Second Life: Testing a new home page this week

I know nothing about Web design, graphics or whether Flash is the Devil's work or not. I'm not a gamer or particular ly tech savvy. I'm just an average person looking for entertinament. And if I stumbled across that black page, I probably would not be inclined to explore it further. Brighten it up, nothing catches the eye. And lose "Flirt". It's juvenile, It makes SL look like it's going after the There crowd. Replace it with Socialize or something a bit more Adult.

You've tested it with one another???????

How about market testing it on an independent user group - or better still a random group of people who're not super tech-literate - which is probably more representative of newbies.

Standard development stuff this - not rocket science... getting the sl community to test it is like taking coals to Newcastle - selling to the already convinced... totally non-productive.

I also agree with Brenda - if I'd come to this as a mature aged person (as I am) and the website concentrated on 'shopping' and 'flirting' I'd think it was another of those myriad teen sites out there - and give it a miss. And you'd lose someone who has been in SL for 2 years and spend thousands of USD and developed a strong community space inworld.

I also concur with those who said they leave Flash sites as soon as they hit them - I hate the damned things - when they work. i can't view them at my place of work anyway as we don't have Flash and don't have admin rights to install it - so I'd have a mostly blank black page with some links and maybe a basic pic - not very inviting.

I am looking at this proposed home page and what do I see?

pics that look low rezz and amateurish. If you really want to show off the richness of SL then counldn't the pics taken have exhibited a profesional photographer look to them? What I see in these pics is that SL is not any better then its imitators. There was one pic in there that grabbed my attention in a positive manner (the one wiht the girl at here computer). The rest left me cold.

Never mind that I block flash (thank you firefox and all those lovely addons), never mind that black is for goths and 1950's computer terminals, forget about all the criticism leveled so far. I keep reading that once we see this page in its full working flowing mode we will love it. Well give me access to some kind of beta or something that I can see if you are right or to paraphrase Top Gun you are just blowing ******** up my ***.

On seeing the screen shot.

Ugliest damn thing. catering to the lowest common denominator. I guess I'll not be using the web page very much if at all when that monstrosity goes live.

To give an accurate impression of what SL looks like, each image on every page on secondlife.com should be gray for from 30 seconds to ten minutes.

What she said

Ok, it seems that I've missed nothing. It looks like a picture wall, nice Idea, but not really original. Maybe spaceship were inspired by CoolIris, a nice Webbrowser plugin (windows, mac) for large galleries (works also fine with google image search )

I'm not sure if really new users will have a easy experience with this flashsite. I'm also not sure if it is a good idea to create a website based on a third party plugin. Many ppl haven't installed the flash plugin and most of them won't install it. I think the better way is to design a website with html/css, easy access and experience. Don't forget, the average resident isn't a computer freak / geek, many knows where to turn on/off the computer and "use it" as is.

Maybe Einstein is a good teacher "Keep things simple as possible, but not simpler".

Meph.

CoolIris Website: http://www.cooliris.com/

The talent and creativity of the residents is not even imaginable by looking at your sceenshot and the images. First Impressions count.
Look here:
http://www.flickr.com/groups/secondlife-bestofthebest/pool/show/

I think a page containing a wall of videos would be a great idea to give an insight of what goes on in SL without having to login or download anything to view. Not sure that I would have it on the home page. But the SL site design could certainly do with improvement so it will be interesting to see what happens.

And if it is implemented like BS's own home page, it may not go down well. Just visited their site. Red text on black is an interesting choice. You hover over each picture and it changes color yet is not interactive. Instead you have to click on one of the small text links beneath the image. Tried clicking 'launch' and still the video does not start. Instead you get another page of text and links. I gave up.

Compare to doing a video search over on Microsoft's Live site. Go to www.live.com, click on 'Video' above the search box and then enter a query - try Second Life . The results page contains images. As your mouse hovers over each image, the video starts to play. Far better than having to clickety-click all the time. Something similar for SL to promote machinima would be great.

Believe me, it's not. The future is with RIA, rich interface applications. That means Flash *and* Silverlight. Wait until Silverlight picks up and you'll see a proliferation of RIA web sites. Silverlight sweeps away all the development shortcomings of Ajax.

Believe me, it's not. The future is with RIA, rich internet applications. That means Flash *and* Silverlight. Wait until Silverlight picks up and you'll see a proliferation of RIA web sites. Silverlight sweeps away all the development shortcomings of Ajax. Ajax is already on the exit lane...

New page looks very nice. It seems more dinamic than the previous one.

My word, Katt, you really do have a sense of humour....

"BS and Lindens have tested these concerns....with one another...."

Which is why you're only providing a bare-bones snapshot of the new site, rather than letting _users_ take the actual front-end for a spin? If you honestly want us to give constructive feedback, then how about putting something worthwhile up that allows us to actually _see_ how the thing will work - Flash & HTML - rather than all this wordy hype that is coupled with a satatement that strongly suggests you've already determined this _will_ be the new look for your website no matter what comments come back to you?

As it stands, this posting, much like last month's "announcement about the announcement yet to be made" on OpenSpace sims demonstrates there are individuals within LL who mistake marketing hype with "communication with users".

That is, it smacks of trying to pre-shape feedback on the basis of a simple snapshot in the hope that the feedback will be positive, and can thus be used as a vindication of the design ahead of any negative feedback given should we actually get to witness the new site during "testing" next week....

Great suggestions these. Imaginative. Practical.

Are you listening, O Lindens? Just say no to Flash on the Second Life homepage for all the many good reasons discussed thus far. Slow down, reverse direction--this new homepage is a dawg. Really. Flash is sucky and shortsighted in oh so many ways. The boxes on black are boring and disorienting. There is no focus. There is clutter. There is overthink.

Overall, it I give it a "B" for "Bufugly" and unimaginative.

Please take the "Flirt" thing offa there. It's tres embarassin'. Teenagey, in an awkward way. "Flirt" is now a euphemism for hook up. SL shouldn't admit that it's Adult 3D Friend Finder, even if it sadly is for some.

I think the boxes (they are not "pods", they are boxes -- resist projectspeak) are too small. Cumulatively, they overwhelm. If you must ave them, do two, not three rows (not "carousels". The background in black is not inviting.

That's my two cents. Call if you want some good alternate design ideas. I promise to charge you only a tenth of what the big space ship is charging.

Yuck its gross imo, will be interesting to see if it develops to be as bad as Adobe's website

Looks good for a media player... looks rather un informative as a web page entry point.

Hahahaha... er...um.... I have no idea what you are talking about.

Okay, without actually testing the site.. which I couldn't even if it was live, since I block all annoying flash. You can thank the banner and side ads on many, many sites for that...

I have now had some time to consider a critique based entirely on the image provided and my own reactions to it.

1. I love the color black, but just not as a webpage background. It says, "We're trying to be edgy without actually providing anything new or exciting." Plus, for purposes of displaying images in a gallery like setting, it overwhelms whatever images you are trying to show. Change it to some other color, maybe like the Second Life hand's teal color.

2. This webpage is more Big Spaceship rather than Second Life. It looks like all the other websites they have done, except less interesting. If you are going to do something image driven, please, please try for something other than the "Wall o' Images." It's rather sad when I can look at my snapshot folder on my computer and find it more appealing than your new homepage. I'd recommend going with either a circular style for your pods or make the images for the pods round. Something, anything to add more visual interest.

3. Pod system might be okay, but please consider that most new users want information, not just images and videos. From the looks of it, all the really important information is in the top bar, the rest is just window dressing. Have one labeled Tutorials.

Now, I will gladly test this out when it goes live.. but I might not be able to. Many of us block out flash and with good reason. I'm going to show the image to my graphic artist friends and see what they have to say about it.

Q - How many Lindens does it take to create a home page?

A - None, any 10 year old can do it, but it takes dozens to share in the experience.

As an example of how the left hand has no idea what the right hand is doing.....

The objective is to invite and create more premium users...right?

Then why does the dead center of the screen say "Membership is Free!"?

In more easy-speak, what you mean to say is, "This is what we are doing and to hell with what you have to say."

Why does Linden Lab CONSTANTLY asked for comments/feedback and then, apparently when they don't like what they hear, turn a deaf ear and give the Customer what Linden Lab wanted to give them all along?

This ISN'T communication. Communication doesn't mean you just ask for Comments and then walk away blindly. It's about listening, comprehending, and changing when necessary!

The problem has always been, and always will be, that Linden Lab doesn't Communicate well, and doesn't care too.



Let me repeat myself as well. Two years ago I suggested to Robin, Philip, and Blue, that you should use your Customer Resources to perform some of your Business Functions. Shortly after, you decided to go Open Source; and made a miserable mess of that. Now, you have all these people that you could have drawn upon to come up with a design for your new website, and what do you do? You spend money like it's water from the drain and from what we've seen so far, a LEAKY DRAIN at that.

Before you get too "tied into" this bad design, maybe you could publish your RFP for the re-design and open it up to the Residents. You can work out payment details either thru Second Life or Real Life, but I can promise you this, the very TALENTED people here in Second Life will provide you with a web design that is 100% better then what you've shown us to date, and will have the added fact of being made by Residents FOR Residents, who already know how to attract NEW RESIDENTS.

As a matter of fact, since this is the second time I've suggested this, I would like a finders fee for it.

And if i remember correctly All these folks that hate the new homepage can in fact put up a "resident gateway" page and use a Surl to direct folks to their in world setup.
The Flow being (for a nonresident) Hit Surl page >trigger get redirected to the SL signup/download > do the signup and install > get dropped to the Surl location (maybe with a revist to the Surl page?).

So if you think you can do better then do so

You can't accuse LL of being inconsistent, at least.

I've got no particular dislike of Flash as such, but that sample page seems so busy given how little content it contains. The current homepage is at least halfway structured, and you have a good chance of finding what you're looking for on the top level. The new layout has all the disadvantages of minimalism without any of the advantages, IMO.

The colors hurt my eyes a bit, too.

Just like how .NET replaced everything. Actually, I suspect both .NET and Silverlight would take off more if MS were to demonstrate they were serious about web standards by open-sourcing them completely.



Ajax at least works on all my platforms. Silverlight is an interesting idea, but MS has a habit of ruining its good ideas with its atrocious business practices. (See how I brought that back to the topic of SL?)

I have Flash, but I block it because too many pages have busy flash pages that drag down my CPU. Even though I'm using a Core Duo CPU and I've got 2 GB of RAM, if I did not use Flashblock I'd have to significantly change my use patterns. I wouldn't be able to open up a group of pages in tabs and look through them, I wouldn't be able to leave pages open in the background.

And I'm not unusual... the browser I'm using ships with Flashblock by default.

Please provide a "no flash" link REGARDLESS of whether the user has Flash enabled or not.