« Animated Action Comedy - "Da New Guys: For The Winnings"
Improve the Quality of Your Renders using Tone and Gamma Corrections »

Site Changes

  Published by Bart on March 9th, 2008 in BlenderNation

tabbox.pngAs we have over 1,400(!) posts on this website, I've been looking for ways to make readers (especially new readers) more aware of the wealth of information that we offer. After some tinkering we now have two new functions: first, a tabbed box on the homepage that presents the latest posts in our most popular categories. Second, the 'related posts' now also shows a thumbnail for each post.

I find that especially the 'related posts' now keeps drawing me back to old posts - pretty cool.

For those of you who are interested in some technical details: to keep the page loading times low, the tabbed box on the homepage uses lazy image loading - the images for a tab will only be loaded if the tab is displayed. I've tested the CSS and Javascript in Firefox, IE6, Safari and Opera. I'm confident it'll work pretty much everywhere.



Related Posts


Related posts are selected automatically based on their content.

29 Responses to “Site Changes”  

Feed for this Entry Trackback Address
  1. 1 shul Edit Link Mar 9th, 2008 at 10:49 am

    Cool! on firefox 2.0.0.12 I had to refresh twice before everything loaded.

    Bart, Thank you for continuing your effort with the site and the community :-)

  2. 2 AntonG Edit Link Mar 9th, 2008 at 10:53 am

    works perfectly on safari here, and the new functions are really cool!

    -AntonG

  3. 3 cretox Edit Link Mar 9th, 2008 at 10:59 am

    it works on konqueror too! very cool!
    :)

  4. 4 olivs Edit Link Mar 9th, 2008 at 11:10 am

    Worked fine with Firefox (had to reload, too) and Konqueror. Tabs can be messed when browser is not fullscreen, though. Down to which resolution the CSS has been tested? Not my case, but I know a few people are going back to laptops with pretty small screens, this could hinder them.

  5. 5 ccherrett Edit Link Mar 9th, 2008 at 12:15 pm

    very nice addition. I will for sure use it a lot

  6. 6 Sanne Edit Link Mar 9th, 2008 at 12:48 pm

    Bart, I seldom have my browser window full screen, so I also found the tab bar a bit messed up. The content of the last tab, "Add-ons", wraps around and you can see the top of it's characters just a bit under "Tutorials", see here:
    http://img410.imageshack.us/img410/5740/tabbarwrapgg6.png

    A part solution is: in mini.css, put "white-space: nowrap;" to "ul.tabs", that way wrapping of the tab content is prevented, at least on supporting browsers as Firefox. The content is still cut off a bit, but at least it's accessible. See here:
    http://img405.imageshack.us/img405/6260/tabbarnowrapds3.png

    Aside from that, I like the additions very much, thank you. :)

  7. 7 Sanne Edit Link Mar 9th, 2008 at 12:59 pm

    Hmmm, another idea: a (maybe even better) way to prevent tab wrapping would be to use icons instead of text in the tabs, with the text in the title attribute of the tag, so you would get the text as tooltip in most browsers when hovering over the icons.

  8. 8 Sanne Edit Link Mar 9th, 2008 at 1:00 pm

    Grrr, sorry, I meant the "a" tag above.

  9. 9 Barbie Edit Link Mar 9th, 2008 at 2:08 pm

    Cool!
    But I think all the images for related news take a too much space … how about just showing one image in a fixed place while hoverig over one of the links?

  10. 10 Trawler Edit Link Mar 9th, 2008 at 4:15 pm

    I think it's great. You've done a great job!! Thanks so much!

  11. 11 James Edit Link Mar 9th, 2008 at 4:55 pm

    The tabs mess up with Java script disabled, shouldn't the tabs be removed in this case?

  12. 12 johan_zhe Edit Link Mar 9th, 2008 at 4:58 pm

    hmm, perhaps its just a coincidence, but my rss-feed stopped working,, does anyone else have the same problem? (i'm using firefox)

    otherwise, great job bart ;-)

  13. 13 Byron Kindig Edit Link Mar 9th, 2008 at 5:19 pm

    Thanks Bart, This is such a great resource. Your work is appreciated.
    Byron

  14. 14 Rolandixor Edit Link Mar 9th, 2008 at 7:35 pm

    Hi! Great stuff…
    It's me, Rolandixor… the guy from blendimation.
    I'm still waiting for feedback on integration!

  15. 15 Bart Edit Link Mar 9th, 2008 at 9:13 pm

    @olivs, sanne: thanks! I now see it as well - I'll take care of it tomorrow and try your suggestions.

    @barbie: I see what you mean, but I think the best part of showing all the thumbnails is that it triggers either your memory or curiosity. Having to hover over a link before you see an image would kill that effect..

    @James: I'll look into that. Would you prefer not to see the tabs at all in that case?

    @johan_zhe: it's not a coincidence ;-) It should be working again now.

    @Rolandixor: I mailed you back two weeks ago!

  16. 16 Ben Edit Link Mar 10th, 2008 at 1:24 am

    Firefox (windows) everthing seems fine. At a guess I'd say many fellow Blender users are visual people, so the image tabs make sense. :)

  17. 17 DramaKing Edit Link Mar 10th, 2008 at 5:15 am

    Those are some awesome changes! I support you all the way.

  18. 18 Sandra Gilbert Edit Link Mar 10th, 2008 at 6:12 am

    That is one very slick setup and a great way to showcase news and items of interest.

  19. 19 Paul Edit Link Mar 10th, 2008 at 6:46 am

    Hey Bart,
    The changes are great! I really love the Related Post thumbnails.. They're a nice addition to the site.
    Just the same though, you don't know how much time I've taken away from all my other tasks because of following all these different Related post links.. I like them though! I just need to have more self control and stop myself from reading all these great articles from the past…

  20. 20 Sanne Edit Link Mar 10th, 2008 at 1:06 pm

    The tab bar is much better now, thanks Bart.

  21. 21 ROUBAL Edit Link Mar 10th, 2008 at 1:15 pm

    Thanks for your efforts Bart. Great work !

  22. 22 gauravanim Edit Link Mar 10th, 2008 at 2:57 pm

    Nice efforts…

    :)

  23. 23 Ataru Edit Link Mar 10th, 2008 at 11:51 pm

    Latest version of Firefox, Windows XP, everything looks great! I LOVE the changes. BlenderNation is better than ever, and that says a lot! :-D

  24. 24 Jon Edit Link Mar 11th, 2008 at 2:03 pm

    Hi Bart

    I've made a set of icons for the new category tabs. Let me know if you want to use them and I will send them as gifs…

    http://i208.photobucket.com/albums/bb108/jongreenslade/BlenderNationIcons01a.jpg

    Great work on the site as usual. It's much appreciated. BN is my daily paper.

  25. 25 Mike Edit Link Mar 11th, 2008 at 9:58 pm

    Its a nice touch to the site. Good job BN.

  26. 26 NathanKP Edit Link Mar 11th, 2008 at 10:41 pm

    I think that the new features are great. They really open up the site and make it more accessible. I'm already finding information that I didn't know existed or that I had forgotten about.

    NathanKP - The Ink Weaver Collection - Book Review Blog

  27. 27 Bart Edit Link Mar 15th, 2008 at 1:30 pm

    @Jon: great initiative! However, I feel that these icons don't really fit in the current design. We're slowly working our way towards a new site design though so I'll take the idea along.

  28. 28 Rolandixor Edit Link Apr 12th, 2008 at 9:07 pm

    Hey Bart. Mail me again, sorry for the confusion.
    I didn't see your email, so I'll have to see if this one comes through.

  29. 29 Bart Edit Link Apr 12th, 2008 at 9:16 pm

    @Rolandixor: I'm not sure what you mean. Please contact me directly by mail for personal issues.

    Cheers,

    Bart

Leave a Reply


Search

 

Categories