Redesign Updates

I like it.
No flash? good!
Adobe anything nowadays is just too bloated.

I only started coming to Dannychoo.com beginning of this year and I already seen so many changes. All the new designs are for the better so keep up the good work!

Danny boy, this idea is great. Anything to make browsing dannychoo.com faster/easier, I'm all for it. I appreciate every effort. DCFTW.

I think its important to keep things clean and simple, so that new design looks fairly slick.
Plus getting rid of the thumbnail icons means you can have a more visually appealing header.
I'm a fan of all the designs you have created for a number of different reasons, I guess the biggest factors (in my mind) is ease of navigation, and something that you can enjoy looking at.

Also some more ecchi Mirai banners are always relevant ^^;

i actually kinda like this one LOL! Mirai look so kawaii ^O^!

I love the mock up design you have there. It seems a bit more intuitive for me, though I don't if that holds true for others. I do think you should keep a "more articles" link at last article post on the front page, along with keeping your ads up, it should be a careful balance between ads and good looks for a site. :p

I think your doing excellent, Danny. Keep it up!

*Brain wave*

Add a slim detachable music player somewhere on the page .. that plays j pop and anime stuff ... kind of like a last fm style thing .... although uploading new stuff to stream would take time and suck up speed ... so maybe its a bad idea?
Just throwing that out there ...

This is looking good. It doesn't look as much "all over the place".

Not sure yet how the "your tab" will work.

A suggestion might be to increase member news to 4 or 5 slots because it is the most frequently updated.

Ah Danny, the headers finally met it's demise I see. I'll miss it for its dc look, but its true I never use it since the evolution of member news. I could imagine this revision loading much faster as I always see the header loading slow thru wifi, so I agree with your functional minimalistic look to the overbearing aesthetic eye candy. Mirai is finally sitting on the right side which I like. Are comments still set to be toggled? I like them on, but not sure how it set to look in the article section of the page.

Your tab bar right underneath the featured news portion seems horribly out of place. Might want to put that on the top of the page. Also, you might want to make the search box bigger and more noticeable for people looking for specific things.

Also might want to put your rankings, or a list of most popular latest items along the side and run the ads along the bottom.

It looks so simple, I like...

It's kind of messy don't ya think? I prefer Mirai and the latest featured post on the upper left side, It's kind a little off but cuter as it looks, kinda simple though try to figure out more.

Very much like the more more streamlined look Danny, your site has always had a very busy/cluttered front page, but the mockup is a big improvement over the past layouts.

Only thing I might suggest is to give yourself slightly more room for those articles at the top, it is your site after all.

Yes this is really good, but an option to get toggle puchi blurbs on and off would be a good addition as well.

I like this new design. anything is good if its easy to navigate with.

a non-related suggestion
being wanting a dictionary of term that normally appear on dannychoo
pseudo-terms and also japanese term
e.g of terms: "eyes", hoshii, dolphin, soldiers, mikuru beam, SAFS, bla la ba la ba la la la...
it would be a great read and help for new readers and good for those wanting to learn japanese as well...

hmn..I still prefer the old style (^_^") .. cause this one looks a bit a dark, so it might just be a color scheme problem for me.
I'll miss the image categories if you do decide to take them out..its just that this one looks plain to me..I love how your design doesn't look like any other site.
but yeah the ajax tabs on the header is a bit too much..your design before those ajax tabs is better I think
wah sorry .. just trying to help ^^ hehe

As per your question about how important seeing the category of a post or article is; to me, on a scale of 1-10 I would say it's about a 6, I sometimes take a look but most of the time I just read everything, I do tend to pass over some of the Gundam stuff from time to time, as it's not exactly my favorite subject.

Its a plus for faster loading and getting a glimpse at everything at once....but it feels kinda plain...maybe if you chose a color other than gray...

Seems good. And making the top page load quicker is a good idea:)

Needs some colour I think too. Not sure which colour but something other than Gray. Maybe a blue gray would work better.

The Member News and Puchi Blurbs column looks a little too wide compared to the Danny Choo New Items Column.

What's The Footer for (Latest Items?)? And What's the Secret menu?

It's kinda important for me to see Categories of posts since it helps give a sense about what the posts about. Sometimes it's hard to tell.

Secret tab..... What's that? o.O
Anyways, I like the current drop down tabs as it is easy to navigate through the categories for the news and articles.
In my opinion, the articles should take up more space to fill the top page for the new design since it is the main content for the site. What happened to the pie in the new design?

I like it the way it is now. Maybe you're going a bit overboard with the layout changes; once or twice a year is more than enough

Looks alot better Danny, seems alot cleaner and easier to navigate :)

Keep up the good work!

I like the new layout / redesign. The category of the post/article isn't that important to me since it's usually the thumbnail that would catch my eye or not. But it does give me an idea when the thumbnails are a obscure.

Not too sure about the grey top banner... I'd suggest you go for the dannychoo.com orange and fade to while so you don't need to invert the dannychoo.com logo on the right.

I wouldn't mind if when I hover over either the feature article or a member / danny news post, the entire block goes orange instead of just the active links that usually changes colour.

I really like the slideshow for the feature articles, too. Hope you can impliment that.

Looking forward to all these awesome changes, Danny.

looks nice~
but no images for the top tab menu?

very nice design. it looks more like a magazine layout which is what your web site has become, less of a blog and more of a magazine type. which is good thing. for thum i think the way you specific what news item it is like (anime) right now you are using colorful image with yellow and blue. I think that is more powerful then using transparent box. its far more eye catching in color.

i think you should retain the orange color scheme you have always adopted. it is what makes the site distinguishable.
as i mentioned earlier, you really should consider enlarging the size of those thumbnails. It would make the excerpts look smaller in comparison and less of a turnoff in my opinion.
love the moo moo moo, a fresh take from the regular blah blah blah :)

I especially like the minimal tabbar at the top.

Looks good, no great.

"A good engineer never uses his first design. The perpetuation of a good design is always moving forward." ~Anonymous

Great stuff Danny! I see you were working on this yesterday morning your time, yesterday evening my time. Very amusing seeing my puchi blurbs in the picture! The design is awesome, incorporate the portals in and it will be the bomb.

Great work Danny.
one thing from me, could you include a " page top ",hmm...goto page top link under " reply to xxxxx's comment " so that i can go to the top page with one click instead of moving the browser scroll side bar up or using the scroll wheel from the mouse. somethmes the comments are quite long in a post.
keep up the good work.

I like it! it's quite simple but great idea b^^

I like the design...simple, not too many buttons...

just simple...

nice...

minimalistic.....less is more...ornament is a crime...

Ooo~ I like. Very simple and clean!

Not important to me to see the category of a post/article. I can usually figure it out from the image or the title, and I read everything/most of what you write, so it doesn't matter much ^_^

Liking the design a lot though, can't wait to use it.

Looks good! Honestly, as a regular reader, I just subscribe to the feeds via Google Reader. So the layout isn't a priority. If I want to comment on something, I click to DannyChoo.

Unfortunately, if the page takes a few seconds too long to load (since my Firefox is set to clear cache every time I close it), then I might skip commenting and move on. To that end, maybe a toggle to disable the "Latest Items" and "Items currently read" at the bottom? ^_^;

Looks great ^^ though I have not been here long enough to see all the other designs I like the one here. It is very simple, clean and professional looking. I do not like a lot of useless clutter.

I do like to see the categories of a post/article. I've started to visit more often during the day Danny. Those visits are almost always short and quick. Having category tags help me to prioritize what I want to read quickly. Chances are it might be the same for those who come only for specific topics.

Yes, you have portals now however, I still think category tags are useful. You know best since you see the statistics for the site. Maybe people are using the portals more often than the general top page...

I have seen the cycle plugin in action earlier this year. Sorry the site is gone from the college servers, but it did work very well. They didn't have all that lag time with flash when it came to loading the page. Also the "you need version XX of flash" is gone too. Me still needs to check out a JQuery book recommended to me. It's the same book recommended on the JQuery site.

Something about the top of the page feels visually wrong to me. Maybe it's the placement of the items or everything looks a little cramped. Sorry not sure...

Hey Danny, I like the new look. I was thinking maybe puchi blurbs should have their own Column. Also is there something wrong with the edit function when you UPlOAD??? Cuz, I uploaded something a day ago and now its deleted??? I was thinking since i "edited" that post like 5 times, that maybe it got deleted because it seemed like it was a repeat post??? Also the reason for editing was that the "%%" marks intially were not showing the links to pages i was giving credit to. Thanks for reading this.

looks awesome, lot less crowded.

GAAAAAAAAAH~~~~
the server took a walk on me. (excuse this if this becomes a repost or something ^^")

LOL. I can really tell that you've been in front of a Mac UI for ALOT Danny.
Just one small thing that Pyoro and many others have already pointed out... The absence of the mainly orange theme is a bit..... well, it was one of the things that made dc.com, DC

otherwise, IMPLEMENT IMMEDIATELY

1000 internets to you good sir
ps: i was just thinking, is there a way for the pages to be at auto-sized?
I can probably guess that quite a few users of dc would use/have/own a widescreen monitor(since they are highly avaliable nowadays anyway). And having 2 giant white bars flanking the page feels like a waste of space to me (not sure about other users but, a suggestion is a suggestion).

Looks very good, Danny, but I don't know about the gray. The site has been orange and white for as long as I've known it, and I like that. The gray makes it a bit "too dark" for me. Still, it looks very good and I know it will grow on me if you implement it, so I don't really mind. Keep up the great work with the site :D

Danny, I love the re-design. Very clean.
Just a thought about the header - how about changing the color when you go to a different page (i.e. Articles = orange, Idols = pink, figures = blue, etc). Just a thought.

I'm going to be as clear as posible. I just registered, and I did it from the post of the cromed Storm Trooper. When the registration ended there was a message at the bottom that said "return to the page you was" or something like that. I'm no expert, but I think it should say "return to the page you were". I know is kind of stupid and maybe off topic, but you should consider it. That's all Danny
n_n /

IMO, that looks really nice and neat.
As for article categories, I don't really mind how visible it is, since I usually read/click based on the titles and thumbnail photo.

ahh orange is the best after all ^^ Made me love this layout..haha ^^

I thought I was just disturbed by my first impression on this redesigned feature, I agree now with it, I just felt aesthete by that. More over, you can choose color, nice job! Thumbnails now removed so that there is space for the articles.

well it looks better with the orange site strip, but i am still not getting the dannychoo.com vibe... there needs to be more orange somehow...
and i don't know whether it's the long text, but the site seems a bit too much verbose in my opinion

Better, but somehow it still doesn't have that "fun" feeling like the current blog has...

Naw, keep it as it is ....kinda miss the last year web lay out though.......

wow real nice, really simple.

Looks better now with the color picker, but it seems like the gray gradient in the top band is still a bit dark when using orange.
Personally, I like seeing the category of posts, as the titles may not always tell me exactly what I'm about to read. Categories help me sort out what's not worth reading for me.

this looks much better looks more erm whats that word fresh ? it seems easier to navagate and well my contribution to ideas would be something like a chat system for members so that we can interact more with each other.

Hmmmm.......perhaps i could use my PSP to surf here if the main page was simplified

Danny, the mock up looks great. As some of the others have said, the new look is very clean and intuitive. You definitely have a more successful hierarchy this time around. Keep up the good work!

Thanks all for the feedback so far.

nice overall look, not too flashy or crowded with images or moving elements. I do have a question as to why you moved the dannychoo.com banner to the right side of the page.
Usability rules would advise on the left side for that is the first place people look at when they enter a page. Would give you a better brand recognizability as people immediately can see what page they are on.

also i would like to see how the article pages will look like. Now you have the article, a poll (if it's on), comment section, your latest items and items currently being read.
Mainly the last part is of my concern for if you just give the images the category name how can we see the difference between your posts and member posts?

Am I the only one that like the old design better?

Great stuff Danny, keep it up!

I actually like this design especially when you moved that puchi blurb input box above the blurbs. :D And I don't really click on the thumbnails on the header. They just take up too much space IMO. And no flash is good. ^^

I would have liked for the articles and the Danny News to be on the same level though. Maybe you could swap the member news and danny news?

Any plans for a system for reporting member news as inappropriate?

Have seen a good few posts that cross the line in many ways, have seen some deleted but sometimes they get by, for instance today a post about loli's playing with adult toys... tis a bit too much really.

the design is stunning!but there is only one thing that bothers me and thats the search engine..i would replace it with a ajax one's like apple.com using right now..keep up the great work!! (^_^')