mmo-champion website layout

[Skildar]

Hey, I was recently fiddling with the mmo-champion layout using firefox extension stylus (exists on other browsers) as I unfortunately realized that it's been way too long since it has been updated with a strong impact to its layout.

mmo-champ is quite a complicated to overhaul as it has a strong graphic signature and very far from a flat design.

So I tried my best over a couple of days to overload the stylesheet, which could be a great opportunity for everyone to share a bit of feedback.

You cna use the style right here : https://userstyles.world/style/4148/...o-champion-com



So the first steps I took was to remove most of the borders that took way too much space. Then I added some darker tones to the recent blue posts and recent forum posts. I saw that both of these categories take quite some space so a shrunk them to only display the information when hovering these categories.



It works well, but I'm not quite as happy as I thought I would be with it. The reason is quite simple, you don't see the activity on the forum anymore and have no reason to hover over it. Which is quite a shame as the journalistic coverage (without falling into clickbaiting) and forum are the forces of mmo-c.

Therefore I will definitely update it to regain direct visibility on the forum posts with an updated interface.

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Here is the attempt I have made at a cleaner forum post focus on the home page :


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There are quite a few dynamic effects happening when hovering so be sure to try it out on your browser to see the full change

[alturic]

I see zero improvements in your screenshots.

They made the DIV 75% wide versus the 50% that it is.

[alturic]

Like I said. Zero improvements.

I don't use Firefox, but I think there are some things they did that can't be shown in the screenshot, such as the dynamic effects they mentioned. But yea, it looks pretty identical based on screenshots.

[Skildar]

you can use the pronoun "he" with me, I'm not an english native and the pronoun "they" disturbed me greatly, I thought you were talking about someone else

[Ducos]

If you don't have anything positive to say then don't say it

[Skildar]

So for those who don't know about the extension, it exists on almost every modern browser that uses extensions and modules

[alturic]

If you don't have anything positive to say then don't say it

Because living in a utopia sounds like a great thing right? That is one of the biggest things wrong with the younger generation.

[LemonDemonGirl]

Hmm... if mmo champion was mobile friendly, what sort of layout would it have? This makes me wonder.

[Skildar]

If the argument they’re making is that the site should do things specifically for firefox then it’s even worse than zero improvement. It’s zero improvement and extra work for a fraction of the people who visit a site that doesn’t get a ton of attention on the dev side. I’d rather we get a dark mode like people have been asking for for years.

I was sure to have explained it right, but I'll give it one more shot ^^
The goal is just to try out something new. I am not an mmo-c developer though. I have no clue if they are currently working on an update for their website and if dark mode is amongst the list of features or part of any redesign.

I've talked about firefox as it is the tool that I have used and can attest that it works fine on it (not a big chrome fan), but the methods and tools that I have used in the code are fully compatible with chrome and other modern browsers. Sorry if it threw you off when I talked about firefox. I was just trying to encourage anyone to give the style I've made a try and if it works on firefox, then you can usually expect it to work on chrome, that was my way of thought.

Another thing that you have pointed to is that you couldn't clearly see any changes made and you're right, we don't all have the same monitor sizes and as such it's easier to provide a before-after shot rather than what I did so here it goes :

BEFORE

AFTER

As you can see the width of the container of the page didn't change, though a lot of borders have been removed, giving more room to the content

[Skildar]

Hmm... if mmo champion was mobile friendly, what sort of layout would it have? This makes me wonder.

I didn't fiddle much with the mobile UI as the borders are less noticeable :/

[Skildar]

Not sure requiring extensions like that is smart for any website. And I’ll use he. We use they in English when gender is unknown. Which, ya know, it usually is online until someone states it. Sorry for “disturbing” you by using proper grammar.

I've heard of it a few times, but it's on mmo-c that I've really became familiar with it. Even though I know the rule it still feels weird as I've wired my brain to understand "they" as talking about a group. I'm not sure we have an equivalent in french, we often use the male pronoun when we don't know the sex or if we talk about both male and female.

[Jinpachi]

If you don't have anything positive to say then don't say it

How about you worry about your own speech, and I'll worry about mine. Last time i checked you don't pay my bills, so ill say wtf i want, how i want, to who i want, when i want.

[Doobich]

Yeah, I understand the romance language aspect. But the alternative is I call you she because we flip a coin in English. It’s not masculine by default.

Weird on most forums/site I frequent and especially gaming forums/sites I would default to "he". I assumed most other english speakers would aswell.

On topic, I like the cleanup. This box in a box in a box design is pretty dated now.

[Skildar]

Not sure requiring extensions like that is smart for any website

Just to be clear, I'm not saying that the website should be run using the extension, that's up to people personal preferences just like addons are on wow. Here I'm just looking for feedback, probing for my own edification to see if people are interested in a layout update for mmo-c

All I see is you forcing people to check if there’s something they’re interested in for those areas. I’m not seeing any QOL changes.

The goal is to indeed display less elements in order to give more visibility to some.
Giving more space for the forum to display more elements for instance or just put more focus on it as the blue posts are usually highlighted in the articles below.
Though displaying the time of the latest blue post could next to the blue icon could be done by the website devs, and would be a nice indicator

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Yeah, I understand the romance language aspect. But the alternative is I call you she because we flip a coin in English. It’s not masculine by default.

I encourage you to read again what I've said to you. You can call me however you want, I told you what suits me best, do as you please.

[Tziva]

I will link chaud to this thread in case he finds the suggestions valuable for future changes, but I'm locking this now since it's just people being rude to each other.