Topic: Magic: the Gathering (card game) site for review

thanks in advance to all the people who will take the time to review my site and post feedback here. Any questions or suggestions are welcome
http://www.magictutorial.com

http://
www.magictutorial.com

First of all:
The spash page is not needed. Most info on that page does not matter or could go on the main page.

Second:
The white backround for the header is a bit anoying.. But i better explain this. You did not set the background color for the main page. So in my case Mozilla will put in my standard background (which is a very light yellow to ease the eyes). I think you want the background white just like the picture background so better specify it in your stylesheet.
Also i you realy wanted white i am going to disencourage you to do so.
And here is why :FAQ: Why i hate the white

Third:
You are using an image map for navigating, whitout any mouseover, this is not needed but would be nicer to navigate.

Fourth:
Use the same colors for the forums and the mainpage to create unity

Fifth:
The Disable and Enable link in the card-view window do not work in mozilla 1.3

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"Art has to be forgotten. Beauty must be realized."
Piet Mondriaan

Yah, ditch the splash page.

As for the white background, I don't seem to have a pet peeve against white as a background (which seem a rather strange thing to make a FAQ out of Rins, that's your opinion, not a frequently asked question) but the menu just doesn't fit with the rest of the site. It looks very Magic the Gathering like but it just doesn't seem to fit in anywhere. I'm not saying you should change that; perhaps you could change the rest of the site so that the menu is in less opposition to the other elements in your design.

Typography could do with some attention. Use screen fonts -- fonts designed to display well on computer screens like Verdana or Georgia if you really want to use a serif font.

You also shouldn?t need to use rollovers to distinguish menu links, if you do then the menu is failing on a more fundamental level, that being it's difficult to identify which selection you are making because everything is way too cramped. I think the biggest problem with the menu (more so the sub menu) is readability in general, fix that and you probably won?t need any rollover distinction. Although, with the frequency of java script enhanced sites around, rollovers are almost a given nowadays (most users almost expect them) so it?s probably a good idea, as long as it doesn?t bloat the bandwidth too much.

As for the card info viewing, please use a different link colour for those, it's too confusing otherwise, and they are still links so use CSS to set the correct cursor (maybe even help cursor would be applicable for this kind of thing) for clickable elements -- always try and maintain the codes and conventions when doing stuff like this, as it is I doubt most users will ever click on something that doesn?t either have a rollover effect or an appropriate cursor change to let them know it's clickable.

Oh and what the hell is with those ugly faces? They really don?t seem to fit with the whole ?magic? theme. They look like they belong on a playschool website. If you can live without them, please do. <-- Completely personal opinion. =)

thanks for your input

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First of all:
The spash page is not needed. Most info on that page does not matter or could go on the main page.

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We are about to open up a huge card trading site and at that point, we'll need a splash page to divide the tutorial section from the trading section. When that time comes in 4 weeks, i'll ask you guys for help on how to make the best splash page.

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The white backround for the header is a bit anoying.. But i better explain this

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which part is the "header"?

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Third:
You are using an image map for navigating, whitout any mouseover, this is not needed but would be nicer to navigate.

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i'm sorry but i don't know what u mean by "mouseover". Can you explain?

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Fourth:
Use the same colors for the forums and the mainpage to create unity

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wow i never thought about that, thanks

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Typography could do with some attention. Use screen fonts -- fonts designed to display well on computer screens like Verdana or Georgia if you really want to use a serif font.

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what are "screen fonts"? Wait, so you want me to change the text of the whole site? Why? Is it hard to read or simply ugly?

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as long as it doesn?t bloat the bandwidth too much.

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Well i think i know what u mean by "rollover" and I would imagine that a lot of people are still on 56k's and would appreciate the lower load times, eh?

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As for the card info viewing, please use a different link colour for those, it's too confusing otherwise, and they are still links so use CSS to set the correct cursor (maybe even help cursor would be applicable for this kind of thing) for clickable elements -- always try and maintain the codes and conventions when doing stuff like this, as it is I doubt most users will ever click on something that doesn?t either have a rollover effect or an appropriate cursor change to let them know it's clickable.

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currently, CardInfo words are a bold blue. What's wrong with that? ARe u saying it's confusing because blue is normally reserved for hyperlinks?

http://
www.magictutorial.com

Even if you want to divide a site you don't need a splash page....just put the links on the main page.
That is what that page is for and that is why the first page from a site is called the homepage.
Definition : Mouseover
Header = top part from the site with the title and the menu (sorry for not being clear)
:FAQ: Screen fonts


__________________________________________
"Art has to be forgotten. Beauty must be realized."
Piet Mondriaan

Rinswind is right, there really are few good uses for a splash page. It adds to the loading time of your site, forces your users to make an extra click and well, it's just a complete waste. As it is, you never link back to that page so really it's just a dead waste of time. Websites use the convention of the "home" section to introduce a site and provide a starting point for new visitors.

The only time you should use a splash page is to either help establish branding for information rich websites (although many will disagree with me on that one) or if the website requires plugins then the shlash page is used to inform the user about the requirements of the website and provide support information and links the the technologies it uses.

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currently, CardInfo words are a bold blue. What's wrong with that? ARe u saying it's confusing because blue is normally reserved for hyperlinks?

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It's confusing because when I hover the mouse cursor over the so called "link" the cursor doesn't change to the usual hand cursor for clickable elements so how is anyone meant to know it's clickable?... Sure, you have a whole paragraph of text to explain that, but having to read that before knowing that those elements are clickable is a bad idea. The colour isn't really much of a problem; the problem lies in what typographic elements you're using to distinguish these links. First of all, making something bold does not make it look like a link. Secondly, making something a different colour doesn't make it look like a link either.

By their very nature, links are underlined, have a different colour to the rest of the text and the cursor changes when you hover the mouse over the link. Boldness doesn't really factor into the equation here. The only link like treatment you?re using is the blue colour and by itself this just isn't enough to make it work. I also suggested making those links a different colour so that the user could easily identify the "card info" links from the other links. If you?re to add underlines and mouse over cursor changes to those links you'll want to change the colour to help distinguish that.

Make sense now?

Don't think I can't see that black on black text!

Seriously, though, that's a search engine hack from the early days. Just include something like <meta name="keywords" content="magic cards, blah, blah, blah"> tag in your <head>. It works the same way, and it's (truly) invisible.

That was a bit off topic... um, I'm with everyone. Ditch the splash page

Are "Encahntments" something specific to the game, or is there a typo?? ... right there in the menu ... where the blue letters of the text confusingly merge into the blue letters on the background ... In fact, looking though more pages, unreadable menus caused by a combination of either noisy backgrounds or poor colour combinations seem to be a consistent problem . Glossary, Articles, Fundamentals all suffer from the problem in one way or another.

Lots of information, but ... sorry ... the graphics and overall style don't work for me.


Bug-free software only exisits in two places
A programmer's mind and a salesman's lips