Site updates · 12:29pm Dec 22nd, 2013
Now this blog post really only has two purposes. First: to get that depressing old news blog post off my user page. Second: Everything in this post is going to be copy pasted into a comment that I'll put in Knighty's blog post about the new user page layout. If you hate the changes that have been made to the site I encourage you to read to the bottom of this post and then leave comments regarding any complaints regarding the functionality of the site since the updates. The more severe the better, and they have to be new issues, not issues that existed before the update.
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I CAN'T TAKE IT ANYMORE! What the hell has happened to FimFiction? It's hideous! Bright colors, inviting rounded appearance, and balanced layouts have been replaced by starch white/grey scale uneven building blocks!
Look at this new user page layout! This is the final straw. A user page used to look like a personal library of someones creations, interests and interactions with other users. Now it looks like the most boring doctor's office I've ever seen. Excuse me while I nitpick this apart like an neurotic OCD mental patient.
Let's start withe the bio module. Why does it need to be shoved up into a little box at the top right? Allow me to explain why it worked better as a large box on the top right. Okay, having that little box in the upper right was nice for looking at the artist's stats when it was next to a blog post or story. It was in an area where it was clearly visible and not in your face. It's optional basically. When you start looking at any page, you start by looking at the top left, because that's how we read things. Upper left was large and in charge on your user page, drawing people to it like it was the main attraction, which it was meant to be. Now it's shoved aside like the user doesn't matter.
Oh yes, the sizes of the modules. Now why is everything on the right tiny and everything on the left gigantic with neither visually pleasing?
The latest stories module. When the stories are on the left they are uneven blocks that look like someone mashed them together even though they didn't fit. When they are on the right they look nicer, but look like someone shoved them aside and doesn't give a damn about them. When they're on the left I think "Well this just looks like a disorganized mess" and when they're on the right I think "Well this just looks optional and seems as though the user doesn't care much about them".
The favorites gallery/featured story gallery module. These two are exactly the same visually, so they get the same complaints and I save time. On the right it looks exactly like the latest stories module, which again feels like they're shoved to the side, but now since they're not your own stories it's like saying "Oh yeah, these were written and I guess I liked them, but who really cares?" On the left? Unless they both have all five slots filled up then they just look like they're taking up unneeded space. Another thing that bugs me is that hovering your mouse over any of those stories would show the short synopsis of the story and its tags. Now it doesn't. Bit of a footnote here, but you can't click on the writer's username to go to his/her page anymore either.
The followers module looks either confused or unloved. When it's on the left the icons are so tiny it takes up far more room than it looks like it should. And when it's smaller on the right the icons fit in better and it doesn't take up as much room, but it looks like all the people who bother to follow you are getting shoved into the corner to me, and that's no way to treat people who appreciate you.
The group module? Once again, on the right it looks neater, but shoved aside (noticing a pattern here?). This one I'm oddly fine with on the right. It's well laid out and since you can scroll up and down with it the module doesn't take up any unnecessary room. The groups someone is in normally is a footnote, so having it look like one is fitting. On the left it takes up far to much room and 60-85% of the module is blank white, taking up far too much room.
The blog module (yes, this one). Now on the left this module seems to work. All the space is used up and it has the proper amount of attention drawn to it. On the right however it looks shoved aside, reminiscent of a post it note, albeit much longer.
The custom module. Now this one doesn't work anymore. Most people use this for pictures that won't fit when it's on the right and on the left leaves a lot of space unused (AGAIN!). Personally I use it to show which of my stories are finished, in progress, and being considered. On the right it's squished and goes down so far that I don't even have a proper analogy for it. On the left I suppose it looks better, but it takes up so much room for me that everything else I want attention drawn too looks like footnotes.
The comments module. Now this one shares the problem of the custom module being used for text. The only difference is it can't be put on the right. (Wouldn't fit anyways, that's for sure.)
The photo album module. I do not use this one, so I'm going to go ahead and assume it's like the custom module when it's using images.
The user page used to be very neatly split. The modules were all evenly spaced, none took up more room than needed, all drew focus, and everything looked nice. This is a mess that's just hard for me to look at, and I get used to change very quickly.
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Now all of this is just the user pages. How about the visual formatting of the site itself? I feel like I'm in a sterile white room with nothing to look at and constantly looking for something, anything else to see, which often has me on different websites more than I am on this one. The look this site had before made it hard for me to rip my eyes away for five seconds since it was so friendly, immersive, and engaging. There was always something to see and now there's nothing to see. The most color this site has is the banner at the top of the page and that's hardly looked at when your scrolling down to look at everything else now is it? Everything had a rounded and colorful feel. Now everything is dull and it looks like I could cut myself on the sharp corners (I like to exaggerate okay?).
Now another problem is that I fell asleep during a conversation in a thread because of this, I can hardly bring myself to read anything on the website anymore because the visual feel of it pushes me away so much, and I find myself trying to look at everything but this website while I'm trying to use it! That is a very bad thing.
Now let's get onto the functionality issues I've found. Now I spend a lot of times in threads. Now the comment refresh button in threads doesn't work and I'm forced to refresh the page when I want to see more posted comment rather than just refreshing the comments section, which is much faster. The left and right buttons for going to the next or previous page of comments doesn't work in threads either. Why this doesn't happen to any other kind of comment section on the site is beyond me. I'm not a programmer but that just befuddles me.
With the new atrocious user page updates, the little dot/light at the top of the page that would indicate whether or not not someone was logged in is gone. I find this annoying because sometimes I'll be talking with someone in a thread, just an idle conversation, and for whatever reason they may get offline. Now of course they have no obligation to tell me they're getting offline, but now I can't visually see that they are offline and keep refreshing the page every five minutes for a half hour to see if they'll come back (because internet based social interaction is what I do in my free time).
A bit of a footnote here. A lot of the icons here have broken images, and this is riddled throughout the website.
I am not really leaning one way or another on the new user page layouts, although I do not really visit them that often and there is not much on mine so I am not a great reference for that. Looking at yours I can definitely see some issues, although you might be able to fix some of it with some rearrangement. That said, I do think it would be nice if we had some configuration options with the columns or the ability to partially split some of our columns for when the extra width is not necessary.
As for the general site, I am very much with you there. This site got so painful to read that I wound up getting an addon for firefox called Color That Site which let me invert most of it so it is now a nice combinations of blacks and dark greys. That does not fix the fact that it is still a bland, blocky mess, although part of that is my own fault because it does have the ability to set other colors besides a simple negative.
As for the button images, that is a known issue caused by an addon that I do not have which blocks the icons because they are apparently hosted somewhere else on the internet. I am not sure of the details because it does not apply to me, but it was discussed in the site blog post about the updates so you can go there to learn how to fix it.