Thanks for the feedback. I’ve widened the chapter content area. I’ll go through the feedback and make further adjustments.
Front page looks much better with full columns restored, though still missing the column by column side scroll arrows. Categories list seems a bit long; maybe make those 3 wide instead of 2? Story map is acting weird wrt middle click. Sometimes it gives vertical scroll, sometimes horizontal, never both. I personally like to use all the available screen for reading, so my preference would be for 1-2cm of margin at most when reading chapters. Currently seems to be about 6cm per side. I would also justify, but that's my preference for a clean right edge. Maybe some settings? Chapter writing tips in the sidebar (when adding new chapter) should include the syntax for adding images. That's the only major formatting that's not shown there right now. This is the one most asked about or fumbled in submissions. One thing I would definitely like to always have accessible without any scrolling would be the story map button, which is the thing I am most likely to be looking to hit immediately. Depending on how much text is in the story description, if there is a game mode, etc., it can currently be off the bottom of the screen. One way to recover some space in the sidebar would be to put Category and POV on the same line, and likewise for language and mode (like likes and views).
I'm liking the new changes for the most part, but there are a few little things that I'm not too big a fan of. Mostly with the story map. Scrolling by clicking or holding the middle mouse button no longer works for diagonals, as it seems to lock in on whichever direction (horizontal/vertical) the mouse moves in first, which makes navigating feel a lot clumsier and more awkward than it was before. And to be a bit more nitpicky... The new look of the story map feels a bit bloated compared to the previous one. The 'bars' for each chapter are thicker with more empty space above and below the text than in the previous design, so it now takes more scrolling to move past the same amount of chapters. The thin gap between them also doesn't help with that, breaking up the more compact and seamless feel it had before. That gap looks to be about 1mm (on my screen, at least) which means that a story map with 1,000 chapters in it would have a full meter of extra scrolling for no real reason. But that is a bit more of a personal preference. And the default grey of the 'read' chapters is also a bit hard to distinguish from the background on the white site theme. It looks fine using the black site theme though, and the sepia one too. Beyond that, I also miss the arrow buttons on the main page (for the recently updated stories, new stories, and notable stories lists). Also, I've found a very small bug with the new in-story sidebar: The [name • ## chapters] box that shows up when hovering over one of the authors' profile pics in the 'Contributors' section appears behind the sidebar, if the sidebar is brought out by clicking the little button for it (when you're zoomed in enough or have the browser window take up only one side of the screen as I usually do). It works fine if the window is maximized and the sidebar is naturally open though.
I like the change but it seems the scaling is all a bit funny now. On a 4K monitor the home page is nearly 50% blank space! Everything as a whole seems a lot bigger in font-size so I feel like I am seeing less chapters in the story maps, and on the home-page less stories which I have highlighted in the screenshot.
The new "My Chapters" view is hungry for vertical space with the longer summaries, but zooming out to 67% or 75% helps me with not losing the list below the fold. I have to go down to 33% to see the whole page, which seems "hm?" - makes it hard to page through results if you have to make them tiny to not miss the bottom of the per-page list. (edit: this is Brave for Desktop, with a vertical content pane of about 1000px)
Generally not a huge fan of the whole ui changes recently. here some feedback: first the good stuff: -being able to sort your favorite stories after "recently updates" is a very good change -also very good is seing when a chapter is uploaded on the story map, especially with big open stories/story hubs you often see its updated but cant find out which is actually the new chapter now sadly onto the bad stuff (note that I am majorly using my smartphone so anything here applies to mobile only): Favorite stories: -half my screen is covered with a fat "favorite stories - stories you saved for..."+ the 2 ui bars at the top, its kind of a lot of wasted space and feels weird/wastefull -imo the "remove" button of stories is way too big and central now, exactly where you finger is when you scrolling on mobile -also when scrolling everything feels a bit too big now, but maybe that is just me Story map: -the bars that contain the chapter titles + the new added info is imo WAAAY too large. its like "title"....and endless abyss...and then finally the new statistics at the end. -colours. imo before all the ui changes (so till a month ago) the colour sceme of the site felt perfect, but ever since the change to colour scemes (now I have to change when reading all the time because for reading I prefer the "sepia" one but the white one is better for story maps, so kinda like it was before) of the story map for white and sepia is not good the colour for "new chapters" is too similar to "updated" chapters Search new stories: -I always search via tags. so clicking on one story then click on the tabs of it to look at stories with said tag, which was changed recently but thankfully you can do it with stories again but another thing is that if I now search for stories and sort with "last activity" I only see the last update and the chapters depth. not how many views and likes it had like before, something that gives you lots of inormation. wish that was still there there. Overall: -across all of the ui changes there are many changes from edges to round stuff, which is sad because many "modern" ui changes do this and imo edges are way better/cleaner most of the time.
Whilst it's nice to see the UI getting some attention, I have to admit I really dislike the direction it's taken. I've spent some time to get used to it - nobody likes change - but whereas the upgrade from the old Chyoo to Chyoo2 to Chyoa were significant upgrades, this feels like 2 steps backwards. The UI is now cluttered, lots of dead space on a PC monitor, uglier with all the rounded edges that plague modern UI - the comments section really should go back to being on the sidebar where it was always visible and didn't prevent the End key from being used to quickly access the chapter selection. I don't know if it's just the UI but the font size feels massive now - the whole thing just feels like a cheap mobile app rather than a functional web page. I dunno, man. With so many AI chapters being pumped out recently, I think it's time to drop the site for a while and go read older pre-AI stories elsewhere.
I have some issues with the new site. The first and most important to me is why is the white page setting still sepia tone? It's just a lighter sepia. You can pull up the option and see it's clearly different than the example white in the little pop-up box. It reminds me of that awful sleep helping thing that just turns your screen orange. Other issues: why are favorites and bookmarks removed from the top bar? Hiding them behind the dropdown menu is annoying. The story map seems bloated, like the bubbles the chapters themselves are in are larger. The idea behind searching for tags in a story per chapter is nice, but, it's not like this is retroactive, and it makes it harder/more annoying to search for that tag on that story site-wide. The ai generated pictures for the story categories are a hard miss too. The bisexual image also looks like it's just a threesome thing, not an interconnected bisexuality thing. I do like the change to notifications that shows you exactly where the new stories starts. Unfortunately that screen is now a HUGE empty area with the new chapter notifications in the middle. Actually I just noticed. The notifications menu remains white, while most of the site outside of it is that weird pale sepia now. Small thing at the end: It would be very nice if the "updated" marker on your favorites page said how long ago the story was updated. I think that whole feature needs tweaking too because I have stories that have the little updated star lower than stories without the star, while set to recently updated.
Bookmarks and favorites really belong at the top and shouldn't require an extra click. Or better yet, let us customize what should be at the top.
As always with AI there are some strange quirks and decisions: The guy in Mature should have gray hair to match his beard. What's up with the guy in Non-Erotic? He looks so down about being in the category. Could be a bit discouraging. And what's up with the clock? And with Power Play, why a skull??? It feels a bit too dark and morbid. Like, are people often dying in the stories in this category?
Throwing my hat in regarding the UI changes. Main Page: Too much negative space, and too clean if that makes any sense. Side bar could be a little compact/condensed. Icons are very square. Could use some contrast in the story select links, or background could be a touch darker when mousing over it. Story chapter pages: It comes across as optimized for mobile use, favoring vertical space over horizontal space. Preferred comments on the side, for easy reading. Profile page: Also comes across as optimized for mobile use. Story map page: Format overall hasn't changed, and the legend for chapter types is much more helpful.
