As an interesting footnote, the site should seem familiar, because it is written in Arc and is based on news.arc, the same code that powers this site.
The idea is a solid one. No question. Digg Sports isn't very good. If you can keep the community focused I think you'll do well.
You might like to read this: http://www.underconsideration.com/speakup/archives/002462.ht...
The important bit: "the real reason pizza flyers look the way they do is because that’s what pizza flyers are expected to look like"
Either way, code closed or open, the site does look great and I think its a really great idea. Good work!
- it is harder to open-source something than to deploy the site, because w/ open-sourcing, both the site and the code have to be in good shape, whereas with just deploying a site, it is not as big a deal if the code has some quirks. In other words, there are some deviations from Arc best practices that I want to take care of.
- I am thinking about whether there is an opportunity to have an open-source digg-killer based on Arc, and if so, what that would look like.
Anyway, if you want to work something out then shoot an email to: pageonetimes@idoh.com
If you're planning on taking the look & feel further in the direction of print news, check out sIFR and consider making it an interface option. You have a lot to gain by improving the quality of the page. (sIFR is here: http://www.mikeindustries.com/blog/sifr/)
In your place, I would also play with placement and formatting of certain stories with respect to the others. It would probably require backend work, but determining which of those stories is most important and then displaying them as such would be pretty cool.
I really like the tag line though. It certainly makes the address make sense. "Page One Times - Where Sports Belong."
At least, I wish the newspapers around here would do that... I would love to be able to go to mylocalpaper.com/business to read the business news or mylocalpaper.com/local/phoenix to see the local news for Phoenix.
I'll post a link this weekend when its live.
html { overflow: -moz-scrollbars-vertical; }
It will keep the scroll bars in Firefox from appearing and disappearing as new pages are loaded. The scroll bar wouldn't be an issue except that it alters the centering of the page.
A suggestion: Maybe you should try a different design technique to differentiate the stories.
There is a lot of text on the pages. It's kind of intimidating, makes it seem like a lot like work. If you just broke it up more and maybe added more white space it would look friendlier to read.
(added the MMA section via the REPL on the live server)
Just curious, is it just you manually submitting links at this point?
You can grab it here: http://wildstabmedia.com/hackernews and just save the xpi to disk and unzip to get at the source
Other than that, it's clean and focused.
Agree that the domain name is a bit odd, but not a huge deal.
Would be great to have an RSS /subscribe tool so I can read the headlines in reader, maybe even by sport.
Also if it grabbed an image "ala facebook" share feature that would be cool.
A bit more white space.
Most of these are nice to have and are likely already on your list of possible features. Overall well done!
I see potential, but the name really should be more sports sounding.
I think your page would be easier to read if you mixed it up a bit. It just looks like a wall of text which is intimidating. There needs to be differences in the text to distinguish if they have functions or not.
General complaint not directed to you, but to many:
Lots of people say this is MY fault. I am still 800 x 600 because of vision problems. This works perfectly for me all the time except when I encounter a web page that is hard coded to a large resolution (like yours). This happens more and more often and drives me nuts with all the horizontal scrolling. I would have left your page, but I loved the content.
Why not check the browser's resolution and adjust the css, or simply use tables? Maybe I'm old school, but I just don't believe this should be the customer's fault (or problem).
For the resolution, you are in the right and I will see what I can do to make it better. I'll email you when I am done so you can take a look.
I use the blueprint.css framework (which has a hard-coded width), and the 3 column layout is deep in the code (I am not sure that any CSS will make 3 columns look good on 800x600), so I am not sure there is an easy fix. The news.arc makes significant use of tables, but I had to make a decision to replace most of them with CSS for various reasons.
Small suggestion: You should reduce the leading for multiline headers, they look too far apart so it hurts scanability.
The thought is to make this a great "browse engine", to help people find what they are not looking for.
edit: found it - it just wasn't a major category like the other sports at the top of the page
Thanks for the feedback!