INfront Forum
Posted 23.03.2010 @ 4.09PM
The current forums are a great resource, but it is hard to find information unless it has been posted recently. I think a good forum is one that places the emphasis on search and resources, yet is easy to put up new posts and responses.
Take the main page of the WordPress.org forums for example -- whilst you have all you categories on the right like a traditional forum, the emphasis is first on informing the user, then providing resources so that the user does not dive head-first into the deep end, then allowing the user to search or select from a tag cloud and finally showing them the forum topics.
Personally I think most of the sections are great. Perhaps you could combine 'Programming' with 'Developers Discussion' and combine front-end stuff with the Flash Help as an 'Interactive' forum. The specialist forums like Motion Graphics and Print are great and the 'Design Discussion' and 'Classifieds' are a must.
I think the hardest thing for a user is knowing where to start. And let's face it, the current INfront boards are pretty intimidating. If you can make your interface as welcoming as your new home page re-design was, I'm sure it'll be great.
By the way, I posted here because I'm not sure what my login for the old forums is, so if you could integrate that with the site/blog accounts, that'd be great too :)
simantic
JOINED 11.01.10
POSTS 3
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HTML/CSS map
Posted 08.09.2010 @ 5.44PM
Best way to do this quickly (short of using Flash or SVG) is to have a single image that contains your map and use a good old HTML image map (as that rulers.org map uses), drawing the co-ordinates in a WYSIWYG editor like Dreamweaver.
Then perhaps you could add a tooltip to each link by using a jQuery plugin or similar to save time. There's no way you're going to be able to do CSS rollovers or active states without mountains of code.