This site has the same issue 98% of all websites with a big overlay at the top have - every time you scroll using the page down key, the page jumps too far and you miss one or more lines of text. I hope this gets fixed quickly.
Interestingly enough, it's better on the iPad, where the top scrolls normally with the rest of the page.
This idea of having stuff fixed on the page goes back to the late 1990s, when frames were popular and tasteless big corp CEOs went "oh hey great, with frames we can ensure that certain parts of our branding are always in the face of the customer. Bring it on!".
A few years down the line, we grew up, refined our taste and trusted that if a visitor sees the logo in the top left and then scrolls down, he still remembers the branding. It's sad, really, that this lesson was lost again in the past year.
In the age of infinite scrolling / non-pagination it's a huge pain to scroll back up for menu. Especially on mobile. Polygon obviously uses the fixed bar for improved user experience. It takes up precious screen space - but that's the tradeoff.
Look at their review scoring policy[1], I'm a little underwhelmed. A score of 5:
>indicates a bland, underwhelming game that's functional but little else. These games might still possess quirks or aspects that appeal to certain players.
So what's the purpose of scores below 5? The description for a score of 5 is the lowest possible baseline for a game I might want to play. It seems like a full half of the scoring space is essentially purposeless when viewed from the perspective of recommending games to people who might want to buy them.
I find it pretty horrible for actually reading content on the site. When I try and read a review[1], I find the flow of my reading constantly broken by huge images and the copy jumping all around the page.
It's a pretty site, I just don't know if the design is right for the content in certain cases.
I'd love to like such a trend, I just don's see one. Can you name a few sites from this trend I seem to be missing?
I've been waiting for Polygon, but sadly it is far from being well designed imo. Few things that jump at me instantly when I try to read Polygon: tiny serif font but giant line-height in article texts (I hate waste of screen real estate, and I'm not even using a laptop or a tablet), spacings and paddings between page elements so vast I feel lost in the woods, sticky logo/menu line at the top (come on, I can find +1 button myself), images way bigger than I'd like them to be without lightbox view, no proper labeling of check-boxes (tried to sign up / login) and some other questionable design choices. What bugs me most is fading text in the descriptions on the main page.
Content wise (which is more important compared to design anyways), it may just be too soon to speak about quality/objectiveness. I like The Verge though, so all my great expectations about the Polygon's content stand until proved to be wrong. Congrats on the (re)launch.
[+] [-] Gring|13 years ago|reply
Interestingly enough, it's better on the iPad, where the top scrolls normally with the rest of the page.
This idea of having stuff fixed on the page goes back to the late 1990s, when frames were popular and tasteless big corp CEOs went "oh hey great, with frames we can ensure that certain parts of our branding are always in the face of the customer. Bring it on!".
A few years down the line, we grew up, refined our taste and trusted that if a visitor sees the logo in the top left and then scrolls down, he still remembers the branding. It's sad, really, that this lesson was lost again in the past year.
[+] [-] Geee|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gabemart|13 years ago|reply
>indicates a bland, underwhelming game that's functional but little else. These games might still possess quirks or aspects that appeal to certain players.
So what's the purpose of scores below 5? The description for a score of 5 is the lowest possible baseline for a game I might want to play. It seems like a full half of the scoring space is essentially purposeless when viewed from the perspective of recommending games to people who might want to buy them.
[1]http://www.polygon.com/pages/about-reviews
[+] [-] Gring|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tsigo|13 years ago|reply
What a mess that code base must be.
[+] [-] charliesome|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kmfrk|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nuttendorfer|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] syeren|13 years ago|reply
It's a pretty site, I just don't know if the design is right for the content in certain cases.
[1] http://www.polygon.com/game/medal-of-honor-warfighter/2686
[+] [-] Xion|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] duqee|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] SeanDav|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dylanrw|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] vitalique|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hayksaakian|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ilovekitty|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] spindritf|13 years ago|reply