Really good work, from what I'm seeing so far. Overall, it's intuitive and easy to look around. Off to a good start. But, I have found a few weaknesses.
1) Search: I need to make a call regarding invisibility. It's not on the 'Compendium' top level. I can't find it How do I find it? I assume a complete site-wide search is coming - is that a safe assumption to make?
2) Hierarchy: I'm in the Compendium. I'm trying to find invisibility rules for combat. I click into 'Movement and Position', 'Moving Around Other Creatures'. Can't find it. Oh, look, in the 'bread crumb' navigation right above the torn paper edge, I see 'Combat' - maybe I can click there, and figure out where it is by looking at the index of all the Combat topics - but that level of navigation doesn't exist. I bounce right up to the Compendium again. Why don't you have that big index page? It would be *incredibly* useful, if even just to go there and 'search' within the page contents to get to the right topic quickly. Instead, I have to pogo-stick up and down - and I still haven't found invisibility rules yet.
3) Navigation: On my 13" laptop, the top navigation bar takes up 40% of my screen real estate! I'm not implying you have to make it look like Google Sheets, but that is a *huge* amount of space to devote to that. Give me Photoshop and a half hour and I could cut it in half or even less. This is not a site where people scroll down and spent 90% of their time reading a long article - this is a 'while I am playing, constantly searching, filtering, interacting' thing. It's not a web site, it's a reference tool. Give me my screen back!
I hope these are helpful. Best of luck, and looking forward to what you come up with next!
I agree with everything Beelzebubba said and would like to tack on one more idea to point three.
A thin, but persistent header across the entire site would be helpful. Thin and unobtrusive, but something that would have the major site navigation links (characters, compendium, etc), page title, and maybe the breadcrumb trail. You could even do something like what Medium does where it disappears on a scroll down, but reappears when the page scrolls up.
I agree, while there are few feats and backgrounds, I can see where a search or filter function may be helpful once the product moves toward a 'complete' content set.
Site (app) wide search would be incredibly helpful as a DM as well. Example: Two-weapon fighting rules are in multiple places and, only together, give a complete ruling for the DM. Being able to search and find both instances would be incredibly helpful for these types of things.
The developers currently have a system they're working on for Omni search capability. It'll be one of the last things they implement unfortunately due to the nature of the search function, but rest assured that it will be in upon launch.
Really good work, from what I'm seeing so far. Overall, it's intuitive and easy to look around. Off to a good start. But, I have found a few weaknesses.
1) Search: I need to make a call regarding invisibility. It's not on the 'Compendium' top level. I can't find it How do I find it? I assume a complete site-wide search is coming - is that a safe assumption to make?
2) Hierarchy: I'm in the Compendium. I'm trying to find invisibility rules for combat. I click into 'Movement and Position', 'Moving Around Other Creatures'. Can't find it. Oh, look, in the 'bread crumb' navigation right above the torn paper edge, I see 'Combat' - maybe I can click there, and figure out where it is by looking at the index of all the Combat topics - but that level of navigation doesn't exist. I bounce right up to the Compendium again. Why don't you have that big index page? It would be *incredibly* useful, if even just to go there and 'search' within the page contents to get to the right topic quickly. Instead, I have to pogo-stick up and down - and I still haven't found invisibility rules yet.
3) Navigation: On my 13" laptop, the top navigation bar takes up 40% of my screen real estate! I'm not implying you have to make it look like Google Sheets, but that is a *huge* amount of space to devote to that. Give me Photoshop and a half hour and I could cut it in half or even less. This is not a site where people scroll down and spent 90% of their time reading a long article - this is a 'while I am playing, constantly searching, filtering, interacting' thing. It's not a web site, it's a reference tool. Give me my screen back!
I hope these are helpful. Best of luck, and looking forward to what you come up with next!
Old school knowledge / without all the baggage
I agree with everything Beelzebubba said and would like to tack on one more idea to point three.
A thin, but persistent header across the entire site would be helpful. Thin and unobtrusive, but something that would have the major site navigation links (characters, compendium, etc), page title, and maybe the breadcrumb trail. You could even do something like what Medium does where it disappears on a scroll down, but reappears when the page scrolls up.
I agree, while there are few feats and backgrounds, I can see where a search or filter function may be helpful once the product moves toward a 'complete' content set.
Site (app) wide search would be incredibly helpful as a DM as well. Example: Two-weapon fighting rules are in multiple places and, only together, give a complete ruling for the DM. Being able to search and find both instances would be incredibly helpful for these types of things.
The developers currently have a system they're working on for Omni search capability. It'll be one of the last things they implement unfortunately due to the nature of the search function, but rest assured that it will be in upon launch.
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