Hey tropers, the day has arrived. If you were one of our Kickstarter donators last year you've probably seen us tinkering with a new design for months. Within the next couple hours (depending on how fast your DNS updates you'll start hitting our new servers with the updated version of TV Tropes). A huge thanks to those of you who have been monitoring it and giving us feedback throughout the development process. Some of the new features include:
- Updated design throughout for a cleaner browsing experience
- One click sign in with Facebook
- Random Shuffle button to stay on a namespace (hit Random Media then the Shuffle button to randomize that namespace)
- Browse Watchlist in an image view
- History page now highlights sentences that were deleted/added to make it easier to review changes
- New image uploader with built in crop function
- New About Us page so you can see who we are.
- Contact Us form
- Trope Depictions on the home page (artists can submit their own comic to go with a trope)
- Bug List page Query Bugs (and Query Wishlist for tech wishes) to organize and track bugs on the site.
Ok. Let the feedback begin. (See Anxiety Tropes for my current feelings)
Notes:
- Please do not bother asking for the old design to come back. The lease of the old servers did expire at the day of the changeover, the new ones cannot run the old design.
- You can move the sidebar to the left by going into your profile and selecting Lefthand Sidebar.
edited 14th Feb '16 12:48:07 PM by SeptimusHeap
Nope.
The colors chosen, white and light grey, have no contrast with each other and as a result just leave text and images floating around in an empty void. Said void is too bright and leaves a lifeless appearance reminiscent of Wikipedia, the other wiki, that TV Tropes isn’t.
I mentioned that the text and images are floating around in an empty void, but that also applies to the general feel I get from this site’s new design. It feels corporate, empty, and lacks the personality the other two previous designs had.
And while I realize that this will most likely to an update of the design, the first thing I did when I went to the home page is look for the tabs that let you view the homepage in Buffy speak, Voda speak, Elmer speak, etc. and was disappointed to see that it and other humorous elements weren’t there.
The old designs weren’t particularly modern, sure, but they were practical and are followed a lot more design features that made the overall aesthetic more pleasing to the eye. I could say more but I won’t. While the design itself isn’t the worst I’ve seen for a site, it doesn’t suit this one very well.
![[up]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/smiles/arrow_up.png "[up]"){kind=icon}
And the uploader for hotlinking and page images was what I was talking about. Is it a case of the old link not working, or are images failing to upload? If you're looking for the image uploader, it's now on the bar where the edit, discussion, history, etc. buttons are and might be under the "More" menu.
edited 8th Feb '16 5:24:13 PM by AzureSeas
I'm okay with the new design, but I think they should add more blue so it doesn't look so...bland.
edited 8th Feb '16 5:24:01 PM by Emmz
My interests change over time, though I'll always be interested in video games. Sometimes I like to make pages for my own fanfictions.
The buttons are a bit odd right now, but they work fine to me. Everything I can do on the old layout is available. Scrolling up to use them is an annoyance, but it works. I'd like them to be on the top and bottom eventually, but it's nowhere near as problemsome as the new color scheme, which can affect people heavily due to eyesight issues.
Although I don't get what "Sticky Header" does that much. >.<
To be fair to many people here, "Feedback" and "Bugs" could be considered very similar.
RLL
The green highlights and red highlights on the text when you look in edit history is hard on the eyes when you check the history on two many pages. I often check around 6-10 pages at a time, and I'm sure I'm not the only one. I kind of like the idea of pointing out the changes people make, but I think making it a feature you can turn off or on would be a good idea.
Lost in Space
We're not asking anyone to double as devs. We just want to document all the stuff that needs repairing.
Feedback about the site's interface is welcomed, of course, but it's one of the simpler things to address from a technical perspective. We were rushed by circumstances outside our control to get this new design deployed, and it's way more important to fix the core technical problems than to make it satisfy everyone's (often conflicting) aesthetic preferences.
The problem I observed with those history boxes is that they no longer respect newlines. That needs to be fixed from a visual perspective. Toggling highlighting would be a wishlist item.
edited 8th Feb '16 5:26:42 PM by Fighteer
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
If more color gets added it should be literally anything but blue, for hopefully obvious reasons.
Me Listening to You RN
I think the Home button on the bar that's not the top bar is redundant. Plus, on regular pages, it's placed where the Edit Page button used to be. Nothing too terrible, but it definitely takes getting used to.
edited 8th Feb '16 5:28:26 PM by JRads47
To be perfectly honest, I liked the previous version much better. This seems... flat, somehow. Can you at least include an option for classic view or something?
edited 8th Feb '16 5:29:50 PM by Icestar1186(2)
I went to a random page and discovered the Page History is now in a dropdown menu, as are a lot of other things.
It was really more convenient and easier to see with buttons.
The Protomen enhanced my life.
Answer me this; What is the reason this change was made? Change for the sake of change alone is never a good thing, and this new format just feels too cold and clinical.
A procrastination in of itself
Gonna take a stab in the dark here and say that the more time Fighter has to spend here answering our questions about what's being fixed, the less time he has to try and organise stuff being fixed.
“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ Cyran
Lost in Space
Well, I'm not organizing anything, just playing punching bag for as long as I'm online and awake. While we may support multiple layouts in the future as a matter of user preference, the core elements of this new design are not going to change, because they represent a complete overhaul of the underlying functionality. What we have now is the base that will be built on for future development.
Nobody who knows anything about the wiki's innards wants the old code base back.
edited 8th Feb '16 5:35:17 PM by Fighteer
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
In Love with Homura and Love itself.
"We were rushed by circumstances outside our control to get this new design deployed,"
What exactly were those circumstances?
This is the ultimate state of human emotion. More passionate than hope. Far deeper than despair. It is Love.
Lost in Space
The lease on a physical server was expiring. We had a newer, more powerful one waiting to go, and that one's got all the new code plus software that won't support the old wiki design.
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
~crashkey: Why not blue? In any case this new design does not have nearly enough blue.
"I like girls, but now, it's about justice."
well, rest in peace, then, tvtropes. it had a good run, i think????
because blue and white are the dominant colors on every major social network and operating system (facebook, tumblr, twitter, MAC OS X, older windows, etc.)
edited 8th Feb '16 5:37:54 PM by crashkey
The Unknown
x2 Presumably because wicks, potholes, and external links use blue text.
Or that.
edited 8th Feb '16 5:38:18 PM by Karxrida
If a tree falls in the forest and nobody remembers it, who else will you have ice cream with?
Dislikes:
- This one just somehow feels more lifeless and cold; the bland colors, and maybe something with the font too.
- I absolutely cannot figure out to get to my profile. I have to go back and find my direct Watchlist link from my Favorites in my browser.
- Edit note text is too small and it took me a while to realize it was even there.
Likes:
- Colors showing what was changed in the history. I'm really happy to see that this was added; it was annoying having to scan a paragraph to find a tiny change, and it'll make editing really helpful.
edited 8th Feb '16 5:41:26 PM by Dawnwing
Searching for things doesn't work anymore. What the hell?
Due to the overabundance of white with this new layout, Night-Vision mode is actually A LOT more pleasant to look at on the eyes at the moment.
My one suggestion I instantly noticed with Night-Vision is that Fighter's posts become a bright pink over white wording, so its hard to make out what he's saying in this mode.
Still prefer using normal mode though.
edited 8th Feb '16 5:41:33 PM by Retloclive
RLL
TV Tropes has always been (teal) blue. It's like a badge of identity. In any case it's this redesign which is weird for not including it.
Again, the black/grey parts of the site would probably look much better in teal.
edited 8th Feb '16 5:41:56 PM by WackyPancake
"I like girls, but now, it's about justice."
Lost in Space
~Dawnwing: Your profile is on the flyout menu attached to your avatar in the top right corner of the header bar. Just click it.
@Everyone: The colors are flexible. We've got a lot of room to play with that in the new design. We can't please all of you all at once, though. Some will like it, some will tolerate it,some will hate it, as with any site design. We will not respond to "it's like <other site>, so it automatically sucks" as a rationale, though.
edited 8th Feb '16 5:43:20 PM by Fighteer
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
Core wiki functionality issues are highest priority, obviously.
If it's a visual issue, but the functionality still exists, it's a lower priority. Just how these things go. It'll all get worked through, eventually.
edited 8th Feb '16 5:23:20 PM by Fighteer
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"