Relaunched Symphonic Heaven with a new layout: What do you guys think?

http://symphonicheaven.com/

I worked with a fellow friend of mine on this layout (he did the basic coding + imaging), and I did the major coding to get it to what it is right now, such as the tabs, console drop-downs, etc.).

The tabs/drop-downs are done w/ jQuery (I was previously using a combination of that and Prototype, IIRC). I’ve also done a lot of work to reduce the load times (server changes, condensing parts of the CSS and JavaScript code, etc.).

Anyways, what your thoughts on it? Likes, dislikes, improvements, etc? I’m all ears.

Looks nice, definitely loads quicker

Great improvement. Very well done

It’s beautiful. 

Just one note: In IE7, the left menu appears jumbled into a small area at the upper left with the items overlapping each other until the rest of the page loads, then it looks fine.  You might want to insert it later in the process or preload stuff and display it after everything else is built.  On a slow connection, it would look pretty funky for a while.

I did notice an issue with the selected tab showing over the drop menu. Possibly a z-index problem in the css file or something in the javascript (??)

That’s fantastic, I can’t believe how many pages are on the site – great example to see MODx handling it all. Well done!

What plugins etc do you use to handle the member system?

Quote from: atype at Dec 09, 2008, 06:25 PM

That’s fantastic, I can’t believe how many pages are on the site – great example to see MODx handling it all. Well done!

What plugins etc do you use to handle the member system?

Thanks. It uses WebLoginPE for the members stuff, and FormProcessor, IIRC, for the submission forms (as well as any other HTML form on the site). I’m think of leveraging Jot for user comments, although I still have to work it out.

And a good 200-300 pages are due to me moving my Gallery into MODx (didn’t use MaxiGallery, tricked FileDownload into using a template that loads image files from a directory, and applies the code for HighslideJS to show the full view), as well as moving the news into MODx, which uses Ditto and Reflect (although I’m having an issue trying to get it to use q= instead of p=, due to Google AdSense for Search being used, for the Wordpress-style monthly archives) --- it used Jot for user comments, which I had to remove temporarily due to some minor issues with converting to the new layout). Makes RSS feeds a breeze to implement now. ^.^

Quote from: BobRay at Dec 09, 2008, 04:09 PM

It’s beautiful. 

Just one note: In IE7, the left menu appears jumbled into a small area at the upper left with the items overlapping each other until the rest of the page loads, then it looks fine.  You might want to insert it later in the process or preload stuff and display it after everything else is built.  On a slow connection, it would look pretty funky for a while.

You mean the stuff in the bar at the top? I’ve noticed that on the other browsers (although it’s more "squished" in IE, due to some issues I need to fix). I’m using this to generate the tabs, but I don’t know how to preload it, or get the stuff to be hidden while it’s loading (instead of hiding once it’s loaded everything).

I also had an issue with the tabs where on the console pages, it indents the tabs for some odd reason, where every other browser won’t indent it. Plus IE not centering the layout, which I haven’t been able to fix yet.

Quote from: dev_cw at Dec 09, 2008, 04:31 PM

I did notice an issue with the selected tab showing over the drop menu. Possibly a z-index problem in the css file or something in the javascript (??)

I think it’s a z-index issue. Do you know how that works (like what I would need to set the z-index to for the tabs and the dropdown menu to get it to not do that?

(Thanks for all your comments so far. )

Home links and maybe some breadcrumbs would make it easier to explore the site!  :)

//You have breadcrumbs in some menus but about page for instance miss it.

Quote from: mrhaw at Dec 09, 2008, 07:09 PM

Home links and maybe some breadcrumbs would make it easier to explore the site!

//You have breadcrumbs in some menus but about page for instance miss it.

I was getting this weird Index / Index bug when I tried enabling that. I might just make a custom template for the index to solve that issue.

Haven’t tried this but also an option: http://wiki.modxcms.com/index.php/Breadcrumb_navigation_with_Wayfinder