Reviews 'beta' site

[Staffan]

The font sizes on the review site are still broken. Broken in this case means that they're given as absolute point sizes, rather than using relative scales.

I use a pretty high resolution (1280x1024) on my computer, and 8-point text comes out pretty small. In order to read things properly, I have set IE to display "Larger" text. However, abolute point sizes on fonts bypass that, making the reviews horribly hard to read.

 

[Erithtotl]

Updates to Reviews beta site

I have updated the beta site with the new Left-hand only navigation frame. It's not perfect but it does give us a lot more real estate to work with.

I have also increased the font-size on review text and product text to 10pt. I could even increase it to 11 or 12 if people think its necessary, but it looks ok on my 1280x1024. Unfortunately I just can't really stop fixing the point sizes, otherwise all the menus and other navigational tools will get thrown out of whack. You can't design a good looking interface without fixing the point size.

Added to that is I'm not a web designer, I'm a software engineer, so its not really my specialty. If there is a web designer / HTML monkey who wants to help out, I'd be thrilled. I'm just trying to do the best I can.

As for data incrongruities, that should be cleaned up when we use a real data set. I had to experiment with the data during both development and the conversion process from MSAccess to MySQL, so some things may have gotten misdirected.

As for the performance improvement, it is not a result of using a smaller database. The database I'm using is just the site about a month ago, and it was slow as crap then too. I'm hoping that once this goes live the reviews section will be 10x more usable if only because it will be so much faster. Obviously, one of the big constraints is server CPU and memory utilization, which can't really be improved without upgrading. Also unfortunately we are running PHP for the boards and ASP for the rest of the site, which eats up extra resources. Especially since PHP installations on Windows 2000 boxes are rare and all the performance enhancing tools for PHP only work on Linux systems.

Ian

 

[omedon]

I would like to see the most recent reviews centered like they are on the current review site. Also I am not a big fan of the red scroll bars. I would like to see the scroll bars match the rest of the EN World site.

I am still trying to get used to the frames, and the colourfull scrollbars just make things worse.

 

[Blacksad]

just a small suggestion

Could it be possible to allow playtesters and authors to choose a N/A score if they want to give a good/complete description of their product, without interferring with the ranking system?

edit: second suggestion, a profile section for reviewers. It is often said that people need to find reviewers with their tastes, such a section could help if reviewers explain in it (if they want) what their current campaigns are, how they rate product, if they test the product in their games, by how much they tend to alter adventures, and so on.

 

[ShadowX]

Its awesome

Though I do ask if maybe you could epand the top products list a little.

 

[praetorian]

To be honest, I really don't like the new look at all, even less than the old one. Why? Because the side bar, which contains all the options, is horribly small and annoying. It takes WAY too many clicks to get what you want. If I want to see the best and worse products, I have to click reviews (assuming I know this will give me what I want) then click on EACH of the lists. Personally I would prefer them all on one side bar, together, and have an option at the top of the page to get to them all, instead of all this extra work. I especially don't like it, since the full list cannot be seen except on resolutions 1152x864 (at least on my 17 in moniter). My suggestion: everything is on the right track, but make the side bar bigger and wider as well as the text (7 point verdana is way too small, make it 10 point). Put all the searching options and what not at the top (and again in bigger font size) where the three are currently. Basically make it big and clear, and it will be much nicer and easier to use.

 

[Darke]

???

Is the Review Site totally broken or..?

(want back)

das Darke

 

[Psion]

What's up? Are you all doing a dry run on the look of the reviews page? Whatver the case, there seems to be an error in the list display that causes some HTML formatting code to be displayed.

 

[Morrus]

Playing around with things at the moment - there might be changes/problems over the next couple of days.

 

[Blacksad]

A new way of calculating the average score of a product so as to eliminate the effect of "aberrant" reviews. Also a weighting in favour of staff reviews.

The new way is the square root of (mean*median) ?

I'm not sure on the weighting of staff reviews, If I want the staff opinion, I can clic on simon collins or psion (as they have a link on the main review page). If I want an average of some gamer opinion, I prefer that the staff review aren't weighted, especially when there is only two review on a product.

Otherwise, the new look is very nice!