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The Furaffinity graphic revamp sucks
6 years ago
General
I deliberately didn't say something right away. The Furaffinity UI was ancient and buggy and a revamp was years overdue, and any change breaks patters one is used to and takes a bit to get accustomed with. So its normal that right after the fact, there will be a bit of backlash from people who got used to one thing and are confronted with something unexpected. Immediate responses are not objective. One has to lean back, try to understand, get rid of subjective emotions and analyze calmly
But after trying to get accustomed to the new, refurbished interface for about a month, I have to say.
FA blew it.
Of all the features, browsing art galleries became much more cumbersome. It's no longer clear which image one is viewing, which way is forward which way is backward, or where in a gallery you are. The whole UI is confusing at first. I thought, OK, fine, probably takes a bit to get used to, but that's not the case. It stays confusing. It's just badly made and non intuitive.
Although there still is a preview of works in the vicinity of the currently viewed work in the preview section on the right. By excluding the current page while making it invisible where the current page is in relation to the others means you have to click somewhere else to go back and forth every single time. There is no shortcuts (arrow keys, arrow buttons) to go forward and backward one image at a time, which is especially annoying when browsing comics. The previews are too small to see details like page numbers, and one cannot recognize the currently displayed page, because it's not being displayed.
And if you reduce screensize - as part of the responsiveness (which technically would be a good thing) even that rudimentary means is disappearing completely. There is no reach "the next page", there is not even a link back to the users gallery. One has to use the browser "back" button, (At least that works. Usually) hope that the browser scrolls back to where it was on its own, then click the next gallery item.
Whoever came up with this design either:
1. must have never used the page as a user, nor any similar site, nor had any motivation to ever do so.
or
2. was simply incompetent and had no clue what they are doing.
If I was using FA more, I'd consider reviving good old greasemonkey to bring usability back.
Did anyone already do that? Are there any working greasemoneky scripts you can recommend?
But after trying to get accustomed to the new, refurbished interface for about a month, I have to say.
FA blew it.
Of all the features, browsing art galleries became much more cumbersome. It's no longer clear which image one is viewing, which way is forward which way is backward, or where in a gallery you are. The whole UI is confusing at first. I thought, OK, fine, probably takes a bit to get used to, but that's not the case. It stays confusing. It's just badly made and non intuitive.
Although there still is a preview of works in the vicinity of the currently viewed work in the preview section on the right. By excluding the current page while making it invisible where the current page is in relation to the others means you have to click somewhere else to go back and forth every single time. There is no shortcuts (arrow keys, arrow buttons) to go forward and backward one image at a time, which is especially annoying when browsing comics. The previews are too small to see details like page numbers, and one cannot recognize the currently displayed page, because it's not being displayed.
And if you reduce screensize - as part of the responsiveness (which technically would be a good thing) even that rudimentary means is disappearing completely. There is no reach "the next page", there is not even a link back to the users gallery. One has to use the browser "back" button, (At least that works. Usually) hope that the browser scrolls back to where it was on its own, then click the next gallery item.
Whoever came up with this design either:
1. must have never used the page as a user, nor any similar site, nor had any motivation to ever do so.
or
2. was simply incompetent and had no clue what they are doing.
If I was using FA more, I'd consider reviving good old greasemonkey to bring usability back.
Did anyone already do that? Are there any working greasemoneky scripts you can recommend?
Before it's quite clear - image to the left of the current one is more recent, image to the right is less recent. They could have kept this in their new sidebar system by having image above be more recent, etc. But no.
I mean, they can quite easily fix this, they just have to admit their current implementation is bad. Good luck with that.
But the real reason I don't use the new design is you cannot preview the description of a new submission from your submission notifications without opening a submission itself. You can currently do it by clicking the lower right icon. Completely gone in the new system.
I may get to it sooner or later while rewriting my hotkey script.
And where the heck is my sidebar of gallery folders??
I'm also annoyed that they apparently removed emojis? like..... completely? I'm not sure because I can't remember the commands for making them by hand but the emoji sidebar is just gone.
But I could eventually forgive all that if it wasn't so impossible to be on dark mode for extended periods of time without getting an optical migraine from the really harsh contrasts. I tried switching from dark to that dark aurora one but the change is so absurdly minimal it may as well not even be there. All you get is a minor color swoosh in the background that feels like its maybe at 10% opacity. Wow. I can't even see that. Thank you for absolutely nothing.