New STCC site

[Becky Rose]

I've launched a new STCC web site, i'd be pleased to hear your comments. :)

http://www.simtouringcarcup.com

[Highsider9]

The Link doesn't work for me. Its jumping back and forth between
http://www.simtouringcarcup.com and
http://www.simtouringcarcup.com/home

Edit: Works with IE.

[Tweaker]

I liked the one you had before this :shy:

[AndroidXP]

:D Woah, it just crashed Firefox. Can't seem to reproduce it though.
Tbqh, I think the text is overall very hard to read. The hover-submenus are differently positioned when comparing between Firefox and IE, too (not that I give a rats ass about IE).

It's definitely more 'racey' than the crayon one, but it seems kind of... chaotic. I have a pretty hard time navigating on it :shrug:

A bit more margin between the top orange line and the menu text underneath it would go a far way, and I'm also not a big fan of altering text size on hover. IMO making the submenu text a bit larger, but ditching the big text size on hovering would be better.

But I can feel with you. I'm a programmer too, and god forbid I know programmers generally suck at interface design. :tilt:

[Becky Rose]

Its jumping back and forth between
Fixed, that was as I removed the home page from the old site :) It's all done now.

I liked the one you had before this
:( *suicide*
Oh well.

[Tweaker]

It's definitely more 'racey' than the crayon one, but it seems kind of... chaotic.
The 'crayon' could be racey if you just changed some more images used in the design (replace the 'crayon' ones with a different style).... that's all that is needed. It wasn't a bad layout either.

Funny thing was, I was JUST on the site (old one) about an hour ago, and it wasn't bad to get around and view a broadcast or do some reading... but ehh, this new one is the complete opposite. Large stretching BG images and a drop down menu is not the way to go --- especially with a dark theme.

[Shotglass]

first of all full size background pictures dont work all that well due to automatic resizing ... pretty much guaranteed that they will be the wrong aspect ratio and will look grainy ... additionally they distract from the text boxes
then theres the colour theme which to me isnt particularly pleasing
the menu works well but is a good bit too small (didnt even notice it was there at first) and you shouldnt use resizing of the font on roll over as it makes the menu resize all the time
lastly the floating text boxes are a nice idea to make the site scale to all resolutions but the boxes overlay each other rather often

sry that the comments arent particularly positive

[unseen]

Honestly.....? Horrible. Foul. An abomination.

Sorry Becky. You did ask in the first place, and I`ve really got a mean streak for bad websites. :shy:

I love the whole STCC thing, but hand over the web stuff to someone else ;)

[zeugnimod]

I also think the old one was much, much better. Sorry. :(

[herki]

No need to suicide, I don't think the old site was better. But somehow the style of the menu doesn't seem right to me yet.
Apart from that: Why is an offroad incident the background pic? :)

[Hyperactive]

- Imho, drop down menus rarely work on net sites
- the background image does not work on my 1600x1200 resolution screen. It simply looks bad
- the site uses too much space compared to the space it actually takes. It could go into a smaller frame, for example.
- don't use different background image for each menu. Maybe use few nice looking and edited ones instead

I attached an example of what it could look, just to give ideas ;)

And I know pretty much nothing about the actual coding...

[Tweaker]

OLFSL (http://www.lfs-league.com/) uses their site with a horribly huge background image and transparency effects.... please don't be the next site to make that decision :x

It is not a fast and smooth site for user experience. You need to come up with something that isn't a hamper on people's browsers -- and eyes :tired:

[Hyperactive]

OLFSL (http://www.lfs-league.com/) uses their site with a horribly huge background image and transparency effects.... please don't be the next site to make that decision :x

It is not a fast and smooth site for user experience. You need to come up with something that isn't a hamper on people's browsers -- and eyes :tired:

Haha, look what I just posted :D

[mrodgers]

Why is an offroad incident the background pic? :)
It's not a static background. It changes if you refresh the page.

The new one is useless to those with a slow connection. You have to wait for the background and the video to load before you are able to see the menus. For a while there, I thought maybe the menu links weren't working yet until I waited about 5 minutes. Then they started working.

Even on a good connection (ie, at work), I really can't stand when a video is thrown at me right on the home page.

Yeah, I like simple webpages. KISS. Too many websites just get closed out from me while loading because of all the fancy eyecandy on them that makes them forever to load. That's not because of my dialup either. I don't like the fancy eyecandy stuff at work either. I like simple, simple background, simple text links, none of the fance flash or shockwave stuff. Automobile and motorcycle manufacturer sites are the worst for that.

[Tweaker]

Haha, look what I just posted :D
Your post and the whole idea of the transparency and large BG image is what my post was directed at :tilt:

[NotAnIllusion]

-Personally I don't like drop-down menus because it means I have to move my mouse around to find links to stuff instead of the links being readily available, the time and concentration taken to navigate such menus quickly gets frustrating.

-The changing text size is distracting because it means I have to re-read and concentrate even more to simply find and click one link. I find the text hard to read too because it's a tad small.

-The random(?) background image feature is a nice addition but especially during day time when my (8 meg) line is overcrowded I feel the difference in loading times.

-The video on the 'welcome' page is not what I expected, the first thing I thought when I loaded the site up was 'where's the button to close this video?' and the second 'where's the menu so I can find stuff?'.

-The overall looks are very... disjointed, for the lack of a more suitable word. The sections (boxes) don't seem as if they relate directly to the actual page but are scattered around the screen. Also, the boxes are kind of far away from each other horizontally.

I'll add stuff if I find anything more that bugs me =)

Suggestions:
-Easy, quick and accessible menu on each page.
-Stick to one text size, if you want effects you could highlight the div's background instead. Text needs to be a bit bigger so it's easier and faster to read.
-Change the site's background to a static image, colour, pattern, whatever. It loads faster because the background is cached.
-Welcome page should have immediately apparent the things any visitor would like to see. Maybe news, quick links to latest race results and/or standings, about link, perhaps a positive viewer statement or two on the league. Essentially, info or links to info that are most frequently visited.
-The sections could be closer so that the viewer doesn't have to look for other sections from the corner of the eye, and could appear more 'physically' related to the actual page.

Key considerations:
-Frequently accessed info
-Loading speed
-Ease of navigation
-Readability
-uh..

There are loads of studies, reports and stuff like that on how to improve a website's accessibility available free of charge. They point out useful stuff such as how long viewers are willing to look for stuff on your site before getting annoyed (it's not very long).

*edit: typo

[funnybone2]

looks great :thumb:

[cannonfodder]

There's some rendering errors on the track pages with large images in Firefox 2.0.0.2. As you can also see, the backgrounds get all streched out and pixellated. It might be better to link the youtube video from the front page, as I don't think that downloads anything but a placeholder. I think having a streaming video of the latest event on the front page is important. You can also consider adding dailymotion.com to the lineup, they have bigger resolution video now, still in flash so it doesn't need an extra plugin like that divx site.

The menus have some issues, I don't know if they're firefox specific. The letters are too small, and jump to the right and increase in size when moused over. They should start out at the larger size and not move, change color at most.

One of the background images has a car in an FE track about 50 feet in the air. I don't think that's the kind of thing you were trying to show off in the broadcasts. :schwitz:

[A.Ulleri]

:shy: Hate to say it but the old one was better.

[r4ptor]

STCC is a spectator show (feature races), or however it was put - so should the site be - currently it's not really anything.

Make a big deal about it (content + graphics, but no big background images) - you may want to have sponsors presented on the site and more importantly, much more various information on the front page.

The vid could still be there, but preferably as a thumb - it could be a big thumb though :D

You should:

- Work on navigation. Try to make it easy and painless for the visitor by presenting as much as possible.

A good navigation is one that lets you browse the entire site quickly and with few clicks - main reason why pull downs are bad are because the visitor have to pull it down before he/she can see whats beneath it. But the worst part is that the visitor reads line 1, line 2.. "oh something interesting in line 3.. lemme click that", but after checking that page out, have to pull it down again to read line 4 etc.

Of cause, if there are plenty of sub pages, then there is no way around a pull down, but make a tree/branch thingy instead, but don't let it auto collapse.

- Work on the layout - a box with an input field, and then another box that says what to do with first box is confusing - the tekst should be above or below the input field. But the boxes also varies in sizes and have too much margin between them so the pages looks dull (not enough to fill them up). I guess the margin is put in there so background image is more clear? Don't do that.. Design, no matter how good it looks is always secondary. Navigation, readability and content always comes first - in that order.

Add in more stuff, ie. a better working navigation, modules with for instance latest X number topics in forum etc. licence lookup field, news etc. Some things works best (if not only) on front page (like forum topics and news) while others have to be somewhat related to the kind of content the individual pages presents.

- Work on readability - so even if there is lots of info, it's easy to scan through the page and find what the visitor is looking for.

I was on the old site the other day, looking for specific information, but gave up because I wasn't able to do it fast enough (faster than the frustration started to kick in). I'm pretty sure the navigation was a part of this too.

Overall, keep it simple but well thought out (again, navigation and readability). New (and old) site is simple yes, but lacks both.

Ps. don't link to files directly from the navigation :P

[keithano]

Sorry to say.. but a good programmer can hardly be a good layout/artistic designer. Therefore , a good website mostly consists of programmer and layout-designer.

Becky is a good programmer, we do all know that. However, for this site, to be honest it's just like a noob-site. It does not represent the STCC league at all. The concept or image of STCC league is such a professional league. However, this site is just too odd to be an official site for such a league.

[JJ72]

There's still a long way to go before STCC establish a basic template/ image, you know a consistent and representative style throughout it's publication and broadcast. Maybe Becky should seek out some professional design help for the next season?

[spyshagg]

i like when the background pictures change from menu to menu.... its a nice ideia to keep!

[FOGlegsy]

I quite like the new site, even better looking is the new servers :) I was wondering when STCC was going to see some open wheel action!

[SpikeyMarcoD]

Becky must be really glad she asked :)

[Viper93]

Becky must be really glad she asked :)
Bah she can hack it =)

[Swiss_Tony]

I can cope with the cosmetic changes OK but it took a while for me to find the top 50 page (which is still in the old style) under "view another licence" link. I expect this is interim though :) Hmm, maybe that's where it should be :scratchch

[AmayaYuukuno]

Just puttered about the new site, and I'm afraid it's lacking.

In IE7 on 1024*768 I can't get everything to fit onscreen. The ads at the bottom of the page overlap with the video (and a few other things as well), and I don't like the menues, I can't see all available links from Main page, I have to switch to any other to read the complete menues.

As far as colour-scheme goes, I don't know if it's fitting for STCC. I quite like orange and black, but I feel it doesn't fit the much brighter feeling of STCC. I can't come up with a better alternative, but I doubt I would've used black+orange.

Ok, link-tree. I find it annoying that I have to go from right to left in order to read what menue drop-downs available to choose from.

Generally, fixed menues would be preferrable, coupled with a brighter colour-scheme. Although, the colour-scheme does grow onto you after a while, as does the menues. But I shouldn't have to spend 10min to familiarise myself with the page before getting the hang of it, especially not if I'm a to-be advertiser.

And a last note, the background pictures look pixeled on my resolution.

[Becky Rose]

The problems you describe there seem more related to desktop resolution, I saw it myself when I checked the site from my Dad's computer. When I get the chance i'll make the text boxes a fixed % size and scrollable.

[A.Ulleri]

The one feature from the old forum which is missing on the new is the license progress bar. I hope it comes back.

[Swiss_Tony]

It's still there, it just isn't so obvious to get to now. Put your details in licence lookup and from there click on the Personal Licence Page link.

[A.Ulleri]

It's still there, it just isn't so obvious to get to now. Put your details in licence lookup and from there click on the Personal Licence Page link.

Thanks I see it now. Yeah not very obvious.:shrug: