New site layout - Amendments #1
4 years ago

The new UI makes it look like you should be able to click on "Page X of Y" to be able to navigate to any page. But only "Previous" and "Next" are clickable. In a topic with many pages, I cannot select which page to go to. (Mobile, night mode).

I do like the newer style of this layout though are still a few things I have to point out:

  • First off, the opacity; there used to be an option where you can make your profile and games have an opacity of 0-100%, but now it's gone.
  • splits.io Golds are not highlighted; they're white, just like the other ones.

Otherwise, this a very large step in the right direction and I'm impressed how you took the advice from everyone and decided to make it better. Keep up the good work!

cleverpidgeon and Quivico like this
Ero
He/Him, They/Them
4 years ago

@merpell You in fact cannot use middle mouse button to open submissions in a new tab. This has been my biggest issue with this website since I've started using it. Being able to open submissions in separate tabs would be the biggest quality of life feature ever. It's basically the only update I need this website to make.

Another very major issue with the new layout is that the "Resources" and "Guides" tabs on the left no longer show "(empty)" next to them, if there is no content present. Additionally, if this gets brought back, I would like that same feature for the "Forum" tab.

Edited by the author 4 years ago
Imaproshaman, merpell, and sladke like this
England

It seems better than it was earlier, but it still feels like a pointless change and time could've been better spent elsewhere unless there's some back-end benefit behind all of this.

Anyway, for #4 is it not viable to just have two themes so users can set both the day & night themes for the board themselves?

Edited by the author 4 years ago
England

Thank you for being so receptive to the feedback given so far, it bodes well to know that if we have a serious problem with stuff we won’t just be shouting into the void.

As far as I’m able to tell, most if not all of the issues highlighted can be reasonably addressed by giving users more options to choose from. Most of what I’m seeing is variations on “I’m stuck with this one thing and I don’t like it” in which case you should just strive to give users as many options as possible be it colour sliders for text/banners/themes etc. I appreciate that there’s logistical reasons for why certain limitations may need to exist, but I’d like to see as many options as possible

Norway

I agree with Amei. I don't understand what warranted this change. You must have known it would stir up controversy, and now you seem to be trying make little tweaks to appease the complaints. What I'm worried about is that they will ONLY be tweaks; an attempt to win back the userbase, but only within the framework of this new look, and as long as that's the case, it doesn't matter what you do, it will still be a downgrade from what we had before. It seems like every option that was available before now has to be negotiated for, and as someone with an eye for visuals, it makes me sad, frustrated, anxious, and reserved about relying on this site in the future.

As far as I could tell, you had a perfect system in place before this change. Moderators could generate themes that had the potential to look stunning. A theme that resonated with fans and dazzled newcomers. If a user didn't like themes, they could change a setting so that themes (including font colors and the like) would be overriden with that users own preferred theme, like the default one.

You've brought the background back, but it only serves as half of the presentation. The foreground in the form of the panels are now locked to a discord-esqe gray, which do nothing to compliment the pallete of most backrops. In some cases the panels obstruct the most important element of the backdrop, due to the lack of any transperancy option. For an example, see the Rayman 3: Hoodlum Havoc page. A drawing of rayman, the element that makes the backdrop correlate to the game, is hidden by the panel in front.

As well, the themes only appear at all if the user opts-in to using Night Mode. Night mode is hidden in the "More..." tab in the navigation bar, and there is nothing on the site itself that hints at the themes hiding behind this toggle. Say you want to show your non-speedrunner friend your game page that you've worked on to make it appealing to the eyes. Your friend will simply see the unremarkable green/white theme. For someone like me at least, being able to see the product of what the old customization features could do in the form of a game page, would inspire me enough to sign up, despite not having a run to my name.

Actually, that IS kind of how I got onboard. Albeit, I did have a run to my name by then, but just the one, and I was not and am not an active runner, but I have friends who are. I signed up mostly because I wanted to design a good look for the leaderboard game I love, and I'm sure I'm not the only one. This change robs us of that privilige, for a reason I've yet to understand.

I understand that web development is hard work. Building something takes time and effort. But destruction doesn't; Destruction is easy. What I see here is the destruction of a functional and honesty darned good system, and then the construction of an inferior one. Time and effort was put into this, but to what end?

Lets say a carpenter went into my perfectly functional and up-to-code workplace office one night. And that he, without due notice, and without my blessing, proceeded to tear down the walls, toss most of my things into a trash container, and leave only the foundations of the room, only to then reconstruct it with cheaper materials , replace my computer with a less productive one, and replace only 60% of the possesions he tossed out. All by himself, mind, and all with his bare hands. It wouldnt matter if the labour was free. It wouldn't matter if the new computer was set up and ready to go. It wouldn't matter if the remaining items of said office that weren't headed to the dump, were where I left them. I would still resent him for it.

Imaproshaman, Shtrudel and 8 others like this
Moray, Scotland
Treya
She/Her, They/Them
4 years ago

I enjoyed layers, as those are really useful for tileable backgrounds, especially landscapes.

I have a soft spot for autoscrolling (I used it for two of the boards I customised), but I know a few find it annoying and old PC and mobile devices don't particularly like it. If it does return, perhaps have an option to turn it off and leave it off for mobile devices. I find it's great for tiled landscapes and menu-style backgrounds. Vertical scrolling would be nice too

And yeah...I'd like to be able to colour the main tables to compliment backgrounds again.

Edited by the author 4 years ago
Aquellex and Imaproshaman like this
Pennsylvania, USA

Thanks for bringing the backgrounds back, that was my only big complaint. But can you please make it so that we can make the navbar and text separate colors besides black?

Moray, Scotland
Treya
She/Her, They/Them
4 years ago

Oh right., is there any chance we can recover the old assets? The ones I used were saved on a broken PC and weren't uploaded anywhere else.

EDIT: Oh no, pixelart backgrounds look really bad. I really want an option to tile instead of upscale.

Edited by the author 4 years ago
Aquellex and Imaproshaman like this
Sweden

Great stuff now that stuff is reverting back into the new layout. Most of it seems to mend pretty well. Overall the new layout is an excellent initiative and I'm glad to see it now rapidly evolving, suggestions being considered, and in general not stagnating after release.

Edited by the author 4 years ago
Quivico and Imaproshaman like this
United States

Before I was able to have my profile custom theme on the front page and on any other page that didn't have a custom theme already set up. Now it is only on my profile and I cant find an option to change it to how it was before.

Russia

@Pac hello, I think you need to do so on the site in the osu! https://osu.ppy.sh/home a button was made there to choose between the old design and the new one

Saskatchewan, Canada

@Ero oh wow I didn't realize that, guess I should've tried it myself before answering lol

Norway

To CptBrian I will make one correction: Dark mode is available without logging in. From the navigation bar, click "More..." then "Night Mode" The fact that I have to tell you this is indicative of a poorly thought out design though.

Quivico, Imaproshaman, and Alayan like this

I think this must be a minor oversight for when logos were added back in:

Bad[/small]

If visitors can't see custom themes they shouldn't see custom logos.

Edited by the author 4 years ago
Norway

To CptBrian: Such a simple fix too. Thank you for the visual. Still doesn't convey that it doubles as the themes toggle button, but then what kind of icon conveys both "night mode" and "toggle themes" at the same time?

A moon with a paint brush on it??

Scotland

background images not showing on firefox tho i can see them on edge. the hideous grey blob in the middle which is the runs panel isnt transparent anymore so covers up the images basically overall.

Norway

To Renegade522: In firefox, try CTRL+F5.

Oklahoma, USA

So, it used to be the case that you could change various colors and stuff on your own profile page. I can upload my own banner / background images via the 'edit profile' settings, but having some customization for the different colors of the boxes would be kinda nice, if it is possible to reimplement that.

As in, instead of one theme color, having a few different theme colors for background, boxes, text color, etc. Just for our individual profile pages.

Again, just a 'Ria'd like to have it if it won't be too hard to implement or break other things.'