gogtrial34987: Hi! Thank you for the extensive feedback - I really appreciate it, particularly all the detailed comments about graphical layout. I have soaked up some knowledge in that field which would make me from a decade ago marvel at what all I pay attention to now, but am far from a being a visual designer myself, so there are definite limits to how good I can make things myself.
Yes, I feel you ^^. It's quite a different craft, filled with sharp aesthetic concerns, ergonomic and readability issues, compared to the more common (invisible) aspects of design that a programmer takes pleasure with ^^ ! And reaching a merely decent result in those (mostly) visual arrangements will unfortunately emphasizes even more their defaults : one millimeter gaps anywhere can hurt a great work more than any perfectible (but still consistent) design choice at a more general level. Which probably explains why automated predefined mockups are that popular... and interfaces build through mish-mashes of boxes (options, etc.) seemingly placed at random far more forgiving !
I'm no visual designer myself, far from it actually, but I spent years ago some time in a training course in order to learn professional proofreading methods (mostly catered to book edition), helped in various small projects, and will tell you this : even the most simple concept benefits a lot from polishing basic details, for those contribute enormously to any user's first impression.
Fortunately, meticulous people like you are well equiped to deal with this aspect of any project ^^ : as long as feedbacks keep bringing you "food for thought" and that you aren't in a hurry, you'll probably come up with a clear design. What you've already reached is already fairly good... As a front page, Gamesieve looks much cleaner, less congested and more readable that Gog's main page to me, even though I still prefer the latter's colours...
In the end, as some of the first comments noticed, your long term goals (both the amount of functionalities and your investment in advertising those) will probably weight more anyway : any concrete reason to use Gog's interface is one less opportunity to launch yours and vice versa. For experimented users, even a small amount of very specific possibilities will be enough to tickle their fancies from time to time : it's what Gogdb does (well) already. But for the others, you'd probably need to add more links to Gog's common functionnalities.
Let's take a (deliberately) extreme example : if you added (near the Search panel for instance) a drop down menu allowing one to reach his daily destinations on Gog (forums, Blog, wishlist, etc.), he could even launch Gamesieve everytime without bothering to browse the former's main page. Of course, it means a complete front-end, but anything less means that Gamesieve will remain a occasionnal tool... and must be planned as such.
By the way, as someone previously said, it would be interesting to ensure that people can find your front-end and forum thread from somewhere else than itself ^^. Don't hesitate to mention it in well related topics, like you did during that NSFW one. You're working on a service better than Gog's in some regards, so it's only fair to type a line or two about it whenever it feels appropriate...
gogtrial34987: GameSieve does have a dark mode...
Oh, indeed, I didn't notice... and yes, I prefer it's darker version, but that's completely subjective. As long as you don't plan in adding numerous options, I'd say the manual toggle seems a good idea - two dots for that being enough, perhaps at the far right of the Search panel for example. But, at least on the paper, your current version seems more elegent to me. The question is "How many people will realise its existence ?".
gogtrial34987: To be fair, it really only represents Germany. Most of the games for most of the eurozone have identical prices, but GOG really does distinguish on a per-country basis, so I need to do that, too.
Oh yes, indeed. Being able to save money within the Euro zone, just by buying games from a different place, seems so counter-intuitive that I forgot about that.
gogtrial34987: These two things should now line out better and as intended, respectively. (I'm not entirely happy with the white-space around the icons for the filters now, but still think it's an improvement. If you have other cases where you see things not lining out, but where they could without re-ordering the elements on screen, I'd be happy to hear about them, since it's quite possible that I made more bad assumptions which are invalidated by font metrics.
Yes, font metrics can be cruel masters ^^... Both situations look now properly fixed : it's a clear improvement ! I agree that the spacement around those filters is debatable - not only before the sub-filters, but in between categories, plus between any category's title and its filters as well, as the difference feels slightly too forced to me - and I'm still not convinced both by those arrows on the left - even when checking them on a smaller screen -, plus the weirdness of check boxes on the left and check marks on the right of the said filters - why not only check boxes all the way ? -, but I guess you've made your experiments ^^...
The weirdest (non alignment) issue remains, in my opinion, the positioning of the total amount of games presented, immediately under Gamesieve's presentation, when you obviously spent so much time ensuring that all other elements are seperated by a minimum of free space. I'd just place it on the same line as "Sort by" - therefore aligning "Showing X-Y" with "Sort by", which feels consistent, even with the applied filters under it.
I didn't notice any other immediate issue. The few other whacky details I keep noticing are usually related to rare situations. For example, Type "Shaq Fu" and then zoom to simulate a smaller screen... The "First time on sale..." label will eventually mess up with your whole arrangement. Another situation with RoboCop or Northgard : since the "verified" and "total" ratings are similar, they'll be regrouped on a single line... under their usual (top right) position. Ensuring the opposite happens (regrouping "total" on "verified"'s line) would avoid that.
gogtrial34987: As you note, you're not the first to mention this - but the general way you phrased this was a really big drop in the bucket that's made me re-examine what I can do here.
I see two other possible workarounds : either imagine a small "Titles only" check box after "Find", restricting results for that one case. Or - but it would imply a bit more work and I'm not sure the result would be more elegant - come up with a small sub-title (on one line) to distinguish the different (sorts of) results provided. "By title", "By genre", "By developper", etc.
Now, that said, the current situation isn't bad at all and I understand your idea of incorporating all kinds of possible queries into one search engine. It's a solid concept... It just feels weird indeed to end up with so many results while, basically, just searching for a precise title - which, of course, seems the most basic possible use of that engine. I simply don't like this kind of approximation since it often leads to the mess one can witness on websites notorious for their horrible search engines (like Amazon). Type a word and, in addition to a few precise answers, you'll almost always obtain dozens of other elements devoid of any apparent relation with your query.
gogtrial34987: Fair point! I don't want to hide the privacy section away, particularly now that I've added affiliate links, but yeah, once I add user-specific information, I'm going to have to write a lot more. I'll probably start by making that section collapsible as a first step, and/or see about splitting it into a shorter actionable section at the top, and a separate page (?) with more details.
The use of any website's bottom part - even in other modern media, up to books - to store additional optional information is well documented, throughout marketing researchs correlating eye movement and reading habits with interface organizations. On most websites, one can be therefore sure to find some important (legal, etc.) information there and privacy disclaimers would feel right there, with any FAQ, About, Report sections or Forum link.
The same logic applies to any informational (sub-)panel, including research results, and explains why the "Purchase" button usually ends up in their bottom right section ^^. Gog's newer Thumbnail function, in its catalog, also demonstrates that... and is quite well done in itself. It is absolutely useless in my opinion (lol), but well done nonetheless.
mrkgnao: Honestly, I have very little interest in historic prices, only in historic discounts, so whenever I look at what you display, I have to do the mental math to translate from price to discount, which I would rather avoid.
If you wish to avoid information overload, how about replacing historic prices with historic discounts? I don't know about others, but I would prefer that.
Same opinion as Mr. Kgnao : As long as possible (base) price changes are taken in account - otherwise, obviously, the discount percentage would be misleading -, the discount information would be enough.
