Community Resources Suggestions

[The Geek]

This is of course purely subjective, and I am sure things are they way they are for a reason, however I thought I would throw out my thoughts regarding the layout and accessibility of the modifications area mainly because I find the area a bit disjointed and a little unclear to navigate.

AFAIK to get to the "mods" area, one clicks Resources -> Community Resources -> Download (which is in the right sidebar).

I think it would give more visibility to the area to have an actual tab or other top level navigation for "mods" or "addons" or something else that signifies the area to browse and download modifications. Right now, its too buried in community resources.

Lists

There is a lot of vertical space used in the lists. It isn't too bad until it gets to the actual mod listing (i.e. here). IMO the header images are problematic as they seem to consist of different sizes and don't really serve as much of a visual cue (far too small to get an much of an idea about the app). Granted I suppose in the skinning section this is a little more useful, but still... Getting rid of them would condense the heights of the lists substantially and allow for more items to be listed per page. That means faster and easier user browsing. If the images are useful maybe moving them to a popup on hover.

Would love to show user rating for the mods (and be able to sort via ratings)

Would love the ability to sort via downloads/last updated

Think it would be great to have a column for the current version number

Instead of an icon, I think the price should be shown as a column in the list page (and ideally be sortable)

Change the list to 20 per page instead of 10


File page

On the file page, make 2 columns instead of 3

Keep comments with file instead of separate thread.

Show sidebar of either related files, or popular downloads in that category.



These changes could give better exposure to new and existing mods.

Anyhoo - Just my 2 cents ;)

[bfarber]

One thing to keep in mind is that we use IP.Downloads and attempt not to modify our software (to the extent possible, at least) here on our own forums. Gives you a better idea of what you would get purchasing the software.

This is of course purely subjective, and I am sure things are they way they are for a reason, however I thought I would throw out my thoughts regarding the layout and accessibility of the modifications area mainly because I find the area a bit disjointed and a little unclear to navigate.

AFAIK to get to the "mods" area, one clicks Resources -> Community Resources -> Download (which is in the right sidebar).

I think it would give more visibility to the area to have an actual tab or other top level navigation for "mods" or "addons" or something else that signifies the area to browse and download modifications. Right now, its too buried in community resources.

Addons/mods *are* resources, so it makes sense for them to be included in the resources tab to me. What if they had their own "tab" within that section however, instead of being included under community resources?

Lists

There is a lot of vertical space used in the lists. It isn't too bad until it gets to the actual mod listing (i.e. [url="http://community.invisionpower.com/files/category/103-applications/"]here[/url]). IMO the header images are problematic as they seem to consist of different sizes and don't really serve as much of a visual cue (far too small to get an much of an idea about the app). Granted I suppose in the skinning section this is a little more useful, but still... Getting rid of them would condense the heights of the lists substantially and allow for more items to be listed per page. That means faster and easier user browsing. If the images are useful maybe moving them to a popup on hover.

Would love to show user rating for the mods (and be able to sort via ratings)

Would love the ability to sort via downloads/last updated

Think it would be great to have a column for the current version number

Instead of an icon, I think the price should be shown as a column in the list page (and ideally be sortable)

Change the list to 20 per page instead of 10

Regarding the vertical space - we used to have sceenshots shut off for modifications (only enabled for graphics and skins). I'm not sure if there is any specific reason we show screenshots for mods now. I'll check, and if not we can shut that off. We can also make it list 20 per page instead of 10.

Ratings shown in the list view would need to be added to IP.Downloads itself first (as would filtering/sorting by rating).

Current version number is a custom field, so while I get where you're going, again this requires customizations to our installation to achieve, which we shy away from for the most part. That said, I believe I've already added all the source-code modifications necessary for this just to get the price, so it might be something we can look into.

You can already sort by downloads/last update. Go to the bottom of the listing and click "show filter options".

The price is available for a modification by hovering over the icon. I think adding too many columns complicates the layout, though I'm no designer so someone else can chime in here. Sorting by price would be difficult, though, given that it's a custom field (and IDM code doesn't currently deal with sorting by custom fields).

File page

On the file page, make 2 columns instead of 3

Keep comments with file instead of separate thread.

Show sidebar of either related files, or popular downloads in that category.

I also suggested moving to 2 columns. This is in the works I do believe.

We used to have comments with the files and everyone requested we switch over to support topics instead, so we did. I don't foresee us moving back anytime soon. :P Unfortunately, the majority of the submitters seem to rather have full topics than comments.

No real opinion on your sidebar suggestion.