As a few of you eagle-eyed Cemetech members noticed, I have recently added a Highlights section to the front page of Cemetech; the figure below shows the change for those too lazy to click through. In order to fit it, I removed the Service Status section, changed Cemetech Labs items to display with MM/DD/YYYY dates, removed the statistics to only exist on the Statistics page, and trimmed the first two paragraphs down. I personally like the concept of the Highlights section, but I want your feedback (vote in the poll!). If you like the concept, I want to know how many and which different areas of the site I can highlight, and how I can make it look as neat as possible.

I think this is a good idea--it'll make it easier for people to find the things they're often searching for (such as SC and jsTIfied). There could possible be a better design, but I don't really know. I'm anxious to hear what other people think.

I like it. The text is way to small in my opinion. It also looks mildly out of place. Perhaps if it were smaller, centered and with more space between the images it could look pretty cool!

A margin: auto; should adjust the space between the highlight images based on browser width and if the section has a width of 100%.

This.

Also, that dark gray bar that the text "Highlights" text is in looks really really weird. and I kind of miss the "services" status thing on the side, even though it didn't do much.

I personally think the font is odd. It may just be this Imac but I doubt it. It is hard to read, and could do with being a little larger. Even if just a couple points larger on the font.

Other than that, maybe instead of the gray bar, have a 70% opacity bar the red of cemetech. So that it looks separate, but not as separate as a different section.

I like it! The text looks tiny on my phone, though. I also think the icons for SourceCoder, jsTIfied, and TI programs should look less similar, it's easy to confuse them with each other without the captions.

The idea itself is a good one. I agree with points made above.

More thoughts:

Drop the 2.5 for source coder. It really isn't needed.
Hovering over the images might bring up what each image actually goes to, like a brief summary of what SC is, and such.

I really really really like the idea, as it is a option to browse through cemetech quickly to a newbie, and I think that not all newbies would look at the headder and so would think, ok, and now where's what?
So that is a really really really great idea in my opinion.

Awsome
Don't forget the Prizm Wiki

I like it, although I think it would be nice if you tried squishing it in the left portion, below the latest posts and Cemetech labs updates, while having the rest take the entire height. Otherwise the gray bar seems a bit out of place, although the rest with the icons looks quite fine.

If you keep it that way, however, you should probably stuff the area with some extra links such as the Prizm Wiki and maybe MobileTunes.

DJ_O and Krazy: Ah yes, I thought about WikiPrizm, and I was debating whether mobileTunes' converter should go there (and/or the Document DE converter).

Sorunome: Thanks very much! That was my thought as well.

TIFreak8x: Could do, could do; would require some JS, which I'm uncomfortable doing if it might not work well cross-browser.

Souvik: Yeah, I agree, I was thinking that too.

I've tossed this around for a while, but this may give us a reason to start thinking about Cemetech7. That whole Highlights section appears out of place. It's not detached or miss-located because there's not really anywhere it could go in Cemetech6.

If we do it, let's do it right. Kill the tables for starters. And do mobile stylesheets the right way as well.

If you guys are swimming in free time, go for it, but my current schedule and schedule for the foreseeable future gives me nothing but the bare minimum to put duct-tape over the site in various places. If I really re-design the website, I might want to go whole-hog and overhaul the backend too, and I sure as hell don't have time for that. Let's focus on how we can make this look decent for now, if you guys don't mind.

I don't! You want me to take over some (or all?) of the CSS and HTML work for you? I can try the JS with some tutorials but no promises.

It looks ugly, uses up too much space, and is generally terrible. Make them as clickable buttons right below the main menu bar at the top if you care so much about these areas.

That gray bar >_< Use the same style of separators you use to separate poster profile information from post content in the view-topic pages...

Also, can we fix the source for the new file information on the front page to have </b> instead of </B>, </a> instead of </A>, and <br/> instead of <BR> and make sure the links being generated have &amp; in the source instead of just &?

Rudimentary attempt. Better or worse?

Done, done, done, and done.

Nah, I'm just being hyperbolic. My point is that if and when a redesign becomes unavoidable, I want to make sure I have sufficient time to do it properly myself, and not impose on you guys.

Edit: Just for the sake of some contrast, I changed the SourceCoder and TI Programs icons to different images; any better?

I like the addition, though I feel it's a bit misplaced.
The additional contrast does improve the look from how it was when the icons were all TI-83+ models with different overlayed icons.
The SourceCoder icon looks odd being rotated, however (I know it's temporary). I think it would look good like this:

As you can see, it only shows the name and an icon of sorts. It doesn't have the version or anything, because I feel it would be pointless to have. Feel free to use this icon if you'd like.

Ah, I definitely like that! That's a bit cleaner than what I have right now. By the way, is everyone still unhappy with that 5-pixel-high calculator-style font for the labels? Any preferred size?