Feedback required for new vBulletin application..

[Princeton]

Working on a application for the vBulletin community...

Can you provide any feedback regarding the following screenshots?

thank you

[calorie]

Hmm, I think I like newtab2 the best, but for all of them, IMHO the words on the tabs should be smaller.

[Princeton]

thank you ...

About "tabs should be smaller" ...
My target audience is wide. I need to account for everyone - age, race, gender, etc. Plus, users are able to customize the style (change the image) if they wish to.

These are just a handful of styles that will be available. I'm just not sure which one will be the default style.

[Princeton]

based on your input I have changed the tab design .. the icons have been removed from the tab image .. the link is now text-based (you will now have more control over size and tab image)

Attachment 55789

[Paul M]

I prefer the newer version without the icons on the tabs - they just looked a bit odd to me.

Colourwise (which is always personal preference) I like No.1 best, followed by 2, 3 and 6. I don't like No.5 - it seems too pale.

[calorie]

That IMHO looks better because it's more clean to the eye. The little icons are neat though, maybe you can use them in a drop down, something like how icons show up in thread tools.

[Princeton]

LOL ... I knew you would go for the green - Paul.

I like the icons myself but in the end .. not a good idea.

I previously was using an image map to display the navigation - this made it easy for members to replace the image. But, it caused a usability problem ... when a section (eg. blog) is disabled by homepage owner the tab would still be accessible. eg. Viewers would click on the tab and be directed to a "Not enabled... yada yada" message.

Now, the tab doesn't display if section is disabled by admin or homepage owner.

Another problem that came about with the image map was that...
the image map code and image needed to change if a new section (feature) was added. Anyway ... yes, image map made it easy for members to replace image; but, it ends up causing more headaches in the long run - for admins and members.

lesson learned

by the way ... each style element can be changed by admin or member (homepage owner); thus, a homepage owner can have a completely unique homepage

thank you ... appreciate the feedback :up:

[davidw]

Personally, I like the latest (separate) one the best. I also like 3 and 6, but on 6, just like 2, I've seen where styles that go outside of their intended boundaries can look awful. If it is set to expand with the text, this will not happen, but if it is set to repeat or if it is static, it will have issues. 1 has its merits, but also its limitations.

On 2 I like the use of a repeating image, but as I stated above, it can have its problems if not fully tested. A texture image could work as well but I'm partial to gradients like used in the last one.

Although I'm not partial to that shade in 5, it would be more suitable to use something like that for low bandwidth users (provided the rest of the style followed suit) such as dial-up. I can see it work there. Other than that, I personally wouldn't use it. It really depends on bandwidth usage and testing to really determine that though, if the numbers aren't that much different, I don't think I'd consider it, but that's my opinion.