So I've been looking at the front page and noticing something.

The addition of the news section is great, especially with the larger pictures and more prominent news stories.  But I think a side effect of this most recent change is that it has made the front page look a little cluttered.

There are boxes on top of boxes on top of boxes and, while we may understand how to navigate through all that, to a new user or guest it could be a bit overwhelming.

I think one change that could be made is to reduce the amount of space that the charts take up.  I think it could be pretty simple to have just the worldwide chart visible (where we see hardware for Europe, NA, and Japan)....and then rather than having all the software charts visible, make it so that rolling over Europe, NA, or Japan reveals the individual software charts.

Anyone else think taht the front page is looking a little cluttered?

I prefered the old style front page.

Since the new design is pretty new, ioi and the crew are still working very hard on it. Please PM complaints and suggestions to me or DKII.
All input is very much valued.

I agree, lots of information on the front page, but there's really not much to do about it except have less stuff on the page. Most of the information on there is pretty pertinent.

I think basically everything on the right hand column needs cleaned up and organized a bit better, like instead of having a huge long column with all that stuff, have a single article that changes every time you reload the front page.

Sorry...I wasn't complaining....

but a thread gets an opinion of many....not just mine.  Often what I think is completely off the mark and it's usually better to let everyone tear down the idea before bothering the "higher ups" with it.  If there is a consensus, then I think a pm is in order.

Since this forum is called "Website Discussion," I think it's a prime place to have constructive discussions about the general layout and appearance of the site.

A lot of the stuff on the front page is unnecessary in my opinion. Highest ranked games, for example, when we can't even rank them any more, or recently added screenshots.

Yeah, I think something similar to what IGN does with their news stories would be good for the charts. Have a default of worldwide hardware with tabs for each region's SW charts. I also think the spacing between the three columns should be increase a little. Finally, I'm sure ioi and co. are aware of this, but the middle column is off-center. The chart's a little too far one way and the rest the opposite way. It's really irksome for those of us who go OCD over little things like that.

Edit: Rounded borders would be nice too.  All the little cells are neatly outlined, but all the sharp edges looks a little blocky and messy.  I love the top border and think the rest of the site should keep with that theme if possible.

I'm not saying you were complaining, but there were more threads on this already.

All I'm saying is: have a little patience, behind the scenes there's very hard work going on to make the new design even better. We know it's not perfect yet.

Of course you can discuss it as much as you want, the PM part was to point you towards the people that you could contact about this. ioi is as you can imagine very, very busy with all this.

Recently added screen shots is nice, along with most recently updated games, as It lets you browse what people are working on.

As for game rankings, I agree, but it is a left over that has not been removed yet. Who knows which way things will go. ioi may re-introduce game rankings to the game pages.