20090320 TOPリデザイン進歩状況

Lookin' good! The streamlined interface looks great, and you're definetly on to something with the emphasis on photo articles. I can safely say that a large portion of why I was drawn to DC.com was precisely the content you've mentioned, so having everything neatly presented at the top of the page seems like a winsome strategy for hooking new users.

I'm curious to know as how things like member news will show up on that new page, though. I can see the tabs that change the display from simply thumbnails to thumnails & the few few lines of the text (my display of choice) are still there, but if I were to use the latter, would it stretch the page? Or would less articles be displayed to make room for the text? I ask 'cause naturally you've only got so much horizontal room as opposed to vertical. And sorry if that didn't make a lot of sense, very sleepy ^^;

I like the way it all looks so far. The only thing that I was going to say was that it would be nice if we could hide the large picture, but you already mentioned that so I guess it's a moot point. ^^
I also like how you're moving all of the news articles up to the top of the page so that it doesn't require a person so scroll down to see them all.
Good work so far.

It's also nice how you're involved with the community and ask for feedback on your changes. ^^

Looks good! The new design looks nice and tidy!

ummm... i don't really have a positive look on this one

*note: everything here will be pure personal opinion - Everyone is free to flame me of course ^^""*
It's starting to look very busy. Yes, i understand that you're trying to cater to everyone, but if i were to pretend i was a new user, i'd be very overwhelmed with all this functionality.
All these functions, options and selections is already blowing my mind.

With retracting/folding menu's/views, yes that would be good, but can it be a server side function and not something like a cookie? ie: jumping on another computer would usually result in having to 'reconfigure' my 'view' settings/selections and so on for each new machine i'd get on

Something just keeps saying to me "If you try to cater for everyone, no one is going to be happy" and something i remember from my brief intro to web design "KISS: Keep It Simple Stupid"

::is looking for button to merely read every entry in chronological order::

aaa.jpg sounds like a good idea for new visitors but yeah I'm not sure about bbb.jpg for current users. Seeing this giant picture in the middle is kind of weird :/ But if there is an option to hide it/make it smaller like you already mentioned then all is well. ^^ That's just me though... Maybe I'm just too used to the current design ^^"

It's not bad but I guess I still like it the way it is now with puchi blurbs and member news at the side...

The Design looks pretty good so far.I agree that most new users will be drawn in by the photo articles and those big pictures will help to convert them to regulars.
The Filtering Option for newbies is a good idea aswell.We dont wanna haunt them away with ecchi 2 d pictures or figure reviews do we? ^_^

For me as a regular its important to have a good overview over the whole content without much scrolling.Id therefore appreciate a normal sized article picture over the XXL.
Im trhilled to see the final version

Looks good but i can't give much of an input till i get to try it.
Here's hoping that the new update will improve the site even more.

Well it might be that we are all used to the design of the site that we can be a reluctant to the change but in my opinion i think its going well. As stated before, Danny's photo articles are really strong in influence which locating it in the top of the page is an awesome idea. As for the picture in the top for regular users i really don't know how big it would be so i don't what to answer about either minding it or not, sorry >.< I think maybe expieriencing the new page will help us understand better what is good and what needs to be changed, pictures sometimes can be a little too flat XD

Congrats on being chosen for the commercial shoot! And good decision on featuring photos associated with new articles, as soon as someone visits the front page. Good way of drawing people in.

Smart move Danny hoping for more users on DC

Wow, looking forward to it!
and FYI you are a great photographer ^^

I don't mind a change in the site, the more users the merrier keep it up Danny!

I'll miss the member news on the left hand side, and I wonder how it will affect the amount of news stories/comments that members see/leave. Otherwise it looks good, I like the use of horizontal lists of pictures depending on what it is you'd want to see.

It'd also be good to have some kind of function that remembers what items you've seen, so that the next time you visit the page (after 15 minutes, 30 minutes etc) it won't show the item again and create more screen space for items you haven't seen. Also, maybe have four news items up top instead of six? Although that'd cause problems with the character mascot sizing.

Good to see the large images for articles and filtering options though ^^ hope these words are of some use!

^^ good luck to your new design.

Is it possible to run a 1-month trial, after the period allow readers to vote which one they prefer.

Personally I think the new design feature is great, as it allow user to customize what they need by filtering what they dont need.

I have a suggestion for the arrows to navigate forward and backwards. If there is an article available, have the arrow but also the thumbnail for the article that you would be navigating too. Not sure if the arrow should be on the thumbnail and slightly transparent or if it should be below it..

For the most recent article, if you are going to have the forward arrow, then there should be no thumbnail since the next article is not written and loaded. This should make it a little easier to see where the arrows are going to take you on a first run.

Just a thought to consider.

I really like it actually. Usually I'm not too keen on changes. But this is awesome. The option to show the news items is essential. Otherwise I wouldn't like it as much hehe.
Looks compact, nice. It will be weird that the photo articles and member news arn't vertical, but it's not that weird.

Honestly, I prefer the site the way it is now...

Mu humble opinions on the new design:

The new design with the huge photo and member news listed that way would make the homepage too "long". Especially if switched to list mode. The "folding" function would help to counter this problem, bu the user wouldn't know when a new photo article is released.

The recent comments section would prove to be kinda useful to reply to well, recent comments... But it wouldn't be too long for the comments to disappear from the homepage. Judging from the amount of comments.. It would be so fast that users won't even be able to catch up. Would be interested to know the reason for making this section though.

Another thing about the huge photo, I hope it wouldn't move to the next one automatically(like say, a slideshow) - it usually lags on lower bandwidth connection / lower specs pc.

Looks pretty good, but won't one huge photo/article be risky to convert new users? Might they not stay easier if presented with 2-3 more article options next to the large photo?

Looks good. Hope everyone likes it.

I approved of your new design! It totally look great and simple. The picture option is really a plus to the site. I see that you still use back the grid design you currently have which is a must keep.

Hope that you can recruit more reader to the site Danny :D

Danny, it would be interesting to know what percentage of people have permanently killed the sticky menu below. Screen real estate no matter how large a screen one has is always important. Plus once hidden I bet it's never recalled in 99% of cases.

I like the new design d^^b, but me and Inkmaster still can't post at puchi blurbs T-T

http://www.dannychoo.com/detail/mac/eng/image/15116/Some+Generic+Apology+For+Something.html

It looks very, very nice.

The hard part is, of course, balancing meeting initial interest with promoting other articles... Best of luck with it! It'll be interesting to know how it works out.

I like the idea for the new users as it draws them to their focal of what they choose.

I hope the feature for hiding the picture box for regular users would make use of cookies like the sticky bar that can be close permanently till the user desires to open it again.

I wonder how the Japan Photo articles list would look on the side of the featured article.

and perhaps switching the Member news with the recent comments frame. would make for browsing through the member news easier, IMO. Personally, I'd like to be able to read some sort of preview for the posted article like in your news, Danny.

Also the 2 rows of thumbnails seem a tad cluttering.

I usually don't like changes ^^ but that looks really good but most important comfortable.

for some people (hey, i know there's someone who'll agree with me), they don't really care about the homepage design, cause they only look at feed reader, and goes to page they interested, not even once see the homepage..
the point is, homepage is usually for new readers so simplicity is a must. as for regular member, they should already know what this site is about and also how to deal with the UI (actually i never customize anything except for sticky menu below, i only read the newest news/article/member news etc and sometimes older news etc via "Currently being read" menu or via thumbnail below post)

IMO, i think aaa.jpg is better

feel free to flame me =P

The one big photo may indeed be better-suited for new readers, but as a regular, it'd get annoying quick. If you implement this new layout, the features to customize it you mentioned will definitely be necessary.

will there be an opition where you can read past articles of that year/month.

Definately looks good. Now all you need to do is provide multiple RSS feeds for your differant categories so that people can pick and choose which ones to read.

Looks very nice with an open clean feel to it although maybe too simple for first time users?

Also do you use anything like what google offer the web optimiser? to monitor two versions of your site that users are sent between to see which has a better conversion rate? link below

https://www.google.com/analytics/siteopt/splash?hl=en-GB&service=websiteoptimizer&continue=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com%2Fanalytics%2Fsiteopt%2F%3Fet%3Dreset%26hl%3Den-GB&utm_campaign=en&utm_source=en-ha-emea-uk-bk-gwo&medium=ha&term=google%20website%20tools

P.S. you are a great photographer :)

Having a huge picture in front of the page does make the page looks overwhelming..
It will be nice if you can add a bit of "Flash" into it ~
It'll makes your web page stands out even more ~!

A lot of change in DC this year, I'm looking forward to it. Hopefully these redesigns will benefit all readers on DC.

Doesn't really matter to me since I'll be coming straight to the articles from the RSS feed, but I suppose not having too much info the first time you come is good.

Looks good ^^ I'll probably set mine to everything. But the large image does overpowering to the eyes ^^;

Hmm... this design may be useful for new readers, but I still prefer the "power" layout that we get to use when we're used to the site. Perhaps having two designs selectable from the user menu might be a good plan.

I think the new design is the way to go Danny. I think as a new reader, it'd get a bit too much with too many articles and links to everywhere. Keep it simple and let a new reader explore your site.

My only suggestion from a design point of view is to make the rotating hero images in a more "HD" format / dimension, rather than boxed in / framed like you have in aaa.jpg. Also, instead of the the arrows on each side as navigation, I'd suggest you use some orange buttons that only appear when the user hover over.

Have a look at nVidia, I know it's Flash, but I'm more suggesting the navigation/UI design and the layout. http://www.nvidia.com/page/home.html

Other examples include: http://www.hp.com/#Product (not HD but it doesn't use Flash and nav/UI is unintrusive) and http://www.logitech.com/

In terms of regular readers, I probably wouldn't have this big HD hero on, but it'd be a nice option.

Anyway, just some of my suggestions.

I like the changes so far and the photo articles page came in handy for showing my mother and aunt your tours of Tokyo and all the variations ( they loved your photo's a lot which is a good thing ).

yup the new design looks good when will you change into it ???

aaa.jpg looks good, considering it would mean that upon arriving to the site the chance of ecchi dolls appearing on the screen would be minimal, allowing me to view the site more safely at work (in the case there won't be any ecchi stuff on the big pic of course).:) One thing, if the big picture will be foldable, I might fold it "forever and ever" just like the sticky menu, personaly I prefer small things to appear on my monitor. However I do think a big welcoming picture would definitely attract new visitors to the site. But in the end no matter what changes are made as long as the content will be interesting/fun, new people coming here won't be a problem!

I'm relatively new to this site. What i think is great hoever is text material abaut japan. This is what i greatly love. Id prefer if the new design was only if user chose to have Figure side of site, but Japan side should remain as it is. Just my 2 cents.

Btw, great site ;)

Design looks nice, wont be that big of a change for current users, but a major change for new users. I like it

Danny, I'm sure anything you do will be awesome.

Changes are not bad, but I like it the way it is.

If the big image is a cutie like Aoi-chan, I wouldn't mind it staying up for more'n a few days. ^o^v

aaa is a good option for newcomers. The Japan articles really are the biggest draw, so the focus is well-deserved.

However, I really don't like the bbb design. It has nothing to do with keeping status quo, 'cause I've gotten used to your frequent redesigns by now. ^^ What bugs me is that - while the horizontal is much cleaner and better for user conversion - I now have to scroll down the whole time.

The vertical size of the page is huge. Speaking as a current user, the first thing I check is Member News followed by blurbs, because those are the most often updated material. Your news only has an update several times a day, and articles don't change for days. Having to scroll down each time the page loads would not make me happy. ^^;

Also, as a current user, the Japan News bar is completely superfluous, even more so than the article.

Of course, if you can fold the main image, that solves many things. If I can hide the Japan bar, even better. That way the content I need would be back near the top where I need it. But having folded the main image, how would I know if there's a new article...? ><

Finally: noticed a new "recent comments" bar. I find that unnecessary, personally, so eliminating it may gain you more space to work with.

As long as I can navigate thru the site, I've no probs.... let it run.

I just wake up so I can't process all those words real well, but I'll just state my opinion about web design:
1. please make sure the new design will not require user to re-learn the interface too much. relearning some of the interface is normal and inevitable, though
2. nowadays people have been using widescreen monitor in which the horizontal working area is wider than the vertical working area. you may want to make use of the wider horizontal area, separating the main page/text area with a relative size (using % instead of pixels)
3. I just found out from uni course that if you style a page with mostly CSS and not in the main page, you can create 2 styles in which user will be able to switch around freely. (in firefox: view > page style > choose ^_^) though this will require a lot of works.

4. finally, regardless of all those rants above, I'd say that those new design look good (IMHO). XD but why is there 2 RSS icons when you open the menu area?
and btw I don't like those area in the bottom area that didn't go away when you scroll (in current design) though thankfully we can remove that one, because as I said earlier we with widescreen 14" laptop don't have enough vertical working area.

sorry for those long rants xD

Hmm, I guess I'm a bit like everyone on how big that picture is, especially if there's a picture that might be a bit risque to see at work. Maybe half the size of that and have it line up to the left while having Danny's News and Mirai on the right. Everything else seems ok, but I'd like to see the number of comments for each news. The Recent Comments bar might be fun to look at, but will there be a line that says where the recent comment was posted at?

And heh... the "20090320" in the title of this post kinda tricked me, I thought it was another giveaway ^^;

You know best in how to attract new readers thru your stats, so I won't question aaa. Looks nice, clean and unintimidating.
For the regular user in bbb, I like the blurbs and recent comments on top page as they are the elements I refresh the most. Would the recent comments indicate which post it is commented in? On the other hand, me wonders how many comments you will allow to not over stretch the top page.
The big article pic is BIG for sure. Maybe reduce and float it against text or lists of articles thumbs somehow. Don't know how articles and mem news would look in list view on top page, but I imagine it would make for a long page.

Thanks all for the feedback - all points noted.

brilliant!

I like the look...hope to try it out soon...

I'm not too thrilled about the new layout. I like the idea of centralizing the more involved articles, but I think the current format does that quite well while giving member news a nice share of the screen. The new format seems to feel more like a filmstrip and as such loses some sense of progression or somesuch that the current style has.

I can understand that the new format is designed to attract new viewers and the progression down the page seems to correspond with the user's desire to use and participate in this website, but this puts a huge emphasis on having that right image for every article or enough new articles to keep those visitors who only spend time checking that first picture. Having recent comments and puchi blurbs way down there seems to give it a degree of separation from the articles which makes the page feel more pleasing, but may marginalize some aspect of the community.

The "Show More News" button also seems a bit small and out of the way for the first time visitor. Does this mean you consider the blurbs like the 7pm series, news you find hijackable, or small asides about your life not as enticing or interesting to new viewers as the deeper and more photo heavy articles? I think this is like looking at a box of candy. You have a tag telling you what is inside, but to really know what is inside you need to open the box, but is the box enticing enough for you to commit to open or is easier to have a transparent cover so you can see inside?

More customization in the interface is always welcome, but not all users might know what is. Maybe a television and a television manual analogy might work here.

No offense, going to speak my thoughts. I liked your site layout the way it used to be. Don't like the change were the user must choose to show "cute or etchi material" for the member news. If I was a completely new user, I would think that would mean that there are uncensored nsfw pics in there and never open it. Thus, missing out on a huge part of what makes Dannychoo so great.

For the new layout, as others have said. Don't like the huge pic. Especially if I'm surfing at work. Even if it's a cute dollfie dream, people at my work think I'm looking at "s*x dolls" or something. More descrete is the way to go. My 2 yen.

I like it. As to the 'big pic problem' that users refer to: Didn't Danny that there would be an option to not show this in your personal view ?

The only other thing I'd like would be a timeline of all articles posted, from all categories.

Good idea...but i am worried about...the extra loading time for the site...other than that...it looks pretty good...

The new design looks good. I need to accustom to the "catfish" though, it looks great but irritates too.

I find you ideas for getting new readers very interesting, although I find it odd that you are trying to cater for all audiences and tastes. I guess for a new reader, I wouldn't really know what your site is all about because I'm redirected to a subsection of the site, and the rest is all filtered away.

Also I think it kind of complicates things for new and regular users. For new years it's quite overwhelming, and for regular users, it's a pain to keep having to go through it to get to the latest news.

I am thinking the start page is becoming too much of a portal, is quite image intensive and is in the way. I think for that reason, sometimes it's easier to view your site via RSS feeds or email subscription to see whats new rather than try and navigate the site.

The site itself has become rather complex to use. It took me a while to figure out where the classified section was, until I unblocked the member news section. Before then I was always doing a search for classifieds which was kinda annoying.

I'm guessing although you'll pick up new readers through adding these changes but I also feel it is making things difficult for existing readers.

Looks really good ^^ It would be nice if the mock-up images included which parts are above the fold using different resolutions.

For example, if I were a new user, aaa.jpg would work for me because the main image attracts my attention while the thumbnails gives me various options to choose from. However, if I can only see the main image, I might navigate elsewhere/close the tab/window if I don't find the image interesting.

An option that popped in my head is that you could use Ajax to allow users to move sections around (settings saved per user or in cookies) ^_^v Unless the servers can't handle all those connections XD

Either way, so far so good ^_^v Looking forward to the new design!