REMINDER: Any redesign has the prime intention of being practice and just one more thing to add to my portfolio. In the final version of this, any branding and logos pertaining to this site will be removed.

So I was looking at the front page, in my idea of a "redesign" of the site - I have the OK from FSX to do this for the hell of it, and as the idea is a partially working site (at least HTML and CSS working, lol) I'd like to look into the design right now.

After the navbar, I see the recent games/examples area, and a seemingly unrelated area that filters all, games and examples (seriously, the styling on the filter links make it look more like it's part of the area below, not above). Given the nature of this site, I can definitely see how this would be infinitely useful - recent games and example submissions (and of course viewing them all).

Then there's the 3 column area. There's the Latest News column. Recent Blog column and then the Recent Activity column. For some reason this seems rather redundant. Maybe it's just me, but it does - the Recent Activity area includes all current blogs along with forum and QDB posts. Is there a specific reason those two "recent" lists exist, or is it just leftover from before the Recent Activity List?

I think I'll be experimenting with variable width sites this time around - I've done it once or twice, but I'll be giving a minimum width of about 800px or so… MAYBE give a luxury of 1000px of content (I tend to lock in only 800px of content in width, with MAYBE 100px on either side for additional eye candy ("wrapping" around a content area for instance).

I'm looking at my paper. I've got a fairly snazzy new look to the navbar - similar, yet different and a bit more compact versus the current design. When everything is in place via Photoshop however, I'll be able to see how it looks on screen.

For colors… I have to admit - I despise bright, light colors. MOST color schemes hurt my eyes - I've had a thing for dark color schemes/themes, and overall, I must say that while the bright white background is a bit jarring in slightly less than bright light for me, it's one of the few designs that doesn't rape my eyes - literally. The overall appearance is amazing. For those that designed v3, kudos.

However in my design of this, I'll be toning down the colors - however I'll experiment with off-white instead of just going dark again - I wanna try some lighter designs - maybe with a tiny bit less contrast, and I'll see what will happen.

So… let's discuss.