New UI "Beta" is a half finished mess - The Sequel

[Conan]

In late 2012 a "new UI beta" was shown off. It appeared rushed and half finished, with things like this happening:



Today, Dragoneer unveiled yet another UI beta, this time a functioning one that works on the main site. Take a look at that same set of buttons, modernized for 2015.



Yeah. The new UI is essentially a re imagined version of the current UI, just with fewer tables. The design is horrid and looks like it was designed by someone who has no idea how to design a website. Nothing makes sense.

For no apparent reason, he tweeted a picture of the 2009 UI preview and said that there was still a "long ways to go". But when asked what that means, he couldn't say anything more than "It's a concept".



EDIT: Just noticed two files in the source code, "ddmenu.css" and "ddmenu.js". These apparently belong to code you need to license to use, meaning once again Princess Piche threw money at a problem that didn't need money to fix.

[venthewolf]

Even though its a "responable design" it doenst even work correctly on a mobile phone. But hey they are working on it

[Ketsuban]

I notice they're using Google's font service (Open Sans). It's a little weird that Piche would splurge on a menubar but not fonts.

[Pi]

I notice they're using Google's font service (Open Sans)

more like buttugly sans

[Conan]

The day Dragoneer posted the new UI, he promised new updates "every 2-3 days".

Since April 5th, 8 days have passed, so the site should have been updated 2-4 times by now. Unsurprisingly, there have been 0 updates, even though Dragoneer's only job at this point is to work on it.

I can only imagine the excuses he's making to his boss at IMVU. Not sure how far "had to drive halfway across the country to pick up a stray cat" excuses are going to fly anymore.

[an hoopoe]

In the UI Beta, you cannot edit your submissions. You can delete them, but not change their tags, rating or edit the description.

This problem was noted on April 6th and Dragoneer stated that it would be fixed "tomorrow" (i.e April 7th):

https://twitter.com/Dragoneer/status/585324847850459138

It still has not been fixed.

A big (ha ha) problem with the UI is that everything is too big, esp. the huge font. On April the 5th Dragoneer promised this would be fixed "tomorrow" (i.e April 6th):

http://www.furaffinity.net/journal/6636092#cid:45182824

It still has not been fixed.

In fact Dragoneer simply stopped replying to comments, on the Furaffinity UI early beta journal, after April 5th.

The journal currently has over 2000 comments and he's ignoring it.

What has Dragoneer been doing since April 5th? He's been playing the MMORPG Elder Scrolls online:

https://twitter.com/Dragoneer/status/585448325123547137

https://twitter.com/Dragoneer/status/586720028910817280

Over the past few weeks he's been tweeting about that game a lot.

He claimed to be "rather busy" on April 12th:

https://twitter.com/Dragoneer/status/587438673647562752

But doing what? He hasn't been working on the UI and people are still complaining about TTs and E-mails going unanswered. He didn't attend the FWA convention either.

[Ketsuban]

esp. the huge font.

l o l

The computed font size is 14.667px (i.e. 11pt, using the browser value of "pt" equal to 1.3 pixels rather than 0.0138 inches). Typographers suggest between 15px and 25px depending on the choice of font and the intended audience.

Font size is one of the few things not wrong with this.

[Spip]

Typographers don't know shit if they're recommending font sizes in pixels. Declaring font sizes in non-resolution-dependent units like points really is the right thing to do, so that's one down, 99,999 to go.

[Gourd]

Isn't Dragoneer actually NOW -legitimately- supposed to be working on keeping FurAffinity relevant and running now that he's under IMVU's employment? But he's just dicking about in a shitty MMO? A type of game you don't just play for 20 minutes in one sitting, but fiend on for HOURS at a time (let's be serious, we all know Piche isn't the kind to play games sparingly lol)?

Fixing little shit like a font or its size took me literally 20 seconds in my web design classes. How's it taking him a week just to address the smaller flaws as promised? Oh right, Talos has him by the balls right now. :/

[Emil Barr]

If they were wasting their time on IMVUs chat program they could at least have made the claim they were trying to promote the brand. But that's very clearly not the case, so I guess Neer can't even hide slacking off properly.

[Ketsuban]

Typographers don't know shit if they're recommending font sizes in pixels. Declaring font sizes in non-resolution-dependent units like points

I just checked the CSS spec out of curiosity; 1px is defined to be 0.75pt, and print and high-resolution devices are expected to anchor the CSS inch to a real-world inch while low-resolution devices are expected to anchor 1px to the number of physical pixels best approximating the CSS reference pixel (the visual angle of a single pixel on a 96dpi device and a distance from the reader of an arm's length, nominally 28 inches). In practical terms, 1px is just as resolution-independent as 1pt.

My point stands that 11pt/14.6px is a reasonable if slightly-smaller-than-optimal font size for the web, and pushing for 12px would be actively making the site worse.

[Gourd]

Unless Piche forgot how to notify people of updates (which would be unsurprising considering how he prefers Twitter over the main site for updates about the main fucking site), it's been over 2 weeks since he last changed even the smallest of problems. He actually hasn't even looked at any feedback threads since the 5th either. The most constructive thread from Runefox and arguably the only relevant one was completely ignored by him. https://forums.furaffinity.net/threads/1360445-I-should-really-be-charging-for-my-time

And no one responded to his prod at further updates.
https://forums.furaffinity.net/threads/1364258-When-can-we-expect-further-updates

[Conan]

The site has been updated once again. The highlight of this new update? More ads. Google ads everywhere (that conveniently display IMVU half the time).



I have no idea why the banner ad on top is in Spanish.

The rest of the changes are fairly minor fixes and font size changes. My favorite jumble of random buttons is still there.

[Pi]

y'know

it sure looks great with an adblocker





large buffers of whitespace corral the art off into a corner, i love it

[uncia2000]

Google ads everywhere (that conveniently display IMVU half the time).

The Google ads at least gave me a smile, following the admin-side discussion almost right back at the start which concluded that those were an absolute no-go.

(I snagged Arrow onto that team to try to collate some of the mess, at the same time as yak, while D. and Alkora were in one of their inaction cycles, so you can blame me for the "Russian hacker" (in Sean's words) too. Another of those times the site was in danger of dying if no action was taken as D. would've left Alkora until the sun froze over to get the code fixed. Any code.).

Oops; response to reply to on the other thread, apologies. Anyhow... we were more-or-less on schedule for the next stage of "developments", anyhow, after Sean's ne plus ultra "management technique of "just wait until the 'drama' dies down" had ''resolved" the stage one "issues".

02c, as ever, anyhow.
d.

[Gourd]

From what I understand, there were usermade scripts to try and fix the sidebar to be less obtuse. But the site was IMMEDIATELY "updated" to break them.
The person stating this didn't show anything though. Post #34 (I'm not sure how to link directly to a post unless it's automatic).

https://forums.furaffinity.net/threads/1368865-I-m-calling-a-sidebar-about-the-Sidebar?p=5165615#post5165615

[an hoopoe]

It seems that the sidebar was required of FA by IMVU:



Note that in one comment Yak referred to "our supervisors":

we were required to add two additional advertisement slots to the site, one sized 728x90 and another 336x280; with a condition that they have to be in the default viewable area upon page load (above the fold) [...]  We are also communicating with our supervisors trying to find alternative, more accommodating solution altogether.

^
http://www.furaffinity.net/journal/6689390#cid:45480779

I don't remember Dragoneer mentioning anything about supervisors.

From the FA twitter, supposedly it's all going to be reversed now:

We've heard you. Changes to submissions will be reverted. No more sidebar or square ad. Changes will be completed sometime today.

^
https://twitter.com/furaffinity/status/592730325630976000

Also, I saw this comment on twitter which, I think, sums up Dragoneer now:

Sad thing is Neer has gone from having the claim to fame of "The Guy Who Owned FA" to the infamy of "The Guy Who Sold FA"

^
https://twitter.com/vahnfox/status/592460672597774336

[Emil Barr]

Now the question is: Did they backpeddled due to the massive user backlash? Or did Google freeze their ad account already because of all the angry fox people reporting them for the ungodly amounts of porn they host?

[Rowedahelicon]

Now the question is: Did they backpeddled due to the massive user backlash? Or did Google freeze their ad account already because of all the angry fox people reporting them for the ungodly amounts of porn they host?

Sidebar is gone, but the top ad is still there. They also made it so the ads only show up when SFW mode is on to try and get around Google's policies, gotta keep sending those reports!

[JTfurry]

What is the point at all having only SWF?
That is like 1% of the users :p