Now that the “Group” and “Tournament” pages are being reworked, I think there are two additions that might be reasonable and do not require too much extra space:
Show which groups you’re an admin of in a separate list (or with a special icon). If a separate list is made, it can go directly below to “My Groups”. Something like this:
That’s maybe something that could be looked into with the different themes, like changing the star colors for the accessibility theme etc.
I do agree that some things are probably not fully explained, blue is probably started or attempted, and is probably just implied from progress icons like 1/2.
First off: great, wonderful, thank you for initiating a UI revision!
A few comments on my side:
Should Joseki be listed in the “Learn” section instead? It’s a tool, but a learning tool (like puzzle collections).
I would suggest that “Play” be its own button, featured prominently. It’s the key page that should be immediately available.
On the opposite, I agree that “Home” seems unnecessary. Clicking the logo is sufficient and is clear web standard since forever. Search could also just be an icon.
Speaking of “Home”… this is no longer nav bar-related and may not belong in this overhaul, but the Home page is a regular concern with regard to OGS’s UI, especially if you don’t play correspondence and simply get a completely useless blank page. A suggestion would be to take inspiration from Lichess and make it the “play” page.
Edit:
I would also suggest that clicking on your username/picture directly takes you to your profile, as it seems also standard webdesign (and saves a click for a common feature). A gear icon can be added to host the remaining drop-down with settings/log-out/themes.
This is a place for new players to learn to play go.
How do you know that they find puzzles not exciting?
That you find puzzles not exciting is a personal opinion.
Nothing wrong with that, but why force your opinion on new people?
I did notice the emoticon.
Still I think it has a serious undertone.
Btw I could live very well without the exclamation marks (but I am not a youngster).
Just light heartedly exploring what’s going on with the exclamation marks: they are an expression.
So it is not to do with what the recipient finds exciting, it’s part of what the “speaker” (writer) is communicating. It is their excitement or otherwise that the exclamation mark communicates…
FYI I’ve made the tournament icon disabled by default on mobile devices, it can be turned on under general settings.
This cleared up enough room to make the search icon and field visible on pretty much every device under common circumstances. When focused the field will fill up the rest of the nav bar for ease of searching.
I’m not quite sure I get your obsession with this considering we have a pretty big primary button dedicated to that already when you first get to the site:
Granted, if you are already playing games that screen is dedicated to your ongoing games, but at that point, is it such a primary navigation concern such that we should prioritize a special button to do that on a cramped navigation bar dedicated solely to finding more games? I’m not quite sure about that. Also, 88% of folks in the poll above ( New experimental nav bar available - #85 by benjito ) indicated that they use search, so obviously we can’t dismiss the importance of the search feature.
I’m not saying Search should be removed, I’m saying that there are devices where there are a lot of free space in that bar, even with too long Search line and useless notification button when there are 0 notifications
So why not also place there?
2 clicks instead of 1 is:
imagine a bowl with chocolate candies on a party table
if there will be a lid on this bowl, its still physically easy to get a candy
but it will be psychologically harder
bowl with lid is likely to be eaten slower by random people around than bowl without lid
But a few times now on mobile I have fat fingered the search bar while meaning to click to move counter. This opens up the search bar to full width and hides the move counter ( and other notifications to the right). I have not found any way to recollapse it without refreshing the page.
Would it be possible to switch the move counter farther to the right, possibly next to the profile icon? I believe the move counter is the most used button in that line ( for correspondence players at least) so having it farthest from the search bar would help reduce misclicks of this type.
there?