Thoughts on The New DA

[topher chee]

So I just realized that DA changed it's looks, what do you guys think?

[RJ]

BURN IT! BURN IT I SAY!!

http://www.deviantart.com/deviation/37678702/

[Suwako]

I hate it. 
I want color customisation! For everyone!
(doesn't dowload anything)  

[tkg]

Heh... my browser (Opera 9.01) seems to throw a fit over it as well, as there are floating elements at the left-hand side obscuring most of what's underneath. It doesn't detract much from that cute (or is it scarily cute?) pic, however

[Rowne]

The old deviantART layout had a few overlay problems but the new layout is attrocious at low resolutions.  It's amusing the way the comments spill out transparently onto the side.  Resize your browser window small and you'll see what I mean.

So I'm not too fond of it either but usually, once a site has made a design change they stick by it.  If only they all had good taste like Amber's brother.  Seriously, I love the new DMFA design.  Then again, I'm just a minimalist nut.

What'd be really awesome is if they allowed to do what Furjournal allows, that is complete customization via per-user CSS, so that each person could customize their own view of deviantART.  That would be beautiful.

[Lysander]

The comments are annoying to read on pictures, but that's my only problem with it. Then again all I ever do there is view and comment on stuff. In time this will change...

[RJ]

What'd be really awesome is if they allowed to do what Furjournal allows, that is complete customization via per-user CSS, so that each person could customize their own view of deviantART.  That would be beautiful.

You could do that with the last version of dA, though you had to have quite a good knowledge of CSS for it to work. The best I could do was try and find an existing skin and then changing a couple colours... though there were others that'd really make you go 'wow'.

I'm waiting for new skins to come up, though I think I'll be waiting a while

[topher chee]

well Rowne, I tried out what you said and it seems to be fine to me.  As for customizing it I have never even seen that.  RJ, do you think that we'll be able to do the same thing with the newer version.  In a wierd way I think if that happens, it will slowly become similar to myspace...which sucks because my so called broadband connection is slow with my stoopid computer.  Another thing, everytime I return to a certain page, it isnt refreshing itself when i go to a specific link.  So I have to go up and click refresh to make sure I'm not missing anything

[Rowne]

I tried it with a ludicrously tiny font size, it was fine.  Try it with a bigger font size.

Also, I'll be waiting for skins too, absolutely.

[topher chee]

that might be why, but I have my resolution for my screen set on high so that might be why....lemme check it out....

....you were right, I see now, hehe, well, I guess the only solution to that would be to lower your font size

[RJ]

RJ, do you think that we'll be able to do the same thing with the newer version.  In a wierd way I think if that happens, it will slowly become similar to myspace...which sucks because my so called broadband connection is slow with my stoopid computer.  Another thing, everytime I return to a certain page, it isnt refreshing itself when i go to a specific link.  So I have to go up and click refresh to make sure I'm not missing anything

Myspace? Erg... seriously, I hope not. I like to keep things my way really. If I pick a skin and go to somebody's page, I'd like to keep it looking the way I want, not their's.

When the CSS boffins crack the codes, then hopefully we'll start getting some skins. Though they'll probably be limited in what they can do at first (colour changes first, then moving up to stuff like actual re-design if it's possible).

Yeah, and I have dial-up, so think how bad it is for me! I have to wait ages

[Rowne]

topher: Unfortunately, that's not possible.  I have some serious sight issues that won't let me do anything other than what I'm doing.  So I tend to praise sites that realize the importance of accessibility whilst admonishing sites that don't give it a second thought.

It's actually so damned easy to create a dynamic layout so that font sizes don't matter, the problem is that most web developers these days are very lazy and it's easier to code a fixed layout than it is to create a layout that can 'spread' and then check it at numerous resolutions.

When I used to do web development as an odd-job thing for friends, I'd always develop a dynamic site so that anyone, anywhere, whether they were on a high-end PC, could view the site and enjoy both the content and the layout.  It isn't all that hard to do it well, even.

I just think that with new technologies, people become more and more lazy over time.  I fear to think what it'll be like 30 years from now.

RJ: I certainly hope so, that'll make certain parts of dA readable to me again and that's always good.

[Sid]

When the CSS boffins crack the codes, then hopefully we'll start getting some skins. Though they'll probably be limited in what they can do at first (colour changes first, then moving up to stuff like actual re-design if it's possible).

Shouldn't take TOO long. The people contributing to the "Mozilla" account are already merrily pumping out various scripts and stuff. So it should only take a few days or maybe weeks for them to publish updated versions of their existing skins...

I don't have major issues with the new layout, even though I certainly wouldn't have minded sticking to the old one. Both works, and as long as I can look at art and journals and stuff, I'll live.

[llearch n'n'daCorna]

Lest all the opprobrium fall on the web developers, often I've found the web developers would rather make a nicely accessible site, and the client provides silly requirements that invalidate that. "It looks good for me. Doesn't everyone use IE on win2k @ 1280x1024?" type thing...

[Zina]

I really don't care for the new DA design. List of complaints GO.
I really don't like that all my community messages are lumped together up top. The old design told you how many comments, faves/watches, journals and hot topics were in the message center before you clicked. And considering how many people I watch, I don't like seeing that I have new messages and thinking "Oh, more people have commented on my work. Everyone loves a Zina. " Only to find that it's just a few journals, or whatevs.
And all my devious information(like, say, my website) is now huddled down there where it can be(and probably will be) easily overlooked.
I dunno...the whole design looks cluttered and it feels impossible to find anything(I didn't notice all the options on the top right corner on my front page until just now).
DA could have at least offered an option where you could turn things back to the old design.

[Rowne]

llearch: Those who do it for the love of the job, sure but I'm not so sure I'd be willing to believe there are that many of them left that haven't given into apathy.  As you've said, when they're working for a company they often have to fit their designs and eventually they'll just get into that mindset that they might aswell not put in the extra effort because it'll get shot down.

The end result is the same, it's just probably not the fault of web developers in all cases as opposed to the fact that they can't find good people to work for.  Then again, there are a few last bastions of good design out there but those are usually people who aren't working on a mainstream site or for a company.  Some of the best designs I've seen are either open source efforts or personal websites.

If only everything was as accessible as Wikipedia and as pretty as the CSS zen garden thingy.

Zina: That brings another point to mind about accessibility, a lot of links that I saw were replaced with icons.  The old dA always had this good approach where they'd have an image link and then the text next to it, that was very thoughtful and I appreciated it.  This new system ... blech.

[RJ]

*RJ gives Zina a cookie for saying exactly what she is also thinking*


I think the new dA is heavily depending on people to have high-speed internet so then the site is more image-orientated, rather than text to get around. That would explain why the message systems makes my brain wants to run away.

They've sacrificed functionality for aesthetics, and I hate that. I liked the old message system, as bunched up as it was. There was just some cosy feeling to it that I felt secure with (internet blankie!).

My account page is just too confusing, with everything being shuffled to the sides in that little box up top. Everything is being focussed on that one section for all the options, and not only is it confusing, but annoying as all hell. Especially in other sections, where the box completely and utterly VANISHES. I liked being able to see my stats when say, looking at my journal page.

Don't get me started on the journal feature either... the shoutbox has lost its timestamps for one, as well as the little box that shows my mood, currently watching, ect. thing.

As well, dA has put a lot of focus onto emoticons. As much fun as they are, they're generally useless. I don't care what the general mood is of people commenting on a piece of art! Their emotion comes through on their comments. Also, when in the messages section, you don't even SEE what mood someone's set.

Then there's the problems with getting rid of the messages, the browsing systems, the HUGE problems in the forums...

Gah! I haven't ranted this bad since that time I got all angry over the abuse of my fandoms!

*sets random things on fire, blows up the ashes and salts the earth where they were*

Oh, and the CSS Zen Garden is love.

[Sid]

I really don't like that all my community messages are lumped together up top. The old design told you how many comments, faves/watches, journals and hot topics were in the message center before you clicked. And considering how many people I watch, I don't like seeing that I have new messages and thinking "Oh, more people have commented on my work. Everyone loves a Zina. " Only to find that it's just a few journals, or whatevs.

Yeah, I saw that one often on complaints... wait... somebody did bring out a Greasemonkey script you can use in Firefox... if you use it. Check "doofsmack" (I think that was the guy...) on dA. Of course I agree that that sounds like one of the more retarded changes in the new design. Additionally pisses off the people who have, like, 2000 messages in total (so they usually don't even notice that their counter went from 2173 to 2174 or so). Not so smart move on dA's side...

Gah! I haven't ranted this bad since that time I got all angry over the abuse of my fandoms!

Would you like me to write a Harry Potter / Naruto crossover Mary Sue fic to give your rage proper focus again?

[RJ]

Gah! I haven't ranted this bad since that time I got all angry over the abuse of my fandoms!

Would you like me to write a Harry Potter / Naruto crossover Mary Sue fic to give your rage proper focus again?

  Noooo.... If anyone's going to write that kind of eye-burning abomination, it'll be me! (already has done so with Harry Potter Sues at least)

Geez, when somebody commented on my journal saying I was an 'angry young woman', I don't think they were far off.

[topher chee]

hmm....I see what  you mean, that goes for pretty much everyone.  I too dislike the fact that it doesnt show me specificly at the top of the page what kind of messages I have.  Then again, I know I'll get used to it and that I'm just clinging to the other one.  As for what I think they should do, you guys know how they have the deal where when you read a comment, it deletes from you message center, I wish it was like that for the rest of the messages as well, it'd be one little option that'll make my life easier

[Zina]

I really don't like that all my community messages are lumped together up top. The old design told you how many comments, faves/watches, journals and hot topics were in the message center before you clicked. And considering how many people I watch, I don't like seeing that I have new messages and thinking "Oh, more people have commented on my work. Everyone loves a Zina. " Only to find that it's just a few journals, or whatevs.

Yeah, I saw that one often on complaints... wait... somebody did bring out a Greasemonkey script you can use in Firefox... if you use it. Check "doofsmack" (I think that was the guy...) on dA. Of course I agree that that sounds like one of the more retarded changes in the new design. Additionally pisses off the people who have, like, 2000 messages in total (so they usually don't even notice that their counter went from 2173 to 2174 or so). Not so smart move on dA's side...

Exactly. Like I said, I have a lot of people on my watchlist, so my inbox tends to fill up pretty quickly, and I like knowing what it's filling up WITH. I can see people not responding to comments or journals because they didn't even notice they had new ones in their inbox.
I mean, everything else is annoying but I could deal with it. This...I honestly don't see how they could have thought it was a good idea.

[llearch n'n'daCorna]

Perhaps they were thinking in terms of load on the servers? I know when *I'm* thinking about redesigns I try ot keep that sort of thing in mind...

... perhaps that's just me.

[topher chee]

*looks to llearch and shrugs*

ok heres the flash for deviantART v5

http://www.deviantart.com/v5castle/

[Kasarn]

Gah! I haven't ranted this bad since that time I got all angry over the abuse of my fandoms!

Would you like me to write a Harry Potter / Naruto crossover Mary Sue fic to give your rage proper focus again?

  Noooo.... If anyone's going to write that kind of eye-burning abomination, it'll be me! (already has done so with Harry Potter Sues at least)

Geez, when somebody commented on my journal saying I was an 'angry young woman', I don't think they were far off.

I assumed it was HumanityInGeneral... and then I checked and I was correct

[Rowne]

I didn't intend to play devil's advocate any further because my most major concern was with accessibility but there's a worrying trend I've noticed and I thought I'd comment on it.  It seems that whenever a site decides to deal with load by providing less information to the user, the user is going to get that information anyway by gathering it another way.

What I can see happening is that scripts and Firefox extensions will be created to supply this information about the inboxes of those that hold accounts andsoforth and this won't nessescarily be more efficient than dA supplying this information.  On the contrary, if the site's code were supplying this information then it wouldn't have to be gathered in the background by an extension or a script, which has to be a more rigouorus process.

I think that when a site is designed, if they provide information and they need a better way to handle that information then their best bet is to simply rewrite the software so it provides it in a more efficient way rather than taking it away or making it less obvious, that's only going to create a cascade effect that'll leave the server looking worse for wear.

It's always a good idea to design things so that it lessens the load on the server but the designer also has to consider how the users of that service are going to react to those changes and what the users themselves are going to do about it to get at the information that they want.

----

An example of this is the GMail Notifier extension for Firefox.  When GMail was younger, the most efficient way to check for mail was to use that which scanned the page every so often to find out whether new mail was present.  Google weren't too fond of that because it put a strain on their resources.  Suspending and banning didn't really make things better and now their service has both its own notifier software and the ability to collect mail from their servers via POP channels.

[llearch n'n'daCorna]

Oh, removing functionality is one way of limiting load. It's effective, too - as you say, for a short while.

Then people start working around the problems.


What I meant, however, was more coding -better- - if you're going to redesign a site, make it so it loads faster by putting less javascript crap in it. Less back-and-forth between server and browser. Less lots-of-little-images, unless they're all identical. That sort of thing.

All a bit of a moot point, now, really.

[Rowne]

Oh, I'd just pip in with that I agree.

Often in the past I've spoken about how sites should lighten their load not by restricting what users can do but simply by looking at what's wrong with the code itself.  Usually, when code is originally developed it can be unoptimized and somewhat bloated and going back to that code and optimizing the hell out of it and pulling away anything that's unnessescary that won't affect end-user functionality is the best way to improve the performance of a site.

[Sid]

Minor update regarding the "The old design told you how many comments, faves/watches, journals and hot topics were in the message center before you clicked" issue, for all those who don't follow Staff Journals: I just spotted this on the (INCREDIBLY LONG) bugs/complaints list Lolly has in his journal: "x" amount of messages is too vague.

So it seems that at least that is on the "Fix plz" list.

And considering how much stuff has moved onto pretty much every page (more thumbnails on userpages, etc), I honestly doubt this feature was crippled to save load

[llearch n'n'daCorna]

Probably not. We're just suggesting it was moved, whilst attempting to fix something else, without realising just how miserable that made everyone who was using it. :-)

... As is pretty much usually the case when doing upgrades. :-)

[Lysander]

Good to know something is on the fix list...hopefully. I didn't even think about that when I first checked it out since I was only going for a moment. Later when I checked I saw a few comments and they were 4 journals.

This user gallery is currently unavailable. Please try again in a few minutes.

I hiss at thee, DA. Never has this showm until yesterday, when it happened every few minutes for some galleries. *hiss*