you're right that skin-editor still reflects the backend (not that much as it's doing on antville.org right now, but still too much).

• regarding story-templates: definetly a good idea, let's see how we can do this.
• regarding time-format: the way timestamps can be formatted in antville is not what i'd call usable anyway, it just was a quick way of enabling it. implementing "short" and "long" formats is much better, and maybe we find a more error-tolerant way of doing this (right now if you specify an invalid pattern you're getting an error, which is pretty ugly ...)
• regarding main template: i think best would be to simply get rid of the main template of "day" (instead of implementing another option that will - most likely - not be used).
• regarding navigation: slap on my forehead i'd say we move the "antville home"-link to main template and do the rest as you proposed.
• regarding basic part of skin-editor: i think we can get rid of the "header"-skin (as hns proposed). additionally i's say we divide the skin-editor into two separate pages (not just two sections on one page, which is definetly too long and might be deterring for new users).
• regarding the redirect of "place a comment": i'm not sure about this ... do you think the redirect deters users from placing a comment?

just a quick response. i need to go to town before the shops close.

-time format: how about a pull down menu on the prefs page. adittionally, give the expert a chance to add a format.

-the difference between archived day and main page is good. imagine someone has the front page full with banners, buttons, links to friends, webcam photo, my books, my cd etc. you don't need it on other pages.

-same with navigation. don't ditch the navigation for everybody. it's much easier to add links to the "about" page, the faq or whatever in this small menu than in the whole page template.

-getting rid of the header sounds like a good idea.

-the redirect thing: currently, you can click on the number of responses and the link to respond. i wanted to change my site to one link, but it's impossible as this link redirects non-members.

Am I right in my perception that you feel very strongly about that (having the cancel button first and the save button second)? Still wondering about the reasons...

people in our culture read from left to right. from left to right means also from negative to positive or from small to big. think diagrams or mathematical graphs.

hence, the apple gui guideline says cancel = left and okay = right.

you're wrong, hns, i just found it funny because it's the second time you mentioned it (but never explained why), and still i don't know which way is better. cancel-save just makes more sense to me than save-cancel ... maybe because of the way back- and forward-buttons in browsers are lined up. thanks to kris i know more now (funny thing because i'm working on windows machines nearly all the time - where buttons are lined up the other way round).

so the only problem with the new line up of buttons is that antville.org uses save-cancel, and this means that users got used to it - which is a strong argument for turning back.

the ONE reason to switch the order is that keyboard users use tab, and the expected action after hitting tab one time is SAVE and definitely NOT cancel.

this Apple stuff (which I do know of course - I actually thought it had something to do with your decision to reverse the order) does not apply here. It does apply for the Mac GUI, for the one simple reason that the OK button is aligned to the right border of the window. It does not apply here, since the one thing that is aligned here is the left button. And we're not even talking keyboard focus here. Even if keyboard focus would work properly to get OK selected easily, it would be wrong to place the OK on the right side, as long as the whole button group is aligned on the left side. The Windows people got it wrong, and the KDE people got it even wronger, putting the highlighted default button in the middle, and I'm fighting with that shit every day.

This has to do with balance of screen space and the gesture of doing something against that of hesitation. The gesture of doing something is related to flipping something, switching something, changing the state, jumping off something, losing the old balance, while the gesture of hesitation has to do with keeping the balance. In our case: you entered some text into the text area already and secretly started moving out of the balance (status quo), but you decide to step back to the middle to keep the balance.

That may not be a perfect explanation and it may sound esoterical to some, but I actually do think this way natively, so it's kinda hard to explain.

Kris, the thing you say about reading order is right and even related to what I said, but it's actually one or two orders of magnitude less relevant than what I tried to explain (you could say that the simple gesture of "Zuspitzung" and flipping is much more prevalent than the habit of reading direction). That means: yes, other things equal, it is preferable to have the OK button on the extreme right (provided you do have a right border).

This is a detail from the KDE Konqueror preferences window. They're making exactly the same mistake like we do in recent Antville. See what I mean? It's much more important that the OK button be on the extreme side of the space we have (because it's the climax of what we do) than whether this is the right or left side.

Uff. Sorry for being so dogmatic, but as I said, it's something I really suffer for every day.

this is something completely different. this screenshot is a really pretty example of "i don't know which option would make sense, so i'll offer them all" (what's the difference between "ok" and "anwenden"? and what is the "voreinstellung"? ok, anwenden or abbrechen? i know it's something different, but isolated from the context it's more than irritating. and this has (at least i hope) nothing to do with recent anville.

clicking on "cancel" means: "wanna go back to where i came". how do you flip back in a book? where's the button to go back in browser history? i don't want to compare the web with books (too many have done this error before), but i'm talking about learned habit, and we shouldn't ignore that.

reading direction argument again. Like I said, I think it's not wrong, but it's not prevalent either. Also, the problem with the KDE example is not merely the number of options, or the way they are called.

i wouldn't understand the meaning of "ok" in your kde-example if it would be placed in the far right - might be because i tend to read before i decide/click on any button/link. and i still don't see what this example has to do with antville (sorry for being so insistent)

It has to do with Antville that in both cases, buttons are in the wrong order. In the KDE example, the right order would be (man, that's so obvious!)

[Standardeinstellungen einsetzen] aligned the left border, then, aligned to the right border, [Abbrechen] [Anwenden] [[OK]]

But let's not get stuck on the KDE example.

Anyway, if you're sure you prefer your button order, that's fine with me and I'll stop arguing now. Eventually, I'll do something to let me and others easily use the other button order, but I'm not yet sure how to do that.

nope, hns, antville should stick to one way doing it. anyway, finally you convinced me (sorry if it was a hard job :-), so i undid my experience. interesting discussion ...

Oh, that's great and I'm very glad about it! ;-) I hope you don't have any bad feelings about this. I know I can be an asshole sometimes when I argue.

Again, the decision is yours. When I said I'll use the order I prefer, I didn't mean to force it on anybody, just offer a different skinset or some such. I don't necessarily think non-homogenous order would be so bad, since Antville site designs will vary greatly anyway, and I don't see Antville so much as mega-hosted one-server solution, but more of an app that people can download and install for themselves and their peers. (Of course, we'll have the mega-hosted-service too ;-)

why should i have any bad feelings? it was interesting ;-)

I just had the feeling that I had been a bit pushy about it ;->