Hi Nick, it's Mike here. I think the design of the site logo in the new header looks amazing. I like the way the "Pixl" section has a raised and reflective look. The "bit" section of the design is classic. Vic Roman did a good job. I think the news ticker is a cool feature, it scrolls at a pretty reasonable speed, and I especially appreciate that the ticker stops when I scroll over the link I'm interested in so that I can click on it easily.
I have some feature suggestions for the site that I was hoping you could ponder. When it comes to the sites features, what do you think about:
1. Personal messaging or commenting system
2. Personal profile feature rearranging
3. Flexible notification system that notifies not only new messages sent to your inbox, but also new comments in a thread your involved in
I first thought about it a couple days ago when I was on the site looking at one of Kathrine Theidy's Tour de 64 features that she does. I went to her profile and read that she has a huge collection of N64 games and does the Tour de 64 series about those games I would assume. I wanted to ask her if she had the game Body Harvest 64 in her collection and if she ever did a Tour de feature on it, but I realized I didn't have a quick simple way to talk to her. What if it used rich text as well? I love having rich text in not only blogs but in comments as well like we already have here. It's an awesome luxury.
In general I think it might be neat to continue adding features to personal profiles to let members personalize it more, or just make it more efficient through organization. At the moment the layout is pretty nice. Having the bulk of text on the left and info compartments on the right seems to work, but boxes like "Upload New Avatar" seem a bit out of place and I think the task of adding a new avatar photo could be reduced to a button up near the heading of the profile where the member's name and avatar are. Also, when I'm at my profile, the bottoms left side of the page is empty and unused. Maybe there could be a way to occupy that space with a new feature or something. I'm not sure what kind of feature, but I'm sure that negative space could be used in a practical, clean, Pixlbit fashion.
As far as the messaging and notification system goes it would be cool if we could have the service to message eachother in the event we have something to say that doesn't pertian to a discussion going on in the comments sections of articles and other media. The notification system could be an icon somewhere easily visible like at the top of the page where the Profile, Blog, Collection, and Log Out features are. There could just be an icon that changes depending on whether you have a new message or not. It would be nice if the notification system also extended out to other features like comments and such. If I'm in a thread talking to folks in a Pixltalk discussion for instance, the only way I know new comments get added is by either personally scrolling thought each thread I'm involved in, or by observing the Recent Comments compartment on the front page of the site (which only holds 4 new comments at a time). It's true that the Recent Comments box has a link that takes you to a list where many more new comments can be scrolled through, but I don't think it would be as efficient as a notification system because in the current system you click the link, scroll, and search for something that might not be there. With the notification system, you will know when something new has happened, and one click will take you to it, or to an inbox/hub where it will be available.
As the size of the site increases, that Recent Comments compartment will be adding new comments as multiple discussions occur simultaneously and it will be unable to represent the community as a whole and each discussion. I love having the Recent Comments compartment and don't want to see it go anywhere, I just think that if we rely on it alone to keep us up to date, it won't be able to get the job done by itself.
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