Discussion of changes to Armageddon Website

[Booya]

Could the 'Reference Table for Easy Viewing' be put back into the new Clothing docs please? Maybe under the main heading for 'Clothing'.

It's at the end of the old webpage for it. and it's the only place where regional differences in trims and prints is mentioned.

[James de Monet]

I don't know if it's a mobile only issue (or a PEBKAC issue) but I can't seem to post any additional information when using the "use this link instead of replying to the email" link. It just wants me to link extant requests together...should I file a new request, then mark it as a child of the old request? Did I miss discussion about this somewhere?

[Morgenes]

I don't know if it's a mobile only issue (or a PEBKAC issue) but I can't seem to post any additional information when using the "use this link instead of replying to the email" link. It just wants me to link extant requests together...should I file a new request, then mark it as a child of the old request? Did I miss discussion about this somewhere?

Can you be more specific on what's happening in an email?  Give me steps to reproduce, from what I'm getting from your note:

1) Clicked link in email  (would be nice to have that link, you can email it to me)
2)   Not sure what you did
3) It asks you to link requests.

Could you also send a screen shot of what you're seeing?

Also what browser or hardware are you on (phone, tablet, desktop?)

[Nyr]

I don't know if it's a mobile only issue (or a PEBKAC issue) but I can't seem to post any additional information when using the "use this link instead of replying to the email" link. It just wants me to link extant requests together...should I file a new request, then mark it as a child of the old request? Did I miss discussion about this somewhere?

If a request is closed, you cannot reply to it at all unless you are staff.  You can link an old request to a new one, definitely.  And honestly, that works really well (I had someone do that recently and it made it very easy to locate what they were referring to).

[James de Monet]

Mmm. Yeah. I think Nyr has the right of it. It's probably simply because the request is resolved. I still sent you that e-mail, Morg, just so you can verify.

[Barzalene]

I wanted to link a request but um, couldn't figure out how. When you finish laughing please explain... Slowly.

[Morgenes]

I wanted to link a request but um, couldn't figure out how. When you finish laughing please explain... Slowly.

1) Log into your account on the web page.
2) Click the Account dropdown (button on the top right) to get to 'Requests'.
3) Click on the 'View' button (looks like an eye) next to the request you want to link to other requests.
4) In the 'View' page, click the 'Link Request' button, which is a green button at the top and bottom of the page.
5) In the dialog that pops up you can choose two things:
  a) How it's related to the other request (related to, child of, blocking...)
  b) The request to link.  Start typing to search the titles, types, and categories of your recent requests.  Or you can just enter the request id, if you know it.
6) When you've found the request you want, click the 'Add Link' button to finish the process.

[Cutthroat]

The Tuluk thread made me think about a lot of the good documentation that was on the website, but when I went to look for it, couldn't seem to find it on the new website. It seems a lot of the "general information" pages are on the old site without an equivalent page on the new site.

http://old.armageddon.org/general/ - Allanaki and Tuluki nobility, pregnancy, Tuluki roleplay and Tuluki caste tattoos  seem to be among those that are missing from the new site. Are there any plans to translate these to the new site, maybe under Characters/Roleplaying or the World menus?

[Barzalene]

Thank you.

[racurtne]

The Tuluk thread made me think about a lot of the good documentation that was on the website, but when I went to look for it, couldn't seem to find it on the new website. It seems a lot of the "general information" pages are on the old site without an equivalent page on the new site.

http://old.armageddon.org/general/ - Allanaki and Tuluki nobility, pregnancy, Tuluki roleplay and Tuluki caste tattoos  seem to be among those that are missing from the new site. Are there any plans to translate these to the new site, maybe under Characters/Roleplaying or the World menus?

Apparently the database crash is causing a hangup here, I recently inquired about it.

[Nyr]

There are definitely plans to move it over.  We know there are some spots that haven't been moved yet.  Once my finals are over, I'll have more freedom to move and create documentation in spare time (so about a week or so, unless someone else gets to it first).

[Cutthroat]

Ah, alright, cool.

[John]

I'm a website administrator so I thought I'd weigh in. I'll note my feedback may not be as authoritative as Maso's though. As an administrator I only deal with one website, whereas designers tend to deal with many websites. Also I'm discovering that my knowledge of website design is starting to lag behind (it pretty much constantly changes and you need to always be researching the latest market trends basically).

In regards to scrolling... It's not that people do not scroll or should not scroll or are not naturally inclined to scroll. The reason the homepage (which is what I was comparing) should be scroll free is because you want to minimize clicks/actions/effort/searching. For the homepage at least. With that said the golden rule is whatever the client (staff) want to get the image they are going for. So it is also an aesthetic choice.

When I was learning website design (I started in 2001) the website was designed around "the fold." This was how much of the website would appear without scrolling. It was important to get as much information into that region as possible. The company I work for recently brought in some consultants to give our website a bit of a touch up (I'm a coder not a designer I can normally tell you what looks bad. But I'm not so good in offering a solution). I was amazed to hear that scrolling is no longer considered anywhere near as large of an issue as I was taught to think of it as (my knowledge is slowly getting out of date). With smart phones we're accustomed to not having everything fit on the one screen and so we've gotten use to swiping to get to the next bit. Tablets have moved this thought into a bigger screen and it now seems we no longer care about scrolling on computers (YMMV, this is general trends to the larger audience).

I think the rise of laptops are also partly responsible. With wide screens, laptops, tablets. We can't really take for granted the monitor size that will be used so people with nonstandard monitors have just gotten use to scrolling and it no longer registers as a conscious act for them.

Responsive Design
I love the whole resizing element and even elements disappearing depending on the width of the browser. This is an amazing CSS trick and I really don't have much more to say about this other then a giant kudos.

Banner
Being MUDDers we can become accustomed to just text. However banners can be very important to convey the branding of a website. For example take this website. It's a council website (most of my examples are going to be council websites I'm afraid) and while it has many faults, the banner right at the top both complements the design and helps highlight it and it also immediately tells you something about the community of this area. It's a coastal community where the beach plays an important part of the community. What they've done here is they've taken minimal space impact while providing the audience with an immediate visual cue.

In contrast this council website has a giant banner as well as an area where the branding of the council's name is in a separate area. This isn't an efficient use of space. Compared with the first link I provided this is a wasteful use of space. That said not all websites need a big banner to help brand their website. this website for example has no banner. What it allows this council to do is draw attention to its search bar and also helps them make their logo larger drawing more attention to it. However they're still using images for branding. This council is very much events driven (whereas the previous two websites don't necessarily host enough events to be able to say the same). By being events driven they're able to keep a rotating banner that is relevant to a news item. Given we're a MUD where most information on recent events is "found IC" we can't really do this.

As such I think the banner at the top of the page is an important part in helping make our website memorable and providing branding.

Title of the Game
I just noticed something very interesting. We've got the word "Armageddon" plastered across our banner. We've got Armageddon in the menu. However in the title and in the first paragraph we still call ourselves ArmageddonMUD.

Are we simply calling ourselves Armageddon? Or are we still ArmageddonMUD? I think having a consistent approach would help with the branding of the game. On the one hand we've always been ArmageddonMUD so a change at this stage may cause confusion in the greater community. On the other hand we always refer to ourselves on the forums as "Armageddon" so it might not be that noticeable.

I'm inclined to stick with just "Armageddon" if only because that's a pretty awesome logo in our banner area and I'd hate to see it changed.

Menu
The menu doesn't conform to my expectations. In two of the links I provided above sub-menus appear when you hover over the top level word. On Armageddon it doesn't. In my experience the norm is for sub-menus (when they exist) to appear on a hover over option (with a clickable option available for tablet and smart phone users. This clickable option can be available for desktop users but simply wouldn't do anything as the submenu would already be there). So this MAY cause some confusion. Or it could be I've simply become too familiar with hover menu websites and clickable sub-menus are actually common as well (out of interest anyone have any professional examples of a similar menu construction?). One final note the menu isn't consistent. On the top level you have to click however when you move down to the second level (and want to move onto the third level) you simply need to hover. If you do click (and in my experience a large number of users who aren't as computer saavy will click on a top level EVEN IF the menu is a hover menu, let alone on a website where the top level trains them they need to click) you then get taken to a page. IMO the menu needs to be consistent.

The organisation of the menu structure is quite well done IMO. It's logical from a new person's experience and it makes things easy to find. One of the issues with websites (such as this one for Hawkesbury Council has no banner. What it allows this council to do is draw attention to its search bar and also helps them make their logo larger drawing more attention to it. However they're still using images for branding. This council is very much events driven (whereas the previous two websites don't necessarily host enough events to be able to say the same). By being events driven they're able to keep a rotating banner that is relevant to a news item. Given we're a MUD where most information on recent events is "found IC" we can't really do this.

As such I think the banner at the top of the page is an important part in helping make our website memorable and providing branding.

Title of the Game
I just noticed something very interesting. We've got the word "Armageddon" plastered across our banner. We've got Armageddon in the menu. However in the title and in the first paragraph we still call ourselves ArmageddonMUD.

Are we simply calling ourselves Armageddon? Or are we still ArmageddonMUD? I think having a consistent approach would help with the branding of the game. On the one hand we've always been ArmageddonMUD so a change at this stage may cause confusion in the greater community. On the other hand we always refer to ourselves on the forums as "Armageddon" so it might not be that noticeable.

I'm inclined to stick with just "Armageddon" if only because that's a pretty awesome logo in our banner area and I'd hate to see it changed.

Menu
The menu doesn't conform to my expectations. In two of the links I provided above sub-menus appear when you hover over the top level word. On Armageddon it doesn't. In my experience the norm is for sub-menus (when they exist) to appear on a hover over option (with a clickable option available for tablet and smart phone users. This clickable option can be available for desktop users but simply wouldn't do anything as the submenu would already be there). So this MAY cause some confusion. Or it could be I've simply become too familiar with hover menu websites and clickable sub-menus are actually common as well (out of interest anyone have any professional examples of a similar menu construction?). One final note the menu isn't consistent. On the top level you have to click however when you move down to the second level (and want to move onto the third level) you simply need to hover. If you do click (and in my experience a large number of users who aren't as computer saavy will click on a top level EVEN IF the menu is a hover menu, let alone on a website where the top level trains them they need to click) you then get taken to a page. IMO the menu needs to be consistent.

The organisation of the menu structure is quite well done IMO. It's logical from a new person's experience and it makes things easy to find. One of the issues with websites (such as this one for Hawkesbury Council is that their menus are little more than long overwhelming lists that make it impossible to find anything. Current trends are moving towards Mega Menus such as this website's menu structure. This helps make the depth of the menu structure much more shallow where sometimes it can be 3 to 5 levels deep. Armageddon's current menu gets around this in an interesting manner and I certainly think it does a suitable job for the task

The second tier A-Z menu is an interesting inclusion. I understand it's feeding in from the helpfile system, but if it's used it needs to be used consistently across the entire website. At the moment non-helpfile pages (intro section, timeline page) aren't using it which will cause confusion for some people. That said I understand the structural/technological difficulty this presents as these pages are the exception to the norm. I can't offer any solutions at this time I'm afraid. If it were me I'd put it on my "to do list" and let it sit on the backburner until I get some time/inspiration strikes.

Related topics: Good use of space and submenus. This site might be overwhelming with the number of submenus. But overall I personally like it For example I was unaware of "change opponent".

Finally: Menu stickiness. Interesting feature. Certainly helpful. Can't say I've seen it on many websites before. Overall I like it

Miscellaneous notes
I don't really have much more to say except the eye for "Latest news" is a non-standard icon. It's cute and once you work out what it does it's fine. But I'd say there's no harm in hyperlinking the "latest news" heading.

Accessibility
I've worked on the old website in the past and one of the overriding goals for it was to maintain an accessible website that people with visual disabilities could utilise with relative ease. I spent the entirety of last year converting a massive website to become compliant with the W3C Website Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0 and achieved a AA rating for the website. I'd be happy to go through Armageddon's website to see if there are any glaring areas where it doesn't comply and if there are some simple fixes for it I'll post my results here (which the staff are free to ignore) but it will have to wait until next week as I have all the tools I need at work.

It's important to note our old website, despite the best of good intentions, wasn't compliant with the W3C WCAG 2.0 guidelines and there were some glaring issues.

I took note that some people had issues with differentiating hyperlinks from text. Accessibility teaches us that you cannot convey information purely through the means of colour. This is pretty much the only way hyperlinks are communicated these days as underlined hyperlinks fell out of fashion years ago. However this causes accessibility concerns as those who suffer from certain types of colour blindness can't differentiate text from links.

The exception is that if the relative luminosity ratio is high enough then hyperlinks can be distinguished purely by colour (I can't remember the number off the top of my head. I've got notes at work) because colour blind people will be able to tell the difference. So I'm curious if those having trouble are colour blind or not (some people can get to 30 before being diagnosed as colour blind believe it or not).

--
As someone who spent at least a year working on the old website (and on again off again in the following years) and quite liked it. I'll say the new website looks pretty damn good to me.

My friend has a small toddler son who tries to swipe (touchscreen style) everything he sees (tv's, books etc). - That one's for you Jeshin.

every little kid I meet tries to swipe everything.

Isn't that crazy?  They have that programmed into their child muscles as the way to interact with the world.

I LOVE THE FUTURE

Present a child whose grown up with smart phones and tablets with a mouse and they won't know how to use it. They'll really struggle to actually learn how to use it to start with. Much like old people who've never used a computer before. The simple things we take for granted can pose a challenge to those who aren't accustomed to it I also love the future. Mostly for the laughs My favourite is a young child who can't read and write searching for tom and jerry cartoons on youtube by activating the search menu, then turning on SIRI voice recognition, saying "tom and jerry" and then selecting the cartoon. I'd never have thought to do that. It's simply amazing the things kids who've grown up with this technology are able to do. And yet I love the fact you  present the same kid with a mouse and they don't know how to use it

[Morgenes]

Let me start by saying thank you for the feedback.  You have done a nice amount of research, and we appreciate you sharing. 

Responsive Design
I love the whole resizing element and even elements disappearing depending on the width of the browser. This is an amazing CSS trick and I really don't have much more to say about this other then a giant kudos.

We are using a base framework called 'Bootstrap' by Twitter.  The responsive design aspect is one of the selling points of Bootstrap (among many other things).  You should check them out if you're in need of a redesign or starting a new project.

Title of the Game
I just noticed something very interesting. We've got the word "Armageddon" plastered across our banner. We've got Armageddon in the menu. However in the title and in the first paragraph we still call ourselves ArmageddonMUD.

Are we simply calling ourselves Armageddon? Or are we still ArmageddonMUD? I think having a consistent approach would help with the branding of the game. On the one hand we've always been ArmageddonMUD so a change at this stage may cause confusion in the greater community. On the other hand we always refer to ourselves on the forums as "Armageddon" so it might not be that noticeable.

I'm inclined to stick with just "Armageddon" if only because that's a pretty awesome logo in our banner area and I'd hate to see it changed.

My thought is that it's ok to use both, we are both 'Armageddon' and 'ArmageddonMUD'.

Menu
The menu doesn't conform to my expectations. In two of the links I provided above sub-menus appear when you hover over the top level word. On Armageddon it doesn't. In my experience the norm is for sub-menus (when they exist) to appear on a hover over option (with a clickable option available for tablet and smart phone users. This clickable option can be available for desktop users but simply wouldn't do anything as the submenu would already be there). So this MAY cause some confusion. Or it could be I've simply become too familiar with hover menu websites and clickable sub-menus are actually common as well (out of interest anyone have any professional examples of a similar menu construction?). One final note the menu isn't consistent. On the top level you have to click however when you move down to the second level (and want to move onto the third level) you simply need to hover. If you do click (and in my experience a large number of users who aren't as computer saavy will click on a top level EVEN IF the menu is a hover menu, let alone on a website where the top level trains them they need to click) you then get taken to a page. IMO the menu needs to be consistent.

This is something we got from Bootstrap.  There menus are default click to open, and their submenus are hover to open.

The organisation of the menu structure is quite well done IMO. It's logical from a new person's experience and it makes things easy to find. One of the issues with websites (such as this one for Hawkesbury Council is that their menus are little more than long overwhelming lists that make it impossible to find anything. Current trends are moving towards Mega Menus such as this website's menu structure. This helps make the depth of the menu structure much more shallow where sometimes it can be 3 to 5 levels deep. Armageddon's current menu gets around this in an interesting manner and I certainly think it does a suitable job for the task

The second tier A-Z menu is an interesting inclusion. I understand it's feeding in from the helpfile system, but if it's used it needs to be used consistently across the entire website. At the moment non-helpfile pages (intro section, timeline page) aren't using it which will cause confusion for some people. That said I understand the structural/technological difficulty this presents as these pages are the exception to the norm. I can't offer any solutions at this time I'm afraid. If it were me I'd put it on my "to do list" and let it sit on the backburner until I get some time/inspiration strikes.

Related topics: Good use of space and submenus. This site might be overwhelming with the number of submenus. But overall I personally like it For example I was unaware of "change opponent".

Finally: Menu stickiness. Interesting feature. Certainly helpful. Can't say I've seen it on many websites before. Overall I like it

Thanks for the compliments.  We spent a good amount of time trying to decide how to provide a menu that covers things appropriately without being too much or too little.

Nice point on the A-Z submenu.  We actually have different sub-menus on different pages (The Intro pages some have their own sub-menu).  But I could probably add the A-Z menu on the Timeline.

The sticky menus come from Bootstrap as well.

Miscellaneous notes
I don't really have much more to say except the eye for "Latest news" is a non-standard icon. It's cute and once you work out what it does it's fine. But I'd say there's no harm in hyperlinking the "latest news" heading.

Accessibility
I've worked on the old website in the past and one of the overriding goals for it was to maintain an accessible website that people with visual disabilities could utilise with relative ease. I spent the entirety of last year converting a massive website to become compliant with the W3C Website Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0 and achieved a AA rating for the website. I'd be happy to go through Armageddon's website to see if there are any glaring areas where it doesn't comply and if there are some simple fixes for it I'll post my results here (which the staff are free to ignore) but it will have to wait until next week as I have all the tools I need at work.

It's important to note our old website, despite the best of good intentions, wasn't compliant with the W3C WCAG 2.0 guidelines and there were some glaring issues.

I took note that some people had issues with differentiating hyperlinks from text. Accessibility teaches us that you cannot convey information purely through the means of colour. This is pretty much the only way hyperlinks are communicated these days as underlined hyperlinks fell out of fashion years ago. However this causes accessibility concerns as those who suffer from certain types of colour blindness can't differentiate text from links.

The exception is that if the relative luminosity ratio is high enough then hyperlinks can be distinguished purely by colour (I can't remember the number off the top of my head. I've got notes at work) because colour blind people will be able to tell the difference. So I'm curious if those having trouble are colour blind or not (some people can get to 30 before being diagnosed as colour blind believe it or not).

--
As someone who spent at least a year working on the old website (and on again off again in the following years) and quite liked it. I'll say the new website looks pretty damn good to me.

Thanks again.  If you have specific things we can do to improve accessibility feel free to submit a request (Web Related: Bug/Typo Idea).

My friend has a small toddler son who tries to swipe (touchscreen style) everything he sees (tv's, books etc). - That one's for you Jeshin.

every little kid I meet tries to swipe everything.

Isn't that crazy?  They have that programmed into their child muscles as the way to interact with the world.

I LOVE THE FUTURE

Present a child whose grown up with smart phones and tablets with a mouse and they won't know how to use it. They'll really struggle to actually learn how to use it to start with. Much like old people who've never used a computer before. The simple things we take for granted can pose a challenge to those who aren't accustomed to it I also love the future. Mostly for the laughs My favourite is a young child who can't read and write searching for tom and jerry cartoons on youtube by activating the search menu, then turning on SIRI voice recognition, saying "tom and jerry" and then selecting the cartoon. I'd never have thought to do that. It's simply amazing the things kids who've grown up with this technology are able to do. And yet I love the fact you  present the same kid with a mouse and they don't know how to use it

I was recently sent this article, which talks about how Ethopian kids who had never seen words before hacked OLPCs in 5 months with zero instruction.  Crazy.

[LauraMars]

I was recently sent this article, which talks about how Ethopian kids who had never seen words before hacked OLPCs in 5 months with zero instruction.  Crazy.

I saw this too, and was totally floored.  Machines teaching children to read.  Straight out of The Diamond Age.

[i can haz mantis]

So, apparently the request tool has a character limit and it cut off a great portion of the request I sent in. I tried to make a note on it to add in the rest, but the button for "add note" is in the body of the request and not clickable. I have tried other devices and browsers only to find the same problem. Do I just make another request to add the rest of my request in the mean time?

[i can haz mantis]

Also, the avatar that comes up when you've signed into the website... I've used that particular avatar I believe one other place, but I'm not 100% sure. Where does the site get it's information for the avatar from? Is the only place to change it on wherever the site gets the info from?

Sorry if this was already mentioned before. Didn't feel like reading through 12 pages to find out.

[Wug]

So, apparently the request tool has a character limit and it cut off a great portion of the request I sent in. I tried to make a note on it to add in the rest, but the button for "add note" is in the body of the request and not clickable. I have tried other devices and browsers only to find the same problem. Do I just make another request to add the rest of my request in the mean time?

If you find yourself hitting the character limits on requests, just make them shorter.

[i can haz mantis]

So, apparently the request tool has a character limit and it cut off a great portion of the request I sent in. I tried to make a note on it to add in the rest, but the button for "add note" is in the body of the request and not clickable. I have tried other devices and browsers only to find the same problem. Do I just make another request to add the rest of my request in the mean time?

If you find yourself hitting the character limits on requests, just make them shorter.

Well, it included a log, so... I can't really make it shorter.

[Barsook]

Also, the avatar that comes up when you've signed into the website... I've used that particular avatar I believe one other place, but I'm not 100% sure. Where does the site get it's information for the avatar from? Is the only place to change it on wherever the site gets the info from?

Sorry if this was already mentioned before. Didn't feel like reading through 12 pages to find out.

It's a Gravatar avatar, many sites use that service.

[Morgenes]

So, apparently the request tool has a character limit and it cut off a great portion of the request I sent in. I tried to make a note on it to add in the rest, but the button for "add note" is in the body of the request and not clickable. I have tried other devices and browsers only to find the same problem. Do I just make another request to add the rest of my request in the mean time?

If you find yourself hitting the character limits on requests, just make them shorter.

Well, it included a log, so... I can't really make it shorter.

If the request type is expecting a Log, we'll have a special place for it.  That aside, there shouldn't be a character limit on requests, can you email me the request id where you ran into this?

[bcw81]

http://www.armageddonmud.org/help/view/Family%20Roles

The link in this file is bad. It no longer directs anywhere.

[Nyr]

Fixed it.  The whole file was jumbled so I modified it to make more sense and be more readable both in-game and on the site.

[AreteX]

I am not sure if this has been brought up already, but I find it a bit jarring that I can no longer middle-mouse click to open many of the website functions in a new tab.  This is how I view the interwebs, new tabs.  I dont always want to switch over my full screen.

Is there a way to have this shortcut click renabled?  This happens with Firefox.  I can still RIGHT click and then open in new tab, but that is just uncomfortable and sluggish!

[racurtne]

I am not sure if this has been brought up already, but I find it a bit jarring that I can no longer middle-mouse click to open many of the website functions in a new tab.  This is how I view the interwebs, new tabs.  I dont always want to switch over my full screen.

Is there a way to have this shortcut click renabled?  This happens with Firefox.  I can still RIGHT click and then open in new tab, but that is just uncomfortable and sluggish!

It seems to work fine with Chrome.