Redesign Launch - Stage 2 in progress

[Dark0ne]

In response to post #55673416.

Madrias wrote: I'll try to keep to constructive feedback on this. While I'm not a fan of the new interface, a lot of it could be rather easily resolved, I believe, without having to do a total roll-back.

Let's start at the top of my list.

1: While I appreciate the new "Two top hot files" strategy, it feels way clunkier than the old Nexus Mods Hot Files, with 6 small images that, when hovered over with the mouse, would give a blurb of information. Now, only the top two mods have any information about them at all, and the lower five just tell me the name of the mod. In my opinion, this is a huge step backward in design, because now the only way to get any information about a mod we may be interested in is to click on it. The old design at least gave a blurb of information when we hovered over it.

How would I fix this problem? Let's split the difference. Give us both more mods in the hot files (a Top 10 instead of Top 7) by reducing all of the mods down to the smaller picture size. It's big enough to get the core point across. Then, when you hover over it, give us the short-description of the mod. This, I feel, would both increase usability (Top 10 instead of an arbitrary Top 7) and put all of the mods on an equal playing field.

2: This may just be me, but I like a little "white space" to the sides of my content. Why? I use middle-click scrolling. Right now, if I middle-clicked on the main Nexus home page, I'm more likely to open a new tab than I am to activate middle-click scrolling.

How would I fix this? Add a few pixels' worth of white space, maybe about the size of the Messages or Settings button, to either side of the page to create a 'safe zone' for either clicking, or scrolling through on a tablet device.

3: The New Mods list is just way too big. No, seriously, it is. They're nearly as big as the Top Mods, but they contain information. This is sad, that the top mods get less information than the latest stuff pushed out by mod authors. Perhaps condense this down to image sizes the same as the current "Middle 5" hot mods and relocate it back to the right hand side of the screen in an ordered list. This big-chunky-grid layout would be better suited for using my phone with gardening gloves on, not a 22-inch 1680x1050 screen.

4: Put the news page back where it was, to the left side of the New Mods list. Right now, it's under the Images section (I'll get to this in a moment) and thereby it's nearly invisible. In fact, if I hadn't accidentally clicked on my scroll bar when trying to aim for that narrow 'safe zone' to scroll down, I wouldn't even have known it was there. I'd think Site News is more important than a bunch of pictures anyway.

5: Condense the images down into a small-form list again, placed under the right-side-located New Mods List. Where they're at right now, they force site news to the bottom, making it possible to miss important things if you are just looking at a glance. In fact, if you wanted to keep the images as they are now, then place them under the News and New Mods list (which, theoretically, should be side by side as they were in the older layout, it just worked a lot better that way) and they'll fit right in.

6: The contrast between the old site and the new one is... Not pleasant. Your primary background gray is a little too bright. As a whole, you could darken the whole site and it'd just come out a little bit better.

7: Personally, I think the decision to, on reduced size windows/monitors (I don't use the full width of a 1680x1050 screen on my browser windows because I have other applications running, so my window runs at 3/4 of the screen width), completely blank out the background with a flat, boring 50% gray at 100% opacity, well, I think it's an eyesore. What is the point of having a background image if you're just going to cover it up with the same gray that my cheap vinyl office chair has? Either reduce the opacity or remove the background gray from areas it doesn't need to be in. It'll give the site some personality back, instead of looking like another Social Media Site clone. It'll also make it easier to recognize if you're on the Skyrim Nexus, the Fallout 3 Nexus, the Fallout New Vegas Nexus, or whether someone's link accidentally sent you to the Special Edition Skyrim Nexus or Fallout 4 Nexus.

8: You know, there's a reason most text boxes are white, and you type in black. There's also a reason that almost no one uses a white text-box that makes you type in gray. It's hard on the eyes, especially on a dark layout. If you're going to be fancy and change up the text boxes to be different, a black text box with a 30% gray should do well. But it'd require a darker background to make sense.

9: Big chunky buttons are great for mobile use. Since when did mobile games allow modding? Are smartphones and tablets now powerful enough to run Skyrim, Fallout 4, and the other games you're supporting mods for? No? Then why is the site optimized for mobile devices? If you took all of the "button blocks" at the top (the game, mods, images, videos, updates, and Support) and squeezed them down by half (You can do it, this wouldn't hurt desktop usability at all, and mobile users would also still be able to hit these buttons), you could fit the search bar right next to it, and give back quite a bit of screen space. Right now, it reminds me of those old 90's and 00's era toolbars everyone had to remove from Grandma's web browser every time the "computer is running slow again." In fact, if you wanted to be really fancy, I'd bet you could get the button blocks, search bar, and the top bar all into the same space with only a little bit of trickery.

How would I do it? Split the logo, so that the symbol takes you to the Nexus Home, but the words take you to the Game Home (the one for your Skyrim/Fallout/etc.). Because we've already moved the news back to where it should be, just under the Hot Mods, offset left, the News button can be removed. Put "Install" over "NMM (0.63.14)" and shrink that button a little. This means you have two extra buttons left, Forums and Chat. Modernize these to fit in with Game, Mods, Images, Videos, Updates, and Support, put them at the end of the list, tack Install NMM at the end of that, and you've got a nice bar of buttons. Between the bar of buttons and the Nexus Mods logo/text, fit the search bar, now made acceptably small. Then the top bar would be nice, thin, and modern. It'd be a little cluttered, but right now, the whole site is cluttered, so it'd match just fine.

Thanks for the feedback. I'm away at the moment but can assure you it's being read and I personally appreciate the way you've approached your attempt to help.

[Dark0ne]

In response to post #55665451.

HobbesBones wrote: Seriously bring back advanced search and description options, because right now nexus has become really crappy when it comes to looking for mods. I can get used to the new site look but the loss of search options is a massive no-no. Whoever thought it would be a good idea to strip away those features really need to ask themselves what made nexus great in the first place, as opposed to asking themselves what looks "good" to newcomers.

Click "Refine results". It's all there.

[Thenryb]

I don't seem to be getting update notifications anymore ?

last couple days had a handful, normally would get 50+

any new settings I've missed ?

I have the same issue and have posted same question before. No updates for days.

[Dark0ne]

In response to post #55681471.

Thenryb wrote:

I don't seem to be getting update notifications anymore ?

last couple days had a handful, normally would get 50+

any new settings I've missed ?

I have the same issue and have posted same question before. No updates for days.

I'll prod the programmers about it.

[Eolhin]

In response to post #55681471. #55682106 is also a reply to the same post.

Thenryb wrote:

I don't seem to be getting update notifications anymore ?

last couple days had a handful, normally would get 50+

any new settings I've missed ?

I have the same issue and have posted same question before. No updates for days.

Dark0ne wrote: I'll prod the programmers about it.

I also can't clear the "New" number on Notifications. I submitted a ticket on it on Github.

[Jimmielo]

I'm not a fan of the new site redesign. It has the look of what most sites are doing, more easy for phone and tablets to use "screen pokers". the older design was way more easy to get where you wanted to be, less clicking and scrolling. one of these days we might see web sites get really brave and add a thumbs up and thumbs down for members, but that is way to simple of a idea to get feedback on how the sites are doing

[speckledsnake]

Not a huge fan of the new design. Font choice seems odd, given the square/rectangular theme. More work to navigate and find information. More clicks to get to anything. A nice design for an online magazine. Not as functional or logical, I think, as the previous iteration.

[Eolhin]

For future reference, I really don't think periwinkle-purple and neon-orange go at all well together... (Skyrim SE/stickied post)

https://www.nexusmods.com/skyrimspecialedition/images/17610

That is personal opinion, of course.

Edited December 3, 2017 by Eolhin

[F3NR15ULFR]

The Skyrim Nexus used to be my browser's homepage; I could open it, immediately see six hot files and scroll down just a short ways to see recently uploaded and files of the month in a very compact design right next to each other. Perfect for wanting to glance over and see what's what.

 

This new metro layout however, is absolutely abysmal in it's design, looking like it was made for mobile users rather than someone who actually wants to download mods on a computer.

[leirynot]

After having played around a bit with the relaunch, I have to say I am not pleased. It's not horrible, but there's literally no improvement over the old version. It's not any harder to navigate really, but hot files feature is well... useless now. It only shows 2 mods with description blurbs instead of letting you look at the descriptions of the other hot files by hovering your mouse over them. The real problem isn't that though, it's that everything always has images now. As someone with slow internet, this vastly increased the load times of the site. A wonderful addition that would fix this would be to add in a "list mode" option that only displayed the names of the mods, like how they're listed in the old layout when you click to brows new or recent files. Still... this entire change was unnecessary. It improved upon nothing, and change for the sake of change is a pointless waste of effort and time. None of the customers (i.e. users) thought change was necessary and most are unhappy now that it's occurred. When focused on the product, you should be focused on the needs of the customer. We did not need this, so there was no need to implement it.

 

Still... all that I feel is really needed to make it more tolerable is a "compact mode" that reduces picture sizes and a "list mode" that eliminates pictures when browsing altogether for people with slower internet speeds.