Site's doing a ton of work replicating db stuff and images to the network! We could have waited until it finished, but it'd have taken way too long. Worry not, it will be back stable soon ^^ You can also try another cache server that might be less busy than Netherlands cache now!
Site's doing a ton of work replicating db stuff and images to the network! We could have waited unti
No, but we're interested in hearing the specific reasons you wish to change back - things you can't do now that you could before, etc. - the UI is a constant work in progress and we fully expect to make changes after collecting feedback on this release.
As for speed: we're down one of our major caches right now, and all the others have a lot of files to update; it should improve, with the caveat that if you use some of the high-bandwidth features (particularly 'huge' and 'wide' mode), they will naturally require more time to download.
No, but we're interested in hearing the specific reasons you wish to change back - things you can't
I cant speak for the journal owner but the whole thing feels a little bit cluttered and overcomplicated. Not to mention redundant and.
I don't mean to be one of those people I really apologize but it doesn't look that good either. The whole thing just feels and looks horrendously awkward by creating what is essentially widescreen panels around the image.
It looks cluttered and silly and just feels really awful.
Not to mention using it on mobile is a bit of a nightmare because idk if it's just my phone but it's causing the frames to take up half the screen and they disalign when I zoom out.
I like the new feature of going back and forth through the gallery. But the execution could not possibly have been done in a more... oblong way.
It feels very furaffinity overall. It's lit the same ui change that they had a while ago before they updated to the one that they have now. It's functional but aesthetically very displeasing and doesn't seem to mesh in the way the site works.
If the new format was changed slightly to be a little more simple? I think the issue is its too much.
If you dropped the top bar to below the image, combined with or under the other bar. It would be much more appealing to everyone universally.
I cant speak for the journal owner but the whole thing feels a little bit cluttered and overcomplica
While I wouldn't go so far as SnowTaradien and call it 'awful', it does seem a little excessive. If I were to give some specific suggestions:
-There's a lot of repetition. For instance, each image has two links to the artist's main gallery, pools of images have a 'next' button both above and below the image...On top of the thumbnails for both the current pool and the main artist gallery, it takes up a lot of extra room. -Some of the options on the page seem unnecessary. For instance, the 'Default Image Size' buttons could just as easily go in User Settings instead. -Am I the only one for whom the 'Default Image Size' and 'Show Custom Thumbnails' links don't align?
I suppose that maybe the GUI could follow more of a hierarchy, with important artist info near the top of the page and avoiding repetition as you move down? At the moment it seems relatively more haphazard, in that there's no distinct order in how the information is present. But I don't know web design very well, so~ :P
While I wouldn't go so far as SnowTaradien and call it 'awful', it does seem a little excessive. If
We actually did try getting rid of the gallery links in this very release. People immediately complained that they wanted to be able to access the users' gallery from there, having scrolled down to read the description and then thought "I want to see more of their work". :-)
Pools are only below the image. The timeline of the users' gallery is above the image. What you are seeing is sequential items in the user's gallery which are also sequential items in a pool. We have looked into combining the two, but it's a tricky challenge and may confuse people trying to navigate through the pool (if it starts disappearing and appearing from beneath the image).
The default image size buttons are a user setting - and we just added them to the account settings page. It has historically been modified through links present on the submission, in roughly the same area. We were changing enough this release and didn't want to "break" that for everyone, even though it results in being able to set it in two different places. (The same applies to thumbnail size, which can still be modified on the gallery as well as the account settings page.)
We actually did try getting rid of the gallery links in this very release. People immediately compla
Alright, that more than satisfactorily explains the site's loading speed concerns.
Well, the biggest major concern is having the Gallery Navigation at the top of the image, with the title/s.
Not only does this work very strange, it works contrary to other websites (naming Fur Affinity, and Weasyl, here), which's likely to confuse a lot of users. While Pixiv does use a similar system to having the navigation at the top, I would certainly not be calling Pixiv the paragon of user friendliness.
In addition, most users scroll to the bottom of the image to get the detail easiest. While I don't want to go into the whole spiel as to how drawn artwork generally happens, I am more than reasonably sure that you understand that almost all artists draw most of an images detail near the bottom, not the top. It prevent the image from being cluttered, and humanity pretty much evolved that way. "Least significant stuff at the top, most significant stuff at the bottom" being the mantra here.
The point being made here, that it's much much easier for users to access the Gallery Navigation from the bottom of the image, rather than the top, because most will be at the bottom of the image anyway. This does also tie into site clutter, as
have pointed out. By having significantly important GUI controls at the top of the image, it's extremely cluttery-feeling. Particularly when significantly important controls are also at the bottom. You can't have it both ways, it feels almost claustraphobic.
Having the user profile link, and image title, centred into the GUI layout, particularly between the Gallery links, creates an immensely noticeable amount of 'whitespace'. While you might have even more whitespace existing by having the user profile link/icon and title next to each-other weighted towards the left of the GUI, this actually makes the whitespace less noticable. Western cultures are used to reading everything from Left to Right. We ignore what's to the right of blank text because we're so used to it, but having blank stuff to the left of important information is incredibly irritating.
Also, having the title and user profile link/icon stacked on top of eachother is very... strange. Can't place my finger on why it feels odd, but it's just very strange.
Anyway, this sums up most of my direct concerns. Image pages are just very bizarre, and most definitely not in a good way. They're more inconvenient than they were, and incredibly irritating with mistakes that're grating for reasons that aren't realized until they're pointed out to boot.
I do understand that you guys are trying to make a better site, but remember the mantra, "If it aint broke, don't fix it".
Thanks for that - it's useful feedback which I'll bring to the attention of the rest of the team. :-)
To explain my own thoughts on this feature…
The main idea of the submission timeline is to encourage casual browsing of a member's gallery, particularly as an alternative to leaving. Say a user opens the submission, takes a glance, and isn't particularly interested. They may get bored and close the tab.
The timeline thumbs are a second chance to get them to visit a piece they are interested in. Having them in a consistent place above the fold makes it easy to casually surf through a member's submissions by clicking in the same place every time, only examining those which are of particular interest. Putting them below the fold discourages such use.
This is distinct from a more involved user who might, say, be working through a pool, or has a keen interest in this particular image. We don't really want them to jump off elsewhere - they could be adding a +fav or interacting in the comments.
One key question is the height of the screen. Some users' screens are tall enough to see most or all of an image at medium size - if so, they may never bother to scroll. Others are not; people on a netbook are liable to be scrolling no matter what, unless you use the small size of image. We'd very much like to condense our site header to help with this, but it wasn't feasible for the current release, which had many other features which we wanted to get into our members' hands.
Thanks for that - it's useful feedback which I'll bring to the attention of the rest of the team. :-
While I do understand you guys have had good intentions behind the modifications performed, good intentions don't necessarily translate to good design.
As an additional note, people like to scroll down to read the description. If someone's gotten to the point of reading the description, having the gallery submission timeline available in the same location is of incredible convenience.
There is also another thing I want to note, and I can't believe I'm actually quoting Fur Affinity for sensible design choice. Their method of showing multiple past and future images inside the submission timeline is extremely useful, and convenient as hell. I think Inkbunny would do well to implement a similar feature for standard gallery timelines, and image pools, when surfing individual images.
See - YouTube.
1920*1080. Standard LCD monitor resolution. While I do understand you guys have had good intentions
We started off prototyping a block similar to that - first in the pool area, with four or eight thumbs (pool count determined whether it was half or full-width, to make an even row); then in the header, with two small thumbs either side, before moving to a larger one on either side of the header - we eventually got rid of small thumbs altogether.
The changes were partially to make better use of space, and partially to avoid icon clutter distracting from the main image. We tried to adjust for that by tweaking opacity, borders, etc, but the problem remained - and we weren't convinced of significant benefits beyond what was gained by showing the nearest neighbour.
It's true that some people like to view the description, some of the time. We expect them to scroll down - and then, perhaps, to click on related work in pools, rather than the gallery timeline (which is more likely to contain unrelated work).
Now, if there are no pools attached to the image (or just one pool), there'd be more benefit from timeline thumbs below, perhaps similar to the prototypes mentioned above. Something to consider! After all, we'd already have two of them loaded in the header… only in the linked case, nearby pool items duplicate the gallery, making it less useful. We found this happening quite often.
We started off prototyping a block similar to that - first in the pool area, with four or eight thum
