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The Boss Is Back

Doctor Oak

Staff member
Overlord
HTML:
[img]http://74.200.74.194/~hostpoke/xnews/images/gary.jpg[/img]
Wow, it's over 2 months since I last updated. Sorry about that, >_>

So, yeah. The main reason is that about a week after Platinum came out in Japan, I moved to England and started Uni here. Needless to say, I've spent much of the last two months settling in and getting into my Uni work.

Part of that Uni work has involved a lot of design practice - which is why you can now find me on DeviantArt at http://doctoroak.deviantart.com/ with my latest examples of designs for various things. This also includes web design, which brings me to the main point of this update.

I'm working on a new design for Pokecharms - and with it a lot of changes to the site. You can see a working example of the design here and how it will look on the forums here.

I make special note of the forums bit because the integration between the main site and the forums will be ramped up massively through this design. You will be logged into the forums the entire time you're visiting Pokecharms, and the forums will - by default - feature the site design and navigation to bring everything together.

This will have massive implications at a later date for future features - but I wont say anything solid about those until much closer the time.

Part of this redesign is a redesign of Pokecharms' content in general. The Games section, you'll notice, is no longer present on the new design's navigation.

This section has plagued me for years now. An ambition with Pokecharms has always been to make it as unique as possible - but the games section itself is inherently not unique at all. I've attempted displaying the information in a unique way, but when it comes down to it - it's still all stuff that other sources like The Bulbapedia provide in a much fuller and simpler way.

As such, instead of struggling to compete and think up impossible ways to redesign what's basically static information, I've simply dropped the section from the site.

From the new design's launch, Pokecharms will be entirely focused on community and unique web applications such as the Trainer Card Maker and a redesigned Pokedex - and hopefully everyone will be on board to make that new focus a success.

One final note to make about the new design is that the news, once the design is running live across the whole site, will be generated through the forums (as seen in the design example. This will eradicate problems we've had in the past concerning how the news displays, the comments system not working right and archiving not working correctly. It will also help to reinforce the unification of the forums and the rest of the site.

As such, I'm posting this news item into our new News forum as well - where you may comment on it and where it shall be archived within the new system. You can find that topic here: http://www.pokecharms.com/forums/index.php?topic=5164.0

I'll try not to take too long to update again, folks. But the next time I do, it will probably be with the new design. And finally a major thanks to Katie, Sem and Ed who have been keeping the site updated for me in recent weeks in my absence. :)
 

Ruko

Bearded Trout Warrior
It's Opera 9.62 XD

Sorry about that ^^;
I run windows without explorer.exe, so I run everything from Task Manager, which sits best at the top left.
 
Probably only me, but all the ad that is normally on the side for me is now at the bottom of the page instead. And the stuff at the top is either non-existent now (Headings)or the stuff that was suppose to go in the corner is now in the middle of my page. This only happens in the thread itself, not on the topics list.

Any reason why it looks different than the set-up from last night? Cause I just got attached to it.

http://i230.photobucket.com/albums/ee278/Plapti/Screenshot1.jpg

http://i230.photobucket.com/albums/ee278/Plapti/Screenshot2.jpg

http://i230.photobucket.com/albums/ee278/Plapti/Screenshot3.jpg
 

Doctor Oak

Staff member
Overlord
Anything you're seeing at the moment is 'cos I'm working through the stylesheets to try and get everything working properly. Please ignore all issues for the time being.
 

Ruko

Bearded Trout Warrior
I've still got the same problem I did before... the only difference is that the "Advanced Search" is now slid a bit farther up and closer to being within the border. The bottom text on the tabs is just as cut off as it was before.

Would you still like another screenshot?
 

Doctor Oak

Staff member
Overlord
Sorry, can't do much to fix any style issues with Safari since I can't test them.

If you have any issues with text bursting out of where it's meant to be, try reducing the size or text-zoom set by your browser. It's not exactly ideal, but because of the information I'm FORCED to put in somewhere in integrating the forums in a restricted area to fit into a 1024 width properly, there has to be a trade off between design and accessibility here.

Of course, since my module next semester on web design standards focuses HEAVILY on accessibility, I'll have to hide the hell out of Pokecharms when we're doing that. >_>
 

Magpie

Feathered Overseer
Staff member
Moderator
I actually use FireFox, the Site News section of the forum won't even open in my version of Safari, it crashes the browser. But I doubt that's a forum issue, my Safari is very outdated since I rarely use it.
 

Ruko

Bearded Trout Warrior
So your font is still pretty large, then?

Do you have Opera setup to display any larger than the default?

No, I don't :-/
I'm not even sure how to set that because it's never bothered me XD

I'll start hunting around to make it smaller
 

Linkachu

Hero of Pizza
Staff member
Administrator
Everything looks perfectly fine to me, but I use the most up to date version of Firefox. Might also help having a wide screen display - not sure. Either way, no issues.
 

Prof. Cinders

Mathemagician
Staff member
Administrator
The only (small) problem I have is this:

CharmsScreenshot3.jpg
 
I'm good now. The ad doesn't stretch my page out anymore.

And Rach, does zooming in or out fix anything or does it do nothing. My Firefox does the same thing if I zoom out too far.
 

Doctor Oak

Staff member
Overlord
I don't know why you're getting a horizontal scroll bar there. At most you should only receive a vertical scroll if your name's long enough to cause it to stretch out. I don't see why yours would do that either though, since it's the same length as mine..
 

Doctor Oak

Staff member
Overlord
Ruko, I've tried what I can to make the forums work nicer with Opera - but between the forum software and Opera itself it's impossible to get a fix.

Luckily, it's a pretty minor problem and doesn't affect any functionality on the forums from what I've experienced. There just seems to be some weird way that the forums are forcing text through that only actually WORKS on Firefox. And unfortunately, IE's the only browser that has the facilities to work a fix in. That does cover 99% of the people visiting the site though... so... yeah.

As for people experiencing horizontal scrollbars on their welcome section in the header - could you please provide screenshots, browser makes and models. Thanks.
 

Magpie

Feathered Overseer
Staff member
Moderator
I had the scroll bar once, but mostly the text is just slightly over the edge like in that last screenshot I posted. Zooming doesn't fix it.

FireFox for Mac, version 2.0.0.18


However, like you say it doesn't interfere with anything, the rest of the forum works fine, so it's not really a problem per se.
 

Doctor Oak

Staff member
Overlord
Should be working a lot nicer now - though the trade off seems to be that Firefox will need vertical scrolling in that section more often.

However, it shouldn't appear with horizontal scrollbars for anyone, so should be vastly improved in looks and utility.
 

Magpie

Feathered Overseer
Staff member
Moderator
It looks fine now, all the text fits within the border. I have a vertical scroll, but it only moves the text slightly, so slightly in fact that I barely think it moves at all XD
 

Ruko

Bearded Trout Warrior
Ruko, I've tried what I can to make the forums work nicer with Opera - but between the forum software and Opera itself it's impossible to get a fix.

So long as the 'dex search up there works for me when it's up, I'll be fine XD
Cosmetics were never a major issue with me on websites, so long as I could find what I wanted XD
I should really switch to a more mainstream browser if it does start bugging me.
 
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