So we've been kicking around ideas for the total website redesign and decided that the forums needed work first. I looked at it on a smart phone and it looked like it needed a lot of work -- I found it almost completely unusable. :(

Here are some interactive mockups of the design that will begin being implemented this weekend. There are logged in and logged out views.

Forum view:
http://ee_design.evolution2025.com/forums_board.php
http://ee_design.evolution2025.com/forums_board.php?loggedin

Thread view:
http://ee_design.evolution2025.com/forums.php
http://ee_design.evolution2025.com/forums.php?loggedin

These are built to be forward-compatible, but should gracefully degrade for older versions of Internet Explorer. If you are using Chrome or FireFox, try resizing your browser window. The design will change based on your browser width, replicating what you would see on a smartphone or tablet. for smaller resolutions, the menu structure changes and for mobile devices, the menu changes to a more mobile-friendly design. Try it out on your phone/tablet and see how it looks!

The design is made to scale down to a very, very small width so you could theoretically be reading the forums at work with a small window in the corner of your screen while having other stuff taking up the majority of your screen.

The ingame and public site redesigns will follow the same sort of idea and methodology. We wanted something far more minimalist and I think we finally got it where we want it :p

I'm hoping to implement most of the changes this weekend, so if you have any feedback please provide it soon.
Thanks

Indeed; these are the main direction we're heading now; have patience, converting systems always takes time hehe

LOVE IT!!!!!!

Looks very nice.

One question: how does it look whenever someone with a really long name posts?

If it's a regular name that just happens to be very long with multiple words (like General Nukevil of Aragon), it wraps nicely. If it's one long string with no whitespace (IKILLYOUINYOURSLEEPBECAUSEIAMFREDDYKRUGER), it will be clipped by the edge of the user info container (i.e., part of it will appear under the post content).

It may negatively impact smartphones where that container can impact total width. I may have to code something to clip super long names for small res.

The thread views look a bit clunky the way it puts the name and title above the post instead of to the left. Some lost space there.

mmm that's done to make more use of limited horizontal space in exchange for taking up more vertical space.

Because of smartphones?

I dont have any issues. What size is your screen/ resolution at?

ya, if it looks weird, take a screenshot.

you can upload them to imageshack for free without signing up:
http://imageshack.us/

I don't know if i have an issue or not. is this what it looks like for everyone else?
http://i.imgur.com/g4WYU.png

no, it doesn't look like that at all. It looks like this: http://img7.imageshack.us/img7/8840/forumpager.png

what browser are you using? It looks like a bunch of the CSS rules are being ignored.

Another question:

Does it have 'like' buttons?

no, although that functionality might be included for a "help" forum so folks can choose the best answers for n00b help.

but that would require extending the forum system, which is down the line. this is just a design refresh as an interim step.

I'm using Chrome. I bet it will look right on my home computer but here, it looks like that... doesn't seem to matter where I set my resolution, 1024x768, 1280x1024, it keeps formatting that way. Maybe the video card is old or the hardware is out of date... I don't know. Let me try updating Chrome.

Nah it looks like that no matter what in Chrome. In ie it looks right except all the blocks have sharp edges, not rounded ones. Guess this computer is weird.

what OS are you on? :-/

and if you're seeing a square edge instead of a round edge in IE -> you're likely on IE8 or IE7. That's the "graceful degradation" I was talking about.

IE8. I haven't updated it because I don't use it...
XPSP3.

hmmm

XPSP3 would be fine I'd expect... I'll have to fire up a virtual machine and check it out. But that's pretty old, so maybe it's messing something up.

Looks nice.

1. In the forum view, you can save 10-20 pixels width if you use "5h ago" instead of "5 hours ago".

2. Current forums has a "Current Time: Aug 24, 19:30:46" at the top, which isn't in the new forum format. This allows me to see how long ago a post was made (in thread view). Perhaps add the current forum time somewhere?

Good points! Still working a bit with the time on mobile, but I added it to the breadcrumb bar for the full view and to the user bar for the partial view (with a hover state that shows full time). I need to work on it a bit for tiny screens.

Blid-- I'm on google chrome too and mine doesn't look like yours. Do you have any gadgets or add-ons that may interfere with CSS?

No. I use Chrome at home too thoug and it looks fine here. Something with my work computer, I don't know.

looks good on arch linux ff14 and newest chrome.

1440x900 res

Internet Explorer in any version blows Chunks... and I do mean my ex-boyfriend's dog 'Chunks'. Get a real browser, like Opera, Mozilla FireFox or Mozilla Aurora?

soon he needs to update windows.

what happened to implementing this new design by that weekend? lol....

more important things?