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What do you think of the new FA update?
3 years ago
General
I've seen many people talking about it offsite, but I haven't seen that much discussion of it onsite with the exception of a few larger artists that are understandably upset because of how it impacts posting comics and other strange file size images. Of course I mostly stick to my tiny corner of FA so that could be why, but I'm curious:
What are your thoughts on all of the new FA updates?
This is not a rant journal, I just genuinely want to offer some feedback and hear how others feel.
Personally, I wouldn't call it atrocious, but I'm not a big fan, even if I find it tolerable. It feels like many of the changes were to fix what wasn't broken rather than providing quality of life updates that would benefit users. I won't really go into the file size details because I think other journals have covered that better than I could, but I do want to talk user experience.
For example, there's a bunch of visual design choices that make the site less comfortable to navigate, such as the comments section and the notification page overhauls. The first makes comments blur together compared to the old since it's now all a single color rather than having those nice boxes to make comments pop, and the second is so filled with underlines everywhere that it's now harder than ever to read. Design 101 is to use underlines sparingly to make key details stand out, but at least on my notifications page, it's safe to say I now have more words that are underlined than not underlined. The banner on user pages is a neat idea, but it doesn't seem implemented well, a logical size for how it's being used (why is it so thin?!), and I can't understand why it was funded over other changes that would provide more value.
Oh, and I'm sure it's no coincidence that the FA+ buttons got bigger and more invasive. I used to think that was just a nice little way for people to give back to the site community as a donation, but it looks like there are plans to build a proper subscription service base out of that by rolling out special new features like increased icon sizes and cutting features that base users previously had access to. I'm not comfortable with that because something I've always loved about FA is that unlike most of the internet, everyone here was always treated equally in terms of how you could build your page and stand with others. There was no elite status that gave you an edge over others because you were paying money. This seems especially worth saying because even if you don't have FA+, you've already been supporting the site financially as a user since FA has ads on it. I'd rather FA start hitting us with sidebar notifications about "we need this much to meet our server goals, consider donating" than see people pressured into a subscription.
Some chatter seems to be that people think FA is trying to imitate Twitter and DA. I don't use either of those, but when I saw a side-by-side with DA, I'm inclined to agree that our user page overhaul does seem like a knockoff of DA's. There's also some sort of feeds feature coming according to the post notes, but I'm not sure what that means considering I thought we already had a feeds system with submission notifications.
I keep mentioning "better options" they could have put their time and money into, but what are some of those?
One of the first that comes to mind is an overhauled search feature that includes blacklists. Trying to use the search feature here is always a total pain, and if you want to find a particular image or artist gallery, you're usually better off going to another site like e621 to search there and then follow a link back to FA. I know there's no tagging regulation here and that makes it harder for the search to work well, but even if you type in an artist's name directly, you might still have a hard time finding them (and who knows what else you'll see along the way).
A second has to do with how icons currently have to be uploaded at an exact size, otherwise they will come out looking weird. The same is now true for the recently added banners. Why is there no feature to crop images from your gallery or that you upload into the size right there within the site interface using some sort of visual preview tool? Think of how it works in discord when you want to change your icon and how convenient that would be.
One of the most significant "better options" is to improve the interfaces when working with text anywhere here on the site since it's currently a total pain. Adding bold, links, underlines, colors, alignment, or any other basic text features requires knowing how to use html code with the exception of a few options on very limited pages like journal creation. If you're a writer, you also know that uploading a story here is genuinely a chore because depending on how you want it to display, you will likely have to manually go through your entire story onsite hitting the enter key every time there is a line break as well as tracking down any use of bold or italics so that you can add html code to them. It's very tedious, especially if you only have one monitor to work with.
While the ability to change usernames doesn't cater to me and I have some concerns about it being abused since I've seen that happen on other sites, I know this is a high priority for many people who are stuck with names they don't like but don't want to have to rebuild their following by creating a new account. They have a valid concern, and it seems strange that some means for changing your username has yet to be implemented. Supposedly this one is coming in the future, but still, seems odd that it has taken so long but we had a big ui overhaul instead when people have been asking for it longer than I've even been on this site.
I'd also love more ways to customize your profile page, such as the ability to add borders or little stickers/emotes to it. Yes, there is a workaround for some of this through linking account pages that people have created just for that purpose, but this workaround is tedious and seems like it wastes server space, so it would be nice to have better customization options build in. I guess the banner is a step in the right direction with this, but there's better options they could have done.
Anyways, that's some of my thoughts on this big change. I wouldn't really care if this was done as an opt-in feature, but since pages were forcibly changed to it I felt sharing opinions was valuable. What do you think? Feel free to share this around or make your own journals too to create more discussion.
What are your thoughts on all of the new FA updates?
This is not a rant journal, I just genuinely want to offer some feedback and hear how others feel.
Personally, I wouldn't call it atrocious, but I'm not a big fan, even if I find it tolerable. It feels like many of the changes were to fix what wasn't broken rather than providing quality of life updates that would benefit users. I won't really go into the file size details because I think other journals have covered that better than I could, but I do want to talk user experience.
For example, there's a bunch of visual design choices that make the site less comfortable to navigate, such as the comments section and the notification page overhauls. The first makes comments blur together compared to the old since it's now all a single color rather than having those nice boxes to make comments pop, and the second is so filled with underlines everywhere that it's now harder than ever to read. Design 101 is to use underlines sparingly to make key details stand out, but at least on my notifications page, it's safe to say I now have more words that are underlined than not underlined. The banner on user pages is a neat idea, but it doesn't seem implemented well, a logical size for how it's being used (why is it so thin?!), and I can't understand why it was funded over other changes that would provide more value.
Oh, and I'm sure it's no coincidence that the FA+ buttons got bigger and more invasive. I used to think that was just a nice little way for people to give back to the site community as a donation, but it looks like there are plans to build a proper subscription service base out of that by rolling out special new features like increased icon sizes and cutting features that base users previously had access to. I'm not comfortable with that because something I've always loved about FA is that unlike most of the internet, everyone here was always treated equally in terms of how you could build your page and stand with others. There was no elite status that gave you an edge over others because you were paying money. This seems especially worth saying because even if you don't have FA+, you've already been supporting the site financially as a user since FA has ads on it. I'd rather FA start hitting us with sidebar notifications about "we need this much to meet our server goals, consider donating" than see people pressured into a subscription.
Some chatter seems to be that people think FA is trying to imitate Twitter and DA. I don't use either of those, but when I saw a side-by-side with DA, I'm inclined to agree that our user page overhaul does seem like a knockoff of DA's. There's also some sort of feeds feature coming according to the post notes, but I'm not sure what that means considering I thought we already had a feeds system with submission notifications.
I keep mentioning "better options" they could have put their time and money into, but what are some of those?
One of the first that comes to mind is an overhauled search feature that includes blacklists. Trying to use the search feature here is always a total pain, and if you want to find a particular image or artist gallery, you're usually better off going to another site like e621 to search there and then follow a link back to FA. I know there's no tagging regulation here and that makes it harder for the search to work well, but even if you type in an artist's name directly, you might still have a hard time finding them (and who knows what else you'll see along the way).
A second has to do with how icons currently have to be uploaded at an exact size, otherwise they will come out looking weird. The same is now true for the recently added banners. Why is there no feature to crop images from your gallery or that you upload into the size right there within the site interface using some sort of visual preview tool? Think of how it works in discord when you want to change your icon and how convenient that would be.
One of the most significant "better options" is to improve the interfaces when working with text anywhere here on the site since it's currently a total pain. Adding bold, links, underlines, colors, alignment, or any other basic text features requires knowing how to use html code with the exception of a few options on very limited pages like journal creation. If you're a writer, you also know that uploading a story here is genuinely a chore because depending on how you want it to display, you will likely have to manually go through your entire story onsite hitting the enter key every time there is a line break as well as tracking down any use of bold or italics so that you can add html code to them. It's very tedious, especially if you only have one monitor to work with.
While the ability to change usernames doesn't cater to me and I have some concerns about it being abused since I've seen that happen on other sites, I know this is a high priority for many people who are stuck with names they don't like but don't want to have to rebuild their following by creating a new account. They have a valid concern, and it seems strange that some means for changing your username has yet to be implemented. Supposedly this one is coming in the future, but still, seems odd that it has taken so long but we had a big ui overhaul instead when people have been asking for it longer than I've even been on this site.
I'd also love more ways to customize your profile page, such as the ability to add borders or little stickers/emotes to it. Yes, there is a workaround for some of this through linking account pages that people have created just for that purpose, but this workaround is tedious and seems like it wastes server space, so it would be nice to have better customization options build in. I guess the banner is a step in the right direction with this, but there's better options they could have done.
Anyways, that's some of my thoughts on this big change. I wouldn't really care if this was done as an opt-in feature, but since pages were forcibly changed to it I felt sharing opinions was valuable. What do you think? Feel free to share this around or make your own journals too to create more discussion.
Overall, it's not a terrible update, it's definitely not good but the fact that we're getting stuff like this when there's still so much room for improvement in other departments is pretty frustrating
You've got rounded edges for avatars on comments, but the comments are surrounded with hard edged boxes, and they've completely removed the spacing between comment threads so now everything blends in at a glance.
I like the idea of the banners, but they need some work, and also they just straight up look awful on mobile (of course only a masochist is going to try and use this site on mobile anyway).
I don't mind that they're attempting to modernize the look of the website at all when the design has been stuck in the late 2000s for over a decade now, but I would have preferred them to focus on improving the user experience over the visuals of the site.
The fact that you still have to use HTML code to do simple text editing is embarrassing considering there are a plethora of smaller websites out there that allow you to do that with one-click solutions that copy what has existed in text editors like Word for decades now.
And I completely agree with the need for a proper search and blacklist function. It doesn't need to be anything as robust as e621's but at the very least there needs to be some way of filtering out undesirable content while still being able to browse everything else.
Other than that all they added is just fluff that doesn't impact my user experience in positve or negative way.
The fact after so many years there is no obligatory tagging system and blacklists ala e621, so the search function could work actually, is sad.
I agree with you regarding lack of editing text functions that you can find on most modern website.
I see this FA site update as lacking other QoL features but hey, they did something at least compared to other furry website, SoFurry. ekhm
Paywalling image size on a primarily art focused site is pretty bullshit. So now instead of being able to offer the full res directly on FA I'll have to link elsewhere.
Seems the differences between mobile and desktop don't have rhyme or reason, some things carry over to mobile, others don't. Overall it seems like there wasn't really an improvement to usability or QOL, but just a new coat of paint on a structure that needs some serious reworks at the core but, given the age of the place, not shocked it's taking so long for that to happen.
Honestly, it feel like things weren't really prioritized that well for user experience as most things won't fundamentally change it, and those you do interact with aren't exactly streamlined (icons, banner, comments, etc). But, as you said, seems the FA+ thing is just fine.
We'll see what happens. (Also, as someone suffering from the blank spaces on the edge of the screen issue, FA, plz fix)
I appreciate the UI update, but it also feels like energy could have been spent on much better things, such as a content filter.