Improving some aspects of DW (e.g. /newstuff)

Some bits of DW are showing their age. Personally, I've always been very frustrated with the presentation of stuff in the /newstuff chronicles: The lead-pic thumbnail from the front page is never a hyperlink, you don't know which WAD it's for. The article is usually better, at least you get a list of pics-by-WAD. But I dislike it being on a separate page, some kind of overlay would be much nicer in the modern age IMHO, with a larger view which was still scaled to your window size (at least for initial click). For megawads you often get a dozen thumbnails or so and a comment like 'You owe it to yourself to check out Dreadopp's excellent-looking "Plutonic Plate Shift"'; but of course no way of figuring out whether one of those dozen pictures corresponds to that particular highlight.

So I'm whining, but I'd be prepared to put my HTML/JS/CSS where my mouth is, too. How do we go about it?

Jon said:

The lead-pic thumbnail from the front page is never a hyperlink, you don't know which WAD it's for.

It's always from the wad mentioned at the beginning of the news preview. Right now there is written: "JudgeDeadd on Plutonia 1024: The Plutinya Experiment: [...]" and the screenshot is from Plutonia 1024: The Plutinya Experiment.

Having screenshots with captions would be nice similar to what PCGamer and ArsTechnica have.

An example with this article.

I thought of an other idea but I'll have to try to remember it.

I managed to get a review copy of Mario Maker... without even owning a Wii U... or a Wii.

The image viewer is useless to me, as it only displays the file names of the screenshots, not the author or title of the wad being shown. I click on one of the tiny img thumbs, view the screenshot, then click back and go to the next one while keeping count of which ones I already clicked on. If there are more than 6 screenshots I don't even bother looking at the rest of them after seeing the first few.

Now that I mention it, I don't know why I've been putting up with this for so long without bitching about it :P

geo said:

I managed to get a review copy of Mario Maker... without even owning a Wii U... or a Wii.

I do wish they made a 3DS version of Super Mario Maker... But what does this even have to do with Doomworld? :P

Either way, I'm happy with it as it is. "If it ain't broke..." The /newstuff image viewer could use some work though (perhaps resizing images larger than 800x600) and a mobile version of the site would be nice.

I think a good way to improve Doomworld would be to remove all of the broken links on the links page. Then why not actually update that links page with some modern website, for example under Classic Doom/ Level Reviews we don't even have a link to kmxexii's website, on the same note Doom Wad Station, one of the few websites still doing reviews is linked somewhere halfway down the page when it should be one of the starred ones at the top. Then under Calassic Doom/Multiplayer there's no link to the ZDoom forums. I would think that those are some of the most used Doom sites outside of Doomworld.

Okay I just noticed that I can submit links to the links page, but if I did would they actually be added?

Either way that whole area of the website could use some serious cleaning up.

HavoX said:

I do wish they made a 3DS version of Super Mario Maker... But what does this even have to do with Doomworld? :P

Either way, I'm happy with it as it is. "If it ain't broke..." The /newstuff image viewer could use some work though (perhaps resizing images larger than 800x600) and a mobile version of the site would be nice.

Someone posted an article about Mario Maker.

Doomworld can be improved. I could offer to do such things and with time accomplish them. I'm sure there are several people willing to enhance the site.

Jaws In Space said:

I think a good way to improve Doomworld would be to remove all of the broken links on the links page. Then why not actually update that links page with some modern website, for example under Classic Doom/ Level Reviews we don't even have a link to kmxexii's website, on the same note Doom Wad Station, one of the few websites still doing reviews is linked somewhere halfway down the page when it should be one of the starred ones at the top. Then under Calassic Doom/Multiplayer there's no link to the ZDoom forums. I would think that those are some of the most used Doom sites outside of Doomworld.

Okay I just noticed that I can submit links to the links page, but if I did would they actually be added?

Either way that whole area of the website could use some serious cleaning up.

Agreed. That sidebar with the "doom info" on the main page not only needs to be bigger (I imagine it was not designed with 720p/1080p in mind) but the articles need to be added or updated.

A mobile friendly version of the site, or even just the forums, would be an added bonus.

/newstuff has always been the very definition of TL;DR. Large blocks of text with no visual for which part of the article I should immediately pay attention to. Am I expected to open 50 tabs for each screenshot?

Firstly, WADs don't need a dozen screenshots each. Just take a handful of the best unless it's a major release covering many themes and environments. You can show thumbnails using a simple theme like Bootstrap. Fancybox JS opens a gallery view without requiring you to open another page in a new tab. e.g., http://derekmd.com/2005/07/jagermorder-02-terra-nova-released/

For Fancybox, you just add a title="" to the thumbnail's <a> element in order to add a caption. Add rel="<gallery id>" to define which images should be grouped as a slideshow.

I realize the reason for primitive /newstuff formatting is for the sake of forum post compatibility. But it's basically a .txt file linked from the homepage.

I am actually hoping to redo / update the DW design in Bootstrap, don't tell anyone though

Afterglow said:

/newstuff has always been the very definition of TL;DR. Large blocks of text with no visual for which part of the article I should immediately pay attention to. Am I expected to open 50 tabs for each screenshot?

I honestly think tnc would be better if it was more frequent but shorter batches, like around five reviews per chronicle.

Linguica said:

I am actually hoping to redo / update the DW design in Bootstrap, don't tell anyone though

That's great. Put your WIP in github so people can put their pull requests where their mouths are. If you aren't happy to make it *that* public, yet, put it in bitbucket private repo instead. It doesn't have to be a full copy of the DW code, just the new stuff. Puleeeeze

Gez said:

I honestly think tnc would be better if it was more frequent but shorter batches, like around five reviews per chronicle.

This is a good idea.

And I do agree that all the off-page image links are unwieldy and are frequently more trouble than they're worth, and that the T/nC posts are long and wordy enough that they invite skimming rather than reading.

Wouldn't it just be dandy if every screenshot related to the featured review were shown in a slideshow, maybe even that fades in and out (ooh, fancy) like a slightly cleaner version of what Krawa does for ZDS screenshots:




Obviously the thumbnail present on the front page is smaller - Maybe make it have double the duration. I think this would be a really slick little addition.


Also, what everyone else said.