New Front end webpage is awful!

[b1llyb0y]

I just wanted to let FAH group know that their new front end webpage is awful, its difficult to navigate and just plain annoying.

Its hard to find latest news updates, publications, etc .. the old version was outdated but way better.. the current designer should have his head checked ..

[Jesse_V]

That's interesting. I'm personally very pleased with the changes. AFAIK, there was no link to folding.typepad.com in the old version, and its now there several times. Click on the Learn tab, and you'll also find a link to the list of publications.

So you would suggest simply putting the old version back, or do you have a suggestion on how it could be further improved?

[b1llyb0y]

I can clearly recall getting to folding.typepad.com through the old webpage, dont ask me how though as I dont remember

These new pop-up boxes that you have to click through to get to things is a major slow down and definitely annoying, I liked the old page but it certainly needed a spruce up with nicer graphics but not this pop up stuff.

I used to click on what I wanted, and I immediately got there .. my recommendation would be get rid of the pop up boxes and make it easy to get to things.

[7im]

The popup boxes are mostly informational, and mostly for beginners, and you don't strike me as a beginner.

The front page is cleaner and less intimidating, i.e. more welcoming for beginners. While the non-begginers are not typically adverse to the one extra click to get to the Learn page, which is where all the top links for informational resources are neatly organized.

FAQs, News, Guides, etc.

[bruce]

Maybe we can leave the new stuff for the beginners and add a footer with a multitude of direct links for those who already know where they want to go. (Small print, single words, when possible, bit one-click to get there.)

(I'm not the best web-critic. I can use whatever the site provides, though I had to download drivers from a hardware support site today, and I did get frustrated at how many clicks it took me to find what I was looking for.)

[7im]

Was it the number of clicks, or that the path to the download was not easily intuitive?

[VijayPande]

b1llyb0y : Thanks for the feedback. I think everything you're looking for is in the Learn or Stats tabs of the main web site. If it's not, just list what you're looking for and we can see about putting it there.

[derrickmcc]

I think that the "Learn" tab is misnamed, and would be better titled "Information".

I was looking for a link to News and did not expect to find it under "Learn".

[HaloJones]

Given the amount of unused pixels, I would have put the search box on the home page. Studies show that most users, when they don't see what they want, instantly look for the search box, not the word search that then loads a separate page.

[7im]

Given the amount of unused pixels, I would have put the search box on the home page. Studies show that most users, when they don't see what they want, instantly look for the search box, not the word search that then loads a separate page.

That's kind of what I had suggested. It's common to right justify the search while leaving all the other elements to the left.

Examples:

http://www.att.com
http://www.verizonwireless.com
http://www.sprint.com/index_p.html?context=CP
http://www.vonage.com/

[YARDofSTUF]

Adding the search to the main page and a menu under the top links instead of separate pages could be speedy too. You could also have one download page split into sections instead of all the links, its like the high performance stuff is buried.

A quick image of the search + a menu idea:

http://i34.photobucket.com/albums/d104/ ... ahhome.jpg

[7im]

High performance stuff is on the front page with V7. V7 is the default download now. It does SMP and GPU.

[Jesse_V]

A quick image of the search + a menu idea:

http://i34.photobucket.com/albums/d104/ ... ahhome.jpg

I like it! Only the drop-down menu would just add to the link, so if you still clicked on "Learn" you'd still arrive at the Learn page, which had those links anyway and the video.
At least putting the search bar at the top of the main page would be helpful. I don't have any experience doing this, but I know there's a way to make the search bar perform a Google search inside folding.stanford.edu. The current search is kind of strange. (http://folding.stanford.edu/Site/Search ... ion=search )

Even before this overhaul, IMO we have one of the nicest looking websites out of all the many distributed computing projects.

[b1llyb0y]

I just think it was poorly laid out, i had to click through too many things to get where I wanted .. I certainly agree with adding a Search to the site.

The site looks better than most other distributed folding sites, but the best in my opinion is gpugrid's layout .. rosetta fails miserably in the overall design department but its easy to access what you are looking for ..

To be very honest, to get more users folding it must be easy for them to get information (intuitive) and updates often from the researchers / scientists motivates more than anything else. (fah is excellent in the update department.)

[7im]

What were you looking for specifically that was too many clicks?