New Website Design

Talk Discussion in 'BeerAdvocate Talk' started by Jaycase, Jul 8, 2016.

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  1. Jaycase

    Jaycase Grand Pooh-Bah (3,858) Jan 13, 2007 Illinois
    BA4LYFE Society Pooh-Bah Trader

    Firstly, congrats on the site migration. No easy task I'm certain. I understand there will be readability tweaks coming but so far things look good. I do really like the quick link menus at the top.

    I mainly access the website on a desktop (mozilla browser mostly) and just have a few minor comments.

    1) Is there any way to disable the navigation arrows which appear in the lower right corner of the browser? I realize the disappear after some time but to me it's a bit of a nuisance having it constantly reappear when scrolling through a page. I typically use either the mouse or the browser scroll bar to scroll through a page so I don't have any need to use this feature.
    2) Similar to the previous infrastructure, the Online Now indicator appears on avatars within a thread but I thought previously the indicator also appeared on the avatar within the member mini-profile dialog box which appears after clicking on their member name. Maybe my recollection is off. Not a big deal in any event but something which I thought was different.
    3) This is anecdotal but it *seems* to me that pages are loading slightly slower than on the old infrastructure. Not loading slow but comparatively a touch slower. Maybe the additional SSL encryption has something to do with this? It's not impacting the experience in any negative way but again something which seems noticeable to me anyway.

    Cheers!

    [ Announcement can be found here: https://www.beeradvocate.com/community/threads/site-migration-complete-ssl-responsive-design.433225/ ]
     
    #1 Jaycase, Jul 8, 2016
  2. Todd

    Todd Founder (13,518) Aug 23, 1996 Finland
    STAFF Mod Team Society Pooh-Bah

    Not at the user-level.
    The online indicator has always appeared in the upper left corner of the user's avatar. The only difference now is that it's a beacon.
    We're seeing quite the opposite. Pages are much quicker now. Practically instant for me. And today's SSL has a negligible impact. In fact, with HTTP/2 now in place our pages are quicker than without SSL. But there are numerous other factors between our servers and your browser that can impact page loads.

    Thanks for the feedback. Glad you dig the updates overall.
     
    #2 Todd, Jul 8, 2016
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  3. Jaycase

    Jaycase Grand Pooh-Bah (3,858) Jan 13, 2007 Illinois
    BA4LYFE Society Pooh-Bah Trader

    Thanks Todd. Sorry on the above item I was not clear in my comments. See the following screen print. The avatar within the profile snapshot does not have the beacon. I thought this was there previously but perhaps not.

    [​IMG]
     
    #3 Jaycase, Jul 8, 2016
  4. Todd

    Todd Founder (13,518) Aug 23, 1996 Finland
    STAFF Mod Team Society Pooh-Bah

    Gotcha. I can confirm that it never did.
     
    #4 Todd, Jul 8, 2016
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  5. macrosmatic

    macrosmatic Pooh-Bah (2,735) Mar 9, 2006 Florida
    BA4LYFE Society Pooh-Bah Trader

    @Jaycase - I would echo a lot of your positive comments about the update. However, my opinion about this differs:
    I love these. At least on my screen (Safari generally), they act as easy to use but non-intrusive top and bottom of the page buttons. There was always a Top Of Page link at the bottom of the BA screens, but it was small and easy to miss. The new arrows seem much more intuitive and a much easier way to get to the top of a long forum page.

    Cheers!
     
    #5 macrosmatic, Jul 8, 2016
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  6. Jaycase

    Jaycase Grand Pooh-Bah (3,858) Jan 13, 2007 Illinois
    BA4LYFE Society Pooh-Bah Trader

    Fair point. We all have our own browsing approach & styles no doubt. Just an incredibly small ****le on my part. Would be cool to have a user-level setting for this but no biggie. The positive certainly outweighs all else and given the scale of the migration, that's pretty damn good imo. A well deserved Cheers! to BA.
     
    #6 Jaycase, Jul 8, 2016
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  7. macrosmatic

    macrosmatic Pooh-Bah (2,735) Mar 9, 2006 Florida
    BA4LYFE Society Pooh-Bah Trader

    Well, as I've been playing around on the site this afternoon, I've noticed that now the user-specific Alert and Conversation icons stay fixed at the top as you scroll down. I like that feature very much.

    BUT, it will make it much less frequent occurrence that I'm going to use a jump-to-top button now. Oh well...
     
    #7 macrosmatic, Jul 8, 2016
  8. BBThunderbolt

    BBThunderbolt Grand High Pooh-Bah (7,846) Sep 24, 2007 Kiribati
    Pooh-Bah Trader

    Why has the background color of my avatar switched from white to blue? The colors in all the other avatars have remained the same. I also find the up/down arrows annoying, but I just use the up/down arrows on my keyboard, so no biggie, just distracting.
     
    #8 BBThunderbolt, Jul 8, 2016
  9. Todd

    Todd Founder (13,518) Aug 23, 1996 Finland
    STAFF Mod Team Society Pooh-Bah

    Your avatar must be transparent, so it'll pick up whatever background color is behind it. And, as posted, we're still tweaking things.
     
    #9 Todd, Jul 8, 2016
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  10. ClippersSD

    ClippersSD Zealot (524) Jul 17, 2013 California
    Trader

    The website changes definitely improved the cell phone experience. Got on this afternoon and you can tell it's been optimized for cell phones. I thought they did a good job on this.
     
    #10 ClippersSD, Jul 9, 2016
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  11. donspublic

    donspublic Grand Pooh-Bah (3,552) Aug 4, 2014 Texas
    BA4LYFE Society Pooh-Bah Trader

    Being in IT I can appreciate what ya'll went thru. I was somewhat shocked when I first saw it, you get used to shit after 2 years. But it is growing on me, you have put in a lot of features and as with anything you get used to it. Nice job, and I have to agree, on my cellphone, man oh man it is sweet. Thanks for the work you and your team put into this.
     
    #11 donspublic, Jul 9, 2016
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  12. mhksuccess

    mhksuccess Pooh-Bah (1,586) Jul 7, 2012 California
    Pooh-Bah Trader

    It seems the site speed has slowed down
    Also I am having a lot of difficulty figure how to search for a specific beer by name, it used to be really easy now it is confusing
    I am having a lot of difficulty with new site
    Is there a tutorial LOL
     
    #12 mhksuccess, Jul 9, 2016
  13. Todd

    Todd Founder (13,518) Aug 23, 1996 Finland
    STAFF Mod Team Society Pooh-Bah

    This could be caused by numerous factors in-between our servers and your browser.
    Except for the placement of the search box, how you search hasn't changed.
     
    #13 Todd, Jul 10, 2016
  14. mhksuccess

    mhksuccess Pooh-Bah (1,586) Jul 7, 2012 California
    Pooh-Bah Trader

    Thanks I think I figured it out
    New site is working well just have to get to used to it
    cheers M
     
    #14 mhksuccess, Jul 10, 2016
  15. corgistout

    corgistout Initiate (0) May 8, 2014 California

    Hate the new mobile only website. Wish desktop mode could be enabled. Guess I won't be using BA unless I'm at home.
     
    #15 corgistout, Jul 10, 2016
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  16. PapaGoose03

    PapaGoose03 Grand High Pooh-Bah (6,057) May 30, 2005 Michigan
    BA4LYFE Society Pooh-Bah

    I like the new design, etc. EXCEPT for the two-step logoff process. After the last major redesign (which instituted a two-step logoff) the comments/complaints resulted in a change that installed a Signoff on the menu bar (it became so automatic that I didn't pay attention anymore, but I think that's where it was). Can this one-step log-off come back?
     
    #16 PapaGoose03, Jul 10, 2016
  17. Todd

    Todd Founder (13,518) Aug 23, 1996 Finland
    STAFF Mod Team Society Pooh-Bah

    As the vast majority of our users stay logged in, and too many people were clicking it by mistake, I don't see this coming back.
     
    #17 Todd, Jul 10, 2016
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  18. JohnDee

    JohnDee Zealot (612) May 7, 2014 Texas

    The problem with your new responsive design, as with many current web site designs, is that it's focused too much on mobile. On a desktop screen with lots of real estate, everything is out of proportion, which creates a usability problem. In particular, there's way too much screen width devoted to your primary content (e.g. beer reviews) and it's just not as readable as the old design. I can appreciate the work you've put into it, but I encourage you to shift your focus a little bit. I would love to see the next iteration look just as good on desktop as I'm sure it does on mobile.
     
    #18 JohnDee, Jul 11, 2016
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  19. Todd

    Todd Founder (13,518) Aug 23, 1996 Finland
    STAFF Mod Team Society Pooh-Bah

    I wouldn't call it a problem, but more of a necessity. Over 70% of our site traffic is coming from mobile devices.
    Correct. Aside from the forum and a few other pages, if your browser is stretched out too far the pages aren't overly responsive. Designing for wider/oversized browsers wasn't a goal with this update, but we're aware that it's not perfect and will be addressing this in BA 4.0. In the meantime, you can easily reduce your browser size until things are more to your liking.
     
    #19 Todd, Jul 11, 2016
  20. JohnDee

    JohnDee Zealot (612) May 7, 2014 Texas

    I'm not sure what you mean by "oversized browsers." A desktop browser is not oversized (unless you're comparing it to a phone, in which case you really are "focused too much on mobile") and I shouldn't have to change my browser size no matter what site I'm on. But I'm glad you will be addressing this problem in BA 4.0. Thanks for that.
     
    #20 JohnDee, Jul 11, 2016
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