User Profile and Direct Messaging Improvements Beta

[Xaliber13]

Hi, is there still no way to track our comments in the main Nexus site?

As the notification is unable to notify us replies to comment chains we replied to (unless we're the original poster), it's really hard to track convo. At least in the past we can look at our forum profiles to track comments; now we can't.

[zloybelka]

4 hours ago, NexBeth said:

If the actual date is of interest, you can place you curser on it and the date will be revealed.

Still kinda supports my position. More unnecessary movements.

[DavidJCobb]

Some feedback, before I switch back to classic:

I like the new header typeface a lot more than what's in classic.

250px-tall banner ads are massive -- literally an entire quarter of my screen height on a 1920x1080px desktop. Both the classic and beta layouts have a 250px banner ad on the profile page above the meaningful content; however, the classic profile page has a more compact layout. In both layouts, the profile content ends up nearly a third of the way down the screen at initial load. In the classic layout, the meaningful profile content (i.e. the tabbed view) is halfway down the screen, which isn't great. The beta layout is significantly worse due to its bulk, however, with the meaningful content being two-thirds down the screen and the "About Me" text being almost entirely below the fold. This is really bad.

Bold text in the About Me section has its font color forced to white. If you use bolded hyperlinks with the bolding inside the hyperlink markup (rather than vice versa), then it becomes impossible to tell that the hyperlinks are hyperlinks. The offending selector is .prose-lexical :where(strong):not(:where([class~="not-prose"] *)) and I don't know why it exists. This isn't a hypothetical problem, either; it affected my migrated About Me text when I switched to the beta.

• Repro (markdown): [**Cobb Positioner**](http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/74768)

The mod list in the beta layout handles long mod names very poorly compared to the classic layout. The classic layout is willing to let the title consume more space and leave less space to the description; the new layout is rigid. Compare the images below (classic on the left); test-case is this mod which has a joke name.

In both layouts, the mod list consists of one "card" per mod. In the classic layout, only the mod name, mod image, and specific (colored) pieces of text were hyperlinks. In the new layout, the entire card acts as a hyperlink to the mod, making it impossible to (via the card) jump to the mod's containing category, select and copy text from the title or blurb, or click on the author's name within the card to go to their profile. In particular, breaking text selection is annoying.

The media list on our profiles has a similar issue to the mod list with respect to media titles; however, it's even worse, with even relatively short media titles being truncated. Compare the classic layout to the new one:

I know that "just use the old design" is a bit of a cliche, but I can think of no better solution in this case. At the very least, the title should have a row to itself as it does in the old design, without having to compete with the stats or the profile picture for space. Were I in charge of revising this design, I might also show the profile picture in miniature to the left of the author name, getting rid of the word "by."

Infinite scrolling is a pox on our society and it should be sent back to Hell where it belongs. In my experience, pagination is generally far better for usability (you can more easily know where you are within a list, and how large that list is) and appreciably better for performance (especially in memory-constrained environments like mobile browsers, where a theoretically unbounded amount of content being shoved into the DOM seldom ever ends well). Please rethink switching to infinite scrolling.

I greatly, greatly dislike that the default sort order for profile content is the same as whatever our prefs are set to for searches. When I'm searching for other people's content, I generally want to find the most popular stuff first. However, if I'm looking at a specific content creator's works, I generally want to see it in reverse-chronological order -- see their latest and greatest stuff first, rather than legacy content. Additionally, I as an author would want someone to see my newest stuff first, rather than the same handful of popular mods, if they're specifically going to my profile to look for my content.

I think it's user-friendly for profile URLs to contain usernames rather than user IDs. However, usernames feel more brittle, given that people are allowed to change theirs. I like that ID-based URLs still work, and at minimum I would appreciate having a reliable way to get an ID-based URL through the site UI, perhaps with a "Permalink" button or something similar.

If you don't disclose your location on your profile, it displays as "Not Set." I think it'd be cleaner to avoid displaying it at all.

Every page load seems to request a 930KB JSON payload (compressed to 145KB during transfer) containing the information for every single game that NexusMods supports -- about six thousand of them. This seems wasteful right off rip, but it doesn't get better when you actually look at the data. Each game in this payload contains:

• Name.
• Name but in lowercase. Why? There is literally a JavaScript function that does this for you client-side, and it takes, like, two picoseconds to execute.
• Forum section URL. Games that have no dedicated forum section still have this field and use the forum homepage as its value, so I'd ballpark it at around five or six thousand copies of the forum home page URL in this JSON payload.
• The URL for the game's section on NexusMods. As far as I know, game URLs follow the same format (nexusmods.com/gamename), so that's around six thousand redundant copies of the Nexus's domain name in this JSON data just for this one field.
• The subdomain name for the game's section on NexusMods: every game is accessible as gamename.nexusmods.com which I believe is done for backwards-compatibility. I haven't checked all six thousand games but glancing at a few, it seems like the subdomain name and the pathname are the same, so this is yet more redundant data.
• Basic stats: number of files; number of collections; date the game was added to the site; that kind of thing.

At least this mammoth JSON payload gets cached so it only wastes tons of bandwidth for your first-ever pageload, but this is still ridiculous.

[Iluviel]

8 hours ago, DavidJCobb said:

Some feedback, before I switch back to classic:

I like the new header typeface a lot more than what's in classic.

250px-tall banner ads are massive -- literally an entire quarter of my screen height on a 1920x1080px desktop. Both the classic and beta layouts have a 250px banner ad on the profile page above the meaningful content; however, the classic profile page has a more compact layout. In both layouts, the profile content ends up nearly a third of the way down the screen at initial load. In the classic layout, the meaningful profile content (i.e. the tabbed view) is halfway down the screen, which isn't great. The beta layout is significantly worse due to its bulk, however, with the meaningful content being two-thirds down the screen and the "About Me" text being almost entirely below the fold. This is really bad.

Bold text in the About Me section has its font color forced to white. If you use bolded hyperlinks with the bolding inside the hyperlink markup (rather than vice versa), then it becomes impossible to tell that the hyperlinks are hyperlinks. The offending selector is .prose-lexical :where(strong):not(:where([class~="not-prose"] *)) and I don't know why it exists. This isn't a hypothetical problem, either; it affected my migrated About Me text when I switched to the beta.

• Repro (markdown): [**Cobb Positioner**](http://www.nexusmods.com/skyrim/mods/74768)

The mod list in the beta layout handles long mod names very poorly compared to the classic layout. The classic layout is willing to let the title consume more space and leave less space to the description; the new layout is rigid. Compare the images below (classic on the left); test-case is this mod which has a joke name.

In both layouts, the mod list consists of one "card" per mod. In the classic layout, only the mod name, mod image, and specific (colored) pieces of text were hyperlinks. In the new layout, the entire card acts as a hyperlink to the mod, making it impossible to (via the card) jump to the mod's containing category, select and copy text from the title or blurb, or click on the author's name within the card to go to their profile. In particular, breaking text selection is annoying.

The media list on our profiles has a similar issue to the mod list with respect to media titles; however, it's even worse, with even relatively short media titles being truncated. Compare the classic layout to the new one:

I know that "just use the old design" is a bit of a cliche, but I can think of no better solution in this case. At the very least, the title should have a row to itself as it does in the old design, without having to compete with the stats or the profile picture for space. Were I in charge of revising this design, I might also show the profile picture in miniature to the left of the author name, getting rid of the word "by."

Infinite scrolling is a pox on our society and it should be sent back to Hell where it belongs. In my experience, pagination is generally far better for usability (you can more easily know where you are within a list, and how large that list is) and appreciably better for performance (especially in memory-constrained environments like mobile browsers, where a theoretically unbounded amount of content being shoved into the DOM seldom ever ends well). Please rethink switching to infinite scrolling.

I greatly, greatly dislike that the default sort order for profile content is the same as whatever our prefs are set to for searches. When I'm searching for other people's content, I generally want to find the most popular stuff first. However, if I'm looking at a specific content creator's works, I generally want to see it in reverse-chronological order -- see their latest and greatest stuff first, rather than legacy content. Additionally, I as an author would want someone to see my newest stuff first, rather than the same handful of popular mods, if they're specifically going to my profile to look for my content.

I think it's user-friendly for profile URLs to contain usernames rather than user IDs. However, usernames feel more brittle, given that people are allowed to change theirs. I like that ID-based URLs still work, and at minimum I would appreciate having a reliable way to get an ID-based URL through the site UI, perhaps with a "Permalink" button or something similar.

If you don't disclose your location on your profile, it displays as "Not Set." I think it'd be cleaner to avoid displaying it at all.

Every page load seems to request a 930KB JSON payload (compressed to 145KB during transfer) containing the information for every single game that NexusMods supports -- about six thousand of them. This seems wasteful right off rip, but it doesn't get better when you actually look at the data. Each game in this payload contains:

• Name.
• Name but in lowercase. Why? There is literally a JavaScript function that does this for you client-side, and it takes, like, two picoseconds to execute.
• Forum section URL. Games that have no dedicated forum section still have this field and use the forum homepage as its value, so I'd ballpark it at around five or six thousand copies of the forum home page URL in this JSON payload.
• The URL for the game's section on NexusMods. As far as I know, game URLs follow the same format (nexusmods.com/gamename), so that's around six thousand redundant copies of the Nexus's domain name in this JSON data just for this one field.
• The subdomain name for the game's section on NexusMods: every game is accessible as gamename.nexusmods.com which I believe is done for backwards-compatibility. I haven't checked all six thousand games but glancing at a few, it seems like the subdomain name and the pathname are the same, so this is yet more redundant data.
• Basic stats: number of files; number of collections; date the game was added to the site; that kind of thing.

At least this mammoth JSON payload gets cached so it only wastes tons of bandwidth for your first-ever pageload, but this is still ridiculous.

I can address a few of these points:

• Advertising contributes to keeping the platform running. I'm not saying it's an intentional choice that more space is given to ads in the new design (its not, but is a by-product of making the page more accessible and user-friendly), but it's not a very high concern for us as advertising is part of how we keep the site running. 
• The issue you've raised about bold removing hyperlink colour formatting is a bug, we'll get this fixed.
• I'll speak to our Design team about potentially using more space for longer mod titles.
• I'll speak to our Design team about the links within cards, I believe this was an intentional choice though based on usage (most users don't click those links).
• Agreed on the media list, we're already working on changing this to match almost exactly your suggestion.
• I don't like infinite scrolling either. I am discussing this with the team to see what can be done, but can't guarantee it'll be changed back to page-based very soon.
• We'll remove the location icon/"Not Set" text if a user hasn't set it, thanks for pointing this out.
• I'll keep the user IDs in mind for when we work on updating our search pages, which will be in the near future.
• Thanks for questioning the JSON, I'll chat to your Frontend Devs about that.

[LenaWolfBravil]

Media files on the profile still display an ugly horizontal scrollbar ABOVE the images, see screenshot below. What's more, if I select "Recently added" from the sorting options and move that scrollbar left and right, the MODS count is reset to 0. They are not gone, I can click on "Mods" and see them, but the count is reset.

Overall, I can't say this layout is attractive the way it shows.

 

Edited April 9 by LenaWolfBravil

[AaronOfMpls]

53 minutes ago, LenaWolfBravil said:

Media files on the profile still display an ugly horizontal scrollbar ABOVE the images, see screenshot below.

I see, that space is probably just a tiny bit wide for your window size (~1130x675 on your 1200x675 screen).  I don't see one at my usual browser window size (1340x855) or my own full screen (1920x1080). 

Spoiler

 

[LenaWolfBravil]

1 hour ago, AaronOfMpls said:

I see, that space is probably just a tiny bit wide for your window size (~1130x675 on your 1200x675 screen).  I don't see one at my usual browser window size (1340x855) or my own full screen (1920x1080). 

  Reveal hidden contents

 

It may be my resolution on this laptop, or it may be magnification in Windows or font magnification in the browser. Whatever the reason, it would be better not to show the scrollbar but simply allow those buttons to overflow or even get cut off if need be. I am not the only one who uses large fonts.

[JustThatKing]

Updated:

10/04/2024:

• Mod download and update available states are now viewable on mod tiles. 
• Images in Mod tiles and Media have been updated with multiple design changes.
  • Non-standard aspect ratio images will now blur the unused space.
  • The placeholder image for mods with removed images has been updated to better fit the new design. 
• The profile will no longer display empty country information if it is has not been set.
• Content that is blocked in your Content Blocking settings will now display a notice saying that the mod will not appear in searches. This is the same behaviour as the current profile page. 
• Link text in the 'About' section should now remain orange when formatted (e.g. by making it bold).
• Date/Times are now consistent across the profile page and on mod tiles.

 

27/03/2024:

• Many improvements to sorting options. This will now filter by "Date Published" by default or whatever you have changed you settings to in Site Preferences. 
• You can now report User Profiles for violating the Terms of Service. 
• The Donate button will now display a modal popup when donating to a user via PayPal, to let you know how the system works.

 

20/03/2024:

• The game filtering dropdown for Mods, Collections and Media has been implemented. The game order in the dropdown is in descending order of number of mods/media per game. 
• Fixed a bug with the 'Media' section that's causing videos not to display.

 

13/03/2024:

The page has been redesigned to show more content, especially on the Mods, Collections and Media tabs. All profile details and "user actions" (track, message, etc) are now at the top of the page. 

Below is some of the feedback we have received and our responses to those concerns. We hope the new user profile design improves these things for you.

• Avatar size being stretched from 100x100 to 180x180, due to this they're super blurry.
  • We've reduced the size to 100x100 for now.
• Specific dates are preferred on mod tiles (e.g. 29/01/2024)
  • We've changed the 'Uploaded' date to be more specific. The 'Last Updated' date still displays as "2 Days Ago" as we think that's easier to read.
• Some mod tiles have lots of empty space between the Mod name and the details. Category, author name, etc is bound to the bottom of the mod card instead of the top, which is how it was done before and is done on most sites. 
  • Mod tile content is now bound to the top of the tile, reducing empty space.
• Usernames on mod tiles are upper case, but they should be case sensitive.
  • We've fixed this.
• Mods are too big now and instead of showing 5 mod tiles per line we're down to 3 tiles per line.
  • Mod tiles are now smaller and we're showing 4 per row. 
• The authors column takes up too much space (which could be used to display more mods, collections or media) and shouldn't scroll down with content.
  • The authors column has been removed and any content it contained is now in the header/top part of the page.
• Longer usernames are being pushed onto two lines.
  • This is no longer a problem with the updated design.
• Page "doesn't scale well" to various "extreme" ends of display resolution. Either too much content is removed for scaling or too much "negative space" left on high res displays.
  • The new page design addresses this and more content is now show on larger displays.

 

Additional changes:

• The page will no longer automatically scroll when changing tabs

 

11/03/2024:

• Mod Tile summaries will no longer incorrectly display HTML from mod page descriptions. 
• '"Last Active" and "Activity" sections will now respect your user settings. These settings can be found here. 
• All staff and moderator roles should now display on User Profiles, ensuring there is no confusion as to who is Nexus Mods staff and who is not. 
• Collections success ratings are no longer cut-off.

 

07/03/2024:

• Profile URLs now use Username rather than userID to help with search engine discoverability. E.g. https://next.nexusmods.com/profile/JustThatKing/about-me instead of https://next.nexusmods.com/users/3194960 
• We improved the page data for search results/social links
• Fixed the problem with iOS/Safari, where mods didn't display properly
• Improved 'Last Active' formatting by replacing "at" with "on" and adding an on-hover timestamp. 

[JustThatKing]

On 4/9/2024 at 11:49 AM, LenaWolfBravil said:

Media files on the profile still display an ugly horizontal scrollbar ABOVE the images, see screenshot below. What's more, if I select "Recently added" from the sorting options and move that scrollbar left and right, the MODS count is reset to 0. They are not gone, I can click on "Mods" and see them, but the count is reset.

Overall, I can't say this layout is attractive the way it shows.

 

We are aware of these scrollbar issues on certain resolutions and are looking to fix those errors by updating the designs. 

[HollownessDevoured]

8 hours ago, JustThatKing said:

Updated:

10/04/2024:

• Images in Mod tiles and Media have been updated with multiple design changes.
  • Non-standard aspect ratio images will now blur the unused space.
  • The placeholder image for mods with removed images has been updated to better fit the new design. 

The new placeholder images are a better contrast/match.

But the primary images still look tacky as heck without the crop scaling like classic. Sorry this is still a downgrade to me and I doubt I am the only one who will think this—it just will be more noticeable on mass. When you expand this to search/mod lists for games all the mismatched image sizes will drastically lower the professional look of the site (the blur is not exactly a fix nor makes it look much better), especially from those now inactive here to not correct the look of their primary images—who originally scaled their images to fit the original image scaling setup. I'll have to re-crop all images and I have no idea how to ratio it out to not look like carp . Previous scaling was much easier for me to work with setting up primary images. I only have just over a dozen primary images; I can only imagine those who have countless mods they have to rescale to fix this. But I guess it looks great on mobile which is clearly your priority.

Not that the dev team seems to care about this, since eye strain that causes actual discomfort to a range of people providing feedback means nothing to them; so why care over image continuity and visual harmony in display. 

Edited April 10 by HollownessDevoured
grammar fixes