Needing some feedback on some navbar icons.

[WhiteFelineWonder]

Had the idea of giving my site's navbar some custom little icons, though I'm not quite sure how it would look elsewhere.


The icons shown here are kind of a placeholder, mainly to get the idea rolling and see how it sticks. You can find it in the experiment page on my site.

This one's the default I use.

Not quite sure entirely so I'm looking for some feedback and votes to see which one works better. Me personally? I think the visual icons add a bit of fun, but again the ones in the text preview are like, prototype icons. I'll leave this little poll going for 10 days (technically 9 because the forums are closed on Mondays.

[tesseractcube]

i think the image icons are really cute.  edit: just the images adds an air of exploration to your site that only having text doesnt in my opinion   

- g

[Skykristal]

I think they're great visually but less practical.  A text and icon combo (if you want to use icons not just text) would be ideal. Icons don't tell where you're going and it's something thats a bit of a personal menu diskike of mine. I want to look at the menu and understand it in a few seconds to go to the pages that are of interest to me. It's more of an issue with touch screens, but still bothering when you have to hover with your mouse to see the url to get an idea.

That said, I think icon menus can work well for specific uses, especially when you know where you are and what to expect (like a game, subcategories,  gallery or writing/book mechanics) but for a general website menu I find it to be too tedious to navigate unless the graphics are super straight forward, feature easy to understand and common topics and the topics differ enough from each other to not get confused or mixed up.

For example your last graphic is I assume an open book, meaning the guest book in the menu. To me, it looked like a shield at first, and without context, I couldn't make out most of the icons that well. The text menu on the other hand is easy and fast to digest.

Ofc at the end of the day it's your website,  do whatever you enjoy! Just my two cents

[TheFrugalGamer]

I like the icons, but would be a little lost about what they mean unless you added some hover context. You could also do both, by putting the icon off to the left, and the text to the right, or something similar.

[grubbyfox]

i agree with the sentiment that icons-only in general can be a bit confusing. your icons are really cute either way! :3 personally i would have tried some way to incorporate text and icon. either as a full buton or maybe a small icon next to text or idk. but i looove coming across sites that use custom icons!

[WhiteFelineWonder]

Seeing the feedback and I'm very glad I asked about this. A lot of votes are towards mixing the two which honestly sounds like a better idea than icon only.

Where things are in terms the experiment page, when you hover over an icon, it'll show little text. I could try and have text inside the image as well, though I kind of wanna go for small text so's not to make the navbar seem like it's got too much going on.

unrelated to the navbar icons i gave it a snazzy purple gradient and i'm loving it

Lemme know what you guys think of this little update!

[Captin]

I really like the icons over the plan text, but I think everyone else agrees lol. But some of the images are a bit confusing like the guestbook looking like a shield, or the portal looking like some kind of fuzzball. That's why I think that its a good idea to combine the two to make it more accessible for people that suck at telling what images are (like me).

Ideas for mixing the two: when you hover an icon the text moves out maybe, or maybe just have them next to the images.

Not too sure whats been said before but that's just what I think. Someone out there will maybe have a way cooler idea then mine!

[WhiteFelineWonder]

I really like the icons over the plan text, but I think everyone else agrees lol. But some of the images are a bit confusing like the guestbook looking like a shield, or the portal looking like some kind of fuzzball. That's why I think that its a good idea to combine the two to make it more accessible for people that suck at telling what images are (like me).

Ideas for mixing the two: when you hover an icon the text moves out maybe, or maybe just have them next to the images.

Not too sure whats been said before but that's just what I think. Someone out there will maybe have a way cooler idea then mine!

Yeah, the icons are moreso placeholders. Eventually the icons will be better.

[WhiteFelineWonder]

Had the idea of giving my site's navbar some custom little icons...

Alright, I've decided to close the poll now. Some new hybrid navbar icons are underway.
You might see this later since at the time of this post the forums are about to close at around 330 beats but that's okay-

Thanks to everyone who voted! Again I'm really glad I asked beforehand.

The final results are:
Visuals - 2
Text - 0
Hybrid - 6