Site Update

A big update to GameSquat.com went live last week.

The homepage got a big makeover. We've gone from vertical scrolling to the fashionable horizontal style. Due to popular demand the number of games shown on the home page has been vastly increased and the size of the screen shots used to advertise our games enlarged!

There's a cool new button layout too, which hopefully makes GameSquat's features easier to find and use.


(GameSquat's New Homepage Features)


Everywhere the aim has been to simplify GameSquat's layout as much as possible. Check the new catalogue and game pages to see where the biggest changes lurk, same functionality just a lot more visible, common elements grouped far more logically and features made even easier to use.


(GameSquat's New Button Layout)


One big change is the improvement of the 'instructions' tab bar located under each game, this now contains all the functionality of the toolbar previously located at the top of a game's page. The tab bar still contains instructions and links to similar titles but now also provides tools that enable you to share and tag a game.


(GameSquat's Improved Tab Bar)


Check out the new rating system located at the top of each game's page, it makes it simpler and more fun to rate our games.

The new '+' button located on the top left of a game's page, next to the 'info' button, allows you to simply add or remove a game from your list of GameSquat favorites, viewable at anytime by clicking the 'Favourites' tab always present at the top of a GameSquat page.


(GameSquat's New Tab Bar)


Hope you like the changes, more soon, keep it Squat!

Trick Or Treat

We've just released the latest game crafted by yours truly. GameSquat's Trick Or Treat hit the site early this week and is rising quickly up the chart.

Check out Trick Or Treat on GameSquat.com!


(GameSquat's Trick Or Treat)

New Term

The office is full again, folks back from their summer holidays, time to get back to work and pick up from where we left things in August.

We've been uploading tons of new games over the summer, now it's time to get busy finishing off new site features and releasing updated versions of our widgets.

But today is Friday and the suns out, a rare thing for England in the autumn! So forgive us if we down tools and sneak off early. Means letting the release of a new version of GameSquat slip until next week but we thought you'd cut us some slack.

We'll keep you posted over the coming months in the mean time check out some sneak peeks below.


(New 'Info' Drop Down Coming Mid Sep 2009)



(New 'Instructions' Tab Bar Coming Mid Sep 2009)



(Version 2 Of GameSquats iPhone App Due Late 2009)

Keep it Squat!

Summer Holidays

The site gets a lick of paint this month whist we wait for bigger changes to be baked over the summer.

Tons and tons of style changes make it even easier for squat users to find games and use features. You can also paint GameSquat with two new colors. We've added green and orange to the existing blue and pink. Check out the color picker to the right of the GameSquat logo at the top of every page.


(GameSquat's color picker)

A note to folks using Internet Explorer 6. The version of GameSquat displayed by IE6 downgrades some of the features of the site, solely due to the technical difficulty involved in getting these feature to work with Microsoft's old browser.

We're real sorry, appreciate not everyone can upgrade to a modern browser so we'll do all we can to keep our core features usable with IE6 for the foreseeable future.

Whatever browser you're using, keep it squat!

GameSquat Features 101 - Saved Searches

We've just released a new feature that lets folks save searches, so seems like a good excuse to explain how it works.

Say you frequently search for games developed by yours truly, scoot down to the bottom of the 'Games' page, click 'Show Advanced Search Options' and select GameSquat from the 'developed by' dropdown as normal.


(GameSquat's saved searches feature )

Once the 'Games', page has reloaded and is showing games developed by GameSquat, the new search bar will be displaying the option to 'Save This GameSquat Search', click that link. A save dialogue will then appear giving you the chance to name your search click 'Save Search', wait a sec or two an your done.


(GameSquat's search save dialogue)

Close the save dialogue and you'll see your new search listed below the new search bar. Whenever you're logged in and you visit the 'Games' page the new search will be listed just below the search bar, just click to carry out the search.

There's an extra option too, click the email icon to the left of any saved search's title and we'll drop you a email whenever new games appear in your search. Enabling and disabling this option is as simple as clicking the icon, by default this option is disabled.


(Search showing email and delete icon)

Click the red cross icon to the left of any search's title and the search will be deleted.

Finally if you select a search and click the search's name in the search bar, the save dialogue will appear giving you the option to rename your search.

That's it, have a play, more ramblings and new features next month, keep it squat.

Testing

How much testing is enough testing. The purpose of this months update of Gamesquat was to test the site until our eyes bled, squashing any bugs we found in the process. The bofhs got to work server side whilst yours truly and GameSquat's designer spent what seemed like forever viewing Squat with a list of different browsers, including IE6 which according to our logs is still very much in use, sigh.

There's now 3 major versions of Internet Explorer for us to support, all with different levels of compliance to web standards, ranging from the very poor IE6 to the vastly improved but far from prefect IE8. Write a valid web page and it will render perfectly in Firefox, Chrome, Safari and Opera. Load the same page with any flavor of IE and the pain begins, the mind can tend to fantasize about a trip to Microsoft HQ for revenge.

With that in mind, we'd be fools to say the latest update was 100% perfect but we're rather proud of the site's consistency in the vast majority of browsers. In the case of IE6 we gracefully downgrade quite a few features that we've decided would be too time consuming and error prone to include.

The change you'll notice straight away is our new footer, which after a great deal of convincing and a few days use I'm warming too, there's a ton of other subtle GUI changes in there too and loads of server side upgrades that I don't pretend to understand but mean Squatters have a faster more responsive site to play with, especially at peak usage times.


(GameSquat's new footer)

On to the next project, there's a ton of new site features that are 'nearly' ready to go and a new version of our iPhone app doing the rounds in the office. It's going to be a busy summer,

Keep it Squat.

Side Navigation Is Dead! Long Live The Drop Down!

Tons of graphical tweaks in the new build of GameSquat. The change you'll notice the most is the absence of the side nav bar formally found to the left of all GameSquats pages.

We got a few friends together and asked them what they liked about the site and what they'd ditch. Feeling was that although the side nav held worthwhile information it took up too much space. Once closed it was forgotten and never used again.

We allowed our designer to sulk for a while, then set about improving. We went round and around - the idea of the side nav was to offer quick access to GameSquat's charts and new releases on every page of the site, how could this be done otherwise. The answer we came up with was our new drop downs:


(GameSquat featuring new drop downs)

Check them out and let us know what you think.

Speed improvements, bug fixes and subtle graphical tweaks make up the rest of the changes in the new build. Many more cool changes coming soon, stay tuned and keep it squat.