Site Post » New FIMFiction · 10:55am Sep 9th, 2011
So, as you've probably just noticed, FIMFiction has been totally revamped. I've been working on this for the last week and a half and it's required essentially writing a significant portion of the site again from scratch. Part of this was to facilitate the use of a templating engine I've written, which is going to make it really easy to do a proper mobile site which has all the same functionality as the main site but for smaller screens. Just needs time.
I really hope people are happy with the look of the new site. I think it's a lot cleaner and I've learnt a lot from the old design. One of the main goals was to remove the side bar to give as much horizontal room for content as possible. This wasn't such a big problem on large screens, but at 1024 x 768, the side bar was really an issue.
There are still a few pages I have not coded yet. Off the top of my head, I think it's basically just the readers page, and the user list. Neither of which are exactly integral to the site so that's why I've decided to get a preliminary version up now to start finding bugs. As usual, please let me know about any bugs in chat or in this blog post.
i... need... black background....
How are people going to view stories? The "Latest" side tab would help beginning Author's publicize their stories more easily.
It's just at the bottom now.
^ I agree with Darkevony.
Also, I liked it when an author of a story commented on their story, the background of the comment was red. This contrasted with the other comments and made it easier to see replies from the author. Now, all the comments have the same color, and I have to search for the author's name in the comments. This isn't such a big deal, but it created ease when fishing for replies.
Yeah that's something I need to do thanks for reminding me.
Didn't expect this...was just here an hour ago.
Going to throw in a suggestion here, perhaps put in a 'Recently Updated Stories' button next to the Archive button at the top of the website. That way we can be redirected to a page filled with stories that have been recently updated without having to scroll down to the bottom of the page to check for recent updates.
Done!
That could be a good idea, regarding the page full of latest links that is. But you know if you click browse it basically goes there :P
Hell, the archive is also sorted by latest updates so it's there too.
Did not know that, learn something new everyday! Looks like ill be hitting that archive button much more now =P
okay, i like the look, but navigating is now even harder with my laptop.
my laptop has a small screen and because of this it auto-reformatted the old page in a way that rendered me incapable of logging in, but this new format makes the reading area just wider then my screen forcing me to go back and forth to read. i also found the sidebar very useful for navigation and am a little sorry to see it go.
the new site is overall very smooth though, it just dosnt play nice with my laptop
thats my two bits on the new site
-Juyunseen
(i still cant login from my laptop with the new format)
Looks awesome, knighty!
Both the old site and the new one fit on a 1024 x 768 screen and would cause scrolling below it. That hasn't changed at all so I'm not sure how it would have affected where you have to scroll on your laptop.
the scrolling issue comes from my laptop only showing me part of the page in order to keep the resoloution high. i dont see the full screen, just about half of it so i have to scroll back and fourth to read. it's a problem on my end, not yours
-juyunseen (still on my laptop
Everything seems good as is for me! My mobile actually loads the new site fifty times faster than it did previously (curse that sidebar!)
Oooooh, and is that a new smilie I spy?
Well, great job!
GOD I LOVE BOOKS
Like the new site too. :) But you knew that already! Nice work, Knighty.
I... don't like it myself.
The old system had everything nice and neat. A menu down the left side with everything, and the content on the right. Everything looked slick and compact.
Now the options/new stories etc are all over the place, the featured stories only show one at a time. Most everything has been stretched too big, and come across as obscenely large.
Pretty much all that's happened is stuff has moved. The latest story links are at the bottom, or you can use the archive and browse page as I said above which have always existed. Featured stories get shown off better like this and you can click through them or let it cycle.
Also, I'm not sure how everything is obscenely large. The amount of vertical space content takes up hasn't really changed very much, it probably just feels bigger because I've simplified everything.
Anyway thanks for the feedback. Remember the site is still in beta so it's going to WIP until I say otherwise.
You need a few more themes. Maybe a contest?
Ahhh...now I have to wait for a new Fluttershy theme to pop up.
i agree with Marine, the old one was a really slick setup
Apparently I'd accidentally lowered the font size at some point on my browser, which seems to have reset itself somehow when the changes occurred. That probably didn't help my perception of the changes. So no, not much of a size change. My bad.
However I still stand by my point about the site layout.
Shouldn't "God, I love books" be "Celestia, I love books"?
There should be a much quicker way to view my tracked/favorite stories in a simple text list format immediately from the start of the website within a click. As of right now, we have a nice UI for tracked stories without a quick way to view them. It seems we traded UI niceness for functionality; I don't approve.
The layout is imensely superior...but...
When do we get skins back? I miss my nightmare moon skin.
Also I agree. Latest stories should be more visable.
No offence, but I kinda hate the new theme.
Pretty much the only reason I (used to) frequent this site is because it looked so awesome.
I know how hard it is to create backwards compatibility, but it would be very nice if you had an option to use the old website layout.
Maybe it's because I really hate simplified things.
It's the reason I hate Chrome, too. WHERE ARE MY BLOODY OPTIONS AT?
I dunno, I just like tons of buttons.
I found the old version much easier and I think it looked better. Of course I just woke up to find my favorite site completely renewed, so I'll take a look at it and get back to you.
@Evanve, do you mean the list of tracked stories in the bottom bar? I didn't think anyone used that thing considering there's the tracked stories page but I can put that back without much hassle. And this isn't a case of ui niceness over functionality, it's a case of removing the stuff that didn't serve much purpose and making everything cleaner. You'll get used to the rest of it I'm sure.
@Inconspicularity, because of the templating system I've written, I can actually write completely new themes now which look totally different. I've done some of the old theme on it so there's a decent chance you'll see it as an option in the future but I'm not promising anything. Also, your hate of lack of buttons isn't something that I can do anything about. If you look around you'll find that stuff hasn't just gone missing.
I mean the stories I've tracked myself specifically. I know the favorited stories appear as a nice list, but not the specifically tracked stories which display the story, picture, and all the chapters.
Oh I actually forgot I hadn't put that back on the user page yet....
Alright I've added that back in. Assuming I know what you're talking about...haven't done the picture yet.
Yep, that's what I was looking for.
Just to let people know, I'm working on something for having latest updates at the top so just bear with me for a bit.
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So yeah, moved the bar to the top and did some stuff with it. Hopefully people like that a bit better. The page definitely needs another pony somewhere now though....
Have to say, at first impression I greatly preferred the older layout, but, see how it goes.
Few errors I've noticed.
1) You can rate your own stories. Surely this didn't get left in on purpose?
2) The e-mail notification check-boxes in your personal settings get cleared every time. (Haven't received a single notification since the new site went up)
Also, the various statistics for the stories are very confusing, even in the old site. There's a "views", a "total views", and a "views per day", and none of them make any sense. What exactly do they all mean? Why are there sometimes more views on a single day than the "total views" statistic reports? What does the smaller views number mean? Is that a specific chapter? AND WHY IS NONE OF THIS IN THE FAQ!!!?
1) That's always been the case. You don;'t have to sign up to rate, so if you wanted to rate your own fics you could always just log out and do it which is why I didn't see the point in trying to prevent it.
2) I'm not sure what you mean by this?
Also, if you hover over the eye icon where the views are, it says what the numbers mean, but I'll say here anyway. total views is views across all chapters, views is the most views a chapter has received which is a better judge of the number of readers a story has, otherwise it'd be very unfair to stories without multiple chapters.
And the views statistics isn't the same as chapter views. It's every view that a chapter OR your story receives.
I miss Trixie's snide comments on the upper right ;_;
Also, the edit button is bugged. I make an edit and save it, but when I hit the edit button again to preview it, the edit I made doesn't show. I have to exit completely out of the story and re-enter it again before I see the change.
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Fixed.
Just curious. Are the featured stories at the top hand-picked? Or is there an automated system that picks out the high-rated with the most ratings?
It's automated yes.
On 1920x1200 there's a hell of a lot of wasted space. That and the 'dark' background doesn't colour the entire site and has big white boundaries around it.
I played around with greasemonkey a bit and here's some examples of how I think the site should function, at least on higher res:
Original:
herpderp.com/fim/fim2tn.png
My thoughts:
herpderp.com/fim/fim1tn.png
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Making the content box wider just shifts the "wasted" spaced inside them which looks much worse imo. I will put in an "expand to fill fox" option for the text at some point but I'm not sure you'll like reading text that wide when you actually try it. It's incredibly difficult to follow text when the lines are that long which is why it currently has a static width. I agree on the light on dark stuff though.
Okay, finished browsing through it, I don't see much difference. Though to tell you the truth, I do miss my Trixie theme and the online list.
Well, on first look it was really bright and obnoxious. White is really hard on my eyes, that's why I stick to darker themes (which I miss, by the way). Giving my self a few minutes to get used to it, I love the top part of the website now. The old site was nice and I liked looking at it, but now that I think of it, it was rather hard to navigate around. Haven't found any bugs, but I wouldn't know a bug if it bit my finger. Everything but the actual reading content seems really stretched out though. It seems like it bleeds into margins that I expect but aren't there.
Okay, after a few days/weeks/whatnot:
1. Comments- need to have post numbers next to the post, and numbers for which chapter the post is on.
2. Overall- seems a bit more clunky than the old one, but it's not too hard to adjust to. Perhaps the bar at the very top could be moved down beneath the secondary bar?
3. Appearance- not as cool as the former look, but not bad either. Needs more themes.
Thank god, someone has the brains to make themes have more power than just changing colours.
I applaud you for such a wise choice.
What would be brilliant would be some sort of system to make and upload your own custom themes, but for now I can live with just a few built-in themes. ...Which there don't seem to be many of...
Could we have some themes please?