Website Redesign

[Sharky]

Hi Everyone,

I'm thinking of making some cosmetic changes to the site. Nothing to drastic, but I think even after a few weeks, it's already looking outdated!

So I'm throwing this question to everyone. What changes would you like to make to the site.

For example:

Q, Is the font size to big/small?
Q, Shall we drop the left menu bar, and use the space in the header instead.
Q, Do you like the colors of the BB. Would you find it easier to read the text and see the links, if they were a different color, or on a different colored background.
Q, Should the sections be split into UK/US/TA etc on the menu bar.. rather than BB, Chat, Links etc.
Q, Is there too many gfx. making the pages slow to load.

At the end of the day, website accessibilty is the single most important thing. Is there any way we can make the site more accessible.

Please share with us any thoughts you might have.

Cheers,
Sharkster.

 

[Riz]

cosmetically good..

Hi Sharky,

I think the site is cosmetically ok..can't think of anythink bothering me really (if you insist on me saying something then I'd say colourwise it's a little crude risking myself of being arrogant of course)..you deserve lots of praises...the only thing that I often wish we had is being able to print a chart (simple even) in a thread..of course I have no idea as to whether it's possible..you've done a great job, mate...you never stop looking for better..that's great, well done..

rizgar

 

[Cigar]

Sounds a bit rude of us to make comments on other peoples work.

But heres a couple of comments:

I think its a good move shifting the private messages to the bottom.
Do we need to know the 'current active users'

I think the appearance is 'a bit busy' and perhaps a tad crowded.

Silly one now.. I keep clicking on the yellow £ signs, next
to the general headings.. can you activate them?

The 'author strip' or whatever its called. Theres a lot of space in there wasted. Could it be narrower and add more width to the comments themselves.

I'm still having to use the horizontal bar at the bottom some times. I don't know if this is my problem of not. I'm on aol and IE5.

I think your links to the chat rooms are excellent.

best rgds

 

[Guesty]

Wonderful Job

Sharkster,
I'm new to this site and have no complaints at all, you have done a wonderful job here. I do live by various rules of thumb, one is "if it ain't broke, don't fix it !"

All the best
Kev

 

[Sharky]

Keep them coming..

First off, one of the things I'd like to fix, is the fact that if you click back after entering your reply, the BB doesn't retain what you've typed in. Hence I wrote a long reply to this thread, my connection died, so when I clicked "submit" the next page was blank and I lost my reply. Doh!

OK here goes one more time...

Thanks very much for the comments so far. If we can get everyone even just to make a few comments, we could really improve the website I believe.

I'll take the comments one at a time:

Guesty

Thanks Guesty, you're too kind.. though I'm sure there must be something you don't like about the site. Like Neil Finn once said music is never finished, it's abandoned. But I see the website as evolving, and there will always be more to do.

Cigar

Great stuff Cigar. And it's not rude at all, it's constructive criticism - and I want everyone to be as critical as possible!

Current Active Users: What does everyone think. You can turn it off in your profile, so your name isn't visible. It will still count you in the no. of members viewing the BB (in fact it should say website, as it doesn't matter which part of the website you're in). I quite like seeing who's around, as it means I can private message people if I want to have a quick chat. But do you think it's really uneccesary? Let me know.

I agree about the busy and cluttered look. I think it might be better particularly for the BB, to drop the left menu bar, and instead have icons across the header, to the right of the T2W name.

See what you mean about the pound signs, I'll fix it so they also link to the corresponding forum.

Also agree about the Author strip, I'll narrow it so there's more room for the comments, which is after all the most important thing.

Going to do some testing on the horizontal scrolling. Hopefully I can fix it so you never have to do this.

Rizgar

Cosmetically OK - please do elaborate. You're right though, it lacks a refined-ness. But this will hopefully be something rectified in the next face-lift.

Good point about the colours. I like the purple, but it is awash with colours (too many blues maybe), and could do with having a cleaner look.

About the chart. I'm not sure what you mean. You're either referring to including images in your posting. And this is something already available. In the table row underneath the space where you write your message. There's a link called "Upload Image To Insert Into Post" and this opens a little window, which lets you upload your image from your PC to the website, and then generates the code you need to copy and paste into your message wherever you want the image to be placed. Voila!

Otherwise you are probably refering to being able to fire up a chart of a stock that's being talked about in the posting. This is something not available at the moment. A lot of financial sites, outsource this to someone like http://www.bigcharts.com, who lease their technology. But our budget (do we have one?) doesn't stretch to this. So instead I'm thinking of storing all historical price data in a database on the website. That way we can generate our own charts, and do all sorts of cool analysis. But obviously it's going to take a while to implement.

Nice one Rizgar, thanks for the comments... who's next?!

Sharky.

[Edited by ChartMan on 10-02-2001 at 09:31 PM]

 

[Riz]

Thanks Sharky,

I forgot to mention the BB not retaining what I've typed in when clicking back..good thing it's happened to you too..

I think I'd like to see who is active on the BB...

I can't get my head round of the first you said about the chart issue (storing on my computer..how will the other be able to see it then?), but agree with your second comment and understand the budget issue, so it's cool to wait till we can generate our own charts...clever idea

cheers

rizgar

 

[Sharky]

Hi Riz,

About uploading images to the website. Let me try and explain. If you've got an image stored on your PC. Maybe you've cretaed it yourself in a paint program, or you've taken a screenshot, or you've downloaded an image from the internet to a folder on your hard drive.

Instructions on including your own images in a message posted to the BB.

Now you want to display that image in your post to the BB. No problem! Just click the link in options, and a new browser window pops up. Click the browse button. And a new window pops up which lets you choose a file. Then all you have to do is navigate to the folder that contains your image, click the image (either a *.gif or *.jpeg (file extension) and then click the Open button. The window automatically closes, and the first window will now contain a test field containign the location of the image on your hard drive.

Now just click "Upload", what this does is send your image to the Trade2Win website, where we automatically store it on our server. All you then see is a new window, which displays a piece of text (code which instructs the BB to look for the image on our server), you then copy this by highlighting the text, right click, then click on copy or just press "Ctrl-C" after highlighting the text.

Then you can click "Close this Window" to close the window or click the link that says preview image - so you can make sure it has uploaded correctly.

Then all you have to do now, is paste in the copied text into your post. if you paste at the end of your message it will appear there, if you place it between paragraphs it will appear there etc.

It's a great feature, and one that I think a lot of people aren't aware of.

Feel free to open a test thread, or reply to this thread.. with a test image (nothing too big!)

Cheers,
Sharkster.

 

[Sharky]

Well I've made a few cosmetic changes to principally to the BB overview and forum pages. Thumbs up or down? It's quite time consuming, so I'll stop for now.. until I find out if anyone likes it (!)

Cheers,
Sharky.

 

[Riz]

test

Let's see if I can print a chart here...

grrr...

[Edited by rizgar on 10-02-2001 at 08:44 PM]

 

[Riz]

test2

Let's see if I can print a chart here...

It worked..hehe..

[Edited by rizgar on 10-02-2001 at 08:45 PM]

 

[Riz]

test3-size

 

[ChartMan]

I Like the new look!I also like to see who is on the BB.
I like Riz's chart too.
When I copy to P/Shop pro, and get the "resize" right so it looks ok on the BB, the image becomes fuzzy in PSP, and then that fuzziness is transfered to the BB (all using jpegs). I,like you, like to get things right. Can any one help me with this?
Is it just "luck" that Riz's chart came out so clear because the image size was perfect?

Heeeeeeellllllllpppppppppp...

I see you're lurking.....
hehe



[Edited by ChartMan on 10-02-2001 at 09:41 PM]

 

[Riz]

hehe...

Hi Chartman,

I saved my chart as .GIF..first tried .bmp it didn't work..so I saved it as .bmp first, then using I Adobe PhotoShop5 I saved it as .GIF and it worked out very nicely...Photoshop does really provide good quality and various functions with such things..I don't think it is because of the size, I think it's got more to do with the quality of the program providing the image...if you think Photoshop will be of any help to you, let me know...

Sharky, my I be a little more rude and say that the colour of the left column:
About Us
- Welcome
- Contact Us
Bulletin Board
- Overview
- UK Shares
- Tech Analysi
- US Trading
- System Trading
- Market Indices
- Boot Camp
Live Chat
- Overview
- Via the Website
- Via your PC
Trading Links
- Tech Analysis
- Day Trading
- UK Shares
Tech Analysis
- TA From A to Z

needs a darker shade (or text in a darker colour)to reflect the texts more clearly...the text and the background are both light and don't match properly...

cheers

rizgar

 

[Sharky]

Hiya,

Martin: Here's my effort of Riz's chart at 75%..

I did this with fireworks, rather than PSP. I modified image size to 75% with bicubic optimisation and saved it as as gif, after reducing colors to 16, thereby reducing the file-size. Your best bet is to always save charts or flat colored pictures as gifs, it compresses them better and the picture is better. Only use jpegs on photos.

Your right about Riz's image size - it is a straight copy (there is no reduction in size).

Riz: Changed it to bold, I think it's clearer now - you were right the text was getting lost in the background. How do you like the look of it now, I could tweak it for hours. In fact I have.. is it any easier to read now, I think so. But let me know what you think.

Cheers,
Sharkter.

 

[Riz]

much better..

Hi Sharky,

It's much better now..it also helps balancing the whole shades I think..as I now don't feel any eye strain...thanks and well done once more..

rizgar

 

[RobDeNiro]

And I thought I had it tough!!

Having just finished my "day job" I turn on the PC to find that I am not the only one who has been at work.
You guys take the biscuit,spending your Saturday night tweaking this wonderful website,now that IS dedication above and beyond the call of duty.
The only fault that I can find is that the page is too wide for the screen now(it could be my problem).

Keep up the excellent work.

RdN

 

[ChartMan]

Have you tried setting your monitor resolution to 1000*768?
Not too good if you only have a 15" Monitor.....

 

[Sharky]

I think it might be because Riz added those graph images. You can't do anything about that. If the image is too wide, the page will have to accomodate and thus you get a horizontal scrollbar.

If it's something else RdN let me know.

Thanks Riz, and RdN once again for your feedback.

Sharky.