Toon Zone News & Main Page redesign

[Brian Cruz]

In case you haven't noticed, the Toon Zone main page (http://www.toonzone.net/) has been completely resdesigned, and Toon Zone News (http://news.toonzone.net/) has been reorganized and redesigned as well.

Credits for all this goes to Adam Tyner, Harley, and Maxie Zeus. They've been working on this for months and deserve a round of applause.

So, any comments? Questions? Complaints? Post them here!

[auto]

Nice job Adam Tyner, Harley, and Maxie Zeus!
IMHO, Toonzone now looks like one of those professional news websites.

[Tanooki]

very nice job, everyone! it looks so sharp

Falcon

[Discloner]

I'm not horribly keen on the whole highlighted article graphics at the top of the page...but other then that, the new layout does a fantastic job of providing a resource too all TZ's information.

I preferred the older, but this one does its job just as well, and everyone involved in getting it up and running should be proud.

Edit: Now that I think about it, the graphics would look pretty good up there if they looked a tad bit more professional. Perhaps, a constant graphical design scheme? Something that ties all said images to one other? I just think with all the various directions each graphic is going...it kind of comes off shoddy, but that's just me. :)

[Jave]

Looks very nice indeed. Keep the good work up guys!

[True Noir]

Nice job! It looks really good. No joke. :)

[Craig Crumpton]

Really like the redesign. Excellent as always.

However, this button on all the news pages is a bad link:
http://www.toonzone.net/images/tz5/rss.gif

[maxnugget]

I love the custom feature graphics, nice job on those.

There is one thing I'm not crazy about though: It seems to me that it's harder to read the list of headlines (and reviews, etc) now that they're center-aligned instead of left-aligned like they were originally. Your eyes basically have to search for the "starting point" of each headline. Switching to left-aligned headlines or coming up with some other way of displaying the headlines might make them easier to read through.

[Maxie Zeus]

What headlines are center-aligned? What pages?

[Burgundy Ranger]

I like how the "middle step" to get to most stories and features has been eliminated. It was a real pain to go from the front page to the summary page and THEN to the full item.

[maxnugget]

What headlines are center-aligned? What pages?

The site shows up fine in IE, but in Opera (my browser of choice) all the news and reviews headlines, and anything else on the main page with similar formatting, is showing up center-aligned instead of left-aligned (which is, of course, a bit trippy to read).

I don't have Firefox intalled so I don't know how it looks in that, but if you want it to look right in Opera you might want to check it out. On the other hand the site displays fine other than that and the center-alignment is only a minor inconvenience, so don't feel like you've got a zillion Opera users breathing down your next to fix it. :) (there aren't exactly a zillion Opera users...)

[Maxie Zeus]

Thanks for checking on that and replying. :)

The headlines are left-aligned in Firefox and Safari also--those and IE are the browsers we tested it out on.

[guinaevere]

Nice update, guys. Excellent work as always.

[A.J]

Congrats on the new design guys! The site looks totally awesome. I actually feel very proud of being part of the TZ community. Keep it up!

[Harley]

The site shows up fine in IE, but in Opera (my browser of choice) all the news and reviews headlines, and anything else on the main page with similar formatting, is showing up center-aligned instead of left-aligned (which is, of course, a bit trippy to read).

I don't have Firefox intalled so I don't know how it looks in that, but if you want it to look right in Opera you might want to check it out. On the other hand the site displays fine other than that and the center-alignment is only a minor inconvenience, so don't feel like you've got a zillion Opera users breathing down your next to fix it. :) (there aren't exactly a zillion Opera users...)

Hey, just to let you know... I'll get that all fixed up this weekend.

[Tak Mazé]

Making all those pictures for the featured items on the front page must be difficult :) Looks really effective though! Kudos!

[Ben]

Making all those pictures for the featured items on the front page must be difficult :) Looks really effective though! Kudos!

Yeah, especially when all the editors are new to Photoshop. :sweat: TIiiime-consuuuming!

[Maxie Zeus]

Thanks. We're still figuring out what the most effective presentations would be, so hopefully they'll get better ...

[Harley]

The site shows up fine in IE, but in Opera (my browser of choice) all the news and reviews headlines, and anything else on the main page with similar formatting, is showing up center-aligned instead of left-aligned (which is, of course, a bit trippy to read).

I don't have Firefox intalled so I don't know how it looks in that, but if you want it to look right in Opera you might want to check it out. On the other hand the site displays fine other than that and the center-alignment is only a minor inconvenience, so don't feel like you've got a zillion Opera users breathing down your next to fix it. :) (there aren't exactly a zillion Opera users...)

Okay. That should be all fixed now.

For some reason, beyond my knowledge, it was center-aligning by default in Opera. So I just set the cells to left align.

[Tak Mazé]

Photoshop is evil X_x Paint Shop Pro is my fave.

[Discloner]

Photoshop is evil X_x Paint Shop Pro is my fave.Then you haven't been spending enough time with it. Photoshop is the answer to all of life's problems. :p

[Harley]

Photoshop is the answer to all of life's problems. :p

The man speaks the truth.

I won't color random comic book pages (for the hell of it) without it.
http://www.bilateralwarp.com/artists/harley/portfolio/colors/flash-final.jpg
http://www.bilateralwarp.com/artists/harley/portfolio/colors/10011.jpg

[guinaevere]

Good heavens, Ms Harley!! Did you color those?! I weep for the skills which you wield so mightily. No, honestly, talent (which I don't posess) makes me cry.

[Conan-san]

The man speaks the truth.

I won't color random comic book pages (for the hell of it) without it.
http://www.bilateralwarp.com/artists/harley/portfolio/colors/flash-final.jpg
http://www.bilateralwarp.com/artists/harley/portfolio/colors/10011.jpg BZZZT! Wrong! The Gimp provides a less painful alterntive to your photoshoping.

[Harley]

Good heavens, Ms Harley!! Did you color those?! I weep for the skills which you wield so mightily. No, honestly, talent (which I don't posess) makes me cry.

Oh, thank you. I did do them, but there are people much better and faster than me at that.

[Harley]

BZZZT! Wrong! The Gimp provides a less painful alterntive to your photoshoping.


New things frighten me. I may chase it with a pitchfork and an angry village mob.


...But let's not hijack this thread. If anyone wants to talk about this further, we can take it offline. =)

[Conan-san]

New things frighten me. I may chase it with a pitchfork and an angry village mob. May hell mend you for it.

Anyway, Firefox ocasiuonaly glitches when displaying buttons (Using peoples avitars and such)

[Simpler Simon]

Have to say I'm not liking the new headlines on the main page...they highlight the bigger stories, but sometimes its the smaller ones that I'm looking for (DCAU dvd updates, release of JLU episode taglines, news of the riddler episode airing on teletoon). I just find the minor news bits don't catch my eye as easily now when the graphics for the main headlines remain static for days (how is it decided how often those get rotated, and what new headline is introduced in their place?)

[Ben]

Have to say I'm not liking the new headlines on the main page...they highlight the bigger stories, but sometimes its the smaller ones that I'm looking for (DCAU dvd updates, release of JLU episode taglines, news of the riddler episode airing on teletoon).

You might like the root news page better: http://news.toonzone.net . That only has one splash image and highlights all the latest stories a bit more.


I just find the minor news bits don't catch my eye as easily now when the graphics for the main headlines remain static for days (how is it decided how often those get rotated, and what new headline is introduced in their place?)

Every time a new feature article is posted (in the reviews, opinion or interviews section) it gets a new splash image. That's every day (almost always). The "news" splash changes whenever Maxie has time to change it.