New Site Feedback

Discussion in 'Site Feedback' started by Murakami, Dec 3, 2015.

  1. Mr.B.

    Mr.B. Moderator

    Added clear indications that the guide is out of date and soon to be updated. Feel free to edit/update it, I read you're already working on it :)
     
  2. Murakami

    Murakami Really Experienced

    I thought you and Friedman were coordinating about that.
     
  3. majus

    majus CHYOA Guru

    Great job with this site. Really impressive.

    A small glitch:

    In Firefox 'Add story to favorites' button tends to jump, when you point at it. There is no such problem in Chrome.
     
  4. Hypnoticus

    Hypnoticus Experienced

    I'm curious as to what the "awards" are and how does one get an award?
     
  5. RicoLouis

    RicoLouis Really Really Experienced

    Me two, you can find them under the writers profile but the only one I have seen is veterian for those who have been here for either the start of the old site or the new?
     
  6. Torg

    Torg Really Experienced

    I really liked the tabular format of the My Stories, My Threads, and Feedback. Made checking things easy. Is there an equivalent that I'm missing? Is there a "Short Form everywhere" preference?
     
  7. Mr.B.

    Mr.B. Moderator

    Sorry, can't work on something like that now. Feel free to use whatever is still useful.
     
  8. moonblack

    moonblack CHYOA Guru

    Previously there was a Feedback tab where I could see all comments for threads written by me. Does it still exist? If yes - where is it?

    Also, previously there was mention of conditional branches functionality (see this thread). Was that left for a future version, or am I just failing to see it?
     
  9. Friedman

    Friedman Administrator

    We're working on an overview page for all awards. I'll let you know once it is ready.

    It's part of the new CHYOA, although disabled at the moment. Once everything else is working fine, we'll enable it.
     
  10. Murakami

    Murakami Really Experienced

    Ok I am taking a stab at some of the pages. I can't completely update it as yet.
     
  11. OK, Murakami probably already conveyed one of my issues with the new site, which I previously voiced over on reddit, but let me make my case here again anway and add to it:

    On the old site, the notifications link would give me a drop-down list of all the stories I had favorited and the date when each of them was last updated, with those stories that had received updates having a green dot displayed beside them. Clicking on one story took me to the story map, where I could easily see the titles of the newly added chapters colored in green and the updated ones colored in blue. And the threads that had subthreads to them had a small "+" or "-" sign next to them. But not the way they do now, the opposite way. This is hella confusing. They way it was before, it was far easier for me to navigate than the current way.

    TL;DR: revert the way in which bookmarks and notifications work back to the previous version.

    Also, the more angular design of the story map, as well as the light brown bg for stories, are absolutely atrocious, imho.
     
  12. Zingiber

    Zingiber Really Really Experienced

    I like the notifications for thread bookmarking and story favorites. As an author, it gives me a feeling that the story has fans rather than flyby observers.
     
  13. Zingiber

    Zingiber Really Really Experienced

    I'm hoping that later on, the new site will help with what Chyoa took away from me as a relatively prolific author: ways to page through my old threads in a compact form with many threads per page (50-100).

    I find the design has lots of whitespace, and a "rich and inviting" feel with the chapter and story summaries pulled into the lists of recent chapters/stories.

    "Rich and inviting" is nice for a reader who wants to explore things. It's terrible for a writer who wants to find things. It makes it harder for me to navigate and pick up older stories and threads.

    I also miss the view showing all the stories I've contributed to.
     
    airwreck likes this.
  14. varmint1234

    varmint1234 Virgin

    Wow! Great update. Keep 'em cumming!
     
    Friedman likes this.
  15. Djibril

    Djibril Virgin

    Honestly, as someone who primarily uses this site from a PC, the redesign feels entirely built almost entirely for mobile and tablet users. One of the features that I have appreciated about CHYOO in its various iterations has been the relatively austere simplicity. This redesign feels needlessly cluttered when you don't have the option of quickly zooming a page to focus on a particular element. The scaling of features and text is larger than necessary when using something with a full-size screen, which reduces the information density. With the exception of the 'mark all as read' feature, which is quite welcome, there is nothing that enhances the user experience for me and a lot that detracts from it. Personally I would prefer if the redesigned site was made mobile/tablet specific and users logging in from PCs could get something more akin to the last iteration, which was less cluttered but more information-dense, especially when navigating story maps.
     
    deadlyelmo, xgkf, airwreck and 3 others like this.
  16. Simon_Silver

    Simon_Silver Guest

    I disagree. As someone who uses the site from a laptop I say this is a good rework: sure if you use it from a desktop it might feel scaled down and restricted but for my smaller screen size this is a welcome change.
     
  17. Selias

    Selias Virgin

    This.
     
  18. Mr.B.

    Mr.B. Moderator

    Revert back is a terrible idea in my opinion. A smarter solution is to use the new system and find a way to achieve the same results of the old system in terms of visualization (translated: an easier way to see your list of favourites and which one of them have been updated...an easy way to partially obtain this with the new system would be to simply order the notifications under a story...you have the story title at the top, you click on it and see all the recent notifications dedicated to that story)
     
  19. xgkf

    xgkf Virgin

    Horray, the favorites/bookmarks button at the top of the screen works they way it did before again (full, scrollable list). Thank you for returning this functionality. :)
     
    Friedman likes this.
  20. Simon_Silver

    Simon_Silver Guest

    While I agree that this is a good temporary solution I don't want to see "the baby thrown out with the bath water" to use an old Irish phrase. Other than that minor paging problem which has been repeatedly mentioned and it defaulting to bookmarks rather than fave stories the new method IS an improvement, I want to see the two blended and refined rather than V2.0 abandoned in favor of the old tried and true method.

    P.S.: Please ignore the above if that was done, I am going on 36 hours with no sleep right now... (And having the updated site to play with is partially to blame! I have waited for this SO LONG, I don't want to miss a thing, but now I MUST rest or I will not be able to be any good to anyone later, so I have no time to double check these things.)