Yes! It's that time of the year! Buster Tests is one year old now, so it's time to take stock of the design, feedback and my usage statistics and improve.

But I have actually decided that I like what I see right now. It's alright. It'll do. I'll be making some changes, however.

Buster Tests' navigation has always been a bit of a problem. There are quite a lot of features, all of which vary in importance. The way I have combated this is to separate the menu into two (three if you're logged in) and colour the really important bits of the navigation. I'm not sure how clear it is at the moment, though, and I don't like the idea of splitting the menu up full stop.

So I'll be putting the menu all back together again, in order of importance, highlighting the two most important sections, perhaps renaming some parts to make them even clearer, and making some buttons smaller than others, to draw attention. I also plan to stick a few icons in with the colouring.

The page design is also getting a bit of a vamp: I'll be moving onto a design which highlights the content and not the sidebar with a nice set of gradients designed to look like a page which is slightly raised.

I'm not sure what I should do with the header styles yet. At the moment I think they're a bit obscene - perhaps too bold. Some playing around with them should do the trick.

Just about all page-specific content and styles will stay the same - this isn't a total redesign, more of a nip and tuck.

The sidebar is also due for some justice, but it plays quite an insignificant role. Perhaps it would be good to see what can be done with that space. I can think of a few special navigation features that would make lives far easier already.

I'll be disposing of the main side bar advert for the summer holidays, too. There's no point in keeping it there - all I expect to get from it is $5 over the three months :D

Posted by Fin at 7/04/2005 08:28:00 pm

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