Petopia Gets a New Skin
When you have a chance, swing by Petopia and take a gander at the new skin I uploaded tonight. I’ve been working on it off and on for awhile now, and I have to say I’m rather fond of it. But of course I want to hear what you think. *grin*
Important Note: If you are seeing any weirdness with things overlapping improperly or colors that don’t look like this picture to the left, try forcibly refreshing the page. (On Windows this is normally Ctrl+F5.) And next time I will remember to change the name of the stylesheet so that isn’t neccesary.
As usual there are a couple of caveats. You’ll notice that the pet pics look a bit out of place at the moment. I will probably start replacing them soon: certainly many of the pictures I added myself in the past year could stand to be a little better quality. (It took me a long time to figure out the Model Viewer well enough to get the best shots.)
I’ve also left out some bits of content temporarily while I wrestle them into shape. For example, all the taming guides are currently MIA, as is the “Surviving the First Nine Levels” article, but I hope to have much of that back up soon.
On the other hand, I was able to add some minor new functionality. Individual pet pages now have both a Thotbott and a Wowhead link, for instance, which I know will make you Wowhead lovers happy.
I also added a new overview page for pet families, with a new trial family organization that I’m sure will cause some discussion.
And there are other bits changed here and there. Take a poke around and see what you can find! The biggest plus in my eyes is that I once again like the look of the site — which means I’m more excited to add new content.
Incidentally, I did my best to make sure that everything renders properly in IE6, but there are a few known issues. The ghost saber image in the header has some odd black artifacting and I had to drop the King B image on the homepage entirely. I hope, however, that the site is usable in IE6 — if it’s not, please let me know and I’ll go beat my head against it some more.
And that goes for IE7, Firefox and Safari as well, of course. If you see anything amiss just let me know and I’ll swing into action.
And let me know what you think! I’m anxious to hear your thoughts.
(Aside: I went through a number of possible titles for this post. My favorites were the understated “Petopia Updated - Visibly” and the ironic “Petopia - Still Green!”)
81 Comments
I ttoally love the new layout for petopia! Good job! ^-^
The design is very cool, i just dont really like the eucalyptus color… if you kept the previous darker green, it would be PERFECT!
Good job!
I love the new layout! Wow! The site really has a lot of pop now. Great job.
The lay-out is great. The quick jump selections are great. The color…ummm…not so much.
Very very cool. I like the King B and Ghost saber images on the homepage - very nice.
Good work!!
LOVE the layout.
Personally I think the shade of green seen in the background of the pet pictures is better, but that’s me.
(Disclosure: In any context– green is never one of my top colors, anyway.)
I don’t really like the new layout, the look is great but I liked the quick links on the side for pet families better then the drop down list, not to mention the adds on the side over lap the other tiger..
I like the clean look, the green color is growing on me, and I will get used to the new layout.
Great job Mania!
AH! What happened to my Petopia!
:p The new design is very simple and easier to follow than the old one. It looks great and should be easier for newer users to understand and get use to.
Slick. Nice color scheme, bit more organized, and less clutter. Delicious.
And holy cow, thanks for the wowhead links! Copy-pasting all the time to use the site I wanted to was starting to get to me.
ok, the layout is nice. in firefox and safari the right column adds overlap the cat at the bottom. I’d rather see cats :)
I don’t mind the color actually, enjoy it more than the dark green of the old page. Petopia is a users paradise - there are reasons for coming, and jumping to them are key (skills, types, etc). That you have that upfront is good, efficient (as it was before).
petopia is one of those links I put at the top of all my browsers. thanks for all the efforts
I had one idea and I have no idea how it could be set up, but it would be nice to be able to compare pet families side by side. This way, one could compare, say, a Boar with a Warp Stalker without having to go up and down the table all the time.
It’s just and idea.
ah I see - if I manually resize both browsers the ad stays in it’s little column and the cat migrates to the light green under the message. if my browser windows are not wide enough, then there’s overlap.
oddly on firefox, I had a horizontal bar to shift to the right. On the Safari browser I did not. hmmm
shibumi the inept
I like the new look. I do kind of miss the direct links to various pet families that used to be on the left side.
And no more Mazzranache on the front page? Aww! My pet Peck is going to be disappointed!
I like the new look but I must take offense to the leaving out of boars from “Recommended Pets.” I understand for end game content they aren’t the best choice, but that’s only a portion of the WoW experience. For my money, and rare in my experience is the hunter who will disagree, nothing gets you from 10-70 faster and more easily than a boar by your side. Granted time will tell if the charge/growl controversy introduced in 2.4 will change that, but as of now I believe it’s definitely true.
Also as an aside, maybe to keep the controversy to a minimum you should change to a more tangible way of defining pet categories. I believe you did this in the past, but maybe having some sort of more firmly established categories such as DPS, Tank, and other.
I love the new theme :) It’s much more streamlined than it was previously.
A bigh thumbs up here, even for the colour ;)
Adam W-
I was thinking something along those lines, but I wasn’t sure about saying this. I’ve never liked the idea of a given pet being ‘recomended’. A long time ago, before TBC, the site was divided into DPS, Tank, and Mainline pets, but that changed with TBC and the changes made to the pets. I kind of miss that.
Actually I don’t see the need to divide them at all. If you could put the pet family starts (i.e. for Cats, DPS: +10%, AR: +0%, HP: -2%), next to the family type you can just put them in alphabetical order.
Or yeah divide them into DPS, Tank, Caster,and other. (still having the stats on the front page would be nice)
“If some god somewhere had said ‘let there be light’ in Ankh-Morpork, he would not have gotten any further because someone would have yelled out ‘what colour?’”
LOL. Perhaps the best way to put it is not Recomended, but Most Popular, Popular, Least Popular/Rare to see.
Both the new layout and the lighter color are great. And I have no issue with the Big Three heading the page. It’s not a war on crocolisk lovers or anything, it’s just common sense :)
The one thing I would like to see is the individual pet skin pictures in each category be put against a lighter background as well. Since the thumbnails are so small and they still have the old dark green background it’s pretty hard to see the pets without clicking through, thereby sort of negating the purpose of having thumbnails in the first place. Minor quibble though, and perhaps the clarity of the thumbnails is better on other monitors/monitor settings than mine.
Mania - Fan-faulking-tastic job! I love it. Now, when are you going to make a non-Combat pet section. :-)
Do you know Flash? I noticed that they Gallery loads image by image and I was thinking that with Flash, you could have them all pre-load and fall into place all at once. Just a thought.
Love the new layout. Very clean.
Poped on to Petopia (Before I checked the blog) to see what pets I could get in Darkshore… WOW!
Love it, clean and pretty and I find the color just fine. The King B and Ghost Saber art is a great match, too! (I was never fond of the old forest green color, by the way….)
Good job!
/applaudes
It looks terrific! I love it!
Arides-
We know it isn’t a war on Crocolisk lovers, if you can find them. The problem is that it isn’t common sense. Wind Serpents are just as highly recomended as Cats, Raptors and Ravagers because of their higher than average DPS and Lightning Breath which is a high damage spell skill that benifits from spell damage boosts and ignores armor. Not to mention the fact that Wind Serpents do a lot of front end aggro with LB. Cats, Raptors and Ravagers are just a lot more common than Wind Serpents.
Great work!!! Thanks sooo much for all your continued effort and love that you show the Hunter cvommunity!
After having gone through a few sections I’d say that I like the layout… not thrilled with the color though.
I guess that the tables had the headers included in the middle to make it easier to read but I’m not liking the break… call it a pet peeve.
I like the arrangement of the pet families (except for the arguments it’ll bring up concerning the recommended families…) especially the small images… are those new?
Overall, great job!
for some reason, my Firefox is definitely NOT showing the new petopia the way your screenshot is showing it.
That aside, I do like the new layout (going by the screenshot).
I’ll write more when I have time and describe the various multitude of differences between the SS and what i’m seeing on petopia
I love the green layout. I like the more centralized main page with the news in a box on the right, and the different search functions all together.
I’d venture that any form of comparison will be subjective to the reader. I like reading the specs to determine if a family type is what I want, though I have to admit sometimes the flying (irritating flap flap flap) and large (giant bear butts) tend to get me avoiding them.
However, I regularly use petopia to enrich my skills - and that means I’m going to tame just about anything out there, to get the skills I want/need. Knowing that I can snag a glance on Petopia to determine that is a lifesaver.
Seidouyumi,
Agreed, that’s a good point. Wind Serpents do much better with specific combinations of builds and stats, though, and are not as common at all leves as cats and raptors are (Ravagers are hard to come by early on for Horde, so that may be a good argument against their being “recommended”). It depends on the purpose, I suppose; I saw the “recommended” category as being a sort of reference for the “I’m a new hunter who just dinged 10, what should I get?” visitor more than a “You must have one of these or FAIL” message for everyone. That latter POV–that’s only Blizzard’s :P
I think the functionality of it is great, but I liked the old color better :(
Just my opinion.
I like the new layout and functions, but not fond of the color choice there, sorry. *grin* Then again, like someone else said, greens have never been my favorites anyways. Overall wonderful job, and love how much you do for the Hunter community. Keep up the great work!
Thanks for the feedback so far everyone!
Quick question for those that are seeing the ads overlap the right hand side of the page: Do me a favor and try forcibly refreshing to pick up the changed stylesheet. (On Windows this is normally Ctrl+F5). If you are still seeing things overlap, please comment again and let me know what version of Firefox you are using. Thanks!
(I’ll be back to discuss more of the feedback later. Functionality bugs first. :>)
I like the color - especially having a lighter background.
I agree with Nepthys and Boven - I miss not having the quick links to the pets right there.
Also, probably the number one way I use Petopia now is to search for which pets have particular skills (for training up my pets.) It took me a bit of searching around to see where you had moved that to. It be helpful to see that back more front-and-center.
Finally, I have to agree that I don’t think classifying some pets as “recommended” is the best choice. (And this despite that I have a cat as my main pet.) Maybe a name change … (the “Most Popular,” etcetera suggestion; or DPS, Tank, Balanced, etcetera) (If there is a need to classify, I personally lean towards an “abilities” type of classification.)
Still, as always thanks for all of the work and effort you put into the site. You’re my number one resource as a hunter!
Mania,
I use foxfire and I get the layout issue and refreshing the page in seems to work, but then i don’t get the overlap every time either
Varsar: You should only have to force refresh once, I believe. Let me know if you have to do it more than once.
Verace et al: Power user tip: Type the name & rank of the skill you want in the “Search the Pet Database” input box on the home page. to go directly to Advanced Search with pets that have that skill. For example, if you type “Bite 9″ and hit return, you’ll see that there are three tameable pets with Bite 9.
Real power user tip: You can use ‘and’ to link multiple search terms from that box on the home page, although the functionlaity is limited by the functionality of the Advanced Search itself. For example, “bread and damage” results in a search for pets that eat bread and have a high damage mod, but “bread and meat” results in a search for pets that eat meat because the Advanced Search page can’t search on multiple diets. (Not yet, anyway.)
In terms of layout, I haven’t had any problems. The main screen is a bit bigger than my window, but that’s alright, it just means I can’t see the advert.
refressh (or resizing) works for me.
a new start on safari showed the correct results. Safari is keeping cookies and other kruft. Firefox flushes everything on restart.
Site looks awesome! Keep up the amazing work.
W00t!
Good job - layout and colors are great. Oh! By the way - if you are gonna link Wowhead along with Thottbot (good on ya) why not Allakhazam as well?
Very nice, take’s a little adjusting, but I am impressed! *Laughs*
As for ‘most popular’ pet’s or what have you, that’s never been to hard. Just look at what the crowd’s using. Ravager’s, Cat’s, Scorpid’s, and to a lesser degree Wind Serpent’s. The first two are widely considered the best of the DPSers ((Despite raptor’s having the same DPS rating, and now having bite, claw, AND dash)) the second is considered the ‘mana drain mask’ of the arena, and the third being a form of specialized DPS pet, with it’s only downside being the rather large cost of lightning breath. Many if not most high end boar’s are stabled or released at seventy, no offense to any boar hunter’s, because of the popular belief that “DPS makes right”.
Mania - very nice! A very unique color scheme and it offsets the dark pet screenshot pic thumbnails well.
Looks great! And I like green, so I’m not really tempted to camp some obscure corner of the internets to tame the rare spawn version in alternate colors. :)
Love the new look! The ghost saber & king b pics are great. Thanks for all the hard work. This website is such a great resource & looks smooth too! :)
the only problem i have is i have a hard time seeing the pictures of the pets with the black back ground in the thumbnails
Really not a fan of the color but really am a fan of the new layout. I especially like the little icons on the pet families page.
Two additional thing’s. First off, why so many off green hater’s? Second, Mania, or anyone else with a ravager, does gore’s double damage count as a critical? I was always under the impression that gore had the chance to do double, but that didn’t count as a critical.
Heh. In response to recommending pet families, great job. Recommended, popular, and exotic. You must have agonized over what word to use other than ‘mostly useless’ for a long time.
I still love my crab.
@49
Late one night I tried testing gore, and it seemed like double damage was a critical, and would proc FI. However, when I spoke up, Cheeky (of spreadsheet fame) corrected me that it was just double damage. I would trust him over my sleep deprivation.
I still plan to test it again.
If it IS just double damage, then it should still be able to critical. That WOULD make it better then claw in most respects, as opposed to my current equal or less than theory. If it count’s as a critical though, then it’s high critical chance would be great for proccing pet related skills, but a raptor and cat would be fairly close to damage output. *sighs* Hate to say it, but I may have to tame a raptor just to test.
I like the way the links are grouped. I like the Art.
But….. it is too blocky, to much of a set pattern to actually be pleasing to the eye. Frankly, (and I know you did work hard on it)it looks like a simple website template we all seen a thousand times all over. The different shades of green (and I am NOT a green hater) remind me of a baby puking strained peas.
I am not saying any of this to be mean or contrary, and I do applaud you for your work (of wich I am very grateful), but I only give honest opinions.
Just wanted to share my appreciation of your work. It’s my Pet bible.
/Farghood - Earthen Ring
I’m not too fond of the mint green. I liked the dark background better.
This is a great layout.
I only have one suggestion to make, and that is that you should try adding a 3D model veiwer for the pets.
Other than that, I’m loving the layout.
Palla,
From what I’ve seen, Gore’s double damage can critial, making it do four times the level of damage that it could do. Now, mathematically, this comes to some funky numbers. There are several posts on the WoW Hunter Forum about how Gore doing double damage does not trigger any special abilities that require a critical hit.
It means that there is, I think, a fifty-five percent chance of doing double damage, and a five percent chance of doing quadruple damage. Mathematically, it’s possible for Gore to do a lot more damage than Claw, but Claw’s own damage is higher at base.
Claw 9 does 54-76 damage, and can crit for 108-152 damage.
Gore 9 does 37-61 damage, but could do 74-122 damage, but can crit for 148-244.
I must say, it does look a little bit blockey…
Also, I would recomend being a little clearer about finding pets by level, pets by zone, etc. (Although the Quick Jump is really cool, and it does give pet by level/zone, but you have to type it in to search..)
Also, this is small, but the King B pic is tilted a bit and that kind of thing just bugs my eyes, call me picky >.<
I still love the minty green.. The old green was to dark for my liking.
Loving the new skin, it’s brighter and oh so sexy.
I’m fine with the colors that you chose, but PLEASE take the pet families out of the drop down! There is nothing “quick” about making your users add in another click and scroll through a drop down to find the pet they are looking for.
Maybe I’m just thinking about my own browsing habits at Petopia (I’m there a lot), but I use it MUCH more often as a resource for finding a specific pet than I do for looking up guides.
something about the lightest green hurts my eyes slightly and i miss the list of familys off to the left (MUCH faster then a drop down menu).other then that it looks nice…
The old version looked better in my opinion. The two cats on the new page look funny and the light green isnt the best color.
I agree with the last 3 comments, although I’m warming to the layout the colour is awful. Perhaps I’m just too used to the old petopia as I’m generally not looking for tips and hints but what pets I need from where for skills or just to find a new interesting pet for my hunter. I would like to see the pet families back on the main page and a definite change of colour, that pale green just doesn’t feel very hunter-ish. Functionally though it feels pretty good though.
Apologies for the double post but I forgot to say, a good shade of green imo would be somthing like you would find in Nagrand, love that zone :)
The new design is, well, nice and clean. In my opinion it looks a bit like an accountant’s first attempt on webdesign. It is not wild and dangerous at all, considered it is a page about animals.
Still, petopia is and always was my favorite page about hunter pets. Thanks for taking the time making and updating it.
It’s great that you have freshened up the pages, I’ll second the other comments here on that. (I just haven’t used the pages enough to be able to appreciate the changes yet, so I leave that decision to them for now.)
The other comment I would like to make, is similar to some others; I turn down the light on the screen to view the new pages, as the old ones were so soothing to my eyes. In fact, I hardly ever saw a more relaxing page for my eyes to read. :s
…call me weird and dark-dweller if you like. I’m a creature of the night. ;-)
I’m not a big fan of green, but I much prefer the lighter shade rather than what it was before. Depending on how easy or hard it is to implement, perhaps we could choose our skin (both having the new layout, but a choice of shade). Of course, if you started along that route people would be insisting on even more choice so perhaps you should stick to what you like the most.
It’s great how it’s set out now - I really like the Quick Jumps, search ability and artwork. I will 2nd the wish for Allakhazam links, but I don’t want to increase your workload too much. :) All in all, great job Mania!
I noticed something. The little icon by the URL in the address bar has changed. It’s still a white Cat for the main site, and a pink Tallstrider for the Blog :D
hi! Looks great!!!!! No weird stuff yet. You are da Queen of info!
It looks awesome! :)
wow, not to be rude, but i dislike it alot, light green, and bright white gives me a headach, plus it is much harder to search imho, i miss the darker warm colors, and the quick pet links on the top left, if you are having a vote on looks, i say either change it back, or make it a little like the old one,such as the old top left pet links.
have a nice day,
Also, Allakhazam is old and not very great imo, i like wowhead.com and wowwiki.com wowwiki for lore info, and wowhead for spells, items, prof skills, and everything other then lofe! :D
plus the quickjumps i don’t like, just because i’m sadly lazy to go *click click click click click tap tap*
I’m with the minority here, and I dislike the appearance of it. The color definitely needs a lot of changing. The utility is nice, I just don’t like how it looks any-longer. It’s… *sigh*… unprofessional looking?
i like it very much ;) i’m glad that new hunters can have new knowledge without any difficulty =) nice job
To be honest with you, I very much dislike the new layout of this site. The color scheme of mint greens is nothing less than painful to the eyes, the older colors were much more appealing. Neutral tones are key to making an appealing backdrop, it draws your attention to the features rather than the blank space. Even a faint pattern would have been nice, the whole BOOM PLAIN GREEN really is tacky looking, as is the new layout. It looks like a Multimedia 101 project, all flat and basic and very boring. The new interface is rather sloppily done too, the old left-side menu was fast and efficient. This one has more steps and is clumsy to navigate. Don’t get me wrong, the info is great as always, but the way it is organized has gone down in quality. I would seriously reconsider trying out new skins and interface options, I am sure you can come up with something much better.
Also, I am having major issues with the two illustrations on the front page, of the Ghost saber and King B. They look, I’m sorry to say, incredibly cheap. The cliche Photoshop drawings, if you will. Sloppy shading, ill-use of coloring tools, no substantial anatomy visible. As an artist myself, I would seriously recommend either trashing them altogether, as they make the site look childish, or getting someone to make new ones. if you paid more than 45 a piece for them you were very much ripped off.
Sorry if that sounds harsh, but I am very disappointed in the new look, as I can see several other people are too. I hope that you decide to alter some of the things myself and others have suggested.
In Opera, to force refresh you use Shift-F5. Ctrl-F5 cascades the mini-windows. :)
On the subject of recomended pets-
Someone mentioned that certain pets get the spell bonus while most don’t. Most skills don’t benifit from the spell bonus (I checked), but certain, specific, pet skills did.
Those skills are Lightning Breath, Fire Breath, Scorpid Poison, and Poison Spit. I’ve checked two out of three of these and will be checking the other two shortly. Scorpid poison does, at rank one, one nature damage per tick, but it gets a huge bonus from the spell bonus. My scorpid’s poison was doing three nature damage per tick at rank one, and with only one application. Lightning Breath gets almost a full bonus from the spell bonus as well.
For a Marksman Hunter, that spell bonus could drive the DPS of these specific pets pretty high comparitively.
I made an error in my last post, I’ve checked two out of four.
I really like the new layout. ^^D I like the coler and King Banglash on the front page. It’s awsome. Good job. :-)
please please PLEASE take the pet “quick jump” OUT of the javascript drop down menu! It’s getting REALLY annoying to have to select the pet, and then click the button. Well over 50% of web surfers use browser that have Tabbed browsing, but those javascript drop downs completely make tabs useless. I have come here many times since the layout change, and it’s incredibly frusterating to not be able to have several pet families open in different tabs. I see that you added in a comparison table for the pets, but it’s still just so much easier to have two separate windows to compare them.
If you really MUST have the pets in a drop-down format, there are plenty of ways to do it Via CSS so your users can still right-click on the link to either copy the link location or open the page in a new tab and/or window.
Ayrianna: It sounds like the Browse Pet Families page might be more suited as a starting point for your purposes.
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