simonbuchan

A few small quibbles in no particular order after spending a hot minute on the side, (that said, I'm a developer who works with designers a lot, but not a designer myself, so take these with a grain of salt):

1. The top nav hover tray open state should preserve when mousing between tabs, and only swap out content when scanning across, looks a bit lame right now
2. Similarly, but an existing issue, the top nav doesn't avoid the mouse corridor issue, which makes them feel a bit fiddly: https://css-tricks.com/dropdown-menus-with-more-forgiving-mouse-movement-paths/
3. The home page middle responsive break points have the tweet tile content break out of the background. Looks like you might need to narrow the community tile there (e.g. put the list below the featured image?)
4. Don't put a play icon on hovering content if clicking isn't going to start playing! You already have the video/audio circle icons for the podcast page, you should preserve that visual language.
5. I think the flat design is probably closer to the right direction, but to my eye it needs either some very strong spacing and color usage; or some parallax or light effects or something to give it visual hierarchy. You don't need to go full Material or Fluent here, but the push is toward semi-flat for a reason, good pure flat is very hard, and right now, for example, your headers are disappearing between the content. (Netflix have a similar design, but they largely get away with this by not having any text other that headers and "continue watching" details)
6. Might just be me, but when following a show link, I just get the page for the latest episode: I feel this should be something like the existing home page card with a short blurb about the show, then the grid view of episodes.. The main problem for me is ATM you go to what could be a show page, that shows the latest episode then a list of other episodes, then a comment section which could be for the show, but is actually for the latest episode.

Sounds like I need to add another site to Google Reader now :'(

Patrick Klepek: If you're going to be linking spotify for these, could you also look for rest-of-the-world links, for example http://jimguthrie.bandcamp.com/album/sword-sworcery-lp-the-ballad-of-the-space-babies, thanks!

@iAmJohn: Mechanical "clicky" keyboards are really different to the normal membrane keyboards. See if you can try one out if you are ever looking for a keyboard again. RAT 7's looked a bit heavy to me, even if I ever believed that it was intended for human hands :)

@Rolyatkcinmai: Fair enough :)

@Binman88: It's listed as Portal 2 DLC in Steam. Check the "pack of ten levels" link.

@Rolyatkcinmai: That's a stretch if it's not possible to complete the maps without the controller. You could probably get it through court, but I'd expect (especially since they are selling the hardware through Steam) that they have an explicit agreement with Valve anyway.

@Rolyatkcinmai: Aren't they breaking the mod terms by effectively selling these maps though? They would have to have official sign off to do this, which does make these kinda-sorta official DLC.

@FissionXuiptz: To be fair to Steam, its only Modern Warfare (both Blops, and 2???) that gets *that* bad. FEAR 3 and Dirt 3 are (pre)selling for $50 still, for example. But Duke Nukem is $80, and The Witcher 2 is $75. :(

@iAmJohn: Stick to the input devices. Razer's Black Widow mechanical keyboard is the best keyboard I've ever used, and I've used quite a few. (Just make sure not to waste your money on the 'Ultimate' - backlighting is not worth $40). It's cheaper than any other mechanical keyboard I've seen, and has even better feel than the Das Keyboard, though I'd love to get my fingers on an IBM Model M or equivalent for comparison. Also I like the weightlessness of their mice - most of the other high DPI mice are too heavy for me.

Well at least here in New Zealand they are tracking the US dollar accurately, since our dollar went from USD ~0.65 to ~0.90 games on Steam here are USD 90 rather than the old 50 or 60. Wait, that's not good at all, dammit.

Love the writing in this article, BTW :)

@mutha3: Yeah, I completely agree: I was just saying even if it only really requires that you are not blind, you are still "analyzing, interpreting and acting upon facial cues".