New Generation MSX online

New Generation MSX online

by Jorito on 25-03-2013, 21:28
Topic: Websites
Languages:

Generation MSX is an MSX site well known for its extensive software database and in lesser extend for its library section. Over the years the site didn't change much and kept the same look. Until yesterday, when Generation MSX v2 was released.

The entire site was rebuilt from scratch, uses a new CMS and has a clean new look to it. Most of the functionality from the previous site is still available, and a hardware database based on the MSX FAQ was added as well. Here's an overview of the new features:

  • The media tab of software contains youtube videos
  • When publications (magazines) have a review about software they will appear on the software info tab
  • Everybody can contribute images/videos without an account
  • New hardware database based on the MSX FAQ
  • When publications (magazines) have a review about hardware they will appear on the hardware info tab
  • New publication section that replaces the old library section

Relevant link: Generation MSX

Comments (38)

By enribar

Paragon (1208)

enribar's picture

25-03-2013, 22:24

Sorry but... at this point, the only useable part is the forum...
But it still remain the most complete MSX software database!

By mars2000you

Enlighted (6480)

mars2000you's picture

25-03-2013, 22:45

What do you mean ? The search engine works very good. Smile

I've only noticed a small error in the 'Latest MSX news' section : my site is 'MSX blue', not 'BlueMSX' ...
I know, it's confusing Wink

By hbarcellos

Hero (645)

hbarcellos's picture

25-03-2013, 23:36

Cool! Let me check my suggestions! Smile

*PS* I would still add a "tab" called review! Smile Let people submit them. Someone approve and publish or not.
Same process for "submit" a screenshot...

By Sylvester

Hero (589)

Sylvester's picture

26-03-2013, 00:03

@enribar: have fun on the forums Smile
@mars200you: fixed it Wink
@hbarcellos: I wrote it down on my todo list, but first i have some other features to build and fix entries in the database Smile

By enribar

Paragon (1208)

enribar's picture

26-03-2013, 09:03

hehe, yes you're right, I have to do some practice since I'm still used to the old one :-)
But I think this site suffers a bit of the "information overload" problem... (http://www.w3.org/WAI/)
(Sure It's my opinion but) Site is "too white", it stresses my eyes, and often you have to do vertical-up scroll to display basic information. See for example: http://www.generation-msx.nl/software/namco/center-court/rel...
It goes at the bottom on the page automatically, showing first the release information... this is annoying.
Name of the entry is too big.
Entry informations are not clearly limited with borders, background color or other graphical effects, so you can easily look at advertising first...
Anyway, I love it :-)

By Sylvester

Hero (589)

Sylvester's picture

26-03-2013, 09:24

@enribar, when we released the black version people complained that it was too black, and now people complain it's too white Smile But I first wanted a different design, so I opened PhotoShop did some drawings and came to the conclusion i'm not a designer Smile so at that point I took the Twitter Bootstrap Framework and created a site with it Smile But I already got a proposal to replace the (retro) header with a new one, so who knows, maybe the rest of the site will also get some minor changes in the future.

About the scrolling, this was a feature request for the old site, that if you clicked on a specific release of a software title you would go to that release information. But if i get more complains i can always revert that feature.

By meits

Scribe (6542)

meits's picture

26-03-2013, 12:05

Congrats with the new site... I want to add that the white is indeed a bit too white... There must be something between the old black and the new white Wink

By enribar

Paragon (1208)

enribar's picture

26-03-2013, 13:05

Yes I thought that the white choice is a clear response to all those criticts about black.
But I was in love with the old CMS, in my opinon some minor changes were sufficient to improve look and feel.
For example, only changing black backcolour to blue and adding more media feature. This is a good example of colour mix: http://www.bluemsx.com
Old Gen-MSX site is still in Google cache, so... It's not too late ;-)

By Akiguchi

Hero (623)

Akiguchi's picture

26-03-2013, 17:27

Where I could find the "highest rated games tab"? It was the most interesting thing about the whole old site which I looked upon to see how people vote their favourite games. Maybe I'm blind that I can't find it. Smile

By OeiOeiVogeltje

Paragon (1432)

OeiOeiVogeltje's picture

26-03-2013, 18:01

an option to switch it to black?
i believe some sites have such a thing

By FiXato

Scribe (1742)

FiXato's picture

26-03-2013, 21:05

While I agree that it would be nice if there were multiple supported stylesheets, people can also just grab client-side solutions such as the Stylebot (http://stylebot.me/about) solution to restyle the page however they like: http://stylebot.me/styles/2258

By Edwin

Paragon (1182)

Edwin's picture

27-03-2013, 00:18

I'm ok with the new appearance. Nothing spectacular, but the content is much more important than the looks. A couple of issues though:

1. Clicking the quick search results is not as useful as the previous site. Now it's click, click search, (mostly) see one result, click again. Three clicks to take you where one should do.
2. The scrolled start position is really unnatural. I'd skip that.
3. Clicking the 'tabs' is seems rather slow. This is mostly because it actually loads a new page and the response time for this CMS doesn't appear to be all that quick. It's nice for linking, but it'd be much better if it showed the content without reloading anything. This would remove the jump as it starts at the top again as well.

By tcruise

Master (133)

tcruise's picture

27-03-2013, 05:25

It does look better than the old site, need to have a proper look later.
You still haven't added Electric Adventures as a company and there are a few other Australian/New Zealand publishers you are missing as well.

By Poltergeist

Champion (280)

Poltergeist's picture

27-03-2013, 11:55

The random function is funny... It very often shows the 404 page...

By enribar

Paragon (1208)

enribar's picture

28-03-2013, 09:36

I love Gen-MSX as much as MSX.org.
I've been spending much time in finding, buying and preserving MSX software, and then updating Gen-MSX!
This activity is not easy and sometimes hard, but it's a passion and funny.
Much work still have to be done, for example as tcruise says, entire companies' entries last in the database...
My personal next goal is to reach 4000 unique entries, but now I can't see statistics anymore... Is there a way to reactivate them again?
Another think: I had an account in the old CMS backend, can I still have it in the new? (and how? please webmaster contact me).

By Sylvester

Hero (589)

Sylvester's picture

28-03-2013, 09:47

@edwin: about the autocomplete it's the default behavior of the twitter bootstrap script, but i will see if I can fix it. The scrolling will be removed this weekend and the tabs stay for now Smile
@tcruise: it's on my todo list Smile
@poltergeist: strange, it should only give existing software, this weekend I will improve the logging of the 404 pages so I can see what goes wrong.
@enribar: the statistics will return this weekend and check you email Smile
@akiguchi: the "highest rated games" will return this weekend Smile

By ro

Scribe (4962)

ro's picture

31-03-2013, 12:18

Sandy, great work. GenMSX has a more modern look to it and the contents is still amazing. thumbs up!

By anonymous

incognito ergo sum (116)

anonymous's picture

31-03-2013, 21:41

Contents? What contents? I can't find anything on this trainwreck.

http://img820.imageshack.us/img820/8264/fixthiscrap.png

Generation-MSX was so awesome. There was nothing wrong with it. Please fix it.

By sd_snatcher

Prophet (3659)

sd_snatcher's picture

01-04-2013, 01:04

Indeed, unfortunately the search function seems to be broken.
OTOH, I liked the new/cleaner design.

By Manuel

Ascended (19461)

Manuel's picture

01-04-2013, 22:47

Try again, it seems to be better now. It seems Sandy is still ironing out some bugs...

By Manuel

Ascended (19461)

Manuel's picture

03-04-2013, 15:33

Can you guys confirm it's OK now?

By anonymous

incognito ergo sum (116)

anonymous's picture

04-04-2013, 14:03

It is. Smile I only wonder where the advanced search went. But it works perfectly again.
Oh, and it still says "no results founds".

By FiXato

Scribe (1742)

FiXato's picture

04-04-2013, 13:39

John: http://www.generation-msx.nl/software has a bit more advanced search, though I agree that the old version had much more finegrained search options.

By FiXato

Scribe (1742)

FiXato's picture

04-04-2013, 13:40

Then again, the old version didn't have the filtering system that the current one does. Just have to get used to using the bar on the left.

By JohnHassink

Ambassador (5670)

JohnHassink's picture

04-04-2013, 13:59

@ FiXato: Thanks. Smile

By the way, what is causing this:

Could it be my browser? I'm using Firefox 20.0.

By Sylvester

Hero (589)

Sylvester's picture

04-04-2013, 14:06

@John: nope it's not your browser. It looks like the Twitter bootstrap doesn't handle long names correctly in a list when you have a smaller screen. Will have a look at it.

By Sylvester

Hero (589)

Sylvester's picture

04-04-2013, 14:15

@John, try a refresh and it should work now Smile

By JohnHassink

Ambassador (5670)

JohnHassink's picture

04-04-2013, 14:18

@ Sylvester: Yep, it does. Nice work. Smile

One more little nitpick - it still says "No results founds". Wink

By Sylvester

Hero (589)

Sylvester's picture

04-04-2013, 14:20

@John, i have the same problem if i search for: verylongtitlethatdoesnotexist Smile
What did you search for?

By anonymous

incognito ergo sum (116)

anonymous's picture

04-04-2013, 14:22

Sylvest, look closer at the bold formatting. ;-)
He means that the page says "founds" instead of "found".

By anonymous

incognito ergo sum (116)

anonymous's picture

04-04-2013, 14:22

I searched for "patat", in order to get no results on purpose.
It's not the problem that patat is not in the database - I'm referring to the text "no results founds" instead of "no results found". Wink

EDIT: FiXato was quicker. Smile

By Sylvester

Hero (589)

Sylvester's picture

04-04-2013, 14:26

hmm, i need a new monitor here at work Smile don't see any bold, but it's fixed Smile

By FiXato

Scribe (1742)

FiXato's picture

04-04-2013, 14:35

Hmm, on Chrome on my mac the font-weight difference is indeed very small.

By DanySoft

Champion (452)

DanySoft's picture

05-04-2013, 21:36

Please,
Changing the background in black!
I do not like the white background! Evil

However, the black background style msx opened my eyes and I see many games perfectly
recognize the images of all the MSX! Tongue
I am passionate about research in the game, but the white background is not of my liking. Shocked!

Bye Bye
DanySoft

By anonymous

incognito ergo sum (116)

anonymous's picture

27-04-2013, 13:03

How can I upload images to the "Latest Changes" part???

I can´t find any options for do it

By anonymous

incognito ergo sum (116)

anonymous's picture

30-04-2013, 05:59

Could be nice to have a language(s) field added to the software, making it easier to know if a game requires knowing Japanese or Dutch. ;p

By MäSäXi

Paragon (1884)

MäSäXi's picture

30-04-2013, 08:12

It´s nice to see that my old wish has been fulfilled! Now I can search for games in every page! Smile No need to press back-button or click software database link. Thank you!

I have one more wish, to make generation-msx more perfect! Smile

Could there be games, which were meant to release for MSX too, but were not? Such games could have scanned magazine advertisements for evidence. I think it would be interesting thing to have. Maybe some searcher could know more about that game and tell more why it wasn´t released. Smile

By Manuel

Ascended (19461)

Manuel's picture

30-04-2013, 16:05

The site already supports unreleased games and language fields.