New Nexus Mods design launched

[fireundubh]

In response to post #54895693. #54896418, #54898518, #54900213, #54900778, #54901488, #54902628, #54905558, #54916983, #54925898 are all replies on the same post.

bigd4450 wrote: I felt so uncomfortable with the new Nexus. It just seems to be to "fiddly", push this button to push this button to push this button to find what your looking for. Old way, click here to see more and scroll, click to the next page when you get to the bottom. I'm kind of an old guy and I see the trend all over the place to get more info and more options out in front of "the people". But, that being said, I always tried to live my life the way I was taught, the KISS principle, Keep It Simple Stupid. And boy do we seem to be veering away from that idea.

fireundubh wrote: "push this button to push this button to push this button to find what your looking for"

What are you talking about? If anything, the navigation path is actually shorter than the old site.

bigd4450 wrote: What do I mean? Well I go into Skyrim SE want to see what's going on with mods. Well, this page just shows me todays mods. Wait a minute, I can see todays, this weeks, popular (30 days), popular (all time), trending, etc. I just want to see some mods, scroll to the top, okay a drop down, there's mods. What am I looking for, a ton of choices, there it is "Browse all mods". Oh wait, do I want to sort them by time, when they were published, or maybe description, nope, just want to look at some mods, losing interest, too much B.S. going on.

Old way, pull up Skyrim SE, oh, there's recent mods, do I want to see more, sure. Click here to see more, scroll to the bottom, page 2, continue, pretty easy.

I realize that what ever I say here will make no difference what so ever. It's just a trend that I see and really don't like, buttons cluttering up pages, spend more time messing with the buttons, (and half don't work) instead of just going where your trying to go. Just my humble opinion, and opinions are like ----- we've all got one.

Zaldiir wrote: Clicking the "Explore all mods" on the front page gives you the same list that you had in the old design. With the new design, the things that were hidden away are now more visible and easier to use, making life easier for those who want to get more refined results. Life for those who follow the KISS principle remains the same; press a button to see all recent mods, scroll down, page 2, continue.

fireundubh wrote:

Oh wait' date=' do I want to sort them by time, when they were published, or maybe description [...'] too much B.S. going on.

Sounds like a personal problem.

buttons cluttering up pages' date=' spend more time messing with the buttons, (and half don't work)[/quote']
Not really. On the new site, if you click "Mods" or "Browse all mods" at the top, you get a better layout of the old "Files" or "Browse files" page, which, by the way, has a sidebar with a long advanced search form, of which the most used options are now simple dropdowns in the new layout. Talk about buttons...

Compare:

- Browse all mods (New) vs. Browse files (Old)
- Recent activity (New) vs. New recently (Old)
- Top files (New) vs. Top files (Old)
- Mods of the month (New) vs. Files of the month (Old)
- View all images (New) vs. View images (Old)

Anyone objective can plainly see the new layouts are less cluttered, easier to navigate, and easier to read.

axonis wrote:

- Top files (New) vs. Top files (Old)

Anyone objective can plainly see the new layouts are less cluttered, easier to navigate, and easier to read.

Easier to read ?

I can read USSEP's description in the old design, but not so in the new design because most of the text is faded to make way for the image. This mod however, like many other mods, cannot be represented by an image.

fireundubh wrote:

I can read USSEP's description in the old design' date=' but not so in the new design because most of the text is faded to make way for the image.[/quote']
By easier to read, I was referring to the font size. On a 27" monitor at 1920x1080, I shouldn't feel like I have to squint.

And, personally, I don't need a wall of text to determine whether I want to learn more about a mod.

The faded text is a good thing and acts as an "effective" character limit, hopefully encouraging modders to be concise and not include extraneous details.

The fixed-size result tiles also prevent modders from abusing the length of the brief description text to expand the size of their tiles and unfairly draw your attention away from other mods. As a modder, I see this as something that helps level the playing field.

axonis wrote: Comparing a 54-word paragraph to a wall of text is exactly why mod authors have such a serious problem with users who refuse to read instructions.

Not every mod has a graphical function. I'd rather trade that huge thumbnail for text; losing the "oh no, wall of text" users would be a most welcome bonus.

fireundubh wrote:

Comparing a 54-word paragraph to a wall of text is exactly why mod authors have such a serious problem with users who refuse to read instructions.

You do realize who you're talking to, right?

axonis wrote: No I don't and I don't see how this is relevant. There's nothing personal in my argument; I just think that your statement about mod descriptions is wrong and I argued against it.

I am a mod author. I had around 60 mods on the Nexus until I moved over to GitHub last year or the year before then. You don't have to tell me about user reading problems. I fully understand the background of your argument, but I still disagree with you and would prefer even shorter short descriptions.

Edited November 3, 2017 by fireundubh

[PotatoExecutable]

with my slow ass internet it takes two minutes to load the page :(

I like the new redesign

[Norr]

I would be happy if they kept the old format (width x height) for the title image and ads at least. As it is now, mods with a tagline in their title image get cut off ("Loot got you down?" -> "Loot got", it sends a very different message) and the adspace now takes up a third of the screen.

[axonis]

In response to post #54895693. #54896418, #54898518, #54900213, #54900778, #54901488, #54902628, #54905558, #54916983, #54925898, #54925983 are all replies on the same post.

bigd4450 wrote: I felt so uncomfortable with the new Nexus. It just seems to be to "fiddly", push this button to push this button to push this button to find what your looking for. Old way, click here to see more and scroll, click to the next page when you get to the bottom. I'm kind of an old guy and I see the trend all over the place to get more info and more options out in front of "the people". But, that being said, I always tried to live my life the way I was taught, the KISS principle, Keep It Simple Stupid. And boy do we seem to be veering away from that idea.

fireundubh wrote: "push this button to push this button to push this button to find what your looking for"

What are you talking about? If anything, the navigation path is actually shorter than the old site.

bigd4450 wrote: What do I mean? Well I go into Skyrim SE want to see what's going on with mods. Well, this page just shows me todays mods. Wait a minute, I can see todays, this weeks, popular (30 days), popular (all time), trending, etc. I just want to see some mods, scroll to the top, okay a drop down, there's mods. What am I looking for, a ton of choices, there it is "Browse all mods". Oh wait, do I want to sort them by time, when they were published, or maybe description, nope, just want to look at some mods, losing interest, too much B.S. going on.

Old way, pull up Skyrim SE, oh, there's recent mods, do I want to see more, sure. Click here to see more, scroll to the bottom, page 2, continue, pretty easy.

I realize that what ever I say here will make no difference what so ever. It's just a trend that I see and really don't like, buttons cluttering up pages, spend more time messing with the buttons, (and half don't work) instead of just going where your trying to go. Just my humble opinion, and opinions are like ----- we've all got one.

Zaldiir wrote: Clicking the "Explore all mods" on the front page gives you the same list that you had in the old design. With the new design, the things that were hidden away are now more visible and easier to use, making life easier for those who want to get more refined results. Life for those who follow the KISS principle remains the same; press a button to see all recent mods, scroll down, page 2, continue.

fireundubh wrote:

Oh wait' date=' do I want to sort them by time, when they were published, or maybe description [...'] too much B.S. going on.

Sounds like a personal problem.

buttons cluttering up pages' date=' spend more time messing with the buttons, (and half don't work)[/quote']
Not really. On the new site, if you click "Mods" or "Browse all mods" at the top, you get a better layout of the old "Files" or "Browse files" page, which, by the way, has a sidebar with a long advanced search form, of which the most used options are now simple dropdowns in the new layout. Talk about buttons...

Compare:

- Browse all mods (New) vs. Browse files (Old)
- Recent activity (New) vs. New recently (Old)
- Top files (New) vs. Top files (Old)
- Mods of the month (New) vs. Files of the month (Old)
- View all images (New) vs. View images (Old)

Anyone objective can plainly see the new layouts are less cluttered, easier to navigate, and easier to read.

axonis wrote:

- Top files (New) vs. Top files (Old)

Anyone objective can plainly see the new layouts are less cluttered, easier to navigate, and easier to read.

Easier to read ?

I can read USSEP's description in the old design, but not so in the new design because most of the text is faded to make way for the image. This mod however, like many other mods, cannot be represented by an image.

fireundubh wrote:

I can read USSEP's description in the old design' date=' but not so in the new design because most of the text is faded to make way for the image.[/quote']
By easier to read, I was referring to the font size. On a 27" monitor at 1920x1080, I shouldn't feel like I have to squint.

And, personally, I don't need a wall of text to determine whether I want to learn more about a mod.

The faded text is a good thing and acts as an "effective" character limit, hopefully encouraging modders to be concise and not include extraneous details.

The fixed-size result tiles also prevent modders from abusing the length of the brief description text to expand the size of their tiles and unfairly draw your attention away from other mods. As a modder, I see this as something that helps level the playing field.

axonis wrote: Comparing a 54-word paragraph to a wall of text is exactly why mod authors have such a serious problem with users who refuse to read instructions.

Not every mod has a graphical function. I'd rather trade that huge thumbnail for text; losing the "oh no, wall of text" users would be a most welcome bonus.

fireundubh wrote:

Comparing a 54-word paragraph to a wall of text is exactly why mod authors have such a serious problem with users who refuse to read instructions.

You do realize who you're talking to, right?

axonis wrote: No I don't and I don't see how this is relevant. There's nothing personal in my argument; I just think that your statement about mod descriptions is wrong and I argued against it.

fireundubh wrote: I am a mod author. I had around 60 mods on the Nexus until I moved over to GitHub last year or the year before then. You don't have to tell me about user reading problems. I fully understand the background of your argument, but I still disagree with you and would prefer even shorter short descriptions.

Very well we can disagree on that, but asking mod authors to rewrite their descriptions is not simply a redesign but a reorganization. We already have this issue with the mod's background bar which has to be remade but this is acceptable as part of a redesign.

[ILNAZMAKSIM]

I hope redesign will be on a Nexus Mod Manager not only on website.

[DeathDude181]

In response to post #54928093.

ILNAZMAKSIM wrote: I hope redesign will be on a Nexus Mod Manager not only on website.

Agree, and with loads of Mods who we can mod

[fireundubh]

I hope you guys do an optimization pass.

 

Both mod thumbnails and news thumbnails aren't optimized. Some thumbnails come in at between 0.3 and 0.5 MB each. PNGs are the worst offenders. The front page typically weighs in at 6+ MB. Yikes!

 

There's a single JavaScript file named "BBoC-{timestamp}.js" that's a whopping 363 KB, despite having been minified. This file should be split into more files and each file loaded only when needed.

 

Finally, forums.nexusmods.com has always been slow and now impacts the main site. Loading my avatar for the header menu took 852 ms! On this comments page, each forums-hosted avatar and emoticon loaded in 500-900 ms.

 

Browser caching helps, of course, but you can't really count on caching to be enabled or not cleared. Enabled, the slow loading reported by users in these comments generally occurs on a first visit. Not a great first impression.

 

There was a discussion about mobile-friendliness, but, combined, none of that is friendly to anyone.

Edited November 3, 2017 by fireundubh

[ozoak]

 

In response to post #54924528.

 

 

 

AbobosFist wrote: Visually, the new design is serviceable and I can see a few perks to it, but limiting non-premium members to only 20 mods per page while browsing a page is horrid compared to the old designs 30. It shouldn't be a feature just for premium members. If you want to make this design accessible for users, this is NOT the way to do it. It just comes across as greedy for what is a very basic option.

Why do you need to see more than 20 mods per page?

 

While a "very basic option" on the frontend, every time you ask for 20, 30, 50, or 100 mods per page, you're executing queries for each mod—unless they're using a more sophisticated solution. Multiply those queries by the number of active users on any day, and you have an astronomical number of queries being executed. These "per page" options can get very expensive on large sites, especially when those queries ultimately serve images and other data to users.

 

Just as an oversimplified example:

 

- 13,597,383 users executing 20 queries per day equals 271,947,660 queries.

- 13,597,383 users executing 30 queries per day equals 407,921,490 queries.

- 30 queries per day per user produces 1.5 times more cumulative queries.

 

So, a reduction of just 10 queries per day per user represents huge savings.

 

Reducing the number of queries overall saves the Nexus a good sum of money, which is used to keep this platform operational. In addition, reducing queries reduces the traffic load on the database and other backend services, which improves overall performance for more users. It's perfectly fair that only users who pay up can use more of the platform's resources, and I'd bet that the vast majority of users don't need to see 30 mods per page, let alone 20.

 

 

I'm neither a fan nor a detractor of the new site design, though admittedly I haven't spent a lot of time with it.

But I'm going to be that guy: query and results are two different things.

I assume you mean results when you say query, because technically speaking 5 single queries each returning 20 results will consume more data and more processing power than a single query returning 100 results. Just sayin' :wink:

 

But ultimately, who cares. If people want more than 20 results they'll just click 'next page' or 'view more' or whatever the page indicates to get to the next set of results, wont they? The only time I use a returned results customisation to show many more on a single page is when I'm looking for something very specific and need to quickly skim through dozens, or hundreds, of results to spot it. If the search engine improves enough that kind of behaviour becomes redundant and then your argument towards cost saving on processing power wins :smile: In other words, I kind of agree with you, but results not query :tongue:

 

What really gets me about the new site:

* HOT MODS and then More Hot Mods on a game landing page - but each only shows 1 mod? It's not a list of top-10 you can click through or something similar?

[not to mention, just an observation over the past 6 months or so: 'hot mods' becomes seriously devalued once new mod innovation drops off, as 'hot' appears to be assigned to many new but infrequently downloaded mods. I think the 'hot mods' algorithm needs some tweaking to avoid rewarding new popular crap versus actual quality.]

 

* If I've selected a game the navigation bar indicates "Game: <game title>" even after I've clicked through to see, for example, "Popular (all time)" for that game. But the navigation bar despite communicating that it will return to the <game title> page by merit of the navigation button saying "Game: <game title>" actually returns to the game selection page. The behaviour of the button runs counter to what it implies it will do. ed: Clicking on "Nexus Mods" in the navigation bar returns to the <game title> page.

** I would suggest that the navigation from the two navigation bar elements needs to be reversed. From the button that says "Game: <game title>" when clicked return to the <game title> landing page, and when we click on "Nexus Mods" return to the game selection page.

 

* And just because this is as good a place as any to make this remark about ads: The reason I don't whitelist sites in my adblocker is because despite the best intentions of a site, if they use a 3rd party to deliver profile driven ads then inevitably a poisoned ad is served up. Ads in the digital age s*** me because they are wildly different in selection than ads from the print media. In Print Media ads are selected and vetted (mostly) before being foisted upon readers. If Nexus wants me to whitelist them, all they have to do is move from using an Ad delivering company (which are, lets face it, all morons) to using sponsors where the displayed ads are vetted by Nexus (or at least have a much more significant confidence rating than ads served by algorithm). Just saying it here because opportunity to say just how s*** modern ads on web pages are never really comes up :wink:

 

* Observation: many mods have a title that is longer than the preview box will show, approximately 50% just looking at Skyrim SE, so displaying a balloon tip or some other visual alert to the full mod title would be very helpful (and consistent with common web design).

 

ed: ok, that's just weird. I literally just viewed a landing page with mods where 9 out of 20 the titles read "This is a mod that does something..." ending with ellipses on the description as it cut off on 1 line, I then just switched back to the tab with the mods listed and now all titles are extending over multiple lines and showing the full description eg: "This is a mod that does something to the the player home in town xyz." I did not imagine this, has it just changed? If the site hasn't been modified to behave better in this regard then it is an odd inconsistent behaviour that should be tracked down. Turns out I was looking at New Media (which doesn't show multi-line titles) and when I switched back tabs it moved back up to Mods (which do show full multi-line title).

 

* Corrected Observation: the "New Media" section cuts off the titles at 1 line ending in ellipses. To maintain site consistency, consider extending those titles across multiple lines just like you do for the mods.

Edited November 3, 2017 by ozoak

[indycurt]

Sorry, I'm one of those "if it isn't broke don't fix it" kind of people. However, I'm always willing to try new things. But I just can't get over the feeling that it looks way too much like the layout over at Bethesda's mod pages. I've always hated their site, and actually don't go there because of it. I've been exclusively Nexus and have never downloaded a mod from Bethesda's site. Your old format was always cozy and compact, your new site is full of large pics, large boxes, and looks garish. The giant boxes take up so much space that it creates way more scrolling to see less.

 

And speaking of "seeing". . .today is a perfect example. As you go to todays page for "New Mods Today", you scroll down and BAM a giant picture of giant boobs slaps you in the face with the mod "Zarya Character Preset". I'm not prudish, but I just find this offensive. Sorry, but I do. I always think that if I were a parent with younger kids, this would really piss me off if I walked in to see them looking at this. At least with the old page, all you got was a title. And yes, I understand that if you click on the title it would take you to these pics anyway, but with the new site you "see" it whether you intended to or not.

 

Go on haters, have at it.

[fireundubh]

In response to post #54929773.

ozoak wrote:

 

In response to post #54924528.

AbobosFist wrote: Visually, the new design is serviceable and I can see a few perks to it, but limiting non-premium members to only 20 mods per page while browsing a page is horrid compared to the old designs 30. It shouldn't be a feature just for premium members. If you want to make this design accessible for users, this is NOT the way to do it. It just comes across as greedy for what is a very basic option.

Why do you need to see more than 20 mods per page?

While a "very basic option" on the frontend, every time you ask for 20, 30, 50, or 100 mods per page, you're executing queries for each mod—unless they're using a more sophisticated solution. Multiply those queries by the number of active users on any day, and you have an astronomical number of queries being executed. These "per page" options can get very expensive on large sites, especially when those queries ultimately serve images and other data to users.

Just as an oversimplified example:

- 13,597,383 users executing 20 queries per day equals 271,947,660 queries.
- 13,597,383 users executing 30 queries per day equals 407,921,490 queries.
- 30 queries per day per user produces 1.5 times more cumulative queries.

So, a reduction of just 10 queries per day per user represents huge savings.

Reducing the number of queries overall saves the Nexus a good sum of money, which is used to keep this platform operational. In addition, reducing queries reduces the traffic load on the database and other backend services, which improves overall performance for more users. It's perfectly fair that only users who pay up can use more of the platform's resources, and I'd bet that the vast majority of users don't need to see 30 mods per page, let alone 20.

 

 

I'm neither a fan nor a detractor of the new site design, though admittedly I haven't spent a lot of time with it.

But I'm going to be that guy: query and results are two different things.

I assume you mean results when you say query, because technically speaking 5 single queries each returning 20 results will consume more data and more processing power than a single query returning 100 results. Just sayin' :wink:

 

But ultimately, who cares. If people want more than 20 results they'll just click 'next page' or 'view more' or whatever the page indicates to get to the next set of results, wont they? The only time I use a returned results customisation to show many more on a single page is when I'm looking for something very specific and need to quickly skim through dozens, or hundreds, of results to spot it. If the search engine improves enough that kind of behaviour becomes redundant and then your argument towards cost saving on processing power wins :smile: In other words, I kind of agree with you, but results not query :tongue:

 

What really gets me about the new site:

* HOT MODS and then More Hot Mods on a game landing page - but each only shows 1 mod? It's not a list of top-10 you can click through or something similar?

[not to mention, just an observation over the past 6 months or so: 'hot mods' becomes seriously devalued once new mod innovation drops off, as 'hot' appears to be assigned to many new but infrequently downloaded mods. I think the 'hot mods' algorithm needs some tweaking to avoid rewarding new popular crap versus actual quality.]

 

* If I've selected a game the navigation bar indicates "Game: <game title>" even after I've clicked through to see, for example, "Popular (all time)" for that game. But the navigation bar despite communicating that it will return to the <game title> page by merit of the navigation button saying "Game: <game title>" actually returns to the game selection page. The behaviour of the button runs counter to what it implies it will do. ed: Clicking on "Nexus Mods" in the navigation bar returns to the <game title> page.

** I would suggest that the navigation from the two navigation bar elements needs to be reversed. From the button that says "Game: <game title>" when clicked return to the <game title> landing page, and when we click on "Nexus Mods" return to the game selection page.

 

* And just because this is as good a place as any to make this remark about ads: The reason I don't whitelist sites in my adblocker is because despite the best intentions of a site, if they use a 3rd party to deliver profile driven ads then inevitably a poisoned ad is served up. Ads in the digital age s*** me because they are wildly different in selection than ads from the print media. In Print Media ads are selected and vetted (mostly) before being foisted upon readers. If Nexus wants me to whitelist them, all they have to do is move from using an Ad delivering company (which are, lets face it, all morons) to using sponsors where the displayed ads are vetted by Nexus (or at least have a much more significant confidence rating than ads served by algorithm). Just saying it here because opportunity to say just how s*** modern ads on web pages are never really comes up :wink:

 

* Observation: many mods have a title that is longer than the preview box will show, approximately 50% just looking at Skyrim SE, so displaying a balloon tip or some other visual alert to the full mod title would be very helpful (and consistent with common web design).

 

ed: ok, that's just weird. I literally just viewed a landing page with mods where 9 out of 20 the titles read "This is a mod that does something..." ending with ellipses on the description as it cut off on 1 line, I then just switched back to the tab with the mods listed and now all titles are extending over multiple lines and showing the full description eg: "This is a mod that does something to the the player home in town xyz." I did not imagine this, has it just changed? If the site hasn't been modified to behave better in this regard then it is an odd inconsistent behaviour that should be tracked down. Turns out I was looking at New Media (which doesn't show multi-line titles) and when I switched back tabs it moved back up to Mods (which do show full multi-line title).

 

* Corrected Observation: the "New Media" section cuts off the titles at 1 line ending in ellipses. To maintain site consistency, consider extending those titles across multiple lines just like you do for the mods.

But I'm going to be that guy: query and results are two different things.

Queries return results.

technically speaking 5 single queries each returning 20 results will consume more data and more processing power than a single query returning 100 results

I don't know how the backend is architected, but it's possible they could have 1 query returning 20 results and additional queries to return metadata for each result, which could add up to, let's say, 21 queries for every 20 results. In any case, I'm just trying to stay clear of extraneous jargon for the databasing-impaired. Edited November 3, 2017 by fireundubh