[Scummvm-devel] Fwd: Demos page overhaul

[Filippos Karapetis]

Note: This message got too big with the attachments. I'm reposting it, and
adding them as external URLs instead.

Old layout: http://s24.postimg.org/dlcshkuo5/demos_old.png
New layout: http://s30.postimg.org/vr8m9ole9/demos_new.png


---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Filippos Karapetis <bluegr at gmail.com>
Date: Tue, Dec 31, 2013 at 6:50 AM
Subject: Re: [Scummvm-devel] Demos page overhaul
To: ScummVM devel <scummvm-devel at lists.sourceforge.net>


 The added icons seem pointless, as already mentioned during previous
> discussion.
>

The added icons were added to distinguish different game titles, and to
avoid having the page look like a huge wall of text. I don't see how this
is pointless. Have you got any other suggestions to make this page more
usable to the average user? Having to search through a huge list (around
300 items) of entries does not seem like the best way to handle this.


> Also please revert hiding multiple demos for each game, which makes no
> sense at all.


The rationale is to group similar entries into one. There are cases like
"Putt-putt joins the race" where we got 8 different demo variants for one
title. With the grouping, the demos page went from 9 pages to 4 by default
(at a 1920x1080 screen resolution). This is the main reasoning for the
grouping. Even the sf.net demos folder is split into subfolders:
https://sourceforge.net/projects/scummvm/files/demos/

In total, the demos page has about 274 different demos (plus some which
haven't been added yet to the XML). So, with around 300 files in total,
it's a nightmare for users to find anything in that page, or even sit down
and casually browse for a demo. There are just too many entries in there to
put them all together in the same page (the "wall of text" mentioned
already).

Perhaps we can offer two different views, one with all the files thrown in
the same screen, and one where they're grouped?

We don't hide multiple versions of other files, and it
> isn't clear to users that they need to expand via the '+' icons to see
> all demos offered for each game.
>

The entries have been hidden to make it easier to distinguish what the
individual demos are. Have you got any suggestion of how to group similar
demos together? For example, without grouping, we got 28 entries for
Putt-Putt games. With grouping, we got 6, so one can easily find out the
exact game he/she wants, and then the version (e.g. DOS or Windows). The
"+" icons are a functionality that users have already used in a tree-like
interface (such as Windows Explorer).


> The game demos page is meant to provide quick access to download game
> demos, and doesn't need to be fancy. This is a web page, not directory
> listings, and not like a file explorer at all.
>

But there is no quick access in that page, if everything is included in
there! It's easy to get lost in there, and it's really not usable. It's a
big blob of entries, and the only way for someone to find anything is if
he/she already knows what to look for! This kind of defeats the point of
having a page at all - we can just link to the sf.net demos page for that
matter, which has everything grouped, and avoid the extra administration
burden.


I'm attaching two screenshots of the whole demos page before and now, for
reference.

-- 
"Experience is the name every one gives to their mistakes" - Oscar Wilde



-- 
"Experience is the name every one gives to their mistakes" - Oscar Wilde
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