Gameslate v5 on August 1st
Complete or not, I’ll be releasing my revamp of Gameslate on August 1st.
I have the basic layout done. I’ve worked out the bugs and quirks in the tabbed interface and it’s working great, it really does feel a whole lot more like a program than a website now. It’s responsive and dare I say it, a bit slick.
I’m currently fleshing out the other features of the site, stuff like: inter-user messaging, spammer blocking, point tracking and even achievements. I’ve got logins, registration and migration (from the old Gameslate site) working and I’ve integrated Gravatars as a replacement for the old Gameslate icon system (which was broken on the old site).
Gates Motel the web-game, is where I’m lagging behind, but it’s also the code I’m most familiar with. It may or may not be ready for August 1st. If it isn’t, I’ll keep Oldslate running until the new Gates Motel is fully operational.
Gameslate redesign in progress
I haven’t put any serious effort into Gameslate since 2003 or so, it’s been slowly degrading since then. A bunch of things are broken and my once faithful audience has finally wandered off.
Ooops.
Well, the best way to get past the “I suck” bit is to do something progressive. As I mentioned in my jQuery bliss post, I’m redesigning Gameslate.
I’ve got the first bit done, the basic layout / interface for navigating Gameslate. I wanted to cement the interface as an application right away in the minds of any visitors, so I decided to replace the old static sidebars with animated tabs that change context during usage. The side tab system was inspired by A-Train (a 1992 train simulation), although my tabs animate nicer. =P
This design is completely text based (HTML, CSS & JavaScript). There are no images used whatsoever.
I’m not ready to demo it in production just yet, but here are a couple screenshots from my Touch:
As you can guess, I’m trying to keep the interface friendly with mobile browsers, or at least small screens. It’ll be usable with a desktop browser too of course, as that’s how most users will play, but supporting the smartphones makes me smile. A friend has the Blackberry Bold I can test with too. If anyone with a Palm Pre wants to help me test, let me know.
The date in the screenshots is in the future, August 1st is when I plan to launch the redesign as “live”.
I’ve started on the AJAX code (well AJ no AX), so the tabs will work more / less persistently.
Digging into jQuery
I’m a bit of a curmudgeon when it comes to web design. I prefer clean uncluttered usage of HTML & CSS, supported by server interaction (usually PHP). I’ve occasionally dipped into Flash, JavaScript / ActionScript, XML and even back quite a few years some VRML. For the most part though, I’ve treated the programmable extras as something between toys and necessary evil, JavaScript especially.
It’s not that I’m old fashioned or clinging to the basic building blocks circa ‘93. There’s just so much bogged down crap and clutter out there using / abusing the toys.
Case in point, Bell Mobility uses AJAX heavily throughout their customer support website: It’s dog-slow, tedious in cases where it should be simple and often hangs (in the middle of their long process of choosing a plan, I wonder how many customers that’s cost them?). Not to get too distracted by the awfulness of it, that’s just one example of bloated web suckage among many.
jQuery is turning all of my opinions about JavaScript around.
I’ve only just started with jQuery (I’m reading “jQuery in Action“) but already it’s been a treat for creating quick and painless JavaScript. It’s hella efficient and easy to use. I know I’m a bit late to this game, jQuery made its first splash about 2 years ago, but count me as a convert.
That isn’t to say you can’t create bloat with jQuery, that Bell page I mentioned uses it heavily, too heavily. The ease of making animations is probably too tempting for many to just cover their sites in perpetual motion. The same goes for AJAX, which should be more efficient and slick, but it’s too often used inappropriately. Some people just can’t resist clanging every bell and tooting every whistle.
That said, when the tools become a joy to use, it sparks creativity. And I’ve been feeling creative lately. I’ve let my old Gameslate site slide for years, to my own embarrassment and the disappointment of its users. It’s a hobby for me, so I need to feel motivated. HTML 5 and CSS3 paired with jQuery have got me excited and productive again.
I’d been wondering what to do with the old Gameslate stuff. It was too walled-garden-ish for me. I felt foolish slamming the social network sites while I had this little web-game community project languishing in the basement. Then, after looking at jQuery, that lightbulb lit up. I decided to stop treating Gameslate like a page, portal or community website and start treating it as an application to get into the games (at this point, just one: Gates Motel). That thought was enough to get me excited to start reworking the site, which will relaunch on August 1st.
I’ll post more particulars later regarding Gameslate, but for now I just wanted to express my joy at learning and working with jQuery.
