Appstore Look

[Alec]

 

[barzoule]

gotta say this one is my favorite

Spoiler

Oh and The Box is an ingenious site name!!

Darien's one, while very professional-looking, is too Microsofty. It tries to be complete while what we need is something very simple.

Someone also talked about the idea of having buttons droping lists. That would make lots of sense. A long list of whatever won't work, unless it has its own scrollbar, and even then, it's gonna be a hassle.
I think the Apple way with the icons and as little text as possible is the way to go. We can add more description and screenshots on the app's page anyway.

my 2¢

 

[Trevsweb]

drop lists can be a bugger even with a mouse. they re very tempermental. adding something like a scroll list would just be a nightmare for the finger friendly folk. better off with a inbetween list we can choose from... its another page to load but beats messing up your selection and having to go back a stage due to inaccuracy.
I think we should personnally get rid of welcome messages.. we know why we are at the shop we dont need to be told where we are imho.

The box is great a clean design. and Dariens design is great too hope more people try and get the most out of the shop front.

Magical Trevor FTW

 

[zacaj]

Its a bit bad looking, but you get the idea. Most of the icons are ripped from the actual file archive, so ignore them and the text.

 

[shill]

Darien's one, while very professional-looking, is too good looking. It tries to be complete while what we need is something very simple.

I think the Apple way with the icons and as little text as possible is the way to go. We can add more description and screenshots on the app's page anyway.

[/quote]
^Fixed. Although I must say, apple has mostly text and very few images in its App Store, the opposite of what you said. When browsing categories, it's just an icon for quick recognition, and then the Title. That's about as basic as it gets. I completely agree with "We can add more description and screenshots on the app's page anyway."

 

[darien]

I have faith that the right people are doing good stuff with what all of us gave them. I was hoping people would look past the site architecture/content strategy and just see the design as just something in terms of a skin and layout, in this thread in particular. I also wanted something that looks good/credible and won't be poked fun at by gadget blogs. :lol:

 

[shill]

I hope there is some way we can just pull the shop data into our own sites. Or at least give users the ability to select skins. But to add to what darien said, the Appstore should look professional, clean, and not be made fun of by jealous bloggers.

 

[Vorporeal]

I feel a lot of people are getting totally mixed up between a good local interface and a good web interface. People need to just suck it up and drag out the stylus to navigate through a webpage. If you're on a slow internet connection (cellular wireless, for example), you're not going to want to load page after page filled with images.

 

[-Tj-]

Spoiler

Its a bit bad looking, but you get the idea. Most of the icons are ripped from the actual file archive, so ignore them and the text.

I like it. One thing I'd change, perhaps the info column on the right can match the height of the image, and have the description tidily-arranged in its own row beneath both?

 

[Trevsweb]

I feel a lot of people are getting totally mixed up between a good local interface and a good web interface. People need to just suck it up and drag out the stylus to navigate through a webpage. If you're on a slow internet connection (cellular wireless, for example), you're not going to want to load page after page filled with images.

stylus is there for a reason. not saying its a bad thing i shall be using it when normal browsing/OS use but i think its a bit awkquad to demand everyone uses it to get a file they want to download.
tbh people will be checking reviews and forums on their pc or outside the pandora shop.
all they want is name of product, is it any good, how much it is and download link. having a full blown full spec rundown in your face, seams a bit pointless sure theyre important but thats not what the majority of the people are going to need.

cellular wireless has improved greatly, maybe not full US but deffo here in the UK. GPRS is becoming a thing of the past. wifi, 3g, edge, HSDPA is the way foreward. we are not in the 56k era anymore
just because buttons take up alot of space their not a bad thing... maybe we just want to be able to use our god given fingers for a change.

theres deffintly two sides to this app store deal. i personally think a desktop-esq design will not be suitable for what we need.
i aggree with you on the images business but my design is very limited image wise. sure i could take off the fancy rollover and on state buttons saving 3kb and just use css colour but other than that my whole image folder is only 26kb could be less if i optimise them more. its nothing. and if craigix optimises the use of the icon/screenshot images correctly then it sould be a breezy load up time.
my next thing is to try shave off 2kb from the stylesheet.

 

[monkeyo2]

I would think that anyone who is using the app store would be there to download apps, so I'm not sure saving a few extra KBs is really going to be that much of a problem when the users are going to be downloading multi-MB PNDs.

Also, as we'll be using the stylus, roll-overs aren't really going to work; menus that rely on them are a pain on the N800 as you can't trigger them. I notice the N900 has a mouse mode thing to get around that problem, and hopefully we'll get one on the Pandora at some point, but it's probably best to not assume it will be there from the start.

 

[Aninhumer]

Presumably we could store the website/images on the Pandora anyway, and only get dynamic stuff from the server, not to save bandwidth, but just to make it load faster.
It would also mean applying themes would be easy, just edit/replace the locally stored site.

Obviously, a solid API is a good idea, and would make sure we have plenty of options to access the repositories.

 

[Trevsweb]

Presumably we could store the website/images on the Pandora anyway, and only get dynamic stuff from the server, not to save bandwidth, but just to make it load faster.
It would also mean applying themes would be easy, just edit/replace the locally stored site.

Obviously, a solid API is a good idea, and would make sure we have plenty of options to access the repositories.

its all webbased so the princess will be in another castle/server

if theres going to be a application based appstore then im sure whoever leads that project will concider all that stuff i dont understand.

 

[zaoin]

Why categories? I hate them. Much better tags.

 

[Trevsweb]

not to drag up a dead topic but hows this coming along Craigix?

 

[streak]

Why categories? I hate them. Much better tags.

hate tags, categories better..

 

[Awakening]

Why categories? I hate them. Much better tags.

hate tags, categories better..

Perhaps a tag system with only premade tags that only the creator specifies, entries could then belong to multiple categories. Like an entry could be tagged Game, Free, Fantasy, RPG, FPS and Single player. So when you search for whatever you are interested in you simply mark the tags you wish for and the system lists entries that contains the same tags. Well, categories to separate Games from Apps because they don't share tags. Man, I just thought that up, would be so convenient to find things you are really looking for.

 

[second exodous]

So tags as in meta tags? Like Wildarms would be in the RPG category but would have a tag for 'guns' 'wild west' 'cowboys' and then all the normal RPG tags like 'magic' 'swords' 'HP'. So a search for 'wild west' would turn up Wildarms. Maybe I'm not thinking of the best tags, but Wildarms could benefit from 'wild west' and 'cowboys'.

Pretty much tags won't determine what categories games are in, they would just be 'extra' stuff for search.

EDIT: I know Wildarms is a commercial game and will never be in the app store, I'm just using it as an example.

 

[cobaltage]

I've been wondering lately if the app store can eventually take the form of a video game style interface controlled by the game controllers. Not like a video game itself, but like a loadout or options screen within a video game. Either built within a browser or maybe with a local frontend application that communicates with a server.... I just think that would be cool, and consistent with the Pandora's design.

 

[Awakening]

So tags as in meta tags? Like Wildarms would be in the RPG category but would have a tag for 'guns' 'wild west' 'cowboys' and then all the normal RPG tags like 'magic' 'swords' 'HP'. So a search for 'wild west' would turn up Wildarms. Maybe I'm not thinking of the best tags, but Wildarms could benefit from 'wild west' and 'cowboys'.

Pretty much tags won't determine what categories games are in, they would just be 'extra' stuff for search.

EDIT: I know Wildarms is a commercial game and will never be in the app store, I'm just using it as an example.

You have tags for all the game genres like RPG, Adventure, FPS, Puzzle etc. A game could belong to multiple ones so categorizing them is not the best solution.

You have tags for themes like Fantasy, Sci-Fi and Wild West. Maybe not something as specific as cowboys, if there's a limited number of tags then it would be easy to list them all on a search page.

Then tags for something like cars, guns, magic etc. Stuff that could be in different genres but doesn't have to be in a game of that genre.


If I want games with zombies and guns but don't care about whether it's an FPS, RPG, platformer or shoot em up I just have to mark those two tags on a page that lists all tags and I will recive a list of all games that contains both zombies and guns. I could even specify that I don't want say magic or don't want it to be turn based. Maybe I hate games where the heroes forms a party.

When you have your selection of games you can list them alphabetically, most downloaded, highest rated etc.