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Fan of the Arts
Just launched this site for a non-profit. Trained them on TXP yesterday, and they love it!
Last edited by renobird (2011-09-15 17:40:32)
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Re: Fan of the Arts
Lovely work :-) Especially liking the navigation system and the ribbon type headings, spacing and grouping. Really easy to use and read.
If there is something I don’t like styling/usability-wise is the contact form. The labels are not labels, and as such are not clickable. If you get on error and sending the contact form fails, the top menu covers the messages.
As ZCR is used to power the form, the actual implementation can cause potential problems. It’s nothing really major, and it’s not a fault in ZCR, but as it is on the front landing page, it will cause extra database inserts/deletes (as because of the nonce tokens) and the form’s expiration counting starts from when visitor lands to the site’s homepage, leading into higher change of the form expiring before the visitor has a change to submit it.
Tom, as always, very nice work ;-)
Last edited by Gocom (2011-09-15 18:36:41)
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Re: Fan of the Arts
Thanks Jukka,
I definitely hear ya on the contact form. Initially there was contact information with obfuscated email address and some phone numbers in that space. However, they decided that a contact form would be better, so I worked that out real quick. The errors getting covered was an oversight (nice catch as usual). The site is hyper-local, so I don’t think the extra DB activity will be an issue — if they get 500 views/mo that would be big.
Thanks for going through stuff so thoroughly, I honestly appreciate it — as well as your opinion on how stuff works. Constructive/critical comments are always my favorite — that’s how you get better.
Cheers!
—
Reno
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Re: Fan of the Arts
P.S. Good point on the labels. The code for that contact form is something I’ve been using for ages — I really need to spend some time with it again. It’s a textmate snippet that takes a keystroke to include. :)
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Re: Fan of the Arts
Georgeous site. I love the navigation but almost expected my back button to work after clicking a navigational link.
Piwik Dashboard, Google Analytics Dashboard, Minibar, Article Image Colorpicker, Admin Datepicker, Admin Google Map, Admin Colorpicker
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Re: Fan of the Arts
Tom’s on fire – somebody put him out!
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Re: Fan of the Arts
pieman wrote:
Tom’s on fire – somebody put him out!
Here, have these tranquilizer darts. Oh, you mean putting out? Sleepy-sleepy is kind of out, right? I suppose this very small glass of water wouldn’t help, would it?
renobird wrote:
P.S. Good point on the labels. The code for that contact form is something I’ve been using for ages — I really need to spend some time with it again.
The source is pretty funny funny looking, seeing that there is set of hidden labels. Too bad you can’t just directly blast current HTML code to ZCR’s label="" attribute. That nice HTML structure for marking required fields wouldn’t just make there. Bad escaping, bad boy. Would be pretty awesome if there was a way to turn ZCR’s labels off.
Maybe you could add another set of labels? ZCR already spans those, currently-not-so-visible, labels. Double the labels, twice the fun.
Other options wage between unnecessarily complex repositioning using CSS, code heavy server side replacing with a plugin or two, JavaScript and forking ZCR’s code.
It’s a textmate snippet that takes a keystroke to include. :)
I myself use Fuel Collective’s Snippet ;-) Not enough tho. Never been really good at making re-usable snippets.
Last edited by Gocom (2011-09-15 22:53:01)
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Re: Fan of the Arts
Clever Bastard.
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#9 2011-09-16 14:33:07
- uli
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- From: Cologne
- Registered: 2006-08-15
- Posts: 4,306
Re: Fan of the Arts
Few nav things I remarked:
In the news archive the to-top link has no named anchor counterpart.
The fan is the only navigational element in the news archive, looks like an oversight. I didn’t think it was a link till I had a look at the code. The fan is more like an illustrative, decorative, element, especially as it has changed its logo position compared to the main page. The fact that the fan is completely hidden on the main page only a few pixels after leaving its top edge increases the likelihood that it’s not sufficiently perceived as a logo/clickable nav element in the archive page.
(In a hurry all of a sudden, Tom, hope I was clear enough.)
In bad weather I never leave home without wet_plugout, smd_where_used and adi_form_links
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Re: Fan of the Arts
Thanks Uli,
Much appreciated. The “news archive” was a kind of a last minute bolt-on. You bring up some really good points that I need to address.
When you say “the fan is completely hidden on the main page only a few pixels after leaving its top edge” do you mean that it jumps from visible to hidden for you? The intended functionality is for it to scroll with the background and disappear at the top of the viewport as the nav element becomes fixed. If that’s not what you are seeing, can you tell me which browser/OS?
Thanks Uli.
:)
Last edited by renobird (2011-09-16 14:57:33)
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Re: Fan of the Arts
Have you thought of having the navigation leave hashes in the URL? That way they could be bookmarkable and the back button would work.
Shoving is the answer – pusher robot
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Re: Fan of the Arts
Hey Patrick,
I should experiment with that — the single page with anchor based navigation definitely raises some issues.
I have to admit all of these comments/critiques/suggestions are what I love about this community. You are all very thorough and honest in your feedback. This site will be airtight after all these suggestions. Much appreciated.
:)
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