User Profile and Direct Messaging Improvements Beta

[bdip]

Glad to see the return of the downloaded/updated indicators, though not so much in their current form. They're much more difficult to notice at a quick glance, especially on images like the ones attached. They look nice enough on their own but they could definitely benefit from some color or something for improved discovery and visibility. Maybe an orange outline around the indicator?

 

 

   -vs-  

[bdip]

A quick and dirty mockup (wasn't able to add to the previous post.) I'm not a designer though, so this could probably look better while retaining the improved readability.

While the aesthetic of the new site design is sleek and modern looking, I think it sacrifices some readability in places compared to the old design. I feel there are some relatively simple improvements that could be implemented to help.

 

[Chadonraz]

12 hours ago, bdip said:

They're much more difficult to notice at a quick glance, especially on images like the ones attached. They look nice enough on their own but they could definitely benefit from some color or something for improved discovery and visibility. Maybe an orange outline around the indicator?

I agree regarding the 'Downloaded' indicator.

If colour or other highlighting isn't possible, the icon should at least be larger. I didn't even spot it until I looked at the "classic" version screenshots to check where it's located on those.

(I don't mind the 'updated' or 'uploaded' indicators; I find them clear and sufficient.)

[JustThatKing]

Updated:

11/04/2024:

• We have taken the difficult decision to remove Activity Feeds from User Profiles. The feature needs a rework from the ground up, it was causing major performance issues which we did not find acceptable (over 1 minute load times were very possible). These will not be returning in the short term. We may consider reimplementing this feature in the future. 
• Media tiles are redesigned to give more space to the image text, moving the counts and uploader onto their own line
• Images moved to the Supporter Share now update on profiles correctly
• We are looking into an issue where deleted images are still showing in the media tab.

 

Previous Changes:

 

Spoiler

10/04/2024:

• Mod download and update available states are now viewable on mod tiles. (We are looking at making these stand out more 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]

14 hours ago, bdip said:

Glad to see the return of the downloaded/updated indicators, though not so much in their current form. They're much more difficult to notice at a quick glance, especially on images like the ones attached. They look nice enough on their own but they could definitely benefit from some color or something for improved discovery and visibility. Maybe an orange outline around the indicator?

 

 

   -vs-  

1 hour ago, Chadonraz said:

I agree regarding the 'Downloaded' indicator.

If colour or other highlighting isn't possible, the icon should at least be larger. I didn't even spot it until I looked at the "classic" version screenshots to check where it's located on those.

(I don't mind the 'updated' or 'uploaded' indicators; I find them clear and sufficient.)

We agree that the downloaded and update available indicators could be made clearer. We are working on this and should have an update for that soon. 

16 hours ago, HollownessDevoured said:

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. 

Thanks for the feedback it will be passed on to the design team.

[menzagitat]

I like the style and background gradient colors.

Yellow text on orange buttons are difficult to read.

A lot of empty space before the profile informations, forcing me to scroll down to see them.

I'm using Firefox.

Switching back to classic for the moment, I'll have a look again later and may post additional feedback.

Edited April 11 by menzagitat

[polymorphic2346]

Hello, the scaling works much better now thank you.

I still have concerns about the total contrast in some of the body text (in this case, white or near-white on black or near-black). While this works well for headers, total contrast actually impairs legibility in body text and causes eye strain especially for people with common conditions such as astigmatism ( halation, which can lead to severe headaches). Total contrast via white text can also make a busy, challenging UI such as nexusmods almost impossible to read for dyslexics, due to the increased visual chaos caused by light from the text bleeding into the surrounding letters.

If there has been some mistake and my profile is now suddenly using subheaders, hence the white text, please disregard; but if it's not, please do adjust the contrast so I and many others can read abouts.

[HollownessDevoured]

2 hours ago, polymorphic2346 said:

I still have concerns about the total contrast in some of the body text (in this case, white or near-white on black or near-black). While this works well for headers, total contrast actually impairs legibility in body text and causes eye strain especially for people with common conditions such as astigmatism ( halation, which can lead to severe headaches). Total contrast via white text can also make a busy, challenging UI such as nexusmods almost impossible to read for dyslexics, due to the increased visual chaos caused by light from the text bleeding into the surrounding letters.

So far it looks like they don't care the new colour scheme with the high contrast is causing eye strain in some, just like the forums new darker theme (but for now we can revert but they said it won't stay). I very much liked your compromise grey example earlier in the thread, darker than classic but still easy on the eyes.

Some of us are being very vocal and insistent that this is something they need to reconsider; it is just too high of contrast. There are about 6 top concerns on this thread and one is the high contrast/eye hurt causing colour theme. So far not enough people have complained but I'd say about roughly 9% of the feedback in this thread agree the high contrast is either too much and/or eye strain/hurt causing. But I have a feeling when this theme moves to mod pages/articles (or full on forced) it will increase—since mod pages/articles are text heavy. I personally spend hours on mod pages/articles editing, I simply will no longer be able to do that under this current beta colour theme.

[Cheerybelle]

If the current beta version of the profiles was implemented in its current state, I would be fine with it, honestly.
I have no major complaints. I like the new and re-implemented sorting options, and the mods tab being 4-per-row instead of 5-per-row is tolerable ...and I can't say I'm all that torn-up about My Games being missing from the Games tab. Yeah.
So, yeah; I like it.
The only minor thing is that I wish the vertical space between the profile tabs and the last active & joined dates was made smaller. Like, 27px (down from 56px), give or take a few px.
I personally think that would make it look much nicer without substantially compromising readability, usability, and intuitiveness... but I'm not an expert on web design, so I may be wrong. Give it some consideration, though.

Edited April 12 by Cheerybelle

[polymorphic2346]

On 4/11/2024 at 1:35 PM, HollownessDevoured said:

So far it looks like they don't care the new colour scheme with the high contrast is causing eye strain in some, just like the forums new darker theme (but for now we can revert but they said it won't stay). I very much liked your compromise grey example earlier in the thread, darker than classic but still easy on the eyes.

Some of us are being very vocal and insistent that this is something they need to reconsider; it is just too high of contrast.

Oh thanks for the link! That text is too near fff-appearing on one of my monitors, but not another, though it is too high on all of them for me to read. It shouldn't be so high as to look totaI on my most accurate monitor. I do hope they tweak it in further testing for consistency.

- Edit to add, the text in "about" on mod authors page is in fact white. Screenshot:

Unless I'm misreading this @mfPixel? The color of this text changed when I poked .prose-lexical in inspector anyway. Even a tiny nudge to #FEFE or #FCFC would keep your contrast high while providing more legibility for the rest of us--especially on the collections page where walls of this text also appear. I can't read those either. -end edit.

I agree the contast was too low on legacy for many visual impairments, but the industry lurch toward accommodating one disabled subset at the cost of another results in the same problem. See discord lol.  W3.org has good, and I believe free, industry guidance on these issues, including on how to compromise to maintain basic accessibility for the widest number of users. It's possible, though fussy, to have both an aesthetic and widely accessible UI. Please keep at it with the palette

Edit to add a link to WAI's luminance guidance.

Edit to add another one for luminosity ratio: https://juicystudio.com/services/luminositycontrastratio.php and to plead for backend support for plug-ins such as darkreader that allow us to adjust these things at the user level if we are not provided such a tool natively, and if further edits to the palette are impossible. I find darkreader helps some sites, but it results in horrendous performance issues in many and outright breaks others. And, unlike for those who need universal high contast, native support in OSs for lower contast is still widely lacking. We need those external tools if needs can't be met at a design level. Cheers!