The "ATS 2010" Project: The Creative Look & Feel of ATS.

Of all the boards Ive been too, not many really .lol.

This is the most user friendly, Tweeking is a never ending thing

in this new tech age, but please don,t change the main board too much.

Greetings William,

I am a fan of the following layout and could envision ATS utilizing the general look and feel.

lifehacker.com...

Becker

I would like at "in my opinion" act as an operating type system.. now i know that sounds bonkers to many lol but what i mean is more stream line..

Less clicking the better for any user.. easy navigation is a must on any website it can look cool as a spaceship but if you want a good site it needs to me fast and easy to navigate.. many sites do NOT have the content held by ATS as its archived..

So i suggest you look at PHP nuke or something of that nature that gives people there OWN personal LOOK and can edit there "homepage" so to speak.. that way they can look and get the feel ATS really is THERE site.. yet adverts and the functions will still remain as part of marketing ofcourse.

I dont have a site that i would suggest for a design really, as most people have such a wide rang of views and likes "see avatars for refrence"..

Just my 2cents

I like how ats looks but the only thing i dont like is the hyperlink down the side when im trying to mess aound with windows i click on it and it buzzes me off some place lol

"little things like that" other than that it looks ok to me and works!

I like the idea of giving a visitation of ATS the feel of commandeering a spacecraft, a console or something like that, instead of making it obvious that you're on a website.

Browsing ATS is sometimes as if you're going down a rabbit hole, but since a lot of the content has to do with technology or extraterrestial mysteries a simple rabbit hole is too organic. On the other hand, going all-out alien isn't fair to those among us that are intrigued by organic earthly mysteries.... This is starting to sound like rambling, so here are two links:

Starcraft2 - (make sure you scroll down on this page)

Alice in Wonderland

I'm thinking alien circuitry with DNA cables and tree roots and ancient carvings and weird laboratory contraptions with vials of galaxies bubbling... makes sense right?

reply to post by Conspiracy Pianist


good idea, thats kind of what i was hinting at with my Iraqi Museum linky on page 2.

Make it some kind of roleplaying platform so to speak.

I think redesigning ATS is a great direction to take!

As a webdesigner myself, I would like to discuss somethings that I think need to be changed about the current design of ATS.

When first becomming a member on ATS I found it to be very user unfriendly. The layout of ATS is very difficult to understand. It in alot of ways reminded of websites like this... www.hosanna1.com...
Where links- pictures- texts were layed out in such a messy way. I still dont understand why there are different colored texts everywhere - it visually very confusing. Things have gotten better over the years but it is definately in need of a complete make over

OK - the links at the top of every page (home- hot- top- board- recent posts- etc....I never use any of them- other than recent posts or boards. Everything else is not of interest to me personally. What also needs to be at the top again in MEMBER PROFILE instead of having to access it by member tools. Please bring that back again.

U2U issues- fix the notification issues. Mine is always on and there is no fixing it- ive tried tons of times.

I think redesigning the Star and Flag system would help improve things. I think they are good- but I think there also needs to be a voting system involved. And that this should be what indicates which topics are the hot topics.

Colors- Keep the backgrounds and tables black. That is what I love about this site- I am on it all night and I loathe white backgrounds. Black is very soothing to look at.

Create a more indepth user profile section. Interactive by profile searches. Where users can upload their pictures (similiar to myspace or facebook) Where we can search people by location- maybe even have local meet ups to discuss issues. I think alot of us are anxious to take ATS out of our homes and into the real world.

Every day when I logonto ATS I read the recent posts thread. That way I get to read threads from all types of subject matters, not just the ones I am interested in. I think this is important aspect to keep. It keeps all of us informed on whats goign on. I would recommend however, removing the different colored text from this page. It is helpful when scanning for a particular board, but it is also visually hard on the eyes. Maybe create a way to sort the Recent Threads by Board Type?

Thats all I can think of now! Thanks for letting us give our suggestions!

Edit: Also- I think it would be a fantastic idea to have notifications of when people specifically- reply to your posts in threads. I personally post on tons of threads each and every day and rarely go back to threads I have posted to respond to comments people make about my comments. Thanks!!!



[edit on 4-1-2010 by xynephadyn]

reply to post by SkepticOverlord

The "ATS 2010" Project: The Creative Look & Feel of ATS.

I guess it all depends on what sliver of which slice of which subdivision of the ATS population you really hope to please.

As you will have already no doubt noted from the daily spitting digressions on the boards, we are not a single people. In fact, we are not even a hundred dozen groups of them. In the end, we are thousands, perhaps millions of individuals who are each as unique as a fingerprint and as opinionated as a toothache.

Coming into ATS, we all accept the current setup because it was here when we arrived. But then changing it is… well, entirely something different, lol!

EXAMPLE: Personally, I really dislike websites with so much active front page content that one has to wait a half an hour to download all the aps to make the jumpy, squiggly animations animate. But others love this stuff and will gripe just as urgently to see that ATS looks like one of them teen social clubs where streaming toenail tattoos are all the rage.

Please allow me to convey my deepest sense of appreciation to all those on ATS Olympus who work tirelessly to keep this operation afloat. Your intentions here are clearly honorable and above reproach.

But in spite of that, I think you have, perhaps unwittingly, bypassed Pandora’s box entirely and have gone straight for her walk-in closet.

Best wishes y'all

reply to post by vkey08

Business Development and being on the front lines every day (and quite honestly I can't stand Autodesk for personal reasons, I HAVE to use them because they bought Maya but that's about the only contact i have with the evil empire) and dealing with the 45 million things that can go wrong with rendering in true 3d, especially with so many variables is / are two totally different things.

No, it’s only different in the sense that I’m not the one doing rigging and everything else that comes along with the job. However, I have to have a complete and thorough understanding of what it is they do, how it can be streamlined, etc because if they don’t have the right tools, it falls in my lap.

I've been doing CGI since the Amiga days and on the technical end not much has changed, a good discussion was had about Avatar for instance that even by refining the process it's not really showcasing anything new.

That’s great that you’ve been doing it for that long, and I highly disagree with your claims that nothing has changed, especially when it comes to the technical aspect. From new mo-cap techn, to new render methods (real time not rendering farms that take days to complete the job) the tech has increased many times over.

As far as shows where they show off the latest and greatest? They have everything there calibrated together so there is maybe, MAYBE a deviation smaller than is measurable by the human eye, it's no surprise that things look better there and magnificent, but when you get it home in a real world application that it doesn't perform as advertised.

As I’ve stated in another thread days ago, on the 6th I’ll be meeting up with a CEO of a company that is doing 3DS for real world applications (museums, theme parks, etc). Most of my concerns have to do with translating to the home market and how the technology can be monetized when it comes to the home user.

As far as telling me to brush up on my numbers? 3D / CGI has been gaining for 5 years now, ever since Lucasfilm/ILM refined the process so that it was a bit more usable and Pixar released Renderman.

Those aren’t the numbers I’m talking about. The numbers I’m talking about pertain to bottom line/profit and how 3D is the new wave of 2010. The numbers I’m talking about show how India and China are devoting billions of dollars to develop 3D incubators and how India will soon cease (or severely limit) the number of outsourced jobs they take in because they are going to focus on developing their own I.P.’s. Now you may not know this, because you are on the frontlines and doing the “work”, but make no mistake about it, this will be a good year.

I don't think that 2010 will be the breakout year, why? it's already happened. 2010 may be a year of refinement of the stereoscopic process, but unfortunately until we can make cheap holographic displays, viewing anything in 3D on a computer monitor is still a while away.

Refer to my previous comments. And no, the breakout has not happened yet but will happen this year. From Direct Tv offering an all 3D channel, to Sony releasing 3D HDTV’s this first quarter, to new 3D peripherals (NVIDIA 3d glasses), it’s all ramping up, and things are not far away.

This is coming from a front line , day to day, hands on , and hair pulling out summation of the technology. it's promising, but not there yet.

And this is coming from a person who has to help the front line, is in contact with them daily, has to understand their hands on approach, wants to make it so they don’t pull their hair out, and understands that the tech is there. The problem is how can the tech be monetized i.e. how will it be presented in a cost efficient and reliable manner so consumers will gravitate towards it.

In closing, if ATS is trying to increase R.O.I they better hope on the 3D bandwagon and do it quickly.

[edit on 4-1-2010 by EMPIRE]

the old myspace, the ORIGINAL myspace layout was gold, imho unbeatable.
I was a member of nexus and some punk music board before myspace and when myspace came along it took over as the only site I frequented asides from deviant art, deviant arts ORIGINAL layout kicked ass also.

but then an annoying trend developed,

myspace old style new style
facebook old style "ok-ish" new style
deviant art old style new style - don't use this site any more.

Erowid.org is a plain & simple non-flashy website which has barely changed (graphically) in 10 years and I absolutely love it. I would love it no matter what it looked like if the content remained the same. That said I love the design too, straight to the point, no nonsense.

I a big fan of the pirate bay & h33t, tho more for reliability & credibility than looks, but that statement sets the trend for why I visit any websites at all, content not looks. In fact, I specifically avoid graphic heavy sites to conserve the 12gb a month I get @ broadband speeds before roll-back to dialup, so that is something you should definitely be considering, the options you might have to keep the changes 'download light'

I get frustrated when I think about this graphics thing because currently the thing defining how my page appears graphically and aesthetically depends on the wrap around banner. currently its displaying ATSnews08, before it was District9...next will be? is this one of the things that might be changing? I hope you're not looking at potential advertising 'real estate' in all this...that would suck.

can't think of any other sites but I have a suggestions.

there are simple programs for determining someones feng shui qualities,
feng shui principles put into practice can influence an individuals mood etc IF they are in ANY way 'spiritual' or 'open'; while strong willed controlling individuals will not be affected by feng shui. Because of that fact, I suggest you provide an OPTION for users to type in their birthdates & whatever (nothing dangerous) and in return they get the feng shui colours that relate to them, as the colour scheme of ATS when they log on.

So to summarise I'm suggesting custom colour schemes, html changes, which will be decided by the rules of feng shui, determined by the birthday data entered into the feng shui colours application by the ATS user,

you could even make it a points thing, has to be earnt.

and then those who ARE interested in it, can choose to enable the option or whatev. The right colours, etc matched to an individual can create all sorts of effects from being calmed down through to being more clear headed & studious, according to feng shui anyway!

P.L.U.R.I
-B.M

P.S) changing colour schemes be a 'low size' addition no?

P.P.S) imho anaglyph is a bloody nightmare to get right, and this Real-D technology being used atm in 2009/2010 movies seems to be the solution, but it would have to be widely available and a common household addition to be worth ATS's interest IMHO

[edit on 4/1/10 by B.Morrison]

I visit ATS every day, don't post every day, but ATS is in my top three sites to visit daily. I like it the way it is.
The only change I would make is voting on posts, like TSN does on it's user comments, just so the user base gets a feel for how the usership feels about a post or comment, different than stars.

www.tsn.ca...

See comments it's a thumbs up / thumbs down -/+ system

Originally posted by Blue_Jay33
I visit ATS every day, don't post every day, but ATS is in my top three sites to visit daily. I like it the way it is.
The only change I would make is voting on posts, like TSN does on it's user comments, just so the user base gets a feel for how the usership feels about a post or comment, different than stars.

www.tsn.ca...

See comments it's a thumbs up / thumbs down -/+ system

I 2nd that
-B.M

I know this isnt what your asking for, but I'm throwing it in anyways since I don't know where else to...

Why don't you have a tab on each thread that takes you to "last read post" like many message boards/forums. Your choices are to go back to OP, select a random page or go to last post. I know I can follow threads through "MY ATS" but it'd be helpful to just click to where I've previously left off reading....

[edit on 4-1-2010 by Toxicsurf]

Clickable TAG CLOUD!

[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/0b8e36a866a2.png[/atsimg]

Show us an up to the minute/hour interactive subject Tag Cloud.

For example this week in ATS there would be some large words with Religion, 2012, Newark, etc...

I'm glad we will be moving forward, i just hope that things remain "simple" enough so that us older folks can still deal with postiings and uploading stuff....speaking of that, I wish we could make the uploads easier like they used to be!!!

Anyhow, I appreciate having this outlet to express my views, always did, always will

Good luck!

I would like numbered posts so that you can direct people to a particular response in a thread.
I'd also like to point out that I'm stuck with an old laptop, so anything that slows me down, slows me down. Fancier doesn't always mean better. ATS pages are already easy on the eyes, that helps keep people here, I'm sure.

Don't change a thing.

You already have an original... It's yours to do as you wish, but no matter what you come up with I predict a flood of complaints weeks worth of drama and angry resistant members... And much more fun stuff!

Take ATS where you want, but don't forget what got it here.

If you are looking to other sites of interest to ATS members is that telling us that original inspiration is lacking?

You seem to have done well so far, I suggest you do what you feel inspired to do with ATS and not ever try to remodel this community and site into some conglomeration of other sites.

As soon as ATS loses ANY of its amazing originality then it really doesn't matter what it looks like does it?

That said, I like the way this site is laid out.. very easy to navigate and buy things here...

stupid.com...

Originally posted by xmaddness
My advice?

Think "Google Wave" meets ATS.

Google Wave is the answer you seek.

-x

i would agree with this style idea

A site that is very similar in purpose being forums for members to participate:
Adventure Rider
The more you check, the more surprised how ATS is a mirror to this one.
It's a worldwide community too like ATS.

[edit on 4-1-2010 by Granite]

Originally posted by Granite
A site that is very similar in purpose being forums for members to participate:
Adventure Rider
The more you check, the more surprised how ATS is a mirror to this one.

This is nice. I do like the fact that when it shows "who's on-line", you can click on any of the user names and it takes you to their own profile page.

Just kinda neat. No biggie.

reply to post by SkepticOverlord


Actually ATS layout is one of the best I have seen in the net, is to the point and easy to navigate.

Most of the web sites I have seen that are on the top best graphic design ones or top artistic layouts are either too complicated or just too "pretty" to take them seriously.

Sorry to say this but I like ATS just the way it is.

25 Incredibly Artistic Websites

vandelaydesign.com...