I'm not entirely sure whether I want to do this yet but I'm thinking about adding more than just light/dark themes. One of the issues here is that extra options explicitly leads to more complexity in managing the site's design, and I don't want to run into a situation where it becomes a hassle to make them all look good. Currently these are all between around 5 and 10 variables changed for the
You may have heard on the grapevine that unfortunately the site is most likely being suspended from Patreon. After certain events that transpired last year, it was likely this would happen one day so I can't say I'm surprised and truthfully it's my fault for not having more of a contingency plan for this prepared. I am not particularly angry or anything at Patreon for this as I understand only
I am posting this in a personal rather than site blog for a couple of reasons. For one, as the situation changes we may have to change our approach, meaning I’d rather not have constant blog posts about how we’re trying to deal with things. Secondly, I don’t feel like fanning flames more here on what I ultimately consider to be some fairly minor changes.
I like most of it! The frontpage header looks really homey, it's nice.
The chapter header thing is pretty cool looking, I'm curious exactly how that bar looks at different percentages. I don't agree with hiding the chapter title for single chapter fics entirely; it looks a bit empty, and there's a lot stories that use it as one last joke to hook in a reader on the fence. I like colored hyperlinks more there too, but the bold isn't inconsistent with the rest of the site so I can't argue too much.
5530108 Single chapter fics I debated on a bit because of the reasons you said. Sometimes the title is indeed kind of part of the content and even though you see it on the chapter page when clicked through...mmm, is questionable.
5530109 I'd argue the space saved isn't worth the chance of missing out on that final hook. You might also start seeing some side effects of people making a one-chapter story into two for the sake of circumventing that issue. Dunno how big a secondary issue that side effect would ultimately be, but it's worth voicing, especially as it would completely negate the intention of slimming things down.
EDIT: I do really like the style of the two examples you have in this comment. I assume the "# chapter" button is a drop-down? Are the individual progress bubbles selectable/expandable? EDIT 2: slashing through the above since we got that cleared up. No need to cause confusion for others coming in later.
5530112 I'm not sure what you mean about splitting chapters into 2? What benefit would that have? If anything I'd argue that this arguably levels the playing field for stories a bit more since stories with single chapters don't get comparably less vertical height to their box purely as a result of having less chapters.
And yes, the button is what opens up the list of chapters. And no the bubbles do nothing currently other than be visual, I debated whether it'd be a good idea to do otherwise but the issue is I had to make it so above 30 chapters it collapses the bubbles into a single one for pretty obvious reasons
edit: Oh I assume you're confusing the screenshots I posted with thinking that multi chapter stories get their chapters shown by default. That's not the case, they're always hidden
5530121 The hearts and the rest of the icons alongside are buttons to add stories to your library bookshelves you have marked as "Quick Add". The buttons show their name and true color on mouse hover.
5530118 I dunno, it was always a hassle trying to get permission and such so I'd want to prevent it becoming a burden which was one of the things that pushed me away from them. I'm not 100% settled on even doing this, but I do think it looks nice so I wanted to explore the possibility of it just being there for the homepage to add some flair
edit: Oh I assume you're confusing the screenshots I posted with thinking that multi chapter stories get their chapters shown by default. That's not the case, they're always hidden
In regards to this, I was going off what 5530108 said, which at first glance it seemed you didn't explicitly answer/correct and thereby I inferred they were correct. In the initial screenshots, pic 2 has two one-shots each with the drop-down collapsed and pic 3 has a multi with its drop-down expanded, which, combined with 5530108 's statement, I took as "single-chapter fics get truncated but multi-chapter fics get a list. Seems I was misled by my own inferences.
With that cleared up, I do like the new aesthetic, but I agree the one-shots chapter title hook issue is still there and I'd have to think how I'd tackle it.
Not a fan of how the lines now go in the middle of things rather than dividing lists into boxes. The expanded feature box with character art would be a cool change though. And the new color scheme looks good.
You have no idea how much I love that “Begin Reading” button.
A couple of years ago, I was showing a friend FiMfiction and he had no idea how to start reading a story. I had to explain to click on the first chapter link.
Not the biggest fan of the green-on-white but it might look better in dark mode. I like the returning header, though, and the idea of a couple of rotating horses on it. No real thoughts on the progress bar.
5530159 Dark mode certainly wouldn't use green like that. Green used to be fimfic's colour for a long time, though at this point blue has probably been > 50% of fimfic's lifetime I suppose. I'm considering having multiple schemes to choose from because I've come up with some nice alternatives it'd be a shame to be unable to use
5530162 Would the site need to be down for a bit in order to implement these changes, or will it just suddenly change without any need to turn the site off?
That was definitely part of the impetus. I have heard of people having that issue before, so a big clear "Read" button that's as unambiguous as possible seems like a good idea
Not much if this is relevant to the mobile layout, though there are changes as a result of this (If you compare the story cards, that's the sort of changes there are)
Would implementing this affect people using the FimFic Advanced extension? Would it just be a case of needing to reinstall it after the implementation? I still have the link to it. Admittedly the main reason I started using the extension was because I missed the headers—I could deal with losing the background—so if you're bringing that back I'll be happy. But personally, if a background wallpapers option were added also that would be pretty awesome.
5530222 Fimfic advanced will certainly need updating because I've changed a lot of the code. I will categorically say I will never be adding backgrounds to the page or the banner outside of the homepage though.
Took a bit of looking, since I'm so used to the dark theme that I find the light theme hard to look at these days, but I like the changes!
The Scootaloo header bar, in particular, brings back a bit of something that was lost in previous changes, and I do want to see that. I'm tending to think there should be a couple different pictures as options (each of the CMC, Princess Luna, Fluttershy, etc...), and an option to not show a picture there if someone didn't really like the options.
5530228 Making the site too customizable was a trap I fell into before, so I like to retain control over design and as I stated further down, managing all the images was a hassle I don't want to fall back into either. The example themes presented should be taken with a grain of salt really, more focusing on just the nav bar/other colour changes which are simple things to set up
5530230 Repeating myself a bit from my post below, but for characters I'd actually be looking at potentially commissioning something bespoke for the site as the singular option most likely.
5530231 Fair. The customizable nav bar color option in FFA is nice, as is being able to upload your own banner, but it's understandable that that and managing all the images would be a b**** to maintain outside of the extension. Overall, aside from my little nitpicks, I will say the potential changes look really good. I wouldn't make a huge stink about it if you just went ahead and implemented them.
Thank you for giving us this preview post, by the way, and the opportunity for discussion, instead of just having the website suddenly change. I sometimes do not do very well with change, so I appreciate being able to ease into it rather than having a sudden "WAIT WHAT IT'S DIFFERENT NOW ARGH WHAT HAPPENED?!" moment. :)
(I suppose my biggest remaining (I had another one, but it was addressed earlier in the comments and looks to not actually be a problem.) concern with the changes is compatibility with older browsers -- but I realize that there's probably a limit to the useful answers you could provide there, and in the end I'll just have to wait and see. I have a rough backup plan if it does break on the browser I mainly use it on, at least, though, well, see "do not do very well with change" above.) ((So far, FIMFiction seems to run fine for me, though curiously the options for the text-to-speech system don't seem to work even though the system itself I use frequently and successfully with the presumably-default settings (and much appreciation for its presence).))
Oh, and while I'm here, thank you, in general, for the website, by the way. :)
5530237 With this I'm completely dropping support for Internet Explorer. It represents a very small number of people nowadays, and on a site like Fimfiction even smaller still. This gives me the ability to make designs far far more simply and is well worth it now.
5530238 Not a problem for me, as I primarily use this through an older version of Safari and my backup would be Waterfox Classic, but thanks for the information. And from your description there, it sounds like that's a good choice. I mean, nice as it'd be if you could accommodate everyone's preferred access and use methods, well. I don't expect miracles from you.
5530222 Certain things will very likely break (though I won't know which parts until the update actually drops) so you will have to update the script, but that should be business as usual if you've been regularly checking for updates.
Nice you have all in green instead of blue
Why's it turned green?
Now there are comments, so the blog title is wrong!
lol gottem
Looking good though. :)
5530103
Probably some kind of sickness
5530105
Interactive Pony: *sneezes*
I like most of it! The frontpage header looks really homey, it's nice.
The chapter header thing is pretty cool looking, I'm curious exactly how that bar looks at different percentages. I don't agree with hiding the chapter title for single chapter fics entirely; it looks a bit empty, and there's a lot stories that use it as one last joke to hook in a reader on the fence. I like colored hyperlinks more there too, but the bold isn't inconsistent with the rest of the site so I can't argue too much.
5530108
Single chapter fics I debated on a bit because of the reasons you said. Sometimes the title is indeed kind of part of the content and even though you see it on the chapter page when clicked through...mmm, is questionable.
cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/807606693965332493/850675805067018281/unknown.png
cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/807606693965332493/850675918405369856/unknown.png
A couple more examples
5530108
Reminds me of a bulkier version of the old feature bar that I very much missed.
Knighty, what's this light mode shit... Don't tell me you're one of those heathens.
Interesting. My gut is hesitant on hiding chapters from browsing pages, but my brain says that's a knee-jerk "They changed it, now it sucks" reaction.
5530109
I'd argue the space saved isn't worth the chance of missing out on that final hook. You might also start seeing some side effects of people making a one-chapter story into two for the sake of circumventing that issue. Dunno how big a secondary issue that side effect would ultimately be, but it's worth voicing, especially as it would completely negate the intention of slimming things down.EDIT: I do really like the style of the two examples you have in this comment. I assume the "# chapter" button is a drop-down? Are the individual progress bubbles selectable/expandable?
EDIT 2: slashing through the above since we got that cleared up. No need to cause confusion for others coming in later.
So we Genfic now?
5530112
I'm not sure what you mean about splitting chapters into 2? What benefit would that have? If anything I'd argue that this arguably levels the playing field for stories a bit more since stories with single chapters don't get comparably less vertical height to their box purely as a result of having less chapters.
And yes, the button is what opens up the list of chapters. And no the bubbles do nothing currently other than be visual, I debated whether it'd be a good idea to do otherwise but the issue is I had to make it so above 30 chapters it collapses the bubbles into a single one for pretty obvious reasons
edit: Oh I assume you're confusing the screenshots I posted with thinking that multi chapter stories get their chapters shown by default. That's not the case, they're always hidden
I like the Scootaloo header bar. Is the intention to have a bunch of those, changing each time you visit the home page?
This looks great!
Interesting. What are the two hearts for? Also, holy hell, you have 140 PMs!?
Wow... I'm pretty sure that's a record on this website.
I miss the headers, they were great
5530121
The hearts and the rest of the icons alongside are buttons to add stories to your library bookshelves you have marked as "Quick Add". The buttons show their name and true color on mouse hover.
5530118
I dunno, it was always a hassle trying to get permission and such so I'd want to prevent it becoming a burden which was one of the things that pushed me away from them. I'm not 100% settled on even doing this, but I do think it looks nice so I wanted to explore the possibility of it just being there for the homepage to add some flair
5530105
Code madness?
So, can we swipe (ui gesture) stories to bookshelves now? )
5530117
In regards to this, I was going off what 5530108 said, which at first glance it seemed you didn't explicitly answer/correct and thereby I inferred they were correct. In the initial screenshots, pic 2 has two one-shots each with the drop-down collapsed and pic 3 has a multi with its drop-down expanded, which, combined with 5530108 's statement, I took as "single-chapter fics get truncated but multi-chapter fics get a list. Seems I was misled by my own inferences.
With that cleared up, I do like the new aesthetic, but I agree the one-shots chapter title hook issue is still there and I'd have to think how I'd tackle it.
Is this going to be new?
My question is who the heck managed to stack up 140 PMs?
Well, actually that makes a lot of sense
Not a fan of how the lines now go in the middle of things rather than dividing lists into boxes. The expanded feature box with character art would be a cool change though. And the new color scheme looks good.
You have no idea how much I love that “Begin Reading” button.
A couple of years ago, I was showing a friend FiMfiction and he had no idea how to start reading a story. I had to explain to click on the first chapter link.
Thanks for fixing that discoverability problem
At least it isn't completely blue.
Not the biggest fan of the green-on-white but it might look better in dark mode. I like the returning header, though, and the idea of a couple of rotating horses on it. No real thoughts on the progress bar.
5530159
Dark mode certainly wouldn't use green like that. Green used to be fimfic's colour for a long time, though at this point blue has probably been > 50% of fimfic's lifetime I suppose. I'm considering having multiple schemes to choose from because I've come up with some nice alternatives it'd be a shame to be unable to use
cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/807606693965332493/850729616117334036/unknown.png
cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/807606693965332493/850730965642510346/unknown.png
Couple of examples but I have an absolute ton of colour schemes I went through testing
5530162
Would the site need to be down for a bit in order to implement these changes, or will it just suddenly change without any need to turn the site off?
5530162
Those look pretty good. I'm kind of partial to the brown.
5530149
That was definitely part of the impetus. I have heard of people having that issue before, so a big clear "Read" button that's as unambiguous as possible seems like a good idea
Ohh nice how does it look on mobile? 95% of my use is on mobile now
5530202
Not much if this is relevant to the mobile layout, though there are changes as a result of this (If you compare the story cards, that's the sort of changes there are)
Would implementing this affect people using the FimFic Advanced extension? Would it just be a case of needing to reinstall it after the implementation? I still have the link to it.
Admittedly the main reason I started using the extension was because I missed the headers—I could deal with losing the background—so if you're bringing that back I'll be happy. But personally, if a background wallpapers option were added also that would be pretty awesome.
cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/607944701961699328/850754682585743370/Screen_Shot_2021-06-05_at_11.13.59_AM.png
cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/607944701961699328/850757427409715250/Screen_Shot_2021-06-05_at_11.25.23_AM.png
5530222
Fimfic advanced will certainly need updating because I've changed a lot of the code. I will categorically say I will never be adding backgrounds to the page or the banner outside of the homepage though.
5530226
So you mean the banners will only change between the ones you've shown if we change the color setting?
Took a bit of looking, since I'm so used to the dark theme that I find the light theme hard to look at these days, but I like the changes!
The Scootaloo header bar, in particular, brings back a bit of something that was lost in previous changes, and I do want to see that. I'm tending to think there should be a couple different pictures as options (each of the CMC, Princess Luna, Fluttershy, etc...), and an option to not show a picture there if someone didn't really like the options.
derpicdn.net/img/2019/9/11/2141324/medium.png
What would actually be really neat is if there was an option to upload your own image into that spot as well...
--Sweetie Belle
5530228
Making the site too customizable was a trap I fell into before, so I like to retain control over design and as I stated further down, managing all the images was a hassle I don't want to fall back into either. The example themes presented should be taken with a grain of salt really, more focusing on just the nav bar/other colour changes which are simple things to set up
5530230
Repeating myself a bit from my post below, but for characters I'd actually be looking at potentially commissioning something bespoke for the site as the singular option most likely.
5530231
Fair. The customizable nav bar color option in FFA is nice, as is being able to upload your own banner, but it's understandable that that and managing all the images would be a b**** to maintain outside of the extension.
Overall, aside from my little nitpicks, I will say the potential changes look really good. I wouldn't make a huge stink about it if you just went ahead and implemented them.
Thank you for giving us this preview post, by the way, and the opportunity for discussion, instead of just having the website suddenly change. I sometimes do not do very well with change, so I appreciate being able to ease into it rather than having a sudden "WAIT WHAT IT'S DIFFERENT NOW ARGH WHAT HAPPENED?!" moment. :)
(I suppose my biggest remaining (I had another one, but it was addressed earlier in the comments and looks to not actually be a problem.) concern with the changes is compatibility with older browsers -- but I realize that there's probably a limit to the useful answers you could provide there, and in the end I'll just have to wait and see. I have a rough backup plan if it does break on the browser I mainly use it on, at least, though, well, see "do not do very well with change" above.)
((So far, FIMFiction seems to run fine for me, though curiously the options for the text-to-speech system don't seem to work even though the system itself I use frequently and successfully with the presumably-default settings (and much appreciation for its presence).))
Oh, and while I'm here, thank you, in general, for the website, by the way. :)
5530237
With this I'm completely dropping support for Internet Explorer. It represents a very small number of people nowadays, and on a site like Fimfiction even smaller still. This gives me the ability to make designs far far more simply and is well worth it now.
5530238
Not a problem for me, as I primarily use this through an older version of Safari and my backup would be Waterfox Classic, but thanks for the information. And from your description there, it sounds like that's a good choice. I mean, nice as it'd be if you could accommodate everyone's preferred access and use methods, well. I don't expect miracles from you.
I like!
5530162
Just a thought: If you can find a good picture in the same style, maybe change it to display Rainbow Dash with the blue instead of Scoots?
5530239
Safari past 2018 should be ok. Before then probably not.
5530243
Same style is easy enough, just stick to cyanlightning for the artist...
derpicdn.net/img/2020/5/27/2359275/medium.png
--Sweetie Belle
Comment without share
Seriously, though, looks good. But is Scootaloo old enough to need reading glasses?!
5530222
Certain things will very likely break (though I won't know which parts until the update actually drops) so you will have to update the script, but that should be business as usual if you've been regularly checking for updates.
These changes overall look nice, I'll say that right off the bat.
I'll just throw out another idea: would it be possible to allow users to group chapters into parts?
5530320
Oh yes. I like that.
Maybe for authors when building their fic. They can assign chapters to parts as some way to group by act.