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Minor Look and Feel Updates and Cleanup

Published January 5, 2015 in Leadership

Nope, you’re not imagining things!  We’ve made a few minor improvements to our software in our ongoing efforts to present a modern and high quality system.

Top Navigation Menu

Here is a look at our old interface.

old-openwater-interface

The new one makes use of smaller fonts and a more intuitive arrow showing you that this is indeed a menu.new-openwater-interface

Breadcrumb Navigation

Breadcrumbs are the defacto way of navigating around a website that has a complex hierarchy of pages. We’re embarrassed to even show off our old breadcrumb style:

old-openwater-breadcrumb-navigation

Users had no idea these were even navigation elements!  We hope our new style (to just get rid of all styling) makes it clear how to move around the program.

new-openwater-breadcrumb-navigation

New Icons for Entrants

On the entrant side we have been hearing for months how our entrant menu detracts from the high quality and prestige of the awards programs we run.  While we support custom theming for each client, our default theme left a lot to be desired beyond this blocky look and feel that is straight out of the early 2000s.

old-openwater-entrant-menue

Our new default menu is a small step forward towards a cleaner and more welcoming system.  

new-openwater-entrant-menue

Note: that we have not changed the styling on any active competitions, so if you want to have your default theme updated with this menu, feel free to contact our support team.  (We’ll phase this into all OpenWater clients as their programs end to improve the look and feel — without rocking the boat on live competitions).

Kunal Johar

Kunal Johar is the OpenWater platform evangelist. He currently manages our development teams and enjoys diving into the fray. Find him in our community chat room.

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