The new layout should be optional at the very least. Since that can't be done, you should revert it completely and forget it ever happened. When you make a huge change under such poor direction, you're not supposed to bull forward with it, you're supposed to revert it immediately and consider what you've just done.
From the very start, this was never a matter of simple opinion. There was absolutely nothing wrong or even dated about the old layout. Meanwhile, this new one is still horribly broken and is still missing features, and somehow makes the site much harder to read in numerous ways. All of this has been pointed out a hundred times so far; I'm only here to add to the pile.
To defend what's happened here, you have to be either staff, paid for somehow, or completely undiscerning. Meanwhile, we are to believe that there is nothing we can do, and there is nowhere else to turn to because speedrun.com is literally the only website of its type (as it's supposed to be). This is just a really rotten situation all around.
Since forgetting this layout ever happened isn't an option, nor is using it in the future... the best option would be to roll back to the old layout UNTIL the new layout is fixed, rather than force literally everyone to continue using a broken site.
But that's not going to happen because... I don't know why it's not going to happen. Maybe there's some technical reason such as the old layout not being kept? That'd be pretty dumb if so...
I think the admin team said that it's pretty much impossible to roll back to the old layout due to the entire front end of the website being overhauled. Recommend what you want to get changed and they'll likely consider it. Making the layout optional is definitely impossible.
Series sub-forums without posts do not appear like they used to. Example: /cnc/forum > click 'Show sub-forums' > Notice lack of other games.
I just came here to get a confirmation that the fact that links look exactly like text is a bug and on the to-do list. The theme is the "I don't care" theme - I never checked how to change them. Well, actually, now I do care: is there a theme where links are recognizable as links?
Just to clarify, I said it's not possible for the two layouts to coexist at the same time. The notion of "optional layout" doesn't exist. The old code is in a git repo, I do not know how much effort it would take to roll back the front-end. Particularly, I do not know if anything was changed in the database via scripts to support the changes. I also don't know if a partial rollback is possible or if it's all or nothing. I'll discuss the path forward with the others. None of us like a broken site any more than anyone else does.
I can see why you don't want to go back to the old layout. But why are you against separate layouts for desktop/mobile? The majority of complaints here are because speedrun.com - like so many other websites - sacrificed desktop usability for mobile.
Was this decision made to make it easier and save time and resources? If that's the case, just ask the community for enough donations to make a desktop version happen! I would certainly be willing to donate specifically towards that.
The new layout is messing up my leaderboard page in New 'n' Tasty. I set it to compare against in-game time but no it compares against realtime instead. This needs to be fixed.
The new layout is causing severe problems in Sonic Adventure 2. This game now uses IGT as the primary timing method, but SRcom is choosing to display Realtime, and now whenever someone PBs by IGT but has a slower RTA run, it will not update the time on the board, and simply claim that their old, faster RTA time is Obsolete.
This really needs fixing ASAP.
I wouldnt mind the layout if things would actually work. I can get used to new designs, but the search function is still broken, lines arent shown properly on a bunch of leaderboards and verifying runs and other things have gotten at least 1 click more complicated.
I don't completely despise the layout, but would be nice if it minimized to halfscreen better. I usually have my browser half-screened.
Update from my perspective:
Background:
Site staff had wanted to update the site to better scale at lower resolutions and on mobile. This shortcoming of the site had been pointed out by multiple users in the past, and was one large scale update of many that we wanted to pursue. The goal was to convert much of the front-end to using the bootstrap framework to accomplish this.
Timeline:
Most of site staff had seen a few pages of the layout converted over on a dev domain and mentioned that the direction/intention seemed fine. I was aware the layout was continuing to be developed, but there hadn't been much staff discussion for a couple weeks. During SGDQ, I logged in to a realization that the layout was launched and about 7 pages of feedback, many of which were pointing out readily apparent bugs. My perception at the time was that bugs would be fixed incrementally as they have in the past. The bootstrap update was launched, and subsequently the ESA site was pushed out over the next week or so, which has delayed many bugs getting fixed. Most site updates have been accompanied by some amount of minor bugs, this time there are a ton of bugs. Updates have historically been accompanied by a reasonable amount of availability set aside to fix the more substantial bugs; that did not happen within a reasonable amount of time this time. Site staff internal communication throughout all of this could've been better, myself included.
Discussion:
Do we dig backwards out of the mess or do we dig forward out of the mess? My personal preference is whatever gets the site in a stable state again in the shortest amount of time. Not being directly involved with site web development, I do not consider myself in a position to accurately assess that course of action. I was informed that reverting the site is not the preferred or ideal option; the ESA site implementation and database changes would cause substantial conflicts.
I don't at all agree with the timeline that occurred. I also don't agree with pushing out such a substantial amount of code that hasn't been well tested for basic functionality. Quite frankly, neither the timeline nor the lack of testing is something that should ever be done with a site with this many users. That's where we're at though. It is still my personal opinion that if the update wasn't associated with a large amount of functionality bugs (and to a lesser but still important extent, some spreading out of items and extra menus), the layout would be an improvement by converting over to Bootstrap. If the bugs get fixed and layout improvements are implemented beyond that, I think we'll be in an alright spot. Ideally this week provides more fixes than last week.
My position has historically been handling day to day operations, I will continue to handle that as before. I also do not wish to go down the path of giving estimates for another developer's work.
I don't know if this post contributes much to anything other than some amount of transparency; it's a bad situation all around until these things get fixed.
- Kirk
First of all, I think we can all give a big thanks to Kirk for his assessment of the situation. Levelling with us is something site admins rarely do, and it's awesome to see genuine user interaction like this.
My opinion as to the situation is this: the best course of action is to revert the site's layout. I understand that it might be difficult to do at this point, but it seems like fixing the huge list of issues be just as much work (I guess I could be wrong, but at least reverting to the old layout would stop people complaining).
The fact is that there are far more desktop/laptop users than there are mobile ones, and nobody would be trying to actually "use" the site on mobile in terms of submitting runs, confirming runs, editing rules, etc (you know, the stuff that makes it a speedrunning leaderboard site). Mobile users, I can only assume, are watching runs, watching streams, or maybe talking in forums. Not creating new run categories or editing the colour scheme of a game's page.
So making the site better on mobile, in my mind, is VERY secondary to having the actual functional aspects of the site not only working, but easy to use. The new layout needs not only all the bugs squashed, but needs tweaking to get it back into a state where it's just as intuitive and appealing as it was before. In which case... why not just go back to how it was?
Also, why could there not just be a mobile version of the site? Wikipedia, for example, launched a mobile version (you can even access it on desktop) which had no impact on the normal version of the site. I know that this would be far more difficult and time-consuming to develop, but in my mind, it's better to keep desktop users happy while trying to figure out the mobile side of things.
That's just my opinion, though. I'm sure there are a lot of good arguments for "pushing through" with fixing the new layout, but if it's going to be a struggle either way... surely the tried and true old layout is the best one to shoot for? Rather than a new one which, even after weeks of bug-squashing, will be ridiculed for being uglier?
Since this is a bug related to the new layout, i'm posting that here.
If you check this leaderboard; http://www.speedrun.com/ides/individual_levels and compare it to my actual PBs http://www.speedrun.com/user/xDrHellx/individual_levels you'll notice that some times are different, in fact, some of my PBs are way faster, but for some reason they do NOT show up on the game's leaderboard anymore o_o
Wich is weird because if i open one of the times that aren't actually my PB, it says "(Obsolete)", but i can't find my actual PBs anywhere.
I haven't checked the other leaderboards, but i bet this isn't only for Initial D : Extreme Stage. Please fix ASAP.