One big critique I seemed to get with the previous template was that it was just too dull. Sorry, I'm not a graphics designer. ^^; I tried to spice things up a little bit more this time with little tarus that also act as visual cues to the level range they represent (although I might've overdone it with the 70s taru. ^^;)
Perhaps the header should have more colour, much like the current Campsitarus where Strawberrie's drawing of me in RDM AF provides a very striking contrast against the green-ish blogger theme.
I'm still trying to keep at least all the standard camps visible on the first fold. It's my intention to display all the alternate camps below (you'll need to scroll down). This time however, the screen resolution has been reduced down to 1024 x 768. I checked against an 800 x 600 browser, and while there will be a little side scrolling involved then, all the campsite links will still be visible.
The font size for the camp links have been increased, and are now bold. I'm not sure if this is overcompensating for the too-small links the previous time around.
I also took away the articles, even though I still think they'd be a good idea. For now though, I'll err on the side that I won't be able to keep up with the articles, and so as per Oshikorosu's suggestion, I took them off.
I'm still not sure on the colour palette. As you may be able to tell, the colours were taken from West Sarutabaruta [S] this time. It still looks rather dull, but I'm at a loss here on what else I can do to spice things up that isn't too complicated and will still load quickly.
So, opinions? Ideas? Comments?
8 comments:
Make the white boxes transparent much like the first box but make those boxes "brighter" in color (or make that top left box darker, contrast and stuffs).
Otherwise, everything looks good. Include a footer, probably add copywrite info and that... should it be. :3
Transparent boxes would work although I'm afraid how the text will turn out against such a background. Hopefully it won't get lost in the background color.
I think there should be a Shantotto somewhere embedded in that frontpage.
Maybe saying "ohhohoho, so you wanna XP?"
Don't make the camp boxes transparent. It serves no purpose other than REDUCED readability.
Make the bottom of the Standard Camps infobox line up with the bottom of the camps boxes. It'll look that little bit neater. That box is also too dark. Inside shadow should probably be removed.
Overall a lot better than before. I still worry about the lack of flexibility -- if you get a new level 42-45 camp in a mini expansion, you have no room to put it.
I also don't like that you're now giving less info than before -- you've always told us what the target mobs are in the listing.
Warning box on the right side is not required imo. Is someone gonna sue you if their camp doesn't work out?
I like the little tarutarus with level-appropriate gear, but I hope the image quality is better than I can see here. Can't tell because of your high compression.
Also: anti-aliasing on your text please!
Re: tacrozarShantotto, eh? Can't say I dislike the idea. ^^
Re: RoxyaI'm aware of the flexibility issues that will arise with boxes of fixed size, although from experience, only the top % of all available camps will ever be "standard," and as more camps come into the game, other camps will become obsolete.
I was planning on showing the mob names when you mouseover the camp, although I admit that's rather difficult to display here. ^^; Not sure if that's a good idea though, but I can't fit everything on the first fold if I include mob info alongside the camps.
No, I'm not afraid of being sued, but I needed something to fill up the space here. :P
The images are low-res because this was just to play around with layouts. If I do implement this though, I'm planning on using 3ds max to render high-res models for the website.
I really like where you're going with the new layout! Things I can suggest is giving the white boxes with the camp links some opacity to keep with the theme you have going on. Though, I am a little sad to see Strawberrie's Taru RDM no longer on the page. Maybe place her on the upper far right and have the "warning" textbox be a speech bubble coming from her, saying whatever new update-ish thing you'd like to say? (gogo overly long run-on sentence!)
Looking forward to the new update and shoot me a tell when you get it up and finalized; I'll make a front page post about it on LBR. ^^
~Juxta
I love the tarus at the top of each level specific heading.
That is really awesome. I have used your guide for years and everytime someone says "where should we level?" I go to my bookmarks and click Campsitarus. Thanks for the work and time you put into it, I have always found it so useful and accurate. The new layout looks really good. I never knew it was you who made it, so Thank You!
Dangertaru of Odin
Love where you were going with this. If you need someone to turn this into an HTML template, I'd be glad to help. I've used your resource for years and years; it's the least I can do!
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