The changing interface

[LPhillips]

Hi, I just want a spot for people to discuss the new interface changes.

I don't know what is experimental, what's permanent or semi-permanent nor what the exact purposes are. So please excuse me if some of my comments are ignorant; they probably will be.

My thoughts: First, the positives. The option to choose between units and site/city is awesome. Really a good addition, and of course I don't know when it was done but it's extremely functional and helpful. The picture grouping to visually describe what the bonuses are and how they're effective is really nice too. I found it to be a bit steep to get into, but once you're adjusted and in on "the code", you can see and understand things at a glance.
The changes to the game selection screen (the "Play" area) are a little cartoonish. That's popular with games right now, but I don't know if it really fits your Warbarons look. Seems a bit out of place to me. Again, I don't know what your plans are long-term, just giving an opinion.
But, some of the recent things are starting to be problematic for me. So here's the negative: With all the peripheral stuff added on the main pages during navigation, it all runs off my screen on both sides and it's really too much. Even now in the forum, Real Time Activity is 35% off the right side of my screen. And that's on a high-res setting with quite a good screen (the screen is probably the best thing on my computer, sadly). Also, everything runs off the bottom a bit at all times in all sections. I don't really know what is hidden behind my task bar in-game, but I hope it's not important. It would be nice if the main pages of the website could be adjusted to fit into normal browser view a bit better. Maybe you could move all things like "news", "facebook request" etc. over to the same side as Real Time activity and trim the width down? There are also some slight interactive problems: if I want to see what Darkh attacked just now, I can't scroll over to look at it.

The real motivation for this post is to ask what people think about the rearrangement of the buttons in-game? I very much preferred the previous incarnation, which I found to be intuitive and easily used. Pumping up the view of selected units seems like a good idea, but this way of doing it and marginalizing the buttons we play with (unless you use shortcuts, and I'm a mouse/lazy player) is awkward. I think it's also much more difficult to figure out what you're supposed to do if you're new to the game. If I have trouble finding and using the buttons, you can bet newbies will.

[piranha]

Could you take a screenshot of what it looks like for you in the game? And one in the community too?

[LPhillips]

Certainly. This is all in Mozilla Firefox, if that helps.

Several of the things that were giving me trouble are gone now. Pretty amazing turnaround!
1) I can scroll to the right now now and see the things that are offscreen, including here in the forum. The amount of peripheral material and its arrangement still puts some things offscreen, but it's better that I can move the view to see the Real Time Activity window. Still can't scroll left to read the Invite Friends button properly, but you'll see that. There's a significant gap of space to the left, suggesting that everything could fit in the browser if things were shifted. Of course the Invite Friends button would have to move on that one page if you did that.
2) "Main chat" and "Friends online" are now both properly positioned and tracking the bottom edge of my browser. Previously they were partly obscured below the taskbar. The in-game display at the bottom is also tracking on the top edge of my taskbar instead of being obscured below it.
3) In-game buttons on the right hand side are back up where they were. Now I'm far less confused. Things are generally constructed in a right-handed manner, so we're used to the focus of interaction being to the right of center. That makes position of the unit interaction buttons prime.

Also, I like the Observer Mode icon. It's prominent, and its meaning is clearly conveyed. One comment on the left-hand side buttons and economy display: it is literally impossible to ever click some tiles in the bottom left and top left of the map. This has not yet been an issue because of map construction, but it could be avoided by moving the buttons/display away from the corners like the buttons on the right side. It's aesthetically pleasing to me with the buttons in the corners, but I thought it was worth pointing out.

Here are your screenshots.

A Crescendo Test Game.

GamescreenFeb092012.jpg (183.36 KiB) Viewed 2697 times

A Crescendo Test Game.

GamescreenFeb092012.jpg (183.36 KiB) Viewed 2697 times

[piranha]

Is your screen cut off like that at the bottom? The image is 1280 X 800 but you have 170 pixels of white at the top of the image which pushes the bottom part out of the image. Is that because you moved the window or does it always look like that?

The left side buttons are place under the unit select area to the right if you have enough resolution, otherwise they are placed along side the screen like in your screenshot. If you look at the url it says lowres at the end. It will be highres if you have higher res and the buttons will be placed different. You can just changed the url between high and low to control the button placement.

I'll see if I can come up with something for the real time thing and facebook invite.

[LPhillips]

First, the screenshots: They're as the forum formats them. I don't have a clue why it bumped them down on the canvas (causing a white space at the top and a cutoff at the bottom).

Hm. Maybe it's just set for bigger screens? I'm definitely set on high-resolution. Odd that the buttons were moving around on me...? I'm not adjusting options. The main window in the non-game screen is fixed at center, instead of floating based on screen resolution or browser settings. So anything placed alongside the main window runs off the side. On most sites the windows as a whole would be centered within the browser, rather than positioned around a central window.

Seems that I remember the game buttons being down at the bottom months and months ago when I played, but as I said I don't fiddle with options. Don't know why it would change.

[Chazar]

Have you checked the magnification setting of your browser?

This may be long shot, but I was once troubled in such a way: my bank changed their online interface and in the new interface buttons were missing and elements overlapped or were cut off. It was horrible and I complained to no avail, as they could not determine the source of the problem.

I found it out later: Due to having a relative small screen with a high resolution, I had unconsciously set Firefox once to 130% magnification (by pressing Ctrl-+ three times). This setting was remembered and applied to all websites. The problem with the online banking browser-application vanished once I returned to 100% magnification. Firefox does a real bad job at magnifying websites (the reason I switched to Chrome). However, there is a Firefox plugin that remembers the magnification settings for each website individually, which is a possible workaround.