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        Arimaa >> Site Discussion >> Website Look and Feel
        
(Message started by: rabbits on Sep 17th, 2011, 9:52pm)
Title: Website Look and Feel
Post by rabbits on Sep 17th, 2011, 9:52pm
When I first joined the Arimaa world two and a half years ago, the website felt archaic.  Luckily, I didn't let this stop me from discovering the wonder of Arimaa.  However, I am afraid that the look and feel of the Arimaa website may be deterring some people from sticking around.

The home page is structured with tables and contains iframes :( .... To say the least, it is not very Web 2.0.  I expect that a more modern design would reduce the visitor bounce rate.  I like some things such as the Arimaa awards newsslider, but even it is an iframe.  I like the image links to networking sites as well as the images of the different boards that are available.  But I don't think the front page should contain so much text.

By the way, the New Forest Earth (http://www.newforestearth.org/index.php) site is down right now, and the image of their wooden board is not loading.  Perhaps a local version of that picture should be used instead.  (I wish they would finally make those boards available to buy...)

I strongly dislike the way the URL does not change while clicking links on the homepage.  This is caused by using iframes.

The gameroom is very blue (http://arimaa.com/arimaa/forum/cgi/YaBB.cgi?board=siteIssues;action=display;num=1262652223), as Eltripas says.  I suspect that a more elegant design would give new users higher initial expectations and make them more likely to figure out how to play games.

Some of the links in the sidebar are more or less dead.  For example, both links under Contests are rather old.

When I first joined, I was particularly annoyed that so many links open in new windows.  Maybe a bit of Javascript/AJAX magic could make the site feel more usable.

The forum is an old version of YaBB (1.3.1).  The latest stable version is YaBB 2.5.  I don't know what the differences are, but perhaps upgrading would be worthwhile.  I wish the reply notification emails that the forum sends would include (at least some of) the text of the reply.

I like the MediaWiki, but it is awkward to find occasional TWiki pages lingering about.

I know that managing a live website is a huge task, and I don't mean to complain.  I love this website and am very grateful to everybody who has put effort into it!  I'm just concerned that the growth of the community is being hindered by website cosmetics.  What do you think?
Title: Re: Website Look and Feel
Post by Eltripas on Sep 17th, 2011, 11:47pm
Well, as people can see in the opening post, I agree with Rabbits and think that the site is not appealing, specially for young players.
Title: Re: Website Look and Feel
Post by Fritzlein on Sep 18th, 2011, 8:53am
I agree with both the general concern and the specific issues raised.  We are losing new users that we could be catching.  The reality, however, is that there will be no major changes without some volunteer stepping forward to do the coding.

Omar's revenue stream from Arimaa doesn't even cover server rental, so there is no money to pay a professional to create a slick Web site.  For the love of the game, Omar himself runs the World Championship, Computer Championship, and Arimaa Challenge.  He also takes time to make small fixes and keep everything up and running.  But a major overhaul by Omar simply isn't in the cards as far as I can see.

If, on the other hand, there were some volunteer who wanted to undertake the large project, or even various bits of it (such as just the client), Omar has shown in the past that he will put in the time to create an environment for coding and testing.  Believe it or not, the current website look is slicker than it used to be; IdahoEv gave the site a bit of a facelift some years ago.  Omar also created a test server, which no one has used for a long time, but if there was interest I am sure he would bring it back up to speed.  The client code has long been available for tinkering, or even for a complete re-write.

Like rabbits, I love this website and am very grateful to everybody who has put effort into it.  Pointing out what needs to be done is an important part of the effort of making the website better.  But a lot of the actual doing of what needs to be done is going to have to be done by someone other than Omar, or it just won't happen.
Title: Re: Website Look and Feel
Post by cvic on Oct 2nd, 2011, 7:47am
That was my first thought when joining this site: "Hm, it needs some work on the client side".  Btw, I'm a PHP guy, *nix geek, and know some Ruby on Rails.  

So, if you need a volunteer (for small stuff or big stuff), let me know.
Title: Re: Website Look and Feel
Post by rabbits on Oct 2nd, 2011, 1:43pm
I worked with Rails 1.0 for a summer as well as PHP for a summer.  I think that most of Omar's scripts are written in Perl, which seems like just as good of a choice to me as either Ruby or PHP.

Obviously the Javascript client (http://arimaa.com/arimaa/jsClient/) is written in Javascript, and the Flash client is written in some version of ActionScript.  The former's code is available by necessity, but I don't think the source has been released for the latter.  (I don't know if the code that I linked to is current.)  Oh, and clojure has shared some very nice looking HTML/CSS/Javascript code for a game viewer (http://arimaa.com/arimaa/forum/cgi/YaBB.cgi?board=siteIssues;action=display;num=1284084084).  (I wish I had as much web-design skill as clojure!)

I see that you're using one of thenoviceoof's icons (http://arimaa.com/arimaa/forum/cgi/YaBB.cgi?board=talk;action=display;num=1306285079) as your avatar.  Perhaps we could figure out how to incorporate those icons into one of the clients.

And source code has been published for bots and clients in a number of other languages too.

I wish I had more time to put into this!  Sometimes I pretend to have time, but right now, well, I need to grade some quizzes and study some combinatorics......
Title: Re: Website Look and Feel
Post by UruramTururam on Oct 6th, 2011, 2:15am
In my opinion the look and feel of this site is great - simple and functional. The forum needs a few additional features indeed, but as for its look it is much better for me than most of the modern sites. Simple and elegant table-based layout, friendly colors - why should I want any "buzzerous distractors"?
Title: Re: Website Look and Feel
Post by Eltripas on Oct 6th, 2011, 8:12pm

on 10/06/11 at 02:15:19, UruramTururam wrote:
In my opinion the look and feel of this site is great - simple and functional. The forum needs a few additional features indeed, but as for its look it is much better for me than most of the modern sites. Simple and elegant table-based layout, friendly colors - why should I want any "buzzerous distractors"?


Why do some people think that the only way to "improve" the page would be with "buzzerous distractors", I don't have a problem with it being simple, but it is not just simple, it is boring and monotonic, all my friends that had looked at the page tell me the same thing, that it looks boring and outdated, I don't want giant flying animated gifs or stroboscopic lights or anything "buzzerous", but lets face the fact that the face lacks appeal.
Title: Re: Website Look and Feel
Post by Boo on Oct 7th, 2011, 1:26am

Quote:
In my opinion the look and feel of this site is great - simple and functional. The forum needs a few additional features indeed, but as for its look it is much better for me than most of the modern sites. Simple and elegant table-based layout, friendly colors - why should I want any "buzzerous distractors"?


I think exactly the same. I like the site design as it is- simple and functional. It would be better to have some kind of new functionality rather than new design.
Title: Re: Website Look and Feel
Post by Eltripas on Oct 7th, 2011, 9:13pm

on 10/06/11 at 02:15:19, UruramTururam wrote:
In my opinion the look and feel of this site is great - simple and functional. The forum needs a few additional features indeed, but as for its look it is much better for me than most of the modern sites. Simple and elegant table-based layout, friendly colors - why should I want any "buzzerous distractors"?



on 10/07/11 at 01:26:49, Boo wrote:
I think exactly the same. I like the site design as it is- simple and functional. It would be better to have some kind of new functionality rather than new design.


http://edge.ebaumsworld.com/mediaFiles/picture/517631/698617.jpg
Title: Re: Website Look and Feel
Post by rabbits on Oct 8th, 2011, 11:20pm
Nice one El :)

UruramTururam: Are you saying that you prefer the look and feel of Arimaa.com to the look and feel of, say, Boardgaming.com (http://boardgaming.com/games/strategy-games/arimaa)?  That site is a good example of what I mean by Web 2.0.  It has a way of drawing people in with its usability (and with its points system.)  I'm not really sure what you mean by "buzzerous distractors."

Yes, Arimaa.com is an awesome and usable site, but it's not awesomely usable; the site design itself does not draw people in.  Of course the game is good enough to keep a lot of people around, but it is kind of like hiding a delicious dessert in a shoebox.  (Okay, I guess I'm not very good at analogies :P )
Title: Re: Website Look and Feel
Post by mistre on Oct 10th, 2011, 9:44am
I 100% agree with rabbits.
Title: Re: Website Look and Feel
Post by Fritzlein on Oct 10th, 2011, 10:58am
I agree that the website could look friendlier and be more intuitive to draw people in.  Steve Jobs would have had a field day creating a more humane interface.  I am sure that we are alienating a lot of new players before they get hooked.

That said, I personally will choose function over form every time.  What did Omar spend his limited development time on during the last championship cycle?  He cobbled together the radio broadcasts and hacked them into the game client.  It's as ugly as sin, but I happen to think live commentary of championship games is one of the coolest things going on in the Arimaa community.  I certainly wouldn't trade away that feature for the benefit of a super-slick website like Blokus (http://blokus.com/), where they don't have anything approaching our sweet World Championship experience.

Yes, there is a reason millions of people play Blokus whereas only thousands play Arimaa.  By the same token, there is also a reason why it is easier to find strategy guidance for Arimaa than for Blokus.  We few aficionados have explored the mysteries of Arimaa more deeply than the masses have managed to penetrate Blokus.  Omar has focused over and over on encouraging discussion, building community, exchanging information, and advancing the state of the art.

You might say there is no reason we can't have both awesome features and great usability, and it is true that there is no logical reason.  But there is a practical reason.  There is only one of Omar, there is no money to pay interface design people, and Omar's talents lie more with adding functionality than improving interface.  He does what he has time to do, what he enjoys, and what he is good at.

As for your photo, Eltripas, I would say that we already have a "nice thing", and the reason we don't have the other nice thing that you also want has nothing to do with Ururam Tururam and Boo.
Title: Re: Website Look and Feel
Post by Hippo on Oct 10th, 2011, 1:59pm
I 100% agree with Fritz :)
Title: Re: Website Look and Feel
Post by rabbits on Oct 10th, 2011, 2:32pm
I 100% agree with Omar :D



When I point out things about the website that I wish were different, I know that it looks like I am pointing a finger at Omar.  I don't mean to put any pressure on him or depreciate what he has done.  I don't mean to bite the hand that feeds us!  I'm sorry if I have.

It helps me feel sane to hear that other people notice that same shortcomings of the website that I notice, and it is interesting to hear that some people are unconcerned about the issues that I brought up.

And I agree that the radio broadcasts were an excellent gift from Omar and a very good and generous use of his time.  Live commentary on event games made the Arimaa community feel much more real to me.

I disagree about the Blokus website being super-slick.  I actually think that it is not very good at all.  Admittedly, I just used it for the first time today.  By the way, Blokus is a fun game!  (I'm not good at it though... I didn't have the patience to use my allotted time and think about my moves much...)

The Blokus website has so much Flash, uhg.  I agree with Omar that Javascript is the way of the future, and that we should phase out our Flash usage.  With that said, I should mention that I still use the Flash Client V2 to play Arimaa.....
Title: Re: Website Look and Feel
Post by Fritzlein on Oct 10th, 2011, 3:30pm

on 10/10/11 at 14:32:39, rabbits wrote:
I disagree about the Blokus website being super-slick.

How interesting; I prefer the look of blokus.com over boardgaming.com that you linked.  Apparently even when we agree about the problem it isn't obvious what the solution should be.  And, come to think of it, if the solution were obvious, everyone would do it, not just Apple.
Title: Re: Website Look and Feel
Post by Eltripas on Oct 10th, 2011, 6:21pm

on 10/10/11 at 10:58:49, Fritzlein wrote:
As for your photo, Eltripas, I would say that we already have a "nice thing", and the reason we don't have the other nice thing that you also want has nothing to do with Ururam Tururam and Boo.


I know Fritz, it's a meme, a joke ...
Title: Re: Website Look and Feel
Post by Fritzlein on Oct 10th, 2011, 8:00pm

on 10/10/11 at 18:21:34, Eltripas wrote:
I know Fritz, it's a meme, a joke ...

Oh, sorry, I thought you were saying that UT and Boo were snarly things with sharp teeth.  
Title: Re: Website Look and Feel
Post by Eltripas on Oct 10th, 2011, 9:06pm

on 10/10/11 at 20:00:07, Fritzlein wrote:
Oh, sorry, I thought you were saying that UT and Boo were snarly things with sharp teeth.  



The site is indeed a nice thing and I truly appreciate the efforts of Omar, I'm not going to leave the site because of how it looks its just that I've seen other people leaving because of that.
Title: Re: Website Look and Feel
Post by Fritzlein on Oct 10th, 2011, 9:10pm
OK, I get it now.  The snarly thing with teeth is the gameroom interface that is scaring people away, not the other posters who disagreed with you.  Sorry I didn't see your point at first.
Title: Re: Website Look and Feel
Post by omar on Oct 16th, 2011, 9:52pm
We can use a CMS like Joomla or Dropal to give the site a new look and feel. I had started looking into these, but they have a pretty high learning curve and I found it frustrating trying to make changes which I can do quickly using vi and editing the HTML directly. But the nice thing about these CMS systems is that there are a lot of templates out there for them and so even you are not good as aesthetics you can use a template to make the site look good. If someone is familiar with these and would like to take a shot, let me know. I can set you up with a fresh install of your favorite CMS and you can have a go at it.
Title: Re: Website Look and Feel
Post by rabbits on Oct 16th, 2011, 11:13pm
I knew I would agree with Omar :)

Yes, CMS's can be hard to figure out and work with.  I worked with Drupal for a summer and did not come away with much appreciation for that CMS...  Perhaps the main problem was that the site had mostly been maintained by students and was quite crufty...

The nice thing about CMS's is the ability to reuse other people's code.  As Omar says, they come with nice templates.

Drupal is popular and has a lot of plugins, but I probably wouldn't choose it.  I don't know much about Joomla.  I've heard good things about the WordPress platform.  All three of these are written in PHP.  Are there any nice Perl CMS / web frameworks?
Title: Re: Website Look and Feel
Post by chessandgo on Oct 17th, 2011, 1:40pm

on 10/10/11 at 20:00:07, Fritzlein wrote:
Oh, sorry, I thought you were saying that UT and Boo were snarly things with sharp teeth.  


Why, aren't they? :p I agree with them btw.
Title: Re: Website Look and Feel
Post by Fritzlein on Oct 17th, 2011, 1:54pm

on 09/17/11 at 21:52:11, rabbits wrote:
By the way, the New Forest Earth (http://www.newforestearth.org/index.php) site is down right now, and the image of their wooden board is not loading.  Perhaps a local version of that picture should be used instead.  (I wish they would finally make those boards available to buy...)
[...]
Some of the links in the sidebar are more or less dead.  For example, both links under Contests are rather old.

One thing that wouldn't require setting up a development environment is clearing out the dead wood.  Preserving the historical record shouldn't come at the cost of confusing newcomers.  If moribund stuff needs to be saved somewhere, perhaps it can be put into the Arimaa Wiki, or anywhere that doesn't make it look like part of ongoing gameroom functionality.
Title: Re: Website Look and Feel
Post by Dolus on Nov 3rd, 2011, 12:44pm

on 10/16/11 at 21:52:40, omar wrote:
We can use a CMS like Joomla or Dropal to give the site a new look and feel. I had started looking into these, but they have a pretty high learning curve and I found it frustrating trying to make changes which I can do quickly using vi and editing the HTML directly. But the nice thing about these CMS systems is that there are a lot of templates out there for them and so even you are not good as aesthetics you can use a template to make the site look good. If someone is familiar with these and would like to take a shot, let me know. I can set you up with a fresh install of your favorite CMS and you can have a go at it.


I am familiar with Joomla and have used CMS to some degrees before. I haven't used it for a while, and won't have time free soon, however. But I may be able to help to some degree with making something look good.
Title: Re: Website Look and Feel
Post by rabbits on Dec 13th, 2011, 2:08pm
I have a vision of a bigger Arimaa website...

On this site, your forum user page would be integrated with your player page.  A stream would list not only your recent games, but also your recent posts and other activity.  New users would only be able to post in the "Say Hello" section of the forum until they have played at least five games.

You would be able to search for games based on what happens in them.  People would classify games in order to earn "Arimaa points."  You could also get Arimaa points by playing games, commenting on games, posting in the forum, watching event games, commentating event games, as well as a bunch of other things.  Players would work towards achievements such as winning a game by elephant blockade or playing at least one game during every day of a week.  Arimaa points would allow players to get better avatars, change the look of the board and pieces, unlock new bots to play, participate in tournaments, and become the player of the day/week/month/year.  Mostly, though, Arimaa points would just be a status thing.  Even Hanzack would want them.

Instead of playing MMORPGs or random Flash games, middle schoolers and high schoolers would login to this Arimaa site during their lunch breaks.  Groups of friends would have subtle competitions to be better at Arimaa than each other, or at least unlock more bots.  After school programs would encourage kids to log into the site and learn how to play.  Jacka's students (http://arimaa.com/arimaa/forum/cgi/YaBB.cgi?board=sayHello;action=display;num=1320788218) would love it.  Colleges would have "Chess and Arimaa" clubs.

This site would cater as much to young players as to bot developers.  Humans would stay ahead of bots even though BotMarwin, BotSharp, BotBriarius, BotBadger, and BotHippo would all play better than Chessandgo.  I would be kicked off the list of top one hundred players because so many youngsters would learn to master the tension of having an active but safe camel.  A setup popularized by a teenage girl would become just as common as the 99of9 setup.  The Arimaa champion would be invited to late night talk shows.

Arimaa would become a household name.  Movies and books would use Arimaa to portray characters as intelligent.  (Edge by Jeffrey Deaver is a good book, by the way.)  Beginning Arimaa would be a classic.  J.K. Rowling would write a book in which Hagrid hosts an Arimaa tournament and Ron Weasley's son wins it.  Oh, and best of all, there would be an Arimaa cereal!  It would be similar to Lucky Charms, with gold and silver elephant and camel marshmallows floating around.

Well, that's just my vision.  It was fun to write up at least :]
Title: Re: Website Look and Feel
Post by froody on Dec 13th, 2011, 8:45pm
do want.
Title: Re: Website Look and Feel
Post by megajester on Dec 14th, 2011, 2:11am
I'd rather have a bowl of ARIIIMA POPS! (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P6MWhn1eixI)
Title: Re: Website Look and Feel
Post by Dolus on Dec 14th, 2011, 10:32am

on 12/14/11 at 02:11:58, megajester wrote:
I'd rather have a bowl of ARIIIMA POPS! (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P6MWhn1eixI)


Arimaa Pops has a much better ring to it... but I want them to be shaped like elephants and camels and horses and dogs and cats. Maybe the rabbits could be marshmallows...
Title: Re: Website Look and Feel
Post by leo on Dec 17th, 2011, 12:49pm
And soon there would be an MMO called World of Arimaa (WoA) with Elephants, Camels, Horses, Dogs, Cats and Rabbits, each class with its special powers, and big PvP and GvG events with supersonic rabbits and snowball fights. For those who feel cramped on an 8x8 board. ;)
Title: Re: Website Look and Feel
Post by omar on Dec 17th, 2011, 7:08pm

on 12/13/11 at 14:08:10, rabbits wrote:
I have a vision of a bigger Arimaa website...

On this site, your forum user page would be integrated with your player page.  A stream would list not only your recent games, but also your recent posts and other activity.  New users would only be able to post in the "Say Hello" section of the forum until they have played at least five games.

You would be able to search for games based on what happens in them.  People would classify games in order to earn "Arimaa points."  You could also get Arimaa points by playing games, commenting on games, posting in the forum, watching event games, commentating event games, as well as a bunch of other things.  Players would work towards achievements such as winning a game by elephant blockade or playing at least one game during every day of a week.  Arimaa points would allow players to get better avatars, change the look of the board and pieces, unlock new bots to play, participate in tournaments, and become the player of the day/week/month/year.  Mostly, though, Arimaa points would just be a status thing.  Even Hanzack would want them.

Instead of playing MMORPGs or random Flash games, middle schoolers and high schoolers would login to this Arimaa site during their lunch breaks.  Groups of friends would have subtle competitions to be better at Arimaa than each other, or at least unlock more bots.  After school programs would encourage kids to log into the site and learn how to play.  Jacka's students (http://arimaa.com/arimaa/forum/cgi/YaBB.cgi?board=sayHello;action=display;num=1320788218) would love it.  Colleges would have "Chess and Arimaa" clubs.

This site would cater as much to young players as to bot developers.  Humans would stay ahead of bots even though BotMarwin, BotSharp, BotBriarius, BotBadger, and BotHippo would all play better than Chessandgo.  I would be kicked off the list of top one hundred players because so many youngsters would learn to master the tension of having an active but safe camel.  A setup popularized by a teenage girl would become just as common as the 99of9 setup.  The Arimaa champion would be invited to late night talk shows.

Arimaa would become a household name.  Movies and books would use Arimaa to portray characters as intelligent.  (Edge by Jeffrey Deaver is a good book, by the way.)  Beginning Arimaa would be a classic.  J.K. Rowling would write a book in which Hagrid hosts an Arimaa tournament and Ron Weasley's son wins it.  Oh, and best of all, there would be an Arimaa cereal!  It would be similar to Lucky Charms, with gold and silver elephant and camel marshmallows floating around.

Well, that's just my vision.  It was fun to write up at least :]


It was fun to read as well. Would love to see your vision come true. Maybe it will in about 50 years :-) In the mean time we can make slow and steady progress with gradual improvements to the site.

And what about Arimaa cookies; something like this, but with the Arimaa animals:

http://www.pepperidgefarm.com/Images/Products/prdLarge_112082.jpg


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