Article format suggestions
Challenges and Articles forum
Posted on Oct. 6, 2010, 10:01 a.m. by Leonard_McCoy
originally posted on squire1 's profile. moved here for better discussion
Dear Sir,
regarding text formatting I just wanted to present some thoughts to you that could raise the appeal and readability of TappedOut.net's articles which are, without any question, in terms of content valuable and interesting for beginners as well as MTG experts.
Somehow if I think MTG I always think of fancy art commemorating very solid game play. While TappedOut.net sports some of the best features for MTG players, its basic design is what does not harmonize well with what MTG is what MTG players, spoiled as we are, expect. This is very general but let me draw an example using just the Articles section here.
Some of your writers really jotted down wonderful insights into the game. However it is not well represented on the site (front page) nor in the article itself. Let me make a few suggestions:
- Teaser image: One of the best things to draw attention to something is a good, well-chosen teaser image, which should not only be placed at the beginning of the article but also be made visible as thumbnail on the front page.
- Fonts: Now this is an area you could write your master thesis about, and where opinions heavily diverge. But you need to get a bigger font size or/and a whole different font for those articles. Usually http://www.typetester.org/ is a nice place to find the right one, with the right size and leading. I would opt for a serif font (Georgia), and not too small.
- Headings: Have a title as most prominent heading and the article's subtitle underneath it. The author should make good use of the different levels of headings in order to retrieve those readers who wanted to skip parts of the text (things they already know) keeping them interested.
- Images and WYSIWYG-Editor: As far as I understand it, editors just use the site's syntax for the articles which is already insufficient in itself. Let them add images (of cards inside the articles, not only pop-ups), split the article in page, etc.
- Redesign right side of article page: I never knew what that was good for. Maybe introduce the author's bio somewhere on the right in a box or suggestion for follow-up readings of other good articles remotely related to what you've presented already in this article.
- Use a lighter grey for the site (main frame)
Teaser image -- great idea
fonts -- never had an issue with it, but a different serif font could be nice
headings -- I try to use them but maybe could a bit more. I think that the Title of the articles could be a bit more prominant, but in all they are used in most articles
wysiwyg -- I am not going to pretend I understand this
right side -- I like the new way that this is used, however, it does crunch the text to what about 700px which can distort the overall look of the article. Love the content of the right side though.
lighter gray -- "all will change in the great redesign coming this week. =)" ~yeaGO! I cant wait!!:-)
October 6, 2010 12:18 p.m.
ok looked up wysiwyg
don't think that this is necessary. The articles can be formatted using html as can comments. The articles can be previewed in draft form and the comments have the preview function. I think that the work needed to do that would be greater than the result. Could be wrong but my opinion on that one
October 6, 2010 12:23 p.m.
Leonard_McCoy says... #6
Would you guys consider splitting up the article into different pages if it gets too long? Readers usually don't want to scroll down for miles or they simply get overwhelmed and staggered by the textual mass the article offers on first sight if presented solely on one page.
October 7, 2010 4:46 a.m.
zerotimestatechamp says... #7
No don't split it up! I can't stand when I have to load a new page in the middle of an article. Most sites that do this do it to increase site traffic so they can attract more advertisers.
October 9, 2010 5:09 p.m.
Leonard_McCoy says... #8
In my opinion, in terms of readability (= how easy/comfortable on the eye it is to read text), the recent site update (early Oct. 2010) has made it worse.
Here is the deal: the background is a relatively bright brown now, and the font color, a pure white, combined with a shrieking blue for links. At least to me, it requires a real effort that I am almost unwilling to make to even skim through the article's paragraphs now.
There are sites that very successfully use a converted color scheme for text (white font color), but, for that, you do need an absolutely dark background, otherwise the effect will backfire, as it does here.
October 13, 2010 1:42 p.m.
Leonard_McCoy says... #10
I think with the recent design fix, adding a much darker background, you have a pretty solid basis now to work with.
In terms of article formatting (and editing) there is still a long way to go though. I have put together a mock-up shot of the article's main body, ignoring the right side for now, (borrowing text from Squire's article on mana screw) to better illustrate the formatting structure I have in mind for non-print articles online.
A direct link: http://img809.imageshack.us/img809/7893/tappedoutmockup.jpg
The structure from top to bottom:
- teaser image
- category
- subtitle
- title
- teaser text
- author/editor
- author pic
- text
- heading
- etc
As can probably be seen, I have changed some wording in the article as well (writing in CAPS to emphasize words quickly gets old, etc.).
October 14, 2010 5:24 p.m.
Very interesting. I'm going to do some work in this direction soon.
yeaGO says... #3
Teaser image -- definitely
fonts -- interesting. never thought of that.
headings -- i twist everyone's arm to do this already. hasn't it worked?
wysiwyg -- this may be possible with some options i haven't researched.
right side -- i recently did some work to the right side... does this still apply?
lighter gray -- all will change in the great redesign coming this week. =)
October 6, 2010 11:38 a.m.