WebMediaPortal Design (1 Viewer)

Aredon

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Hi,

since i'm currently reworking WebMediaPortal's ui (thx@thundercats) i would like to get a bit feedback on the overall impressions.

It's obviously in an early state so there will be many changes...
I earn a lot of my income from web design; so I'd like to offer my opinions and assistance.

First and foremost, I'm going to have to put my vote toward no on the side buttons. Images and icons will be somewhat difficult to make clear enough to be more useful than text labeled buttons: "TV shows" vs "TV guide" for example. I would return to the horizontal navigation from the default layout. However, I would remove the dotted borders, add a gradient bar, bevel the buttons, and add a text highlight on mouse over.

Secondly, the teal is ok, but i would shy away from having the content area be colored. It makes reading the titles more difficult than it should be, and it looks less clean. Have a gradient teal for the header/footer but leave the content area white. (this assumes horizontal nav)

Lastly, something you're probably working on so you can take this with a grain of salt, the titles need to be styled and given a margin. I might also suggest that some uniformity with the thumbnails be achieved. It will look a lot cleaner if you can try to keep them all the same size & form factor. That may be something of a challenge to accomplish, but it would be a desirable change.

I'm having some trouble picking up design projects lately, and I have some free time if you'd like my help. In fact, I may just draft up a concept now. :)

I went ahead and attached a screenshot of what I got done in an hour or so tonight. Still playing with a few colors, but I wanted it to feel more like the media portal site. I'm also aware of the text being cut off on the labels, I haven't got to that yet. Just wanted to give an example of what I had in mind.
 

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Mike Lowrey

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Re: [WebService] General Media Access Webservice

Hi, i appreciate your feedback although i don't support all the things you mentioned.
But if your are interested in contributing to this project, may we can work on something like the layout of google music. Unfortunately i'm unable to do this by myself.
 

Aredon

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Re: [WebService] General Media Access Webservice

hmm maybe, I'm pretty happy with where my draft is heading though. I've attached what I think will be very close to my final version of the layout. I'm open to feedback at this point, but I doubt you'll have much luck shaking me from loving this design. :) (as a draft that is :p)

I'm still somewhat up in the air what to do about the borders. They still seem a bit too busy to me. I might try a very light gray and see how that looks, or perhaps try to compress the list down to only having one border per row rather than two with a gap.

Seems my graphic design friend has taken interest to playing with it. So we may see something very very nice soon.
 

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Aredon

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Re: [WebService] General Media Access Webservice

You wound me. :(

Anyway here's another update after some feedback from my graphic design friend. I modified his ideas a little, still a work in progress.

Since I'm no longer working with static pages, I attached my current www folder for those that want to play with it. Probably only do this if you have some idea where the folder goes :p.
 

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Mike Lowrey

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Re: [WebService] General Media Access Webservice

Well - i'm not the one who denied redesigning _together_ or may be i just interpreted your posts incorrectly...

But as far as i could read your posts, you have your draft and want to stick with it...

If you want a more detailed assessment of the needed changes i would like to do, read my post in the issue tracker.
https://github.com//MPExtended/issues/130
 

DieBagger

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    Re: [WebService] General Media Access Webservice

    Anyway here's another update after some feedback from my graphic design friend. I modified his ideas a little, still a work in progress.

    Hey man this looks fantastic...

    :D

    Edit: I moved the posts to a new topic since it doesn't have much todo with GmaWebservice ;)
     

    Oxan

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    Re: [WebService] General Media Access Webservice

    Ok, this really isn't going to work this way. It would be great if you two could come up with something together, but I don't think that's going to work. Instead, let me offer something: I'll implement a skin system so that you both can create your own layouts and we'll let the users decide which one they want.
     

    Aredon

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    Re: [WebService] General Media Access Webservice

    Well - i'm not the one who denied redesigning _together_ or may be i just interpreted your posts incorrectly...
    It's not that I don't want to redesign with you, I simply don't agree with the direction you'd like to go. If that keeps us at odds, then our concepts can grow separately, and when we're both done users can choose between the "skins". (since it would be as simple as loading a different www folder) Which I don't necessarily see as a bad thing. *shrug*

    But as far as i could read your posts, you have your draft and want to stick with it...
    It's not as though this draft cannot be easily adapted to follow your concepts either. You're more than welcome to take aspects of it for your design. (I'm using a tremendous amount of css3, so it shouldn't be terribly hard to port over to your layout). Ask for my files, I'm not against giving them to you :p. (and many of them are contained in the www folder I posted earlier)

    If you want a more detailed assessment of the needed changes i would like to do, read my post in the issue tracker.
    https://github.com//MPExtended/issues/130
    I like your changes at first glance. Though I think some of these could be accomplished through filtering rather than a bulky navigation system. (ergo visit your music page, drop-down pick an artist using a menu similar to these: Chosen - a JavaScript plugin for jQuery and Prototype - makes select boxes better)
    I think you have a great concept going for the grand scheme of things, that said I think you should maybe start smaller. We don't need all of mediaportal's features ported over to a web interface right away, we can start with the basics and work our way up. ;) That's just my opinion though.


    It would be great if you two could come up with something together
    I think we'll probably end up sharing resources, I can help him develop his layout as well now that I have a functioning draft to work with. In fact Mike, if you'd like to send me that layout of yours I'll see if I can dress it up a little without changing the basic concept.

    Attached is a small update, I want some opinions on the shadows I added around the navbar and main content area. Too much? Too little?
     

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    pünktchen

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    Definitely too dark. Why don't you make it all like on MP homepage as your style is very similar?!

    Sent from my MZ604 using Tapatalk
     

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