We have discovered a lot of fonts solutions and decided to make a quick comparison. As usual, we did a public comparison that can be edited and commented by everyone, so do not hesitate to improve or complete it.

Here is our features matrix of these different web fonts solutions (@font-face vs sIFR vs typeface.js vs Cufon vs FLIR…) :

Finally, we did not choose this solution, and we have chosen to work with one webdesigner directly.

Anyway, here is the comparison matrix we did about logo creation contest websites, as usual, it is a public comparison that everybody can edit or update if necessary:

We are still working to improve this part, it is not yet finished, especially to make the creation of comparison easier.

Your feedbacks are welcomed.

Concerning the main changes, here is a list of what we did:

1. redesigned the logo
2. centered and fixed the page’s size
3. changed the default table color from blue to a sober and generic color: gray.
4. made table auto width in order to avoid stretched table, it is more condensed and nicer table.
5. showed sharing icons directly below the comparison title, it is more visible and accessible.
6. changed home page design, with a example of table’s image comparing apples and oranges:

   

7. changed directory page design.
8. the “last comparisons” list does not show anymore comparisons that are not translated to your current selected language.
9. added “actions button” below the table (and also above when the table is big), such as a “publish” button to make easier the change of comparison’s visibility from “unlisted” to “public” status:
10. added “comments” part directly below to the comparison’s page instead of another external page.
11. fixed some bugs (for example for IE version due to some issues with cross-compatibility between browsers…).
12. added breadcrumb, just below the tabs, to display the last visited pages.
13. added an embed preview window for webmasters and bloggers that want to include a comparison table to their site.

…

Please have a look to the new version and send us your feedbacks !

Concerning the matrix itself, we already knew that we need to do a simple and sober table. So it was easy, without any tool, we have decided to remove the blue color and used gray/white colors instead :

Moreover the background color of the table is transparent, so it should adapt to the website or blog where it is embedded.

Later, we will probably need to develop some color palette choices for bloggers that want to embed the table with the colors of their theme blog.

Concerning the socialcompare.com website, we need to find an appropriate color palette and combination, so we have discovered nice web tools for that:

http://www.colorcombos.com

http://colorschemedesigner.com/

http://www.colorschemer.com/online.html

But at the end, we still continue to use blues, yellow, and white colors for the site, since we like them. But again we try to be more classical, sober with a white background color in the main part of the site.

 We will release soon a new web design, but please feel free to send us your feedbacks on the current beta version of SocialCompare.

Actually, we were a bit hesitating to launch the first version that you can see on the screencast in September, because we were not really satisfied about 3 main points that we try to improve before opening the website:

1. Web Design
2. Ergonomy & Technical architecture choices
3. Content / Data

1. Web Design
   Concerning the first point, I consider that we are ready. Of course, as we do bootstrapping, it could not be as perfect, as if we used a real and professional web designer, but this new version looks globally better than the first one. We have mainly changed header, footer and even homepage or other pages appearance. The best thing would be to get a web designer for future versions obviously.
2. Ergonomy & Technical architecture choices
   Second, when we started SocialCompare development, more than one year ago now, we tried to maintain 2 versions for editing comparisons, one with modern, dynamic ergonomy (using javascript technology) and another one using more static, old way to do things. But we changed our mind, we prefer to focus only on 1 version with javascript to have a nice ergonomy of the website and it will be really more easier for us to maintain on the long term basis…
   We profit to redesign a lot of things on technical and database architectures… Therefore as we impact a lot of things in our current version, we decided to wait the end of this redesign to communicate and launch directlty the second version…
   Maybe we will not finish to implement or migrate all the functionalities already available on the first version (such as the comparison basket)… when we will release directly “the second version”… but as soon as possible we will deliver every functionality that deserves to be added on the service, we hope that it will be a lot of improvements and innovations in perspective
3. Content / Data
   Finally concerning the last point that is not satisfying, we will not focus on that, at the beginning, because it is not our priority. We know that this point is really important to attract people to visit our website. We know that we need to add a lot of contents to have more valuable things to do on our service and incite users to spend time and enjoy our service. But we will do that in a second phase, later. Our first priority is to focus on the real new value that we add on the market, that differentiates us from so numerous comparisons websites on Internet :
   • freedom to create easily any comparison from scratch about everything, especially those that are not price comparisons,
   • possibility to reuse existing contents to create easily new comparisons,
   • users community to maintain collective and structured data,
   • possibility to suggest comparisons updates to a private maintainer,
   • …etc…