FA+
Shop
Dec 4th, 2025- Banner, Classic Feedback, and Beta!
4 months ago
General
🏳️🌈💖Enjoy the site? Please consider supporting us via the links below!💖🏳️🌈
⭐ FA+ ⭐ SHOP ⭐ KO-FI ⭐
Journal Start
Hey there fuzzies!
We are here with a cozy holiday banner update! ☕
This loafy cuteness banner was made by
Nugget_kun!
Be sure to bombard their shouts for this fantastic piece or flood their comments on the original here.
Please use the tag FABanner2025 in your keywords so we can easily locate submissions!
With the end of the year coming up, if you create a banner design meant for after Jan 1st please use the new tag FABanner2026. To be clear- using the new tag will not mean those with 2025 are no longer considered. We may still pick some from previous years as so many wonderful banners have been submitted!
What are community banners?
Our Community Banners are where artists submit banner ideas throughout the year and, if chosen, they will be featured as the site's default banner for a minimum of one week—sometimes longer if it fits a season or holiday. There is no set amount of banners that we choose. We may pick 3, or 12, or even 42! Remember to add FABanner2025(or 2026) to your tags for us to easily locate submissions. We ask that at least one of the mascots is featured, but preferably both of us. Focus must be primarily on the mascots. All banners must meet General Rating guidelines to be considered. Banner sizes are fixed at 1850x300 pixels.
We have some more news we'd like to mention while we have your attention!
Back in 2019 we first announced we'd be retiring the Classic UI, eventually making it no longer available. Classic currently causes many issues and slowdowns for the team as we add new features and update the site. It doubles the amount of work that has to be done as Classic and Modern are different code bases. In addition, Classic just cannot support many of the new updates we've been working on. This has resulted in Classic users being unable to use modern features. Our techs ran the numbers and currently only 4.6% of all active accounts on Fur Affinity still use Classic. On 09/22/2025 we announced that all new accounts after that post would no longer be able to access Classic while it was being depreciated.
Whenever we implement a new feature for the Modern UI, we make a point to remind everyone that constructive feedback is always welcome—especially from the dedicated Classic users—so we can continue to refine Modern. We are going to be more vocal about those reminders. Without constructive feedback, we cannot know what you like or dislike about the UIs. We need community feedback so we can keep making the improvements the community wants!
To make feedback as successful as possible, we have a few ground rules:
1. Feedback and critique must be constructive. Comments like "It's ugly," "I don't like it," or "keep Classic" are valid opinions, but they aren't constructive feedback. We need examples and explanations. An example of constructive feedback would be "I don't like it because the text is hard to read because it doesn't have enough contrast."
2. Scope:
- Features that Classic already has that Modern doesn't.
- Features that Modern already has but how those features could be better.
- If you want to suggest new features for Modern, please submit a Trouble Ticket under the General > Feedback category.
3. Do not plead for Classic to stay. Maintaining Classic is making it impossible for our coders to make meaningful progress on anything else. Classic needs to be retired.
4. Fur Affinity rules and conduct expectations still apply. Remember to be kind and excellent to each other in the comments.
Together we hope we can make some solid improvements for everyone to enjoy!
Some feedback we’ve gotten from tickets, comments, and our official Discord so far:
Note this list is not complete and will be adjusted as needed. Some suggestions might not be possible to implement at this time, but will be kept for future reference.
We will be working on improving Modern with this feedback in mind and have a live beta site for FA+ users to test out before being pushed to all users. When the update is released to all users, an official end date for Classic will be announced. This project is a big undertaking and may take a couple months, so we appreciate your patience and support while we work on improving FA for everyone!
We are here with a cozy holiday banner update! ☕
This loafy cuteness banner was made by
Nugget_kun!Be sure to bombard their shouts for this fantastic piece or flood their comments on the original here.
⭐COMMUNITY BANNER ENTRY INFO⭐Please use the tag FABanner2025 in your keywords so we can easily locate submissions!
With the end of the year coming up, if you create a banner design meant for after Jan 1st please use the new tag FABanner2026. To be clear- using the new tag will not mean those with 2025 are no longer considered. We may still pick some from previous years as so many wonderful banners have been submitted!
What are community banners?
Our Community Banners are where artists submit banner ideas throughout the year and, if chosen, they will be featured as the site's default banner for a minimum of one week—sometimes longer if it fits a season or holiday. There is no set amount of banners that we choose. We may pick 3, or 12, or even 42! Remember to add FABanner2025(or 2026) to your tags for us to easily locate submissions. We ask that at least one of the mascots is featured, but preferably both of us. Focus must be primarily on the mascots. All banners must meet General Rating guidelines to be considered. Banner sizes are fixed at 1850x300 pixels.
We have some more news we'd like to mention while we have your attention!
Back in 2019 we first announced we'd be retiring the Classic UI, eventually making it no longer available. Classic currently causes many issues and slowdowns for the team as we add new features and update the site. It doubles the amount of work that has to be done as Classic and Modern are different code bases. In addition, Classic just cannot support many of the new updates we've been working on. This has resulted in Classic users being unable to use modern features. Our techs ran the numbers and currently only 4.6% of all active accounts on Fur Affinity still use Classic. On 09/22/2025 we announced that all new accounts after that post would no longer be able to access Classic while it was being depreciated.
Whenever we implement a new feature for the Modern UI, we make a point to remind everyone that constructive feedback is always welcome—especially from the dedicated Classic users—so we can continue to refine Modern. We are going to be more vocal about those reminders. Without constructive feedback, we cannot know what you like or dislike about the UIs. We need community feedback so we can keep making the improvements the community wants!
To make feedback as successful as possible, we have a few ground rules:
1. Feedback and critique must be constructive. Comments like "It's ugly," "I don't like it," or "keep Classic" are valid opinions, but they aren't constructive feedback. We need examples and explanations. An example of constructive feedback would be "I don't like it because the text is hard to read because it doesn't have enough contrast."
2. Scope:
- Features that Classic already has that Modern doesn't.
- Features that Modern already has but how those features could be better.
- If you want to suggest new features for Modern, please submit a Trouble Ticket under the General > Feedback category.
3. Do not plead for Classic to stay. Maintaining Classic is making it impossible for our coders to make meaningful progress on anything else. Classic needs to be retired.
4. Fur Affinity rules and conduct expectations still apply. Remember to be kind and excellent to each other in the comments.
Together we hope we can make some solid improvements for everyone to enjoy!
Some feedback we’ve gotten from tickets, comments, and our official Discord so far:
- Classic Light colors moved to Modern/Accessible Color Palettes (Being looked at by Tech)
- USER GALLERIES
- Mini Gallery returned to Centered position
- Gallery Folders Changed to Better position or create "See Folders" button.
- "You Are Here" indicator in mini-gallery navigation.
- Minimalist Modern Skin
- SPACING ISSUES
- Verticality/Scrolling Concerns
- Empty Spacing
- Unified Button Sizes/Format (This section includes the buttons in the comment area of FA)
- Font Sizing/Scaling concerns
- Page Stats in-line with Page Profile or similar design adjustments
- Lack of mobile API for functioning mobile version
- LINKS
- Visited/Un-visited link distinctions
- Remove the dotted underline
- Ability to hide Header/Nav Bar
- Thumbnails instead of Full Resolution (You can adjust this already in Account Settings > Image Full View. You do have to input your password to update these settings, we are working on removing that requirement for UI swapping.)
- COMMISSION TAB
- Create/Reset Display/End Comm Edit buttons misaligned
- Mobile: Commissions area is cut off without a way to view it
- Stylistic Mismatch of Input Boxes (users cites Slate Theme this is the most noticeable between Account Settings vs. Site At Large)
- NOTES SYSTEM
- Legend for Priority Coloration/Clearer Coloration
- Overall Style Update
- Adjusting Icons to look clearer in 4k
- Drop-down for Emoticons (Make them easier to find)
Note this list is not complete and will be adjusted as needed. Some suggestions might not be possible to implement at this time, but will be kept for future reference.
We will be working on improving Modern with this feedback in mind and have a live beta site for FA+ users to test out before being pushed to all users. When the update is released to all users, an official end date for Classic will be announced. This project is a big undertaking and may take a couple months, so we appreciate your patience and support while we work on improving FA for everyone!
Which is really weird when they explicitly tell you "link EVERY image you want to report because we don't check their gallery, only what you link".
Also, I never liked it when Yiffstar, sorry, SoFurry, moved to it, and I don't like how EVERYONE ELSE is moving to what looks like the same damn look and layout!
Also, THE LOAFS
THE LOAFS BE RISIN
I'm curious as I'm browsing the beta, since the site doesn't operate on algorithms...what determines the assortment of submissions shown to the right of the full view/standard view of a piece you're currently looking at? the column collection that says "More From [username]". Is it randomized, or?
Eg the most recent submission will show previous 6
Missing from the list: a "You Are Here" indicator in the mini-gallery nav thing on the submission view page, so that it's actually usable for browsing.
Annoyance: clicking on "download" on the new UI does that force-file-to-download-to-your-downloads-folder thing instead of just allowing the browser to open the file as it sees fit. I'd really like the option for the latter, like it is in classic.
And actually going back to double-check it, it seems to be doing it site-wide now regardless of template. I was pretty sure that before it was adding a '&dl=yes' type thing to the download link on the modern template but now it seems to just be doing it based on file type without any extra link parameters. So like a jpeg file doesn't have the content-disposition header but a txt file does and gets force-downloaded.
The download button on my end is just a plain hyperlink with no events to the file directly on d.furaffinity.net, which doesn't set a Content-Disposition header. It doesn't even open in a new window.
Picking this as an example: https://www.furaffinity.net/view/58025580/
At the top of the story in the old template or the top-right with the new template, you get a download link like this:
https://d.furaffinity.net/art/jeeve.....-_part_one.txt
Which does not add the content-disposition tag:
% curl -i https://d.furaffinity.net/art/jeeve.....-_part_one.txt
HTTP/2 200
date: Fri, 05 Dec 2025 03:17:06 GMT
content-type: text/plain
server: cloudflare
last-modified: Sat, 07 Sep 2024 23:07:19 GMT
etag: W/"66dcdca7-4d29"
expires: Thu, 31 Dec 2037 23:55:55 GMT
cache-control: max-age=315360000
vary: accept-encoding
cf-cache-status: DYNAMIC
cf-ray: 9a90637c5ef2938c-SJC
But then if you scroll down to the bottom and use that download link (roughly the same place on both the old and new template), you get a different url with '/download/' in it:
https://d.furaffinity.net/download/.....-_part_one.txt
Which does add the content-disposition tag:
% curl -i https://d.furaffinity.net/download/.....-_part_one.txt
HTTP/2 200
date: Fri, 05 Dec 2025 03:18:42 GMT
content-type: text/plain
server: cloudflare
last-modified: Sat, 07 Sep 2024 23:07:19 GMT
etag: W/"66dcdca7-4d29"
expires: Thu, 31 Dec 2037 23:55:55 GMT
cache-control: max-age=315360000
content-disposition: attachment; filename=1725750438.jeevestheroo_the_final_frontier_is_magic_-_part_one.txt
vary: accept-encoding
cf-cache-status: DYNAMIC
cf-ray: 9a9065d2fc1115c8-SJC
But on image uploads, both links lack the '/download/' bit. (well, only one link exists in the old template for image uploads but you get the point)
In fact that ticket records my frustrations almost in real-time as they rolled out updates to Modern that actually made things even worse, and I made note of those problems in the ticket as it got replied to and updated. That's because not only are the visited/unvisited color issues still there, but they changed the way hyperlinks as a whole are styled. They're virtually the same color as ordinary text, and they're not underlined as usually is standard, or if they are it's an underline I lack the visual acuity to see. So, as far as Modern is concerned, I quite literally cannot tell what's ordinary text and what's a hyperlink in spaces like the description boxes for posts, or in journal entries. It all just looks like ordinary text to me, no delineation. I tested out Retro and it uses the same style system, so links immediately became unrecognizable for me in Retro too and I immediately switched back to Classic.
I feel like I should bump that ticket again since this announcement post mentioned the visited/unvisited issue but did not mention the hyperlink styling issue, which personally I find the much bigger problem of the two.
The issues around hyperlinks are in fact more or less the only reason I stick hard to Classic. I mean, I do have other gripes about Modern, but those are mostly just personal opinion types of things. The hyperlink deal is of the "this makes it unusable for me" type.
Also the profile layout just being straight down instead of staggered like classic
Like I'm not one of those "phone bad" types, but from an ergonomics perspective, phones are bad and mobile first design leaking into desktop and tablet ui is infuriating
Desktops and tablets have big screens you can put tons of stuff on
I am definitely quite a bit of a "black rectangle bad" type, and it often feels like a waste of time to support, but remembering how it used to be when FA had no mobile layout of any kind... I can imagine the agony at large if it suddenly went away lol
for modern mode improvements, an option to hide the huge banner so can see more of the page before scrolling, could make moving over from classic less of a pain (but, again, a blocker extension could solve that right now for user's that bothered by it)
As for feedback for the modern theme, I definitely think the mini-gallery should return to its central position. It makes it easier to tell which works are before or after the one you're looking at, and it doesn't properly signal that it works like that. This latter issue is pretty serious, as it looks a lot like it's just recommended works on the side instead of older and newer works.
well, bye then, I guess
While the front end - that is, the part that users see and interact with - of Classic is better than Modern overall, the back end - the actual inner workings "under the hood" - is a patchwork, spaghetti code abomination from hell that's been holding the site back for over a decade. Adding features to Classic is ungodly finicky, and the more integral a thing you're messing with the worse it gets. You want to know why it took forever to get the ability to change our display names? It's because adding that functionality without making the site implode was an absolute nightmare that nobody wanted to deal with attempting until the devteam shift. There's a reason the Modern skin is built on a separate, more stable code base. Maintaining Classic's code base doubles the devteam's workload (which is a lot to ask if only 4.6% of users even still bother with it), and the inherent instability of it makes FA that much more likely to break every time there's an update.
So as much as it sucks to say it, sunsetting Classic is the reasonable call.
What we must ask and hope for is that the things that make Classic good on the user end be brought over to Modern.
Think of it this way: it isn't easy to code, especially a massive art website with a lot of users. And when you have two code bases, one of which is super old and aging, it's very hard to take care of both when you are constantly updating the site not just with new features, but also exploits and cybersecurity issues (which having a super old code base can make worse, btw).
Classic is pretty at its face, but in the back end it is a complete mess of spaghetti code and decades old code new techs may not know how to work with.
It's nothing to do with user data or efficiency, it's just because in the back end it holds things back.
From what I've been reading on this page, the new site layout is fixed into the software for some reason which is not explained in plain english. Hopefully it's just a template thing where it's not worthwhile to make it look pretty, though it'd be funny if the "new" codebase were just as screwy and broken as the old; just assembled out of more familiar languages to the current crop of mechanics.
This sounds... Unnecessarily hostile. I don't think staff is doing this at all, especially since they are trying to listen to feedback before the change. Otherwise the discord and this announcement would not have been made.
wow. Just wow.
Found this later on in the comments. Maybe this can explain things a bit?
It's like if you opened up a Model T Ford and found, instead of the plain, no-nonsense Ford engine... one quarter of the Ford engine ad-hoc welded to quarters of three different engines from different manufacturers of varying date, each with different cylinder sizes but all somehow jury-rigged to work together... as long as no-one pokes it and disturbs the balance.
https://fossbytes.com/mocas-worlds-.....puter-program/
and even real objects designed in the 1930's and still use today https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jerrycan#Modern_use
I don't care if it gobbles down two gigs of memory and has all manner of tracking bullshit to block
all I want is for it to look the same on the front end
if I've got to learn a new UI then there's no incentive to stay here instead of learning how to use twitter where seemingly 9/10 of the dead accounts on my watchlist disappeared off to
The people who understand why the plug is being pulled on Classic. Classic is an unstable mess that takes way too much work just to keep running and keep secure, let alone add anything nice. It's better for them to switch completely over to the backend that doesn't fall over in a stiff breeze.
"I don't care if it gobbles down two gigs of memory and has all manner of tracking bullshit to block
all I want is for it to look the same on the front end"
I want it to look the same on the frontend, too, but I understand that that's not in the picture in the immediate term because unfortunately, the codebase that doesn't shit the bed and collapse in a heap when you look at it crosseyed isn't currently flexible enough in how it renders the site (probably because when it was originally made, it didn't need to be - divisions in the dev team that weren't resolved til late last year meant porting Classic over to it wasn't even on the table at the time) and hasn't been upgraded yet because having to babysit two codebases - one of them a trainwreck - slows the devs down when it comes to improvements. They need to pull the plug on Classic to have the time and energy to properly fix Modern's shit.
"if I've got to learn a new UI then there's no incentive to stay here instead of learning how to use twitter where seemingly 9/10 of the dead accounts on my watchlist disappeared off to"
1. If those accounts have any sense, they'd actually be on Bluesky by now.
2. There is an incentive: Gallery sites are much better for actually viewing and saving stuff, especially stories, and the direct alternatives to FA are either lacking in traction (Weasyl), currently still in the shop (SoFurry), or sleazy as all get out (Inkbunny).
Instead of moaning, identify what Modern needs to do to meet you halfway so that even if it looks different aesthetically you basically don't have to learn anything new to use it and it's not an eyesore to look at.
Well okay, so squarespace doesn't offer it as an option. Good to know, but it doesn't change much of anything from the perspective of MrWhinyEndUser (me)
"If those accounts have any sense, they'd actually be on Bluesky by now."
Why? It's the same animal as 'truth social' or that youtube alternative 'rumble' or weasyl/IB, or any other politically motivated offshoot. It'll bumble along for a few years with a small and very 'politically minded' userbase before eventually it quits being worthwhile to keep the lights on.
"Gallery sites are much better for actually viewing and saving stuff, especially stories"
Don't I know it. YS/SF being down has really been cramping my consumption of text-smut. FA has always sucked hard for that though. For images, yeah the familiarity is nice, but the boorus have still got it beat; especially the less talked about ones that are full of pirated content and which ignore DNP requests. So many cleared out galleries on here, again usually due to politically minded tantrums or pressures.
"Instead of moaning, identify what Modern needs to do to meet you halfway so that even if it looks different aesthetically you basically don't have to learn anything new to use it and it's not an eyesore to look at. "
Sorry bro, there's this 'je ne sais quoi' that makes a place feel like the home I've been squatting in for the last couple decades. Getting kicked out feels much the same no matter the justifications given (rental not being renewed, eminent domain being used, building happening to have burnt down, etc)
Agree fully, that Classic has the superior aesthetic.
perferably I would just keep the design of classic.
Yeah it takes more effort than reskinning a couple things on 'smartphone touchscreen hell' but it's all anyone who sticks with the old wants:
the same UI they've been using for the last twenty years
oh wait
And for what it's worth, again, I appreciate a lot of what I've seen the past many months as new management has worked on the site. The fact you're even asking is appreciated. In the past this would have just been steamrolled like everything else. But again, we're not asking for massive back-end code re-writes. We just want elements to be arranged differently, some adjustments to spacing, color, icons, that kind of thing. Trivial CSS tweaks for the most part.
Way I look at it is no more malicious than "if I've got to relearn a new UI and where everything is and deal with touchscreen spacing on everything, then why not learn how to work twitter which is where 9/10 of the dead accounts in my watchlist have migrated over to"
I don't like it, but it's how it ends up working.
Also, the "we're trying to ratchet people off Classic" is working against the "give Retro a try". I'm highly incentivised not to click anything that changes my settings away from Classic in case it becomes a one-way operation. The Beta side doesn't seem to help here since it's sharing the same user settings.
Modern has a number of differences that, in the experience of those of us still holding out with Classic, actively make readability worse (and the sidebars have only intensified this feeling) and make desktop users feel like we somehow got locked into mobile view. Which is very unpleasant. Modern Retro does at least offer the benefit of less-harsh dark mode contrast (dark mode on regular modern is very harsh to the point that for some people it's actually harder on their eyes than light mode), but this on its own isn't enough of an improvement.
Btw, have you done any sort of polling to evaluate how many people use Modern because they prefer it vs how many use it because they feel like they feel like they have no choice? That would be valuable data for decisions like this.
but there are other comments lower down suggesting that might be some path to doing that in the future https://www.furaffinity.net/journal...../#cid:61381456
So may as well bring all the features over to modern and improve modern, then retire classic
And sorry if it sounded like I was arguing, didn't mean to come across as rude!
No, it wouldn't be running strong still because it was never the most stable thing in the first place. Classic from what I understand has always been a mess under the hood, and has only gotten worse as more bodge jobs get layered on top of previous bodges. It was also built to very outdated practices, like using someone's initial username as their integral account ID instead of having a unique serial or hash (which is why we've had two decades of people making new accounts because that was the only way to change their username), and between that and the bodged-together nature it's very tricky to add features without breaking the site (and the more integral and rigid a thing a feature touches, the worse it is). Which is why features that people have been demanding for the entire 15 years I've been here have taken forever to be added - and even then, some of them have only been available via Modern because of how finicky Classic is. Others have required hacky interim solutions. Classic's aging code is also a big problem from a security standpoint (probably especially the old PHP code), and as far as stability goes... even when I first joined, people seemed to treat the site shitting the bed as a normal occurrence. And it continued to be one.
"but its because they put that unnecerary pressure on themselves by updating the UI that no one asked for, and then suddenly you have this problem that wouldn't have been a problem if it wasn't for adding a whole new UI."
People were asking for a modernized UI, otherwise nobody would have bothered making it. Hell, the desire for something more modern with more QOL is a big part of why Weasyl even exists. And the very fact that making a modernized UI for FA required building a whole new codebase from the ground up instead of just making an alternate skin+layout for the existing codebase... really goes to show what an ungodly mess the original codebase is to work with.
"you can update to a different codebase and still keep the same site."
Only if the different codebase supports it, which the modern codebase currently does not.
Now, ideally the modern codebase should have been designed from the start with the template flexibility to render both UIs and just had Classic ported over to it sight unseen. But I suspect I know why it wasn't.
I have been informed that for the longest time, FA had an incredibly territorial and stiff-necked lead developer who was resistant to change even when necessary or asked for, and was so hostile to work with that it was hard to retain other developes; crucially, he wasn't given the boot until the staff reorganization after Dragoneer's death. At the time Modern was made (by what was then effectively a splinter team, I believe), porting Classic over to the new codebase would have thus required his cooperation - which was about as likely as a statue getting up and doing the Charleston, so it's understandable that they didn't pursue it at the time. And doubtless this same territorialism was a further factor in needing to make a whole new codebase just to have a UI change.
"So again, until they show that the changes are being made to make a 1:1 of the original using the modern codebase, I am staying here."
Right now, according to the devs, the modern codebase lacks the necessary template flexibility for a 1:1 clone of the original UI and overhauling it to amend that is still a ways off (though retiring Classic will help speed that up). You will likely find yourself forced over to Modern by Classic's plug getting pulled before that happens.
So, the most useful thing you can do right now is send feedback about what Modern can do to meet you halfway. They do seem to be listening to people.
Hell, some time back I was doing some research and there were attempts to rewrite FA and the GUI since 2014 so all the people going "no one asked for a modern UI!" are just wrong lol
I made a detailed feedback comment for what I really want & need to see changed in modern and I have also been submitting the same points in the form of feedback tickets, and I'm really hoping the two biggest problems I have - the stupid sidebars, and the fact that links don't change color - are fixed before Classic's plug gets pulled.
And it sounds like a big part of why they are pulling Classic's plug in the first place is to free up time and effort for fixing and improving Modern's shit.
Probably because the window FA is running in only has half the screen.
Love the banner. ^^
also, if someone blocks us, or vice versa, we should have em removed from our watchlists/us from theirs.
Far and away the most common complaint seems to be about the giant sidebar taking up way too much space, limiting the display size of the images. That would be an obvious priority, if they intend to fix Modern before destroying Classic. ("Sunsetting" is such a pretty word - all red and gold - but the reality is a bit uglier.)
Have to wonder at what point they'll just give us a Custom CSS box so we can fix it ourselves.
A custom CSS box thing would be nice, however. But I'd imagine it's one of those things that probably can't even be attempted until the classic layout has been discontinued.
I've only ever used Modern UI for a short amount of time - to use the rename feature, due to it being inaccessible in Classic. While I like that features are being added to Modern, the explicitly, well, modern design language it uses just isn't aesthetically appealing to me, and I'm not necessarily interested in most new features that are in the pipeline.
FA is one of the few sites that has continue to support a fundamentally unchanged UI experience for almost the entire time I have used it, now over a decade - and I am of the opinion that this is not a bad thing.
While I understand the need for the codebase to change, for ease of management, most public-facing UI changes I've seen are rarely for the better. A 'fresh new look' is usually just a bid to bring new features to the forefront that that site management wants you to use, that may not be explicitly necessary, or suit the end user's use cases.
I'm not saying that this is specifically what FA is doing, or that there's some exploitative intention behind it, but I've seen enough gradual shifting of big-name site design move this way to make it...just a generally unpalatable experience.
Discord being the most recent example of 'a good UI only ever getting worse' in recent memory.The Classic layout and colors are perfectly serviceable and familiar. The page layout is concise and uncomplicated. If a 1-to-1 replica of the old layout under a backend, that would be fantastic. But the simple reality is, most 'features' that are being introduced...are probably not things I will want to use, and joining it with the Modern codebase will not make those things optional.
The rename feature is literally the only thing that even got me to try it, and that has been a long, looooong time coming. Any additional features, even if they are not 'not for me' at best, or 'actively unappealing' at worst, still add additional buttons and clutter that are almost certainly not going to be things you can just toggle off in the interface - so it's still sort of a net loss that does not incentivize me to use an unfamiliar UI.
I absolutely don't expect this particular comment to change anything - as has been reiterated over the years, and only grows increasingly louder, you've made your decision to retire Classic - but I can at least try to express my displeasure in a generally coherent way. If there's anything constructive to take away from this, I suppose, it's that 'sometimes familiarity is its own strength', and 'I'd like to be able to toggle off interface features that I'll probably never use' - though I will concede that adding them based on popular requests is not bad in an inherent way.
My biggest overall issue is I *hate* the colors for all the 'new' options. I could muddle through if the 'classic' pale grey/violet color pallet was there, but it's not. All of these dark/light versions are hard on my eyes. The nice grey-ish purple tone makes it nice for me to browse and easy to use. I'm begging, please don't make this be another site I need to recolor with a monkey script to be usable.
I'm not fond of the frankly cluttered and space wasting of the new layouts. I don't like the structure or positioning. Heck, half my screen is void space on 'browse' because of that stupid sidebar options menu... For the love of all, put it back up at the top where it belongs. Once you've selected your options you don't even see it and the art thumbnails are tiny compared to classic. The whole point is to see the *art*, not dead space on a page.
The thing I loved about classic when I used it was that it was function before form. I think that's something classic got right. There's so many design choices in modern that really need a rethink, and we'll definitely be seeing that coming up! <3
It's actually been part of the reason I've not added a custom banner to my own profile - because even that is forced to be gigantic to an extent that just fills up too much of the screen.
I primarily use the website on a 1920x1080 monitor. It's to my understanding the themes don't seem to scale with the user's monitor resolution. Everything on the Modern themes seems better suited for being shown on a 2560x1440 monitor (which I did use for comparison).
EDIT: I should probably file this feedback as a ticket of some kind.
I am looking forward to seeing what improvements are in the pipeline though :D
Classic is good for me because it's not overstimulating and does what I want in as few steps as possible. (also please never add infinite scrolling, it's a plague on memory and data use. I like being able to find art without breaking my browser lol)
Also, this. Modern is a bit overstimulating in places like accounts, browse, and search. There's an overabundance of contrast that makes it feel overwhelming at times.
We attempted to put in a Trouble Ticket with some feedback, including accessibility issues we have with Modern and not Classic, but got cutoff at 8 lines and couldn't add any more. Fun fact: The character limit for a Trouble Ticket appears to be capped at 1,028 characters or 9 lines if not using any spaces. :3
A lot of the elements on Modern are a bit weird when using three large TVs as monitors due to vision problems. Modern takes up a LOT of space in several areas when compared to the more compact layouts of Classic. The menus, and submission pages especially are guilty of this.
- The menus are expanded and each section takes up at least double-triple the space of the classic view.
- Comments/threads are really long due to the fatter appearance of the UI as a whole.
- The fonts are in a larger display with no options to scale them smaller sitewide unless playing around with the zoom on your browser, which gets really wonky.
- Having the submission info/tags next to the picture instead of underneath it like in Classic pushes the picture off to one side and condenses it.
- Navigation via keyboard SIGNIFICANTLY harder, as the Modern view makes us tab through ALL of the menus and their options, tags, additional submissions, and comments before I can get to the buttons below the actual picture. Classic doesn't make us sit through the entirety of every menu unless I hit my down arrow key while it's selected.
-- Classic isn't perfect with keyboard navigation either though, as it doesn't highlight where you're tabbed to, but it at least keeps the URL of the selected element displayed in the bottom corner of the browser.
- The dark theme on Modern is actually TOO dark in for our own preferences, and causes a bit of eye strain/fuzziness between the text and the background.
-- We did look at Modern Retro. We're glad that it's the color of Classic Dark, but it doesn't seem to be universal sitewide. On some pages, like the profiles, it covers the entire page, except the headers, menus, and footers. On other pages, like on submissions, Search, Notifications, Uploads, Notes, and Upload, it only applies to a portion of the page, leaving gaps or the side panel in the darker Modern Dark.
- The rotating seasonal/special banners in Modern are nice, but also take up a fair chunk of space when loading pages. It'd be nice if there was on option on Modern to switch between the special banners and fixing it on the default FA banner from Classic that has the splat and Fender with a book and pen.
Another thing that's bugged us for ages is how you actually go about changing themes. It's in Account Settings, and requires you to put in your password every time you want to update it. At least to us, it'd make more sense under Site Settings.
Nor are most of us saying classic is perfect. It certainly has its issues. But on balance, modern (and "retro") are far, far worse. They violate basic principles of web design going back ages. FA is already becoming somewhat of a niche site with the rise of social networks, Discord, Telegram and so on. I think it's going to be increasingly hard to pull new users on to the site when it looks...like modern does. Especially artists, who are more visually/aesthetically sensitive than most.
That banner is lovely! Christmas isn't the same without a loaf or two.
Really hope your day gets better, I'm not gonna insult you or try to be rude. I will however say that this is quite... Hostile? I'm not trying to start a fight and I'd rather take a break instead of fighting so I just how your day goes better for you.
"Only" 4.6% of users ? I figured it'd be much higher.
The primary issue with the modern theme is how unnecessarily spaced out the different site elements are. There are less elements visible on a single screen, which requires more scrolling.
Also the positioning of certain elements, like the 'stats' above 'journals'. 'Notes' that are on the bottom of the page, rather than at the side.
And there's the large banners on top of every page, which pushes everything down even further.
To make sure we're actually looking at the same thing, here's classic/dark vs modern/retro: https://postimg.cc/SjDYQMdm
Note how in classic new submissions and journals are visible at a glance without scrolling.
Lastly, I'm not entirely convinced that classic is "impossible to make meaningful progress on".
For instance, Reddit still allows use of their 'classic' theme, despite the newer theme existing for years now:
https://www.reddit.com/r/cats/ vs https://old.reddit.com/r/cats/
Efficiency is comfy.
Any bolded, italicized, or otherwise altered text is shown in a different type face than any normal text. This wasn't always the case, but somehow happened some time a few months ago.
It could be my browser being silly, but the change in type face when I know the default type face for the Modern UI can surely be bolded without substituting it with Helvetica is a bit jarring.
(*I'm the only dork on staff who refuses to use anything but Opera One, so usually things break on my end only lol.)
Formatted text appears as Segoe UI for me too. Here's my thoughts:
In "override_font_comic_neue.css", as well as "ui_theme_dark.css", there are rules with a ton of specified elements in it that declares the font style for the site:
[pre]
html, body, button, .button, select, .textarea, .textbox, .uploadfield, .avataruploadfield, section.gallery, .header .close-button, .bbcode_left, .bbcode_center, .bbcode_right, #alert-notification-blade, .tags .tag-block, .dragDrop__fileInfo, .c-usernameBlock__symbol {
font-family: "Comic Neue", "Comic Sans MS", "Comic Sans", "Open Sans", -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, "Helvetica Neue", Arial, sans-serif !important;
letter-spacing: 0.5px !important;
}
[/pre]
[pre]
html, body, .button, select, .textarea, .textbox, .uploadfield, .avataruploadfield {
font-family: Open Sans, -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, Segoe UI, Roboto, Helvetica Neue, Arial, sans-serif;
font-size: 15px !important;
}
[/pre]
Let's call these Johnson and Johnson.
And in "ui_theme_dark.css", there is a rule for the BBCode elements specifically:
[pre]
.bbcode {
font-family: -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, Segoe UI, Roboto, Helvetica Neue, Arial, sans-serif;
}
[/pre]
Let's call this one John McClane.
The thing is, for BBCode elements, even if Johnson and Johnson are loaded and located after the BBCode, John McClane is still more specific than Johnson and Johnson, because he's only targeting one selector that's under body. Therefore, the CSS engine lets John McClane apply his styles before Johnson and Johnson can.
Therefore,
https://youtu.be/ILjqife_BnY?t=186
https://www.furaffinity.net/control.....troubletickets
If you run out of characters, a link to your comment also works!
I think it could use a couple tweaks though, namely in the last year or so, the boxes around comments and shouts have had the same color as the site background. They should be a slightly darker grey to match the rest of the theme and stand out a bit more in general.
(An official option to disable avatar rounding would also be nice, I sometimes use a userstyle CSS tweak for that.)
I like the amount of work that's been done to make the theme better over the years, and while I don't browse on mobile, I've heard there's some issues there from some pals. Will play around with it sometime to get a better feel and provide feedback sometime.
For feedback on what I actually see, I'd personally like to see the buttons updated to be more consistent.
The Bold, Italicize, Underline, Alignment, all don't match the same as the 'Post Comment' button, for example in both size and colours, so it feels inconsistent. I'd also like to mention the legend for notes for unread, high, medium, and low priority also could use an update too, if we're matching style globally. Also, I'm on a 4K monitor, and for me, these look a little fuzzy, if that helps.
Radio buttons and checkboxes could also use a reskin at some point to bring it all together cohesively since they appear unstyled to me.
Input boxes, like typing here on the Slate theme, don't match the input box style you see in the settings menus, for example, which is darker than this.
One thing I think might make things easier for the developers would be utilizing some more modernized practices if they aren't already, where they could just work on a single light and single dark theme and allow users to set specific preset choices for colours which influence site-wide changes and allow them some degree of customization to the user's liking, but also provide some samples in some nice colour choices. Would need to pull from the user's preferences to override certain hex/hues, but it'd probably make a good majority of users happy to tweak it to their liking.
When I used to do a lot of UI reskins, a lot of the fields were inconsistent with naming or globalized, so it was a nightmare to figure out all the proper ones needed to include. I've not poked at their CSS these days but I hope they've been working to consolidate the styles down to be more uniform.
Now a days I just run a personal style with some tweaks, mainly distinguishing visited links for submissions and making some things wider for better1440p viewing.
Good luck! Always good to be able to cut off a massive swath of tech debt.
For the curious, the major issue I brought up is that I don't like having a sidebar next to the art. I want the art to take up the full width of my browser or, if it's smaller, have it centered with empty margins on the side. The mini gallery being returned to the center position was mentioned above, which is awesome! The tags and other submission details in the sidebar should be moved next to the submission description, as it is in the classic theme.
im seeing a few people bring up deviantart in regards to classic being retired, and i feel the need to remind people that deviantart took absolutely zero user input on eclipse. FA staff is here trying to meet in the middle and actively trying to learn what keeps classic users on classic, deviantart said "screw you we do what we want". change can suck but it is so not the same situation
I understand the concern that FA might do the same but everyone needs to recognize FA is not corporate in the slightest and continues being one of the few sites that feel like the "old" internet despite all the intrusive changes in the medium of art websites over the years. Sure, there have been tumbles along the way but this site remains by furries for furries.
I guess in the end it comes down to how well some adapt to change. I'm not saying this as a bad thing or insulting said users. I myself have a very hard time acclimating to big changes but staff here has been very communicative on the abandonment of Classic.
The "Commissions" page on userpages is unviewable on Mobile, since for some reason you cannot move the page left and right, only up and down, meaning you can only read half of the page.
With classic, if I am on my phone, I can see at least 48 submissions on the page at once, and just zoom in and zoom out to select a submission from the page. With modern, the layout becomes significantly more condensed on mobile, which seems like a good idea on paper, but it actually makes the mobile version of modern less user friendly.
Secondly, thats why I and allot of people are going to wait UNTIL they make changes and not just blindly jump right in. Its called business.
And of course keep it around for the nerds who actually use it correctly too lol
About the only request I'd like to make is for the CSS classes to please continue to not be obfuscated, and with that, I'm happy. Anything I personally feel needs slight adjustments to my specific tastes I can mod without interfering with the global design for anyone else.
Another set of features I think would be nice are custom colors (like was possible on classic FA using CSS mods) but integrated into the site instead.
But more importantly, I think a custom font setting would also be nice. I think the font has a huge hand in how the website feels and I think ive gotten far too used to Veranda -w-.
One more thing that might help is page-width options? But that one's not that important
Now for some complaints.
Ive only really used modern theme while logged out but I do have a couple.
1. The news banner shouldn't interfere with the content and especially not information like text. Right now the banner cuts halfway into the submission information numbers. I think pushing the content downwards might be a better option.
2. While viewing a submission the "More from [user] area" should be easier to understand chronologically. a 2x3 grid does not convey a useful order unless it's a system you're already familiar with. You might also want to introduce an icon for "currently viewing the submission in this order" like with classic theme. This one's small but it will probably get me a lot once I have to switch over.
3. Is there any useful way of submitting feedback in a useful way that isn't Discord? It's not that I don't have or don't use discord it's just that I think feedback and feedback on that feedback should be easier to access than a place that requires an account to view and isn't easily searchable and as far as I'm aware the bluesky isn't for feedback, so it's either Discord or nothin.
i also just dont want to join another freakin server!!Anyways, that's all I can think of. UI and UX is a little important to me but I know I'm kind of a stick in the mud when it comes to technological change. If you guys want me to elaborate in any way or provide more nuance just leave somethin here. This was kind of a ramble for me.
I will say though, out of a lot of modernizations I've seen of websites, FA isn't the worst I've seen. I would rank it above Steam's initial UI changes a few years ago. The website still seems to run reasonably well which in this day and age is a miracle if your website doesnt use up 4GB of memory.
Jumping in to say yes, you can just file a ticket on this very site. Sending feedback on a journal also works.
I do appreciate Discord allowing for open feedback without having to bug someone in particular or feeling like I'm submitting a full report, though.
I just kinda wish it was on a website that didn't require you to join to view.
(however, i will take this time to grumble that the news banner blocks my beloved in-house ad slots)
[returns to the ad mines]
If it's covering ads instead of content then then I'm a little less concerned and pressing the X button on the banner is a small price to pay for my duplicitous piracy
In all seriousness, though, moving that info to where it is on Classic is something I'd like to see. IDK I've always thought that location looked nicer and more clean?
I will be sticking to classic till its dying breath for now.
The "Edit Submission Info" link will take you to a page where you can edit all of the submission's details.
It is kinda hidden tho.
Reasons I held onto classic for so long were largely because after seeing how deviantart implemented its forced modern ui I was not very keen on trying out modern, and even now as I'm getting used to it, I find it annoying that there's no button for the 'full view' in modern even though yes I did find the thumbnail->full res in account settings and I still heavily prefer to have the minigallery and folders right below the upload instead of far in the bottom right. Please note that these have been the reasons I stayed with classic for so long.
It's also mildly annoying that I can't turn off banners if I don't want to have one on my own profile, and while I'm pretty sure it's just to make it easier to code, I have to ask why can I add tags to my block list on my OWN uploads?
I have to scroll all the way down to the bottom just to access the folders in someone's profile. It was alot easier in Classic because it was basically the same as it is on desktop, but in mobile its far too compressed!
I think a cool solution would be to have a sliding menu on the side in order to access stuff like folders and comments a lot easier.
And the thing for feedback I had is already on the list (thank goodness) so that's wonderful! The mini gallery really is my biggest complaint of the modern layout. It doesn't even show up when I'm using a tablet and I truly hate having to click the main gallery EVERY time I want to go through a sequence. So having it back in the middle, under image like it was in classic, would be fantastic.
OH! And please please please if there is some way to make it to where if you're browsing a folder on someone's page, the navigation buttons ONLY take you through that folder, and not the main gallery.
For instance: Say I want to browse through a comic someone has made that they've been posting over a long period of time, right? And during that time, they're posting commissioned pieces and whatnot, leaving long gaps between the comic. They also haven't linked the pieces together in the description so now you have to either hunt it down in the main gallery, or click back into the folder. So instead of clicking back and forth between pieces and folders, it'd be nice if hitting the Newer/Older buttons would take me to the next piece in the folder itself. And the mini gallery showing what's in the folder would be fantastic as well.
I feel like that would make folders far less cumbersome to use as a viewer ^^
THIS so much. I always forget how much this annoys me
Having an option to scale the font down the font to about 75%~80% will be golden for me.
I am still confused and curious as to what the technical blockers are that prevent a one-to-one replica of classic being made in the modern engine? I've been directed to a post by Yuuk, but short of a migration to using DB Schema instead of hard-coded language and what I assume are more modern JS frameworks, I'm not finding anything that is the metaphorical brick wall blocking that approach. Can someone please explain for those of us that are technically-minded or are in the software development space what the challenge is here? If there was a way for the members of the community that still use classic to help out and help preserve that layout and user experience, I'm sure several of us would be happy to help. I know I'd be happy to help with transitioning it to modern if it meant keeping the classic UI/UX.
Regarding the changes going live on the beta FA site - is there any chance that access could be extended to the users still using the classic theme that may not have FA+? It feels a little cruddy to be told "Hey, we're changing things and getting rid of the primary way you use the site, but because you don't have a subscription, you don't get to see those changes until we flip the switch at some point in the future."
For every feature we add to modern, we've had to recode it *again* in classic. Every single feature add is twice the amount of work.
EDIT: As for opening it up to the community, unfortunately the way the system is designed we can't just give people access. It's a security nightmare. Part of our push to improve development is redoing the entire codebase, which we want to design a way for frontends to be slot in and out. At that point, we can reapproach making something with the classic look and feel, but in order to get there we have a lot of work to do.
I understand there are two separate template engines which run two separate code bases, so copying and pasting CSS, html template files, etc is not possible. I work day in and day out with paying off technical debt and migrating services between languages and frameworks - I understand that is not possible.
What I am asking though and what I would like to know: What features or functionality are missing from the template engine for the modern code base that prevents the classic theme and layout from being remade in the modern code base as closely as it can be to how it exists today?
From a style standpoint: The elements used in rendering different portions of the system are different. The frame for the whole website is different. The layout and location of elements are different. Classic uses a very rigid formatting structure that expects a browser to be no bigger than a specific resolution.
Honestly? I'd love to build a templating engine that allows us to make everyone happy. I want to give people classic or modern and have it be not only compliant but maybe even user servicable or customizable. I want the community to be able to have the freedom to do what they will with the site they use.
Regarding technical standpoint: Several elements of Bootstrap have close equivalents in Tailwind and Material. Template layouts for example - scaffolding and columns in Bootstrap are similar to the column system in Tailwind and fairly similar to the grid system in Material. Yes, it's different syntax, but all three have similar ways to accomplish the same goals and come out with very similar behaviors. It's true that you can't just copy and paste Tailwind style code into a Material project and expect it to work, but you can certainly take something that was originally written in Tailwind and recreate it closely in Material, and vice-versa.
Regarding the style standpoint: Are these layout elements not configurable and able to be toggled by user preference? I was under the understanding this was one of the main reasons the modern framework was developed, so that users could toggle elements and configure them.
I apologize, I know this probably seems like I'm being pedantic or confrontational, but I promise you that is the furthest thing from the truth. I am trying my best to understand why it isn't possible to accomplish what it seems like you already want to do with being able to allow the current modern framework to be customizable to the degree that would allow for both classic and modern to exist in some form. I'm right there with you that user serviceability and customization would be great, it would put the effort to build and maintain that in the hands of the classic users, and again, I think that's what a lot of us would happy to do - to be able to help keep FA in a form that we've come to love over nearly 20 years of it existing.
Edit: I saw your prior update about security with the current code base and I understand, it's not just a matter of someone having access to a git repo with the ability to wreck a branch of development, it's the potential exposure of vulnerabilities. I would say though, that if it's not something opposed of by the team as a whole, a call for volunteers to help rebuild the classic layout in the modern engine to help develop the customization functionality for modern might be worth consideration?
I can't really get into any more specifics beyond what I've already laid out here today, but essentially the fact that things are "fairly" similar doesn't mean that they can just be interchanged with a few swapouts. The components and framework themselves are entirely different!
With the new backend codebase we're working on, we're going to be putting out a call for volunteers to help with development, including even possibly designing an ode to classic in a classic 2.0. I'm super down for that once we get the new system up and running and we can support that kind of endavor <3
Regarding the new backend code base, future development, call for volunteers, etc. I had one more quick question about that, but is it okay if I send you a note about it?
Thank you for actually explaining this. Can you do us all a favor and go poke Fender until he adds this explanation to the journal? The biggest question people seem to have is "Why not just recreate the old frontend on the new backend?" and the answer needs to be front and center.
But if you check the feedback list; this is addressed and being looked at. Please stay tuned!
it's a spaghetti factory.
Will all browser bookmarks immediately stop working?
Will links to users in submission text will change too?
Will new files get new user name in them?
Will old files download with old or new name now?
On IB when user changes name, new files get new name, as if it was totally new account, but old keep old, which is a pain in ass when I try to organize them. I really hope current solution (fixed name, modifiable display name) stays, because it combines best of both worlds - both stable URLs and filenames AND the ability to change name at will.
My biggest gripe with modern UI is how it shows submissions, I strongly dislike the side pannel thing, I find it incredibly distracting when I'm trying to enjoy the artwork.
Honestly that really is the main gripe I have with the modern UI. Change that to be formatted to how classic is (just the image centered, the next/previous gallery boxes under and then the big description/title/tags box with the comments below, and I'll change to modern right away.
"I'm not switching to Modern until they make it look exactly like Classic." That's not going to happen, and when Classic is gone, you will not be given a choice; you'll log into FA, and your FA will be in Modern because Classic no longer exists. The sooner you reconcile yourself to that, the easier it will be.
Specific feedback (i.e. feedback other than "I would like Modern if it looked/functioned exactly like Classic," which is not helpful feedback) is being taken into consideration, but the fact remains: Classic is going away.
There is no solution here that is going to make everyone happy, and the simple fact is that no matter how much outrage you express over losing Classic, they cannot afford to continue maintaining what is essentially two separate code bases for the site. They have to pull the plug on one of them, and since Classic is a deprecated UX that is used by less than 5% of the site's active users, that's the one getting pulled.
They're not going to rewrite the entire Modern codebase to make it match what Classic looks like - that's not going to happen. Switch to Modern, figure out what specific problems you have with it (i.e. not just "it's not Classic," because that isn't a serious complaint), and bring those up. But the simple fact is that at some point in the not-distant future, you will be on Modern whether you want it or not.
Most websites don't take this kind of feedback. When I go to Facebook or CNN or virtually any other website on the internet, I might pop in one day and it will simply look different, and I just have to deal with it. Be grateful this site is taking time to process user feedback, and if you have feedback to give, consider whether it's actually helpful or not ("turn Modern into Classic" is not helpful).
They cannot retain Classic. It's too much of a spaghettifest, and it creates a double workload for the site devs. Nor can they, at this time, recreate the Classic frontend 1:1 on the Modern backend because Modern has its own templating flexibility issues currently.
What they can do at this time, is make feature changes to Modern to meet us halfway.
So tell them what they need to do to meet you halfway.
And my backlog of 78 images can't wait either LMAO
the thing is, there's already been a 2nd, 3rd, 4th, and more looks at it. classic's code is outdated and incredibly hard to work with - to the point that certain features are impossible to add but have been requested for a long time, like name changes and display names, etc. it's likely costing staff more to keep the old version of the site around as is.
this is not a choice made on a whim. fur affinity has needed a full recode for a long time, this is what we get.
But to get there, Classic has to retire.
So, you know how you've been advertising Modern Retro for a week? You should have accompanied that with a journal featuring/linking to screenshots of Modern Retro so that people would have some idea in advance what they'd be trying out.
I just tried it out now, and while I appreciate the less-harsh contrast of Classic FA's Dark Mode... that and seeing the banner appeared to be the only benefits. After seeing what viewing submissions, an image, and a journal was like in Modern Retro, I immediately switched back to Classic proper because I found the sidebars completely insufferable. The reason the minority of us who persist with Classic do so is because we consider Modern's design be fundamentally flawed and visually irritating to use.
Here are the major problems I have with Modern that severely reduce the QOL compared to Classic and need to be changed. I was going to go into more detail in my feedback ticket, but I ran out of characters so I'll be wordier here instead:
* Links do not change color to show that you've clicked them. While links changing color may be old-fashioned, it is an invaluable feature on gallery sites (as well as shopping sites) to let users keep track of what they have and have not looked at. The lack of changing link color on modern is one of the major dealbreakers for me. I need to be able to keep track of what I have and haven't clicked on; this is a use and accessibility issue for me.
* I find the floating menu bar to be visually distracting while I'm trying to look at an image. I think the distraction of the floating menu is a greater inconvenience than having to scroll back to the top of the page. But I know for others the floating menu is legitimately more convenient, so this should be a toggle option.
** Elements on the Modern menu bar are bigger than they need to be, and crowd each other too much (giving the feeling that one is somehow stuck in mobile mode despite being on desktop). This and the lack of comma separation results in the different notification types being mushed together instead of being easily parsed at a glance.
** Certain options which are readily visible on the Classic menu bar are hidden in a dropdown on Modern, and this is a hamburger menu instead of under "My FA".
* The sidebars are fundamentally irredeemable and need to be done away with immediately; IMO they should never have been greenlit in the first place. They crowd the page content off to the side (especially since they take up an excessive amount of space, something that I imagine makes them even worse on mobile), distracting from it. This is bad enough for images, where they prevent it from being cleanly centered on the page (having the image centered is something that's always made FA a much nicer viewing experience than Booru sites or e621), and even worse for text stories and journals where the distraction and crowding actively make it harder to read them. This information needs to be below the content, next to the description as it is in Classic. Or if that's unworkable, take a leaf from Weasyl or SoFurry's book - both of them handle this much better than the clunky sidebars. The journal sidebar should instead be a box below the journal entry so that it isn't distracting clutter, and maybe even something that can just be outright toggled on and off. These sidebars are an absolute dealbreaker for using Modern in its current state and urgently need to be scrapped in favor of a solution that doesn't clutter and crowd the page content.
* Alerts should be in separated boxes as they are on Classic, rather than a transparent overlay that overlaps page content. Having them be overlays makes images and stories harder to look at, and can make the alerts harder to read as well.
* UI elements in general should be smaller, at least on desktop
* Specific to the Modern Retro skin, description panes, comment panes, etc. should have the full appearance of Classic FA (honestly, a clone of Classic FA's frontend on the modern's codebase would probably do wonders to ease the transition and maybe even silence the complaining entirely).
There's probably further issues that need ironing out, but the anti-readability sidebars and the links not changing color are such complete dealbreakers that I wasn't able to stand using Modern Retro long enough to find them.
Precisely this! I get that the change needs to be made because of coding stuff, but it feels like the fundamental change of layout is being done for the sake of changing the layout.
So, having the full Classic FA appearance is something that will have to wait. And admittedly I only put that in as an ideal world stretch goal.
They need to get rid of the sidebars and display the information in a non-cluttering way (either how Classic does it or something similar to Weasyl), they need to make links change color so we can keep track of read vs unread, they need to bring over the mini gallery (especially since multiple people have used that as a crutch for linking the pages of comics); I didn't even realize it was missing because the sidebars made Modern too unbearable to keep looking at, and they need to fix UI element sizing or make it flexible.
Those are the biggest things making Modern so onerous to use over Classic, especially the accursed sidebars from the new tag system.
The three top preforming spots are the two Lil spots above submission stats* and the Leaderboard banner above the submission itself. They are the backbone of our community/ in-house spots and absolutely cannot move. The location of Lils on Classic have their own IDs, so I can track their metrics and they are so subpar that moving those adspots to where they are on Classic to aid in getting rid of the sidebar would destroy our community advertisers' interaction rates.
Then there's the matter of the Square (300 x 250). That one serves third party ads sometimes as well as in-house. Third party advertising has strict rules on where ads have to be located else we lose the ability to have that income avenue. That square spot being there is a requirement.
Tech has their own reasons for needing Classic to go, but Classic is also an active hinderance to our in-house ad statistics due to the extremely poor performance. This is from bad ad balancing/ layout.
So all that to say, even if the sidebar gets reworked/ removed, the ad spots that are in the sidebar would have to stay where they are at somehow lest the site suffer financially. Though I'm sure no one wants to hear from the ad/ numbers guy, I do wanna peep in to temper expectations about things that have to stay where they're at for financial reasons. :3
(*I know who's adblocking my ads if they happen to say the News Banner blocks submission stats. :c )
IMO it's Classic that has better ad balancing and layout. Because ads on Classic stay completely in their lane while remaining perfectly in view. All three of those top-performing spots you mention are up top where they're not in the way, yet we can see them just fine; they catch the eye no problem. I suspect low ad performance from Classic isn't because of placement, but because most people who use still Classic tend to not whitelist sites on their adblocker (because they don't trust ads anywhere to not cause page yo-yoing or randomly yoink them to a fake "You've won an Amazon gift card!" page or the like mid-scroll).
Btw, you better be vetting those third-party advertisers (how badly do we need them currently?) real carefully.
(How badly do we need them? That's a Sciggles question to answer. ^^; )
*Instantaneously in this instance means how fast I, or anyone else with ad access, can get to the dashboard to manually block said malvert.
But that space wasn't made for the ads. It was made for submission info, tags, etc. And that content being in that location is the problem. Move this content back down below the image where it was before and move the ads with it. Ads should not ever drive page layout. Oh, sure, the layout needs to be aware of them, but their placement location should not drive the design. Not unless you're trying to be malicious about their placement, cough mobile games, cough.
The side bar feels wrong because of where it is, not what's in it. People want more space to view THE ART: the thing they CLICKED ON in order to VIEW IT.
The gallery puts folders here too, because (apparently) its the same space the submission page uses for tags, despite the fact that it is objectively terrible design flow. You want to keep this here, then find me any other folder UI from any application or OS that puts the folders on the right and contents on the left by default. You find me one and I'll let you keep it as a layout option if people want it. You can't, and it fucking dies.
TLDR: the sidebar is bad and you should feel bad for defending it. <tongue in cheek/>
Wait, weren't the ads at the bottom of the page a square one and two lils? Looks like a square one and two scaled down full banner ones...what
?_?
Same with rectangles which are now 300 x 250.
Please see:
"While I also would like to see the information housed in them move to somewhere else, "
"So all that to say, even if the sidebar gets reworked/ removed, the ad spots that are in the sidebar would have to stay where they are at somehow"
That is, is it because they are located high in screenspace (top vs. left vs. right) or is it because they are adjacent to the tags and other sidebar information?
In other words, if the entire side bar moved to the left of the screen, does that change the click rate?
Most proposals I've seen tend to move them where the current rectangle is on the sidebar, and that one is already just ok stat wise. Would be a huge doengrade to in-house if they moved there.
Still, am interested to see the results of said tests as we got a few nice layout proposals from folks. Whatever doesn't mess over our in-house beans. :3
Only late replying because I didn't see it earlier and popped back over to the modern theme to validate some of the things I was thinking of from the prior time I used it (and made better notes than my knee-jerk reaction feedback) and ran into that comment reading the things that'd been posted since I'd last checked the page.
You have paying users who want a clean gallery site. "But that's the best place to put ads :c " is a terrible argument to defend layout that users hate.
As stated in other comments, third party slots are not in-house slots. FA+ does not remove in-house/ community ads.
Additionally, please see:
"While I also would like to see the information housed in them move to somewhere else, "
"So all that to say, even if the sidebar gets reworked/ removed, the ad spots that are in the sidebar would have to stay where they are at somehow"
Ad placement should not be informing the site design. That's the realm of the kind of places that are designed as a structure to nail ads to and then fill all the gaps with what they dismissively refer to as "content". You have users who literally want to pay for something better than that.
If you need to change the pricing around "pay for something better than that" to make ends meet because ads where Classic put them aren't doing well enough, that's a different (but valid!) argument.
For me personally, Modern is too cluttered. Everything is too large and too close together in a way that is overwhelming to look at and discourages me from ever actually trying to browse. I've given it chances, I've used it exclusively on my art account to try to force myself to get used to it, but it just feels like an abrasive and loud layout. If a toggle could be added to keep the smaller buttons and more simple visuals of Classic, that alone would be a giant improvement to me, but I know that may not be possible.
All in all, I understand that keeping it has been more trouble than it is worth when those using it really are just a tiny fraction of the user base. But I'll be sad to see it go. I see people mentioning a minimalist version of Modern being on the road map, so maybe that will fix my gripes with it whenever it can happen if it happens!
Mobile specific: Keep the file link as part of the submission. The PDF reader is not very cooperative on mobile (for me) to get the font big enough to see and still be able to scroll the page. When PDFs were still a "download only" option they would open in a new tab and were easier to navigate compared to the reader on the page.
1. My biggest complaint, and the number one thing I want changed- I absolutely hate not seeing the previews of users other submissions under the art! I really like that feature, and its the main reason im still sticking to classic.
If you change that, I will happily switch, but until then I will stay using classic.
The other complaints I have are mostly nitpicks, but they still annoy me
2. I don't like having the icon be in the middle of rhe user profile banner, I would rather the banner be uncovered.
3. I don't like having to go to the drop down menu to search, I would prefer that be still on the main page. It's just an additional little step that gets annoying fast.
3. When using mobile browser formatting, I would rather three per row when searching or on the main page, two is a bit too zoomed in for my taste
4. Also, I believe the modern dosent have the feature where you can see what users favorites your post, and I like that feature. I could he wrong, but I don't wanna check.
A lot of folks had complaints about it (myself included). Seems to be good news though, because “returned to centered position” sounds like it should fix the UI problems.
The other problem with the minigallery is that it’s completely gone on tablets. I also mentioned that problem and I know it’s been acknowledged.
You can check this by clicking the number of favorites (which, yeah, pretty unintuitive and it'd be better if there was a separate button for it). Note that this only works on your own submissions, you can't see who favorited another person's submissison.
I'd also really suggest ditching the italics in random things. FA I think is the only site I see now online that uses italics for anything.
Screen real estate isn't being used well
Furaffinity's HTML on modern is fairly well organized (at least compared to a react site or something) - I'd love to see some attempts from community members to do some CSS changes on modern using Firefox's user-stylesheets or through an extension to see how hard it would be to reskin things - in a way that might allow for quicker iteration or experiments than what the staff/devs can do.
I think it's great that FA is asking about issues - I know that not every issue is probably going to be able to be solved (I suspect there's not gonna be a JS-optional version of the modern theme). But for some of the issues that I'm seeing come up really often (font-size, margins, visited link styling) - this is stuff that can be fixed in Firefox today without even waiting for the devs.
I have visited-link styling on the modern theme right now. I just stuck in userContent.css
-moz-document domain(www.furaffinity.net) {
a:visited { color:#faf!important; }
}
It would also be possible to do targeted adjustments of margins, font sizes, etc in there. I'm not saying that's a permanent solution, or that everything could be solved that way (actual functionality differences are still going to remain) - but if users want to experiment with some different layouts that try to address problems as examples of changes that would be good to make.. it might be a good place to start replicating the classic interface and to quickly build some examples for different themes.
However, I am glad to see suggestions that have been suggested being recognized and mentioned in the journal here. Thank you for this!
(Honestly, the mini gallery not showing, journal lists / pagination not showing, and the seemingly random text size varying between comments in journals / submissions for me are the most glaring issues for me, as I am a mobile-only user. Though I also would prefer the font currently used in Classic as an option, compared to the one Retro uses by default.)
This is encouraging. If all of the fixes mentioned in this post are completed (and the minigallery is added back to tablets) then it’ll be usable enough for me to switch.
They take up something like 25-30% of almost every page on the site, and push the main content off center. They also tend to be very busy from a visual standpoint and distract from the main content. This is especially bad on the main submission view page, where all the buttons and text crammed next to the art make it look like a content creation app.
FA is supposed to be a gallery site, not a tagging tool. I want the art to be attractively displayed as the main focal point of the page, not crammed off to the side and competing with a pile of brightly colored buttons.
Many of the side bars take up more space than they deserve, too. The browse page, for example, has a handful of buttons at the top, and then nothing but dead space all the way to the bottom. The old site used a horizontal bar at the top, which was a much better use of space.
It’s also weird that the side bars tend to be on the right rather than the left. All the Big Name sites I use have their navigation and option bars on the left. (And they’re generally much smaller; maybe 10% rather than 25%).
Apart from the side bar thing:
All the text is too big.
The sans serif fonts make it difficult to read, even though the font is bigger.
I don’t like that the SFW toggle is hidden under a dropdown.
The lack of visited link differentiation is annoying.
There doesn’t seem to be any way to input the FA-specific emoji codes.
In general, the UI is too big and obtrusive and blocky. Too much contrast. Questionable color choices. Too many big rectangles with hard edges (The old site used smaller ones, and has outlines to soften the transitions).
The way semi-transparent UI elements overlay the art and banner is obnoxious, too. The News/Updates banner thing covers part of the art as well as other UI elements, even when you scroll as far up as possible. And on the user page, the links and info to the right of the user icon are visually problematic because of the way they are overlaid across the banner and/or a background with a dramatic luminance gradient.
All in all, “It’s ugly.” and I suggest you go look at Amazon or Wikipedia or Stack Exchange or any of the other big name sites and try to copy how they do things. Or failing that, go copy Weasyl, or InkBunny or the old FA. None of them are perfect, but they mostly work and keep the focus on the art rather than the UI.
No one comes here for the UI.
I am also not a UI/UX expert or graphic designer. I just know what I like, and what has worked for decades. I appreciate the admin at least being open to suggestions, but this whole thing seems baffling to me, because the answer seems obvious:
1. Open up the modern theme
2. Open up the classic theme side-by-side
3. Start hacking away at css etc until you have a version of the modern theme that is effectively visually indistinguishable from classic, while making a few minor concessions here and there to accommodate the new features of Modern (although in some cases avoiding those features may be part of the reason people like classic in the first place, but that's a different discussion).
This seems self-evident to me, if you really want to to address the issue. No need to get into the weeds of this design element or that one. Just visually and structurally emulate it as closely as possible. The current attempt is nowhere near this (it doesn't even have a light theme version, the MAIN version of classic people use). If that's the closest you can get, we're in trouble.
But if you REALLY want to get into the weeds, I think people have given you a lot of good feedback here I agree with. Overall, modern looks too much like a mobile site. Everything is too big, bulky, awkward. Text should be simple, small, slim and unobtrusive. It shouldn't scream at you. Don't have a bunch of flashy UI elements everywhere. Consolidate down. When people say it's ugly, this is probably mostly what they're referring to; certainly it's my main issue. Do not make the site look like a large print book for seniors (despite the fact that many of us are getting up there in age :P). But here, let me put it in a list:
1. Smaller everything. Less bold everything. Slim and unobtrusive.
2. Light mode for the love of god. Dark mode is a fad, and it ironically hurts/fatigues my eyes far more that light mode.
3. Simple UI that puts the important stuff forward.
4. Make site banners smaller (thinner) and give the option to disable them entirely. I know you guys love your banners, but I don't come to FA to look at banners, I come to use the site. Taking up 20% of my screen is massively visually distracting and obliterates usability as I have to scroll past useless noise on EVERY PAGE before I can get to anything I actually want/need to look at. And it's extra goofy that you're doing this as a "modernization" effort, as such design elements went out of style decades ago. It's like we're back to the the era of huge chonky 90's banner ads.
Many of your suggestions are actually covered in the current list of suggestions, or will be added to the discord list that is being updated in semi realtome. A lot of it is just simplified as folks are saying the same things in different ways.
I see them doing stuff like that on Star Trek all the tine
In what sense?
Obviously you can't EXACTLY emulate it, you've introduced new features and so on. But I allowed for that in my initial post. But I have a hard time believing that coming within say, 90-95% of the look of the old site is technically impossible. I suspect you simply dislike the old design, prefer the new one and don't want to have to design backwards, which is understandable, but the new design sucks.
Again, I'm not a UI expert. But things like "don't have massive wasted space, don't have distracting elements, KISS etc are basic principles in web design going back decades, and the new visual styling violates them HARD. It's unpleasant to look at, and a chore to use. I love a lot of what you guys are trying to do, and unlike many think a more robust tagging system, for example, could end up being great for the site. But it has to be usable on a basic level first.
It just bugs me how a lot of this is coming down to "Well we have to kill Classic because spaghetti code" and like... I don't think anyone is saying the backend isn't outdated or needs to go. I really just want the site to stay the same visually (at least as much as is possible) and don't really understand why that isn't possible.
1. Shouts should not be half the profile screen. Push them to the right so there's more space for the art. Viewing and browsing art is the point of the site.
2. Get rid of the icons in the top nav bar. They're visually distracting. Text only. Same for av icon. Username is fine. TEXT ONLY. Hamburger and cog menus are the devil.
3. Get rid of the sidebar on the submission/artwork page. Move the tags and preview thumbnails back below the work. Having that sidebar is ugly as sin, distracts from the work, and results in MASSIVE wasted space once you scroll down into the comments. Also, don't have such loud colors on the tags. Too visually noisy, obnoxious, distracting. Tags are not the point of the submission page, the submission is.
4. Don't make the nav bar transparent, and don't lock it at the top as we scroll. Yes it's very slick, but it's unneeded and wastes space. If I need the nav bar, I'll scroll up.
5. For the love of god stop with all the drop-shading under sections. The fake-3d effect looks cheap, it's distracting, and it doesn't even make sense (the shadow should either be on both right and left of an element, or JUST the right, not JUST THE LEFT).
Corrections to my previous post, as I was remembering incorrectly:
1. Massive 20% of page banner only shows on SOME pages, not all. Still obnoxious though.
2. Having taken a fresh look, I modify my original point: much of the text, at least on retro, is TOO thin; I think the kerning is fucked or something. Looks very awkward somehow.
Also, the navigation overlay on the modern UI covers part of the image when scrolling down. Taking up more space that could be used to view the image.
I have a very specific way that I save the file name of images. The first part is the username that I copy from the image's page. Usernames on the modern UI are harder to copy in the title area of the image. In the classic UI, there is a large space right next to the name that I can use to start the name highlighting to copy it. In the modern UI, there is a comma, then text right next to it that means I have to navigate my cursor right between the comma and the name.
Everything also just feels way too zoomed and oversized while simultaneously being cramped by the sidebar compared to the original ui
If its for the better of FA to progress, then its better if classic just gets retired already so FA can improve without being weighed down by an archaic piece of coding. I used to use classic until last year. Now I"m using modern with the retro skin and you can still keep that classic look with the modern one.
If it helps, I also browse on desktop.
When viewing an picture/submission, I don't like seeing all the submission info crammed into the right side of the screen. I liked seeing the image itself front and center. I don't need to see view count or favorites, or tags. If I want to, I can scroll down. Same with the "other uploads".
The plus buttons by the tags being bright yellow also adds to the distraction.
Everything also looks very zoomed in on the modern theme, if I zoom out of the modern theme to 67% on my browser it looks about the same size wise then.
Also no a fan of the rounded icons in the modern layout. It kind of messes with and blurs any pixel/sprite based icons.
It just feels like every part of the modern UI is trying to be very attention grabbing and it comes down to feeling really overwhelming to look at and use.
I do hope the emote bar transfers over, I do like using them on my comments.
I still prefer the OG classic aesthetic/layout wise and having emoticons! The OG classic felt easier on the eyes and less cramped at times. Been using classic since 2009 so a little biased oop.
I simply can't read site with bright text on dark backgrounds. That causes the text to bloom and blur, which is something I have no control over - unless there's a cure for under-developed optic nerves. I use the classic light theme, because it's the only theme I can actually read without pain behind my eyes.
I already tried modern light, assuming it would be the same color palette and intensity as classic light. But, that has a pure white background and there is no way I can read anything on that for more than around 90 seconds, without an optic-nerve induced headache. That's a sort of pain that no painkillers are designed for. It's a sharp and intense pain, so none of the currently available themes are accessible to me, except for the original classic light.
Classic light is fully compatible with my photophobia, and has worked well for me for 19 years. If the same palette and background color were available in a modern theme, I would have switched to modern already. Unfortunately, I cannot use any of the modern themes with their current background intensities and palettes.
If classic light is retired before an accessible modern theme is available, I simply won't be able to use FA any more - the one website I've spent the most time on over the past 19 years. When designing a new modern theme, it will need to have the same brightness and contrast ration as classic light, so it might as well simply use that exact same palette.
I don't care if the layout and placement of page elements exactly matches classic. I mainly care that the theme is even accessible to me at all. For me, it isn't about preference or nostalgia. It's purely about accessibility. I'd be very upset and depressed if I ultimately lost access to my favorite site over an accessibility issue. An accessible modern replacement for classic light using the same accessible palette, needs to be in place, before classic light is retired. I can't use the site if my ability to read it is taken away.
I've changed a few minor things using CSS to match my preferences and needs before. Firefox makes that relatively easy. I did increase the thickness of the borders around the around the favorites previews on my profile page, so I could actually see the red, blue or black borders, but that's approaching the extent of my successful CSS changes. Attempts at global palette changes over the entire site never got me very far. I'm not that fluent in CSS!
https://darkreader.org/
Currently, the palette used for FA's classic light is very readable. The background is lighter than the text, which I require for the text to stay in focus. And, the background is not too bright, which allows long sessions of viewing without painful sensory overload. Classic light keeps the background around 15 to 20 percent darker than pure white, which is ideal for avoiding the sensory issues, while still not being darker than most of the text. The most simple solution would be to simply use the classic light palette, since it's been time tested for 20 years.
Those who can use dark themes have several to choose from, using modern. Those who need a light theme only have one, which is far too bright, using modern.
There is one site with light text on a darker background that I can read without the sensory blurring of the text. That one is f-list.net, when looking at people's overview, info, groups, etc. I'm pretty sure that's because the background is not anywhere near to black. It is sufficiently bright enough to not cause my eyes to dilate much, so the lighter text still remains in focus for me. If the background there were just a bit darker, I probably wouldn't be able to read that site. In other words, if a site's main background is close to pure white or black, I can't easily read it. If the background is at least 15 to 20 percent brighter than black, or darker than white, it comes into the range where I can read it. FA's classic light happens to be within the range that I can read comfortably.
I don't care if a site background has a slight color tint to it, like FA's blueish tint in classic light. It's more about the total brightness. If a background goes above a certain intensity, it results in sensory overload. If a background drops below a certain intensity, bright text in the page starts to blur and go out of focus. Classic light's colors have been time tested for 20 years, so that would be the safest approach for making a modern light theme. If people later want a slight greenish, reddish, yellowish or other color tint, instead of blue, those would probably work as well, so long as the overall brightness of the background didn't go any higher than that of classic light.
:D I am not Tech, but I've forward this to them! Honestly, sounds great to me as I suffer from the opposite of the other user; I need dark themes to see, but more often than not, the dark themes are too contrasty.
Try adding a compact version and testing it on smaller screen like laptops where screen real state is limited. On mobile is a bit more excusable since it need space for the fingers and you have it right in front of your face.
I'll try the modern one for a while longer and I'll probably return back until you get rid of it...
That said I'm not sure what I'd port over to Modern. The emoji and formatting menu are probably the main thing I can see?
I also am somewhat near-sighted, so the smaller text on classic was also harder for me to read.
I also feel like the colors used to designate priority in the inbox are really hard to read. I use them pretty frequently but they blend too much into each other I'm not sure which is "High" or "Medium" priority at a glance. I realize that you can just choose them on the side to see each of them listed in their own categories, but I have a habit of glancing through my whole inbox to compare the amount of each priority I have listed to see what to focus on first. AGAIN, it's totally something I can learn a new method to work around but it's the only really specific thing I can describe that is making me struggle in the inbox!
I also want to note that the dyslexia friendly font added months back has been REALLY nice!! It's my favorite aspect of the Modern theme and it makes reading things SO much easier, including in the inbox!
Wishing the whole team good luck on us all moving over to the new theme- and also a happy holidays!!
The new story embed viewer update changed the behavior of the download button from opening the file on the browser to directly downloading it. A view button to bring that behavior back would be really helpful, because it’s much harder to read some file formats on mobile now, and it was useful to have on desktop.
The behavior still seems to function fine if you happen to have the database-style link (for lack of a better term, the one that end in the file extension), you just can’t navigate to or obtain said url anymore. Images also still behave this way.
I tried modern a few days ago... and have gone back to classic. The feature I missed the most is that classic respects the width of my window, and properly fills it.
On classic, the search page the form is along the top edge, and short. On modern its on the side, wide, and makes the already narrow (because it's ignoring the width of my window) column of images even narrower. These vast expanses of unuseable display are disappointing.
On an artist's gallery page, the links change color when I have already looked at an image. That doesn't work on modern. There are a couple of recurring comics which I am reading, and I keep track of which comics I've read by looking at the link colors.
Classic is also far more functional than modern when one disables javascript. Turning off javascript is one of my favorite security policies, and that furaffinity works as well as it does without javascript is one of the reasons why I am still here.
I also dislike that I can't click journal titles to open them (it's not until I look to the side and see the "View Journal" option. Maybe from a web design perspective it's dumb to have both be clickable, but idk, I don't think it really adds too much.
but yeah
almost 5% classic users after all this time feels like a lot, dang!
The Stats panel of the user page feels too prominent for the amount of information it contains. I think the Classic theme has the right idea, making those numbers small and in-line with the user's avatar and tabs.
The submission previews on the user page are a bit too big for my tastes. Once I'm pushed to the Modern theme, I'll probably get rid of my Featured submission so that I don't have to keep scrolling past it.
Like just about every other commenter here, I am not a fan of the side panel when viewing the artwork. The centered layout with horizontal mini-gallery underneath it feels much more airy and focused. The sticky header is a further distraction from the art. These elements combine to throw way too much information at you at once.
aside from that, opinions are like assholes, everyone has one but not everyone needs to see yours.
The sidebar on art posts is one that really annoys me personally. I feel like FA is one of the last remaining good art sites out there, with art being the main purpose of it. So it feels off to have a bunch of junk off to the side that the majority of people probably don't care about. We come here for art, and that should be the focus.
/ᐠ╥ ︿╥マ
Retro doesn't have that luxury - if JavaScript execution is halted or can't load, image fetching and all the dropdown menus are inoperable.
Commenting more on the style, Retro feels like a bit of a bodge. Submission pages no longer focus on the submission itself due to the way the sidebar is implemented. The choice of icons over text makes it feel like it was made with mobile users in mind, and - in my opinion - should be done via CSS rather than all iconography, all the time.
And - mild personal gripe - the fact that the theme selection is in "account settings" rather than "site settings" has me absolutely baffled, and took me longer than I'd care to admit for me to find it.
That said, text size on modern is a bit big!! I know its "standard internet" size these days, but I assume UI is generally bigger overall now because of smartphones?
Could a text-size-preference toggle be a functional option?
I'd also love to see the submission editing options closer to the top of the page. Even above the tags?
I make a lot of multipage submissions and dance between them to link them all together. That'd make things much easier than having to scroll down to it each time :)
i dont think they should be AS small as they were in Classic UI, but def not big yellow boxes to the right of my screen, and submission editing options should 2000% be ABOVE tags.
and i think the listed folders that submissions are in should be tucked right undeneath tags - the people who are looking at tags are likely the same people who would want to 'see more' and want to go to an artist's folder.
once again, big overall complain is just that the sidebar exists X3 and that Modern UI has that classic flat-yet-bloated look that all modern sites have. though i fully agree that i miss the old fashioned 'gradients everywhere all the time' look, hehe
Could we...please have the "try Modern Retro" thing at least moved into a corner or something? It's pretty distracting, and doesn't quite seem to be serving the purpose that staff hoped...
And it is a bit annoying that it can't be dismissed, although I understand why.
I know its clunky and hard to maintain and that it'll "go away" at some point. But the modern themes have just felt bloated, visually. 1920x1080 desktop user.
And - mild personal gripe - the fact that the theme selection is in "account settings" rather than "site settings" has me absolutely baffled, and took me longer than I'd care to admit for me to find it.
Echoing this. There's a few other settings that hide in random places too, but I can't think of what they are off the top of my head.
The sidebar on art posts is one that really annoys me personally.
I liked seeing the image itself front and center. I don't need to see view count or favorites, or tags. If I want to, I can scroll down.
These too.
You don't need to use the old codebase to make a stylesheet that mimics the classic interface. Sure it means rebuilding a sort of clone but a stylesheet is much easier to manange than two distinct codebases. The old code is obviously crap but modern tech makes it possible with less work to just basically make a skin that mimics the classic look while using just the one codebase. The old code should absolutely be depreciated.
This, so much this. There is no technical reason why you can't style the new site to look like classic 1:1, from a visual aesthetics stand point. Oh sure, some things would have to change, obviously (eg. how blacklisted submissions are displayed, what menus things are under, and so on). But from a purely visual perspective there's no reason why the colors, spacing, and boxy style can't be replicated.
Annoyance: clicking on "download" on the new UI does that force-file-to-download-to-your-downloads-folder thing instead of just allowing the browser to open the file as it sees fit. I'd really like the option for the latter, like it is in classic.
Ok, that would annoy the shit out of me too.
The theme selection being in "account settings" is probably an awkward artifact of Classic, tbh. So that's probably an issue with both.
The booru/e621-esque sidebar that presumably was introduced with the updated tag system (I don't remember it being there the last time I tried Modern) is definitely an inherently bad design decision and needs to be scrapped immediately. Weasyl doesn't do that, SoFurry doesn't do that, even the ungodly sleazepit that is Inkbunny doesn't do that. All of them recognize that it's an unwelcome design and that better presentation of the image or story is well worth having to scroll down to view tags and stats.
"There is no technical reason why you can't style the new site to look like classic 1:1, from a visual aesthetics stand point. Oh sure, some things would have to change, obviously (eg. how blacklisted submissions are displayed, what menus things are under, and so on). But from a purely visual perspective there's no reason why the colors, spacing, and boxy style can't be replicated."
According to the devs, a 1:1 recreation of the classic look and feel currently is beyond the technical limits - the way the new codebases's template system renders the site isn't flexible enough (probably because at the time it was made, porting the classic UI to it would have required the cooperation of someone laughably unlikely to cooperate) and needs to be overhauled to amend that.
But one would hope it can at least implement better default sizing of the UI elements and make at least some things more neatly boxy.
I also agree about it being a big nuisance that clicking on "download" causes the browser to automatically start downloading images instead of viewing them in-browser as happens with Classic. It actually makes image downloads less convenient for me. Because see, when you're directly viewing the image file in your browser and right-click to save it... it doesn't default to the same folder as right-click saving the image when viewing it on the page. So, it effectively lets you have the browser simultaneously remember two different folders to save images from the site to.
Mind you, this wouldn't be so annoying if the "view image" option in a browser's right-click menu still viewed the image in the same tab and required middle-clicking to view it in a new tab. But noooo, someone decided that was too convenient.
Probably why I don't use it, heh.
This too.
I have never used modern long enough to even notice this, as something else generally gets to me and makes me switch back first.
- When tagging my uploads, I sometimes find myself fighting against a client-side script that tries to remove duplicate tag entries. But it's a little overzealous and will delete some tags before I have finished typing them.
For instance: if I wanted to tag something with both "mouse" and then "mouse_transformation", the script will sometimes erase the latter before I have finished typing it because it recognised I had already tagged "mouse". This is felt most severely when using a mobile device or on-screen keyboard where there may a slight delay before the underscore character can be typed. The script should probably check for a trailing space to signify the end of a tag input before taking any action.
JFC, did no one UX test this!?
something i really want implemented that is in classic and not in modern is the TAB buttons. in classic, the buttons on the profile for Home, Gallery, Scraps, Favs, Journals, Commissions, Stats, and Edit Profile looked like browser tabs, while right now they are floating words.
This too.
You moved half the regular access buttons, not just off the page but onto a toolbar where people aren't used to looking for it, and in fact are more likely to be ignored automatically like the cookie banner notification that keeps coming back no matter how many times it's clicked (and no I'm not using incognito to do it). also, white on pale lavendar is rather difficult to make out for the "I consent" button
You changed the color and style of a bunch of things on top of that, making the whole transition jarringly unfamiliar, bolding fonts, simplifying buttons, making things highlight and interact on hover to the extent it feels like it's inducing the page to do things I didn't tell it to do, like expand several menus with just the flick of the pointer, not a click... it feels like I'm using an accessibility mode for the site that I didn't sign up for, and it feels like the ADHD I outgrew is coming back every time I try to find where you squirreled away the specific heading for a setting or feature.
In summary, "it's different and I don't like it", but hopefully that's a better understanding of why. It feels like things have been changed for the sake of change and not utility or function, the way it's not just backend that got updated but the UI as well.
I guess my main feedback would be:
I hate the sidebar. It takes away space from the actual image. The image should be centered, and all that other stuff should be below it.
It seems like everything needs to be made smaller on PC? It's genuinely the only website layout where I've ever had to use the browser's zoom out feature. Someone above said it looks like it was designed for people with vision problems and yeah, I get that
You still have the "older/newer" buttons under an image but I miss the 5 preview images you can just click.
also, related to the 5 preview images from Classic UI, i think that since FA pushed its users to actually use the tagging system a while back, there should be a section, maybe under comments or under that set of 5 previews (assuming everything is in-line to the main image and w/o a sidebar), where based on tags/title/desc/etc, it offers images of other users that might be similar, related, or of your tastes. if the sidebar stays, then it can be popped underneath the "more by username" section that exists currently.
I think it would make FA feel more interconnected. right now FA feels like a vast ocean, and users are tiny islands far from everything else. Once you click on one person’s upload, you get kinda stuck on their page with their images, there's nothing nearby to see or do, you have to go to their front page to see if they have any shouts or visable watches/watchers, and if any of those people’s pfps/usernames catch your eye.
i feel like knowing that your art might get randomly suggested while disconnected from your account would encourage users to tag their art properly or more thoroughly. plus it would mean users can find new artists more readily, as opposed to using the lastest posted lottery, or trying to guess what tags people might use for more obsure or less popular types of art, because it can pull from more keywords than just the tags alone.
(sorry abt the big rambly reply qwq)
the other thing is that Classic UI feels more compact than Modern UI - theres a lot of spacing between everything that causes big voids of space on screen and it makes the site feel 'bloated'. im tired rn so i cant give any good examples but i do feel there could be a way to make various aspects and elements smaller or closer together.
its an issue many modern websites have, and its more extreme in old websites (like FA and DA(damn you Eclipse Update)) that had "old fashioned" site layouts and design choices because we have something more tidy to compare it to. Modern UI doesnt need piles of gradients like its the '00s (though id love that hehe) as that is visual clutter, but i do think things could be a little more... tucked together.
and one more random aesthetic thing between the UIs cus im here - i think where Modern UI is right now, with the mix of elements that have rounded corners and sharp corners, is good. dont- dont make sharp cornered things rounded or vice versa. its ok where it is rn.
i think out of the colour options for Modern UI, i would like Aurora best as its not nearly as dark of Dark where white text becomes too high contrast and hard to focus on and read, but its got some horrid contrasting between things like the tags boxes which are nearly white, and the background of comments where its just a bit too bright and both makes the white text hard to read, and makes the void of the base dark background and sidebar(damn you sidebar) quite painful to look between, expecially because the sidebar EXISTS, that means that theres a big void where one can rest their eyes, but then that means if they look back at the actual content infront of them(or a little to their left), its really jarring. actually, while typing this, the slight dark overlay behind the text box is a GOOD colour.
i also think its oddly that Aurora is kinda... pinkish? i wish it was closer to Classic UI's colour scheme of blue-greenyness, just... darker. i feel Dark is bland and lifeless and has lost its soul because its actually just dark grey and colourless, and not a dark colour. basically im using Modern Retro because it both doesnt burn my eyes and doesnt feel corpo as fuck. theres a piece of a soul in it still. though again it has some slight contrast issues - i think the headers for stuff like "featured submission" should be smaller and darker.
oh, the yellow highlight colour for comments you just posted and tag boxes (still dont like those either) is really nasty. i dont know what a better colour would be, but that yellow is garish and hard on the eyes for any form of dark-mode user. Dark, Aurora, and Retro are all too dark for that.
i agree with many that the site banner is too thick, and that maybe it should have an option to turn it off. theres an icon on the coner i can click if i wanna go to the front page.
i think theres a lot of wasted space on the top nav bar between the search box and our notifications/pfp, i think some of the stuff from the Account dropdown could be put up there, or maybe the news banner can be put there.
i think that various setting and profile customisation options should be turned from 7 pages to maybe like 3 or 4, and maybe reagrange some since ive been reading from others that some setting are in places that dont make total sense. im sure they can be compressed to take up less room on the settings drop down. i think the settings and account dropdowns should be click to view not hover/mouse over to view, and then you click on the setting you want that way. keeps misclicks from occuring.
i like in Classic UI how our PFP, username, title, mood, registered since, profile description thing, and stats are all in a row, keeping everything neat and tidy. please bring this layout back. i like that mood was visable at all and wasnt just a piece of nothingness in our settings.
i like the gallery folders being to the right as opposed to the left, but that might just be because 1) it reminds me of old DA which i loved and 2) i hate sidebar
i think the thumbnails for the main image for 'featured submission', 'gallery', 'favourites', and maybe 'user profile' are too big and could be shrunk. they dont have to be to the size of normal thumbnails but at least smaller than they are now.
if i think of anything else ill reply to myself.
Of course, it might be easier still if you just made all the submission data available in a single JSON file, which would probably make maintaining such a web view much easier. This applies to scrape only, of course.
My own personal pile of regex soup is also my own real way to get an export of my data from the site so I can have a copy not dependent on Someone Else's Server. An actual GDPR data export target would be a nice salve here. Obviously "a real public (authenticated) API" solves many things (write your own frontend on top that looks and feels however you want!), but at that point...which one of y'all around here are unicorns? Can I borrow your horn for some wishes?
If modern is the only option, I will have to stop using FA.
In the couple minutes it took to navigate through the clunky menus to find the right settings page to switch back, I was already beginning to have a migraine (fortunately not a cluster at least), so trying another theme was not an option.
My dev time is currently over extended on other projects for testing and improving these issues for others affected like this. Considering I get maybe 0.5-3 minutes to test for this every 24-72 hours with 8-12 hours of nausea and migraines, its not really viable to volunteer to do testing for too many projects. Nearly everybody else I've worked with on this type of thing gives up instead of subjecting themselves to it, which I can understand. I'm likely an idiot for doing to myself, but somebody has to be that 0.1% of a group to provide feedback I guess.
Testing this stuff is not as bad as having an epileptic person testing to see what strobe patterns are a problems, but it is in a similar class. o_o
After years of trying to push we have reached a point of having to be annoying so we can make progress and get people's attention. There are still many users that claim we *never* told anyone about getting rid of Classic yet we have so many journals people just hit the [x] on without reading. We may change the banner wording but the notice will stay up to remind people.
---
August 6th, 2025- "I Was Here" Memorial Page
"(Please keep in mind that this page is only available on the Modern site theme. It will not show on Classic)"
June 30th, 2025- Browse, Search, and Keywords Update
Site page “Banner Museum”: Featuring all previously used site banners with links to artists (for modern AND classic banners)
April 17th, 2025- Display Names Official Launch!
"Reminder that Display Name changes are only on Modern Theme, Classic is not being updated with new features."
Jan 9th, 2025 - Tag Blocking and Policy Update
"⚠️PLEASE NOTE⚠️- Classic theme is no longer being updated. Tag blocking is only available on modern themes."
---
None of the above states a sunsetting of classic mode, just that new features are not being actively developed for classic. That's something fairly common with a lot of software that has established legacy user groups. I'm sorry all this confusion has come about but I hope this has helped to provide some insight!
The original deprecation announcement is also listed in the original journal from 2019.
Classic is on its last legs, and its death is inevitable. No matter how hard people are clinging to it, one day it will be gone and there is no way around that. What you die hard classic fans can do is give us constructive feedback on how to improve our modern themes so that when classic inevitably disappears, your transition to a new theme will hopefully be smooth as your feedback helped shape it.
But we need your feedback. Without you, we cannot make improvements as we do not know what you like or dislike. So send in a Trouble Ticket today about what makes classic great, and how we can incorporate that into modern themes for you to enjoy! c:
"We won't change it" is, honestly, a feature in 202X. I appreciate you meant it as a warning, but this is the era of all our phones going "lol I applied updates and broke all your muscle memory overnight :3 by the way here's twelve new dark patterns trying to get you to use generative AI so our stock stays inflated".
Promising to not do that is a relief. Tech's churn-or-perish mentality is not a good thing (nor an inevitable thing, although your risk exposure to it scales with how much you embrace the bleeding edge), and yes, I'm one of those darn grizzled old greymuzzle tech furries myself, like probably a good chunk of this 4% that is just so, so tired.
I didn't even know I was on Classic.
I didn't know there was something different besides what I'm using.
I did so after trying out the new layout of course and switching back because it was a disaster for me to use.
the journal/news banner does this annoying thing where it sits on top of images and the info about images
(even though i've got a lot of sailwind to play)
Functionality/Usability:
- The submission info to the right of artwork on desktop layout takes up valuable horizontal screen space. Some of the information presented within this sidebar is of low relevance to the typical viewer ( i.e. image dimensions/filesize, view/fave count etc ) and could be better suited to a footer underneath the image description. Even tags could go down there. The +Fav, Download and Note buttons are also redundant. I feel like more space could be given to the artwork!
- I like the new image viewer. However, when clicking an image to focus/fit to window, the "X" close button that appears underneath takes up vertical screen space. In some cases, focusing an image like this actually has the image appear smaller than before. The modern convention is to click once to focus an image, then click again to unfocus without the need for a dedicated button.
- The Settings and User Control roll-over menus accessed from the top-right of the navigation bar in desktop suffers from readability issues due to their transparency. Often there is text or other content on the page directly underneath that can be seen through the low-opacity background. For me personally, this is hard for me to parse, especially considering the location of certain settings are unintuitive...
- It has already been mentioned, but the new mini-gallery has some issues. It's not always obvious what position the submission you're currently viewing is within the mini-gallery, which can be awkward when viewing a comic/sequence.
In my opinion, it is not intuitive where "the center" is on a 2x3 grid. You may eventually learn that it displays 3 newer submissions followed by 3 older submissions from left-to-right and top-to-bottom, but this becomes inconsistent when viewing someone's most recent (or oldest) uploads.
- When tagging my uploads, I sometimes find myself fighting against a client-side script that tries to remove duplicate tag entries. But it's a little overzealous and will delete some tags before I have finished typing them.
For instance: if I wanted to tag something with both "mouse" and then "mouse_transformation", the script will sometimes erase the latter before I have finished typing it because it recognised I had already tagged "mouse". This is felt most severely when using a mobile device or on-screen keyboard where there may a slight delay before the underscore character can be typed. The script should probably check for a trailing space to signify the end of a tag input before taking any action.
- Some people have enormously long profiles that take so long to scroll past that I wish I had a fitness tracker hooked up to my mouse wheel. I don't think restricting the length would be the right action as some people really do enjoy their massive ascii art dragons and RP thing made out of blocks. Perhaps profiles could be dynamically truncated to a sensible height, with an "expand profile" tab along the bottom edge.
Design/appearance:
- The random assortment of icons in the top navigation bar are all over the place in terms of style and size. Nothing lines up, some are filled and others are un-filled, and they don't look like they belong to the same family. In my opinion, the iconography isn't necessary if the button already has text.
- Rounded and drop-shadowed profile picture frames are inconsistent with the generally flat and angular aesthetic of the rest of the site. I'm glad FA doesn't restrict profile pictures to a circle like every other website these days, so let's defy that completely. It's hip to be square.
Also I love the new banner! And I do greatly appreciate the hard work and continued development of FurAffinity.
Can't wait for this one to get Hidden By The Administration, too.
- When opening new pages, there's a brief white flash before the page loads. It should be fixed, it's very jarring.
- Link style - dotted underline under a link looks bad, visually busy and dates the look by 20 years. In notification panel it creates lots of visual noise and makes it harder to differentiate entries, usernames and text.
- The text formatting buttons should use same box style as other buttons, beveled box looks out of place.
- Speaking of notifications menu - the new (G) tags for journals also add some messy noise. I'd suggest moving them to the front of titles and maybe removing the (), the bold font and some whitespace should be enough separation.
O
A
F
S
You should do a one time force switch to modern that is allowed to be reversed and see what the real number is and solicit feedback from those users interactively when they switch back.
I hate it. I actively hate it.
But the forced switch followed by a feedback form would be a good idea. I think that's what this journal kind of is, but it's a bit too... unstructured.
I can tolerate the new positioning of the search criteria to be always at the side rather than at the top of the page and able to be hidden away (though the fact that only the top search bar lists previous searches when clicked or I've started typing the search is annoying, wish that was something the side search bar did like the one in Classic), but the positioning of the sidebar when viewing posts is not good. The post should take centre stage, with the sidebar being like it is in Classic: below the post. I also don't see the point of having two buttons to fav or download a post and two buttons to note the poster.
Just recently noticed after the new update that [ b ], (left space so it doesn't disappear), sometimes doesn't work properly for text file stories which just leaves [/b] at the text. The strange thing however is that it doesn't happen always. Some text are bolded properly, but other times the opener tag for bold text doesn't work right, not bolding any text and just leaving the closer tag [/b] in the story since the opener tag didn't work.
EDIT: Thought of this later so adding on, would also like to bring attention that the new embed system doesn't work as well as the old one when it comes to more unique text colors (this one used to worked fine before the big UI update a few months back) is that colored text that uses more specific hex codes instead of general ones on older text file stories doesn't seem to work anymore. A long story I've been reading during the time of the update that had a distinct shade of silver (platinum-ish) just reverts back to default site colors (white/black) instead.
If a user does (color=red)(b) test test(/color)(/b)
Then the BBCode will bork. The order BBCode is opened with, needs to close in the inverse. So to hopefully keep the bork away the correct format is
(color=green)(b)testtest(/b)(/color).
Well, I guess that will be the date where I will cancel my FA+ membership.
I don't like the new UI at all. It's too cluttered, with the tags and other gallery pictures being right next to main imagine. It's distracting and prevents pictures from being rendered in full size. The buttons for Faving or Downloading being in square brackets make it look like a mobile UIm which the entire new design looks like. The new buttons are too big and take too much space compared to the Classic design. And overall, it looks like you try way too hard to copy E621 (with the new use of tags and where you have placed them) and DA (Gallery preview images right next to the main image) instead of stayinbg true to the classic FA design. The new design doesn't look or feel unique, but like any other website out there with, again, a focus on mobile users and not PC users.
Also, why do you need to maintain Classic? Why can't it be left alone with the danger that staying on Classic may brake features for the user?
I was wondering this too - until fairly recently I was under the impression that WAS what was happening... that Classic was just going to be left as-is in a static, "use at your own risk" state while only Modern got updates. (which I was fine with and understood)
Going off some other comments it seems like that might be a potential security risk though? This sort of stuff is a bit beyond me though. But yeah, this is something I'd like clarification on too, why can't Classic just be left as-is until it breaks for good. If it IS a security thing then that makes perfect sense.
After the new "old" theme was released I gave it another try (it's still eyestraining over longer periods of time, but at least I don't get a headache immediately), and I've decided to force myself to get used to Modern before Classic is ripped away from my hands, but I'm still not that jazzed about the eventuality of a forced switch.
In fact, I was already going to switch back to Classic for a while before seeing this post and I will do that after this comment (I wanted to send a feedback ticket originally but there's a 1024 character limit). I'm gonna enjoy it while it lasts :')
Premises that touch on all points: I often split my desktop screen because I multitask a lot and I don't have a second display, plus I generally dislike wasting space on full windows with plenty of blank space (most sites scale nicely anyway). This applies x10 to the mobile browser experience, since the window is effectively even smaller than my usual desktop split one.
Also I've lived through the dA change and, while I deeply appreciate the feedback request from FA, my experience has been kinda samey (negatively).
Main pain points for me are:
1. navigation is a bit of a nightmare, as everything in the Modern UI feels too big, space-hoarding and overwhelming, while old was comfortable and compact (both on desktop and on mobile). It all feels very "I zoomed in too much and the UI broke".
2. tied to prev point, when the page isn't max size, folders get pushed to the bottom of the page and become functionally useless, along with info and everything else. It's bad on split desktop, but it's ironically worse on mobile. It'd be better if they were forced on the side like in Classic, or at least hidden under an easily accessible toggle. Add the lack of highlighted visited links, and it's a complete mess to navigate them.
3. while the colors on the new theme are miles better than all others, at this point I'd rather get a customizable theme so I can make it eyestrain-proof for me (I'm aware I'm a small niche as far as accessibility issues go, but others might like it for other reasons)
4. [partially reiterating the feedback in the journal] the lack of the little gallery/folder nav bar under submission is sorely missed. The deviantart-like "more from the artist" thing on the side (which also gets hidden when not max-size) should be removed (since it picks the nearby pieces in the gallery anyway) or switched to a random folder.
Additional mix of smaller annoyances that come to mind right now: terrible comment thread readability, no emote picker, long list of general UI arrangements that feels plain bad or unintuitive compared to Classic, plain "I just don't vibe" with the info bar on the side (never liked it in any other site), profile pages are the perfect example of UI issues (they scale terribly and have to be scrolled to get all info that was in neat smaller boxes before), Classic mode's submission edit options were in a more comfortable place (horizontal was better, vertical feels samey), the vertical layout during upload feels congested and is hard to parse, I can't explain it correctly but inbox feels cluttered and scattered and I don't like having Oldest/Newest/DisableTiles front and center instead of the selection/remove options, holy moly to edit this comment I had to scroll all the way down to it.
Beyond that, I really dislike the images being off-center with lots of busy looking buttons on the right, it really detracts from the image viewing experience. I don't need to see the image stats and tags at the same time as the image itself. The mustard yellow "+" buttons on the side clash with the rest of the page as well. Classic theme is much more clean and less visually stimulating and keeps the art the focus of the page.
I much prefer the way classic mode's mini gallery under an image is positioned and laid out, it makes it instantly clear where the image is in relation to the rest of the artists gallery. It says "here's a whole gallery to explore!" whereas the modern one says "here's some random images, I guess"
In classic mode there is a thin line around everything, I think it could be described as a bevel, that looks really nice and brings everything together. In modern retro mode there is also an almost-black background to the side bar and along the bottom that looks worse than the consistent page background color in classic.
The banner at the top being stuck there and always on top of everything is annoying. I don't need you in my screenspace, so why are you still here in the way of everything?
Overall, modern theme just feels like all the worst aspects of modern web design all in one place. It's feels like it's trying to pull my attention in a hundred different directions instead of just doing what it's supposed to do and give me a clean, calm place to view art.
If you could at the very least a "remove banner" toggle that just replaces it with the FA logo, much much smaller like it had on classic that would be grand.
Click retention is a nightmare already, let alone with people being hit with a bio and no art immediately visible. Ad space has been diminished in value too as a result and it was already difficult justifying the cost vs outcomes of buying adspace here!
Not to mention, the news dropping over the banner the way it does causes issues with trying to close it, causing page refreshes instead, and just does generally look jank and unprofessional.
I'd also like to be able to show/hide both the Keywords and Meta Keywords sections.
Or any updates on matching tags together so when you block one, similar ones with different wording also get blocked? I remember this was getting looked into.
even e621 doesn't do server-side blacklist filtering. they do client-side filtering, and if you query 72 items and 62 of them are blacklisted then you'll just see 10 items total, not the 72 your requested.
This is not a BAD thing to ask; but we can tackle things like this once FA is not balancing two codebases.
First big problem I have with the site regardless of layout choice is just the fact that the upload page and submission info page are separated. They should just be on one page, simple as that. Most other websites do this now, and it makes the uploading process so much more streamlined. Having them on separate pages is a little confusing for first time users, especially those who are not experienced with gallery sites and only know social media. Hitting 'upload' on that first page makes it feel like the art will just be posted to the site immediately with no chance of doing things like titles, description etc. I'm saying this as someone's who's been using FA since 2006, and it's always been my biggest gripe even though I'm very familiar with how it's done now.
Probably already been said, but we still need to simplify the menus. They are SO confusing. Even now after so so many years, I still forget which page has which setting toggles and fields! Like why are my block lists in the profile tab? Shouldn't all those other options for profile customization just be on the same page to keep it simple? Account, Global, and Site settings are also confusing ways to categorize, how am I supposed to know exactly what kind of options I will be seeing when they're named this way and have options on each that don't really fit that category very well? Again reiterating that I've been here for nearly 20 years and these menu layouts STILL confuse the hell out of me.
It's no wonder that so many younger people I speak to don't want to sign up around here, the UI is still confusing no matter which layout you're using. FurAffinity has everything people are constantly begging for from other gallery websites, especially now that we have certain curation additions like tag blocking. Yet the younger crowd hates being here because the UI is confusing as hell. Things like this NEED to be updated and improved upon if we want the site to continue growing and thriving.
Edit: Another addition, you have GOT to get rid of that ugly sidebar on submission pages. It is so intrusive and distracting, I don't need the full comprehensive list of all tags and categories when I'm looking at art. Make it some kind of hidden script that only shows if I click, maybe underneath the submission itself, before or after the artist description? It would just make submission pages much nicer looking, and more efficient. We had that nice change a while back to remove the site banner on submission pages so the art itself was the first focus, we should have it again for tags/etc!
overall i thought the tabs looked really cool and fit with the gallery theme, but i understand it looks outdated! just my two cents :)
oh also please bring back the site emojis!!!!
Also agree with the emoji thing!
Fender's post makes the following statement: "Our techs ran the numbers and currently only 4.6% of all active accounts on Fur Affinity still use Classic." Many of the Comments have reiterated this figure, some with resignation: "Well, I guess I'm in the minority, so I'll have to make adjustments"; others with irritation: "This site can't cater to such a small minority; it's time for them to get with the program".
I have no reason to question the numbers, but I have a problem with the attitude - the implication that because a group of people constitute a small minority, they can simply be dismissed, or forced to conform.
There are many groups of people whose description could begin "Only a few percent of people are ...". Many of them are particularly well-represented on FA - perhaps the most obvious, and general, being "Only a few percent of people are interested in furry art in all of its manifestations."
There have been impassioned discussions about, for instance, the gender and sexuality classification of uploaded images. While a few people have been content to say "This is what the majority wants, end of discussion", most users (and the admins) have tried very hard to accommodate the preferences and sensibilities of everyone on FA. That's the nature of community.
I imagine that many people right now are thinking "That's completely different!"
No. It's not.
The people on this thread who prefer the Classic format have been clear and articulate about those aspects of the Modern format which cause them personal distress - just as the people who debated the classification of images were clear and articulate about why they found certain terms upsetting.
I have no problem with the technological argument: the programming for Classic is a labyrinthine nightmare which introduces vulnerabilities into the entire site, and the people working on site improvements could actually make it better even for the people who prefer Classic if they were able to devote all their attention and effort to one single, much more coherent format.
What I find offensive is the "most people" argument; it's a perspective which is almost invariably used to dismiss and marginalize people in the minority.
If it makes practical sense to trash Classic - or if you prefer euphemisms, "retire" or "depreciate" or "sunset" it - that's fine. But please do not justify it with an argument which, in so many other contexts, would get you banned from FA. That's not who we are.
honestly the repeated emphasis on Classic users being a "small minority" bugs me in general when it sure as hell doesn't seem that way from the comments x)
In fact, I think it speaks very highly of FA that they're saying "only 4.6% of our users are still using this UX, but we are taking their feedback for what they don't like about the new view." Most websites don't do that. If basically any other website on the internet wanted to update the appearance of the site, they'd just do it. You would log in one day and things would just be different, and you either deal with it or don't. FA isn't doing that - they're handholding, coddling, and cajoling this tiny minority, practically begging them to switch and give them meaningful feedback.
They announced that Classic was being phased out six years ago, and now they have to cut the cord - and the fact that such a small fraction of the site's userbase is still using this feature is a big part of the practical reasons for that.
it's true that a lot of other websites on the modern internet are machines built to create profit and they ultimately serve that purpose above all others, but we shouldn't expect furaffinity, a site that does not make money, to behave like a site that exists for the purpose of making money. this website was an is a place. it seems to many that there are ways of preserving that, but it has not been clear whether fa is receptive to those options or why they haven't pursued them, and that gives the impression that they aren't likely to accept any feedback that doesn't align with whatever they already want to do. to those of us not intimately familiar with the internal technical workings of the site, given what seems possible, the decisions being made just don't make a lot of sense. it's true that they have maintained classic for a longer than a lot of websites would, but it's not clear that they actually care about it given that they from the outside they don't appear to have considered other measures that might reasonably be taken to preserve it. instead, in the time that they have continued to maintain classic, it has given the impression that, for some other reason, they have not been able to justify getting rid of it. perhaps most users still use classic, or perhaps they are reconsidering and looking for other options. when the "try modern retro" banner showed up, i thought maybe they were saying that they had ported classic (or something like it) to the new codebase. that could have been why they were taking so long to sunset classic. in the absence of information, it was easy to be optimistic.
This isn't about profit machines, but the fact that the team maintaining furaffinity are people too, who have to put in real, complicated work to make this website run so well that we end-users don't even have to really think about what must be going on under the hood. But as someone who's put together webdev and programming projects that, by all accounts, are orders of magnitude simpler than running a website of FA's scale, let me assure you, however complicated and weird you think it must be, it is a thousand times worse. Old internet technology is truly limited in ways that, by today's standards, sound like complete bullshit. It's not so trivial to just "make it work" in cases like these. So, please, take it from someone who's been around the block and has no skin in the game, the call to finally sunset classic mode for good comes from a place of dedicated people who have done everything in their power to find the compromise you want to believe exists, and found that it can't reasonably be done. This journal here, asking classic users what would make the switch to modern palatable genuinely is the best way forward for everyone.
Which I guess is why I'm out here trying to explain it to people. I don't think it's helpful to try and moralize this decision. Because, as i've assured you already, what we're seeing is the FA team trying their genuine best to find a solution that works for everyone still on classic without putting unreasonable extra work on the maintainers. Seriously, the kinds of byzantine troubleshooting and esoteric computer spells that can arise from trying to maintain something ancient like classic mode can just, get exponential in workload and time cost very, very quickly, and often unexpectedly. This switch will allow the folks maintaining FA to put more of their time and effort into making furaffinity a better experience for all of us, including the 4.6% being forced to change their routines after so many years.
Yuuk and other tech leads have also already explained, at considerable length, why a 1:1 port of the Classic "look" to Modern isn't possible (at least not in the near term).
Other admins have explained that the sidebar in Modern is a necessary part of the website that they can't just get rid of.
So there's nothing false about the dichotomy: they can't continue maintaining classic, and they can't (for the time being) simply port the classic look to the modern codebase. There are about 600 comments on this journal, and only a portion of them are expressing discontent with the classic theme (and that's out of the ~40000 people who still use classic). The rest of the site's userbase (at least 95% and probably more) is either satisfied with the change or, at worst, ambivalent about it - to the point where they don't feel like they have anything to say. The emphasis matters: the people who are dissatisfied enough to comment here represent a tiny fraction of a tiny fraction of the site's user base, and even then, Fur Affinity is giving them a chance to say what could be done to improve Modern.
Many of them are doing so! A lot of people here in the comments understand the assignment. They're saying "here are the things I don't like about Modern." But you have a few who are coming here thinking they're going to Right Great Wrongs™ and force Fur Affinity to reconsider their position, and because of all the other negative reactions, they feel like they are a powerful and under-represented secret majority. In point of fact, they represent the tiniest fraction of this site's users. That's where the emphasis on the numbers matters.
They're giving "only 4.6% of people still use it" as context, not as an argument. There is no argument. Classic is being retired, full stop. They're not debating that. They're not arguing it. They're not attempting to justify it (although they have given good justifications for it). This is another example of what happens almost any time anything changes on this site: people think they are entitled to dictate how the site runs, or that they are owed some kind of consideration before making changes. This is not a community-owned website. It's not a charity organization. It is a site that is privately owned by a closely-held LLC, and the owners (aside from their legal duty of care) are free to run it how they see fit. The option to leave is always there. If they're careless about how they run it, more and more people will avail themselves of that option, and they're very aware of that, which is why they're collecting feedback so carefully. But the fact remains, even if every single person who is currently using classic were dissatisfied enough with modern to leave the website over being forced to use it (and I know for a fact that that isn't the case), it would ultimately affect things very little.
Call that "dismissive" if it makes this weird crusade to keep an obsolete legacy UX alive make sense, but most of the site's users are just going to keep on keeping on. Some will grumble about it, most won't care.
"it seems to many that there are ways of preserving that, but it has not been clear whether fa is receptive to those options or why they haven't pursued them, and that gives the impression that they aren't likely to accept any feedback that doesn't align with whatever they already want to do."
This 100%.
Believe me, I get it. I, myself am often fighting against the "it's so few people relative to the whole!" arguments, but it is because of that that I find the pushback against it here to be, and I say this very kindly, in somewhat poor taste. Every step of this process of finally making the push to sunset classic has been done with the voices and wants of those 4.6% in mind, to such a degree that it feels almost crass to me to invoke the fight against marginalized erasure in this context. To put it in internet meme terms: that's a whole new sentence.
I haven't read most of the comment section though. No idea if anyone else around here is making that argument, though I sure hope not. I just want to make clear that I really don't think the FA team is actually committing this particular form of rhetorical negligence. I hope this doesn't read as attacking you, because i genuinely and enthusiastically support your overall point. I really think more people could stand to bear it in mind. I just think it's worth recognizing when something resembling a given form of rhetoric is not actually an instance of it, which i would argue is the case here.
If an argument "resembles a given form of rhetoric", it is important for the person making the argument to be aware of this fact, and maybe even to acknowledge it - especially if they aren't using the argument that way, because it contaminates their legitimate point with an unmistakable sense of dismissiveness which, I agree, was almost certainly not intended here.
It is perfectly true that users of Classic are "simply a subset of a userbase of this website with a particular setting enabled", but if you read the Comments, it is clear that their distress isn't related "simply" to whether a switch is up or down, left or right. The experience of using Modern is causing a significant degree of personal discomfort, in ways which many people have articulated.
Either personal discomfort is something which FA ought to avoid inflicting, or it is not. Saying that one person's discomfort is legitimate while someone else's is irrelevant - no matter what justification one may think one has to make such a distinction - imposes a hierarchy of legitimacy which a site like FA should scrupulously avoid, and generally has. The technological argument about Classic being impossible to work with, and putting the site at risk, justifies the discomfort of ending it without needing to dismiss the legitimacy of any user's experience.
As for the intentions of the admins and tech people:
Have they reached out to Classic users for feedback? Definitely.
Have they actually read that feedback? Clearly.
Have they responded to that feedback? Repeatedly.
Are they actually going to implement any of the suggestions made by users of Classic? Or will we be told "Sorry, the coding of Modern won't support that"? We'll see.
Old Russian proverb: Hope for the best; expect the worst.
I don't know if this is the right place for this kind of feedback, but, I don't like how certain pages (Main page, submissions page, galleries without any folders) occupy the whole width of the screen to display stuff. It doesn't sit well with me, I'd much rather have a more compact interface! That's my only complain about the look of the site, love everything else
I'll still prefer the original, but I can live with this one so if it helps simplify the coding it's not gonna be a hill for me to die on. The comment section does look a little nicer though.
If possible, I'd love for y'all to implement the old emojis into Modern. They're very nostalgic for me, and I love how goofy they are.
#1 priority should be fixing the way links are formatted, though. It's not just that there's not enough contrast between visited and unvisited links; the color is almost identical to regular text. This is such a long-standing issue that it's even present on Classic, where links are (if I recall correctly) just the same color as body text but bold. This isn't a problem for links that are obviously part of the UI, like tabs and menu items, but for inline links inside descriptions, forums, and journal entries I'm always worried that people won't realize I'm even linking to anything.
I did have a look because I was bored, and DAMN has modern changed a lot (for the better)
You can look at its source (it's open source!) for things that have been implemented in it, that you might find useful:
https://www.furaffinity.net/gallery.....urAffiniTweaks
Hopefully this helps!
I don't WANT to but... *closes eyes and clicks Retro banner*
*analog horror reel of HK handover*
I hate it already...
I'm not a developer and I don't understand, but I don't consider the old design to be something complicated, the design is important to me, the new cap is not convenient and is only suitable for mobile phones.
You can judge me, but that's my opinion.
I hope that someone decided to take and make an extension that returns the old design. Simple and functional
I agree with you, the old site is better. The new layout does suffer a bit from a moderate case of mobilitis. But it can't be maintained because of how unmanagable the code spaghetti has become, as far as I understand. An old design extension would be nice, but before anything can really go ahead, the classic layout must go, unfortunately. Which is why we're here, giving feedback as to what is better about classic and if it can be ported over.
Please add numerical pagination to galleries that allows users to jump to an arbitrary page number. It would dramatically improve quality of life for us longtime users especially who have who knows how many thousands of pieces gathered up in our favorites or what have you over the years.
Aside from that, it would be nice to also have the option to get rid of the sidebar and move all the info there underneath the artwork.
As for the UI, I wasn't a fan at first but it has since grown on me, and all the new updates that have been accomplished because of it (tag blocks, journal maturity rating, commissions tab, etc) far outweighs any issues. I honestly can't even think of any issues with the actual UI I have anymore. The only one being, I do kinda wish hyperlink colors could be customized. As it stands, when you use the [ url ] coding, it can be hard to differentiate a linked word from others, but that's my only real issue I can think of at this time.
A retro theme appeared the other day. It's better than new, but it's also uncomfortable. I spent 5-10 minutes trying to find an image edit. The fields to fill in are inconveniently located in the editing frame.
Which means that the new mandatory theme of the site is not receptive to the eyes, as if I was lost in the jungle.
I will be this 4.6% user until the end.
Hashtag: classic theme, live.
The banner is very cute
- Submissions/Comments/Journals/Favorites/Watchers/Notes (1S/2C/3J/4F/5W/6N)
NOT
- Submissions/Watchers/Comments/Favorites/Journals/Notes (1S/5W/2C/4F/3J/6N; buttons 2, 3 and 5 appear scrambled)
^ Granted, that one set of rearrangements from 2-5 does make things more-correctly align with the order of categories within the page they open. I won't deny that.
HOWEVER, it also goes against at least a decade of visual and muscle memory, making it a decent chunk of why Modern is still an instant Hard Pass for me, especially when paired with the rest of the overall overhaul to the art-viewing experience. For me, "annoying as hell" will never do well.
A basic opt-in toggle for Classic's notification ordering, even, would go a pretty long way in getting me to ease up on the prospect of being forced out of the theme I practically grew up with.
Also don't be afraid to put dropdowns within dropdowns again, for the many whose laptops and/or other monitors aren't TV-sized with 4K resolution or whatever. Looked and functioned perfectly well on Classic, with nothing feeling "too hidden" beyond the general disorganization. But the full list goes past the bottom of the screen on Modern, with everything at/below "Active Sessions" being cut off and unreachable.
Even something as simple as not having the top bar scroll with us (like it doesn't on Classic) might fix this issue, beyond the lack of toolbar being just generally preferable.
I've never enjoyed a view-thinning browser- or site-based toolbar, and I'd like to avoid adblocking the element(s) like I've done with the (in my current opinion, misleading) "New Classic" ad strip, if possible.
Thank you~
This UI design should be stuck within the realm of a professional software suite with many options. I'd hate to see this when trying to navigate website.
THE BUBLÉ IS RELEASED!
CHRISTMAS IS HERE!!!
You Change The CSS Selectors for the elements.
And it breaks my Stylus overrides:
Like:
body {
font-family: Times New Roman !important;
font-size: 20px !important;
}
And:
A:LINK {
color: #a2db90 !important;
}
A:VISITED {
color: #FF6666 !important;
}
Also:
.tags {
background-color: #808080 !important;
color: red !important;
font-weight: bold !important;
}
My problems with Modern Retro.
1) Browse options should be on the top and horizontal.
a lot wasted space on the right side. I'm using a laptop. It looks like it was designed for ultra wide monitors. The same goes for journals. and other pages. The panel on the right side is a TON of wasted space esp for pages with a lot of text like journals. etc.
2) On my screen the fonts are far too large. Need an option to scale them down.
3) Modern Retro needs classic light colors (blue colors) (understood this is in the works.)
4) option to turn off site banners would be nice. I have to use an adblocker for it. (this goes for any modern)
5) center buttons under new submissions. ---- invert selection select all remove selected. nuke
6) Need more spacing between elements.
7) Put back account name in top menu bar instead of account picture (top right)
8) Why is community under support? Community should be its own menu.
Things that still throw me off:
- I use a fairly small screen and (I suspect) relatively low resolution for The Present Day, so Classic using simple text links for most everything keeps it small and tidy. With things like tags and keywords being big highlighted buttons now, that eats up a -whole- lot of screen space. Basically I agree with most folks saying the sidebar feels huge and clunky in comparison.
- Related, it feels very...odd to have all the gallery folders and tags and such on the -right- side of the screen. Not having the folders on the left is weirdly disorienting.
- The big red X button that shows up when you click on an image to view larger without downloading is distracting to say the least, especially since it overlaps the actual art you just zoomed in on. I'm also used to Classic just blowing the image up in place on the page, instead of - whatever it's doing now, I don't know how to describe it in technical terms.
- Somewhere in here someone mentioned actual page-numbered galleries, instead of based on a file ID or something. I'll agree I prefer page numbers.
- My pettiest little thing: if the top menu bar is going to be frozen/floating/always at the top, might there be an option to toggle its transparency?
Thanks for soliciting feedback.
Also agreeing re: page-numbered galleries.
If modern has clear time stamps now I'd switch over with no problem, otherwise it's borderline unusable for me.
So I prefer classic. But I guess if it's going to be forced upon us, then I guess I'm not going to have a choice, will I lol.
So previous/next is still an option right there where it's always been - you just don't get a preview in Modern like you do in Classic.
Maybe this is an issue unique to me, but when I look at the links on the submission page under "Submission Options", none of them are underlined. So, when I'm scanning the page after realizing that the edit submission link isn't where I expect it to be, I never stop to look at the text of the link that takes me there in the modern layout because it just looks like plain text. It also doesn't help that the text is tucked away in the margin on the right side of the page, which is the last place I would look for something that I consider to be somewhat important.
So, it would be nice if the text could get a styling update that makes it look more clickable.
The modern site just looks like every other art site on the web now. There's massive gutters on either side of the page on my monitor, wasting space. I can't widen this comment box even though there is enough space on my monitor to more than double its width. I legitimately thought emoticons were deprecated as well until you mentioned 'making them easier to find.' I still haven't found them.
It's lacking personality and uniqueness.
The gallery navigation from a particular piece is unintuitive; I have no idea out of the box what the 'more from [artist]' means, as well as the 'featured in folders' means. Those two are in the exact same spot as very similarly-phrased features on dA, but my experience with both sites tells me that they are completely different things. This is only going to confuse newbies to this site.
Making the 'block this tag' button a PLUS SIGN feels ridiculous; I thought it was some sort of community voting feature or a way to suggest tags to other peoples' submissions at first. The meta keywords category is a useless duplicate of the information shown just above it.
Like in every other aspect of the tech world I'm going to eventually get used to it because I don't have a choice, stop complaining about it being a worse experience because that's what 80% of UI updates ARE for my workflows and habits. But you did ask for feedback. So maybe this is useful.
- Browser scaling does not seem to work properly with the modern design. Due to the size of the elements being too large to my own taste I'd like to zoom it back a little, however this causes the site's design to become entirely vertical with empty sides as the site is coded as a static image probably to adjust better for phones. Classic design does not have this issue and scales with browser zoom properly.
- I find it odd how the modern and classic designs have different descriptions for quite a few options in the settings. Oftentimes the classic descriptions seem more accurate and verbose, albeit this is a rather minor complaint and more a curiosity.
- The modern design lacks separators between the settings. This makes it harder to read quickly which text is describing which text and which checkbox is aligned to which setting. The fact some of the bolded text inside said descriptions are using blue bolded text which looks similar to the blue text on the left side for the actual names of the settings, doesn't help.
- The search bar looks cluttered. On one hand it shows more information at once without having to click advanced button, on the other hand it has similar issues to the settings pages where everything just looks rather haphazardly placed without separators. It is functional, it just doesn't look clean.
+ Plus points however to the actual settings cogwheel and burger bar being more clear to me than the classic one. I do find it easier to actually find the settings here than the classic.
+ Oddly enough, if not counting the 40% of the banner taking space, the modern design is often capable of actually showing more information on the screen than the classic design.
+ Overall, I do find that the classic design does look pretty and has promise.
Overall TL;DR is that to me, the Modern isn't bad and is definitely usable and I can't myself think of any absolutely critical faults in it as just a regular ol' user. It has a lot of good promise, but is currently held back by some cluttered elements and technical faults such as the browser scaling not being functional. Due to my own preferences and being used to old-school internet I guess where text pages basically looked just like text documents, I would personally still prefer the Classic if I was given a choice. With no choice given, I will do my best to deal with the Modern and adjust it as much to my liking as I can.
Classic for example has full image resolution (if it is really large) to page / display width with post details under it. Whereas modern & by proxy retro has the image resolution scaled to the width of the submission area. While the block that has post details like tags, resolution size etc etc eats up all the free space on the right of the image. Which in turn makes a larger image still look small. Compared to Classic which gives you as much full resolution as it can.
Honestly the whole submission information panel in modern feels like it takes up too much space on a submission page. Whereas with Classic only after you scroll past an image does the information show up. Giving you a chance to look at the whole image. Modern however covers a significant portion of the submission page and you have to look at it while looking at the art. Which can be a distraction.
Classic just has a charm that cannot be replaced. But if it must go then it must go.
Also, is it totally necessary that changing skin settings requires me to enter my password? This is tedious and I can't think of any other site which makes me do it for something that trivial.
I appreciate the work y’all are doing, and Modern’s clean and slick looking (the tags are far better, and the ui scales better for larger images, especially on mobile) but that specific issue has been the sticking point on my end.
The new text viewer is JS only and that's a huge pain. My real wish is to ban PDF entirely. Its insecure and inaccessible. Failing that, a simple html or txt render of what writers upload to the new viewer seems doable. With the target on furries everywhere I would like to use this site without JS if I can.
Or provide API and let us do it.
But I do!
I never use any special options except just viewing artists galleries, so I will very pleased if you just make the same font-color-anyotherviewoptions as similar as possible like Classic in some of Modern palette variant.
If nothing else, I really do think the "more from user" should be at the top somewhere to encourage more clicks into the gallery if someone wants to. I also don't understand why meta keywords and keywords are separated out, let alone split from being next to each other by the report button. (I see its to report bad tags but I assume it's also to just report the image as a whole; and if not, why isn't it that? xD)
sheesh :V
- site could use sticky buttons for navigating the browse page and user gallery
- option to hide blocked submissions completely and not just blur them, you don't even need to load new submissions to fill the gap, its fine
notes on above suggestion:
- keep a "show all" button for edge cases where user needs to view blocked submissions
- maybe exempt new submissions page from blocked submission hiding and have it blurred instead
- are we getting them emotes back or no? :V
I get the appeal of it, but that feels like something that would be a resource-heavy project for FA, and it's unlikely that a lot of people would even use it.
They DID import the old DMs at least, which is nice
It dawned on me that my may be trivial to a color customization system that gets around this. Rock Raiders United let users set the color of the bar on to of the page.
1) People don't like the sidebar (now, to that, I'm not staff, but I'll venture a guess that the sidebar is just not going to go away; taking away the sidebar would get rid of two substantial community ad spots that FA likely can't afford to lose - I'm guessing most of the people saying "get rid of the sidebar" are either using adblockers or simply don't care, but it's worth pointing out).
2) People really want the old emoji selection tools back.
3) People would like numerically paginated galleries so they can quickly jump back to "the depths" of a gallery. (You can already do this by just changing the page number in the URL, but there's a lot of guesswork involved in that so making it a native UI option would be a good upgrade.)
4) People find that the banner is far too big.
5) Page zoom resizes "the wrong things" in Modern (no one seems willing to be more specific than that).
6) People want "Retro" to be a 1:1 recreation of Classic (tech has already made it very clear that this is not feasible and is not going to happen in the immediate future).
Most of the other things in the comments are either people pleading for Classic not to go away (it's going away, deal with it) or restating points that have already been said in the journal (which I would say is still helpful feedback because it shows them they're noticing the right things). And also LOAFS.
I'm sure this is incomplete, but this is just my general read from looking at all the comments.
Emojis is reflected in the list.
"Page Zoom" is nebulous as some by my reading its they want Thumbnails by default vs. Full Resolution (and also the opposite) which is a setting they can adjust now via Account Settings.
Some of these will be added to the list, but I will touch on not adding a 1:1 of Classic as a suggestion as that is under the umbrella of a "new idea" and thus not fitting for this project.
But yeah, two big takeaways here are: 1) the sidebar is not a negotiable point (due to ad requirements), and 2) a 1:1 recreation of Classic is beyond the scope of this journal (and is not currently being considered)
That said, just to make sure the suggestion doesn't get lost in the ether would it be possible to make the sidebar begin 'underneath' the user submission instead of next to it(so it aligns next to the submission details/comments much like it does in Classic)? That way the user submission has more page width to work with. My wheelhouse isn't in web/UI design and the extent of my knowledge is from a college HTML class I took over 15 years ago, but I figure that might help alleviate some of the gripes?
I'm pretty disincentivised from switching layouts to check because what if you remove the ability to switch back and I can't use the site anymore?
I have a comment here that explains it.
2. I really want the hyperlinks to look like normal hyperlinks, getting color-changed after clicking them.
3. "Full view" engine is bad, poor control on zooming in-out and dragging the picture around. The big "X" button at the bottom is in a way (would be better in a corner). But overall I'd just like something akin to the actual classic full view.
4. Fave, Previous, Next, Main gallery, Download, Note, Full view - the buttons are kinda blend together. Often when I want to fave a pic I have to actually search for the Fave button, because its position changes depending on the Next button presenting or not.
5. The side bar is kinda annoying, too. Too large, too bulky.
6. Overall the interface elements look just a little too massive, too bulky, too mobile-like. I use FA on PC and it just looks like the site has a lot of wasted space.
I think it's because advertisers have made such a demand to them, so they're removing this design.
It remains to be hoped that someone will make an extension to return this design, it is practical and convenient.
Fuller information is gonna be way too long to fit into an FA comment, but if you want a breakdown of some issues I've noticed, I can send them along somewhere. It's a thing I do.
Yet another classic fan here. I have two accounts, and keep the secondary one on modern just so I can see what's happening with it, but I absolutely prefer the classic interface in most respects. Modern just wastes so much space! And it doesn't respect my choice of browser width. I mean, look at this side-by-side of a profile page.
FA-Userpage-1
Classic: I can see an entire journal, some of the profile ID, the featured submission, the start of the gallery, stats are unobtrusively tucked into the corner of the profile box. Two columns, things fit.
Modern: only one column! The top bar is hovering, unwanted. Stats are this huge useless box after the profile, why?
It's SO much worse if you page down just once.
FA-Userpage-2
Classic: All the stats, all the contact info, I can see most of the gallery, I can already read shouts!
Modern: ....half of the first gallery image. Only.
Shouts are buried so far down, they may as well not even exist.
And it's the same deal for submission pages.
FA-Imagepage-1
Classic: Image, mini-gallery, options, description, stats, tags, comments! All VISIBLE, all nicely arranged and compact. All of the info and tags are part of the same small box, next to and below the description.
Modern: Stats and tags are exploded across the page, scattered and huge and wasting heaps of space. Also, there's the unwanted hovering top bar again.
---
Yeah, I get it. If I make the window wider, the second column appears and it's not quite so bad. But that still doesn't fix the over-large font size and giant UI elements wasting so much space. And I admit, this is a problem with web design in general these days. EVERY site expects the page to be full-screen now or things are messed up. I'm old, I miss the old web design standards, and I don't like having to constantly re-arrange my entire desktop to accommodate all the extra space everything (uselessly) demands.
The second column ends with the stats at the top beside the post, instead of besides the description, where the post info would be expected.
When opening a post page, "workflow" goes like this in classic: view post, scroll down, view info, scroll down, read comments.
In modern it ends like this: view post, scroll down, read description, scroll up, read stats, scroll down (passing by the description again), read comments.
And the stats don't even fit within the screen height, while in classic they fit in ~2/3 of the height.
Everything on modern is bigger, and that's not good -- images are bigger, things are moved out to take up more space than they used to, etc. These pictures from Velos' post is a nice side-by-side to compare/contrast what doesn't work with the bass-ackwards that is modern (and, to be clear, it's not staff's fault inherently about modern being big and bass-ackwards, it's a general UX trend across all the internet, and I hate it everywhere I see it. Everyone makes things big and obnoxious and screen filling, as if every person is either using a mobile device or a desktop window maximized on a 4k screen, and nothing in between.
I guess I'm partly a weirdo though -- that's the lion's share of my reasons of not moving over. That, the fact I like the blues of the classic skin (they're dark enough to not hurt the eyes like a light-mode #FFFFFF background (as opposed to the comment box I'm typing in now, XD), but still light enough that it's not a dark abyss that swallows all light like most "Dark" themes go for with #000000 as the base background hue), and I'm a stick-in-the-mud who doesn't like to change if the old works still. And yeah, I understand the last point and the tech debt associated with it is causing part of the problems that have lead to this point; I am concerned from reading the back-and-forth between Xideron and the Tech Staffer Yuuk about the problems with duplicating classic in modern's framework that we'll be doing this again with a later framework change down the road in like, a decade or two, that rends current modern asunder because of expectations and restrictions suggested to already exist in current modern.
Arguably, the size is now less of a problem in regards to images, but the text isn't exactly one-size-fits-all. Not too many sites respect font size preference set in browser settings, so it'd be nice if FA did.
Thank you for illustrating a side-by-side comparison!
On a 1920x1080 screen, laying out two windows side-by-side occupies about half width (~900px). This is a very common scenario for desktop users and multiple columns should be supported!
The other big reason why you're seeing less here is that the font size is microscopic on classic theme. The ultimate improvement would be to use the browser-provided font settings, as that lets the user specify font size on any page that respects it. That would help with accessibility and let you make things smaller if need be.
<3
The peak of UI design has been being killed off for a while now.
I'm pleased how many screenshots people have posted look identical to mine, with all the useless junk like the site banner adblocked away
I'm going to be providing a link leading to a Google Drive Folder with Images Attached as I need to be clear about how I feel about the Modern UI and what Needs to be done to improve upon it because like it or not Classic is Retiring and I don't think I can Continue using this Site with the Modern UI in the Way it Is.
1. The Modern UI has an Awful Squeezed Look. https://drive.google.com/drive/fold.....Ee?usp=sharing
I don't understand why, if it's to make it more approachable for Phones or Tablets then I get that but on the PC it looks ridiculous. The Classic UI does not do this, and it makes no sense why the Modern UI cannot be Unsqueezed either. Otherwise it’s just a Simple Waste of Space.
If you want to have this Squeezed Look for the Benefit of Phones/Tablets then make a Dynamic UI Designed to alter its look depending on the device it's being viewed on. Or Make a Dedicated Furaffinity App for Android & Apple like Deviantart Did. Just Unsqueeze it on PC.
2. Search Page just looks better on Classic. https://drive.google.com/drive/fold.....Mg?usp=sharing
On Modern, Filters & Advanced Search Parameters Are Lodged on the Right Side Permanently Wasting Space, and you cannot toggle hide/show the search box like you can in the Classic UI. With the General Squeezed Look I mentioned in Note.1 it makes this look even Worse.
Now I prefer the Search Filters on the Top Simply because I've used Classic UI for so Long, But wouldn't mind Having it on the Left or Right Side of the Page like it is in Modern But What Bothers Me is I cannot Toggle Hide/Show that Element like you can in Classic.
For me, having the Toggle Switch for Advanced Search Filters is good because half the time I'm just casually searching through FA, and only need to use the additional search parameters when looking for something specific. If I'm not doing that then those elements should remain hidden.
3. Font Sizes. https://drive.google.com/drive/fold.....SQ?usp=sharing
Why is everything Big and Bloated? It was fine in the Classic UI but it seems Modern means Big and Bold These Days which is fine until everybody else starts doing the same thing. Don't be like DeviantArts awful Eclipse UI.
Allow us to Dial the Website's General Font Size, with the Oringal Classic UI Font Size and then 3 Larger Size Options for those who may for instance have Poor Eyesight. You already do this for Header Sizes and Description Sizes for Journals and Uploads, just take that for the UI too.]
4. Gallery Folders. https://drive.google.com/drive/fold.....3J?usp=sharing
I'm just gonna be honest here. I prefer it on the left side as it was in the Classic UI. Being Modern doesn't mean we gotta flip it cause that will be cool. Modernising is simply Building Upon a Foundation and Improving.
But maybe I'm just nagging here rather than giving something more constructive so I would prefer a bit more... modularity to our Profiles and Galleries. Allow us to make it ours, Unique. So we can tailor our personal Experience using the site to suit each of us in our own way.
That's about it for my issues with Furaffinity and why I have yet to switch from the Classic UI to the Modern or Modern Retro UI. Look, I get that Classic is going to be Retired Permanently and the Modern UI provides many improvements to the Classic, But it comes with all these Oddities as well that has made it unappealing so far.
All I ever wanted was the Classic UI brought to a Modern Evolution. Simple but not Simplistic, and Certainly not Minimalist. I don't need to jump 50 hoops just to get to where I want to go.
I do appreciate the "Retro Look" you've provided for the Modern UI. But a Simple Colour Swap is just not enough to convince me to switch over permanetely. and yeah I get it, I'll be forced over regardless eventually but the drawbacks I see are off-putting.
I'm sure there are other issues others have mentioned that I have not, and almost certainly what I've written here are things you've already read before from others but if that's the case it's a clear pattern that should be looked into and resolved please.
Similar issues exist with the search filter layout. The one on classic is pretty awful to use for someone who'd be using magnification software to account for poor eyesight. Though that doesn't mean the one on modern couldn't be collapsible.
They could be options, sure, but none of those things should be the default experience. They've been disappearing for good reason.
Ok, on this, you aren't wrong. The way FA indents each successive reply until its down to some minimum width (and the initial width is 100% of the browser window) is the only real complaint I've had about classic's layout, ever. Oh and the font size, but really only in regards to when there are paragraphs of content which usually only happen in two situations:
1) Story content, which doesn't have a standardized way of being displayed and has always been terrible.
2) Very long comments that don't use line breaks. Usually some kind of long-form deep discussion, which comments weren't designed for anyway. Journal are functionally really long comments.
Have a look by grabbing it here: https://flooftastic.com/ff/
An XPI is just a zip file, look at the source by just opening it up. ^-^;
There's a css file in there for styling, and a tiny js file for easing of styling.
All addons have to be signed by mozilla anyway, so where it is hosted is irrelevant.
Sorry that my tiny download page isn't flashy and ad-filled >.>
I have seen the wild west of unsigned addons and a fair share of malicious campaigns (through articles, as content blocking and common sense come a long way), and your case is definitely unique here, given that it's actually signed. After being used to all the addons which got banished from the realms of Moz/Goog and were therefore not eligible for signing, I just learned something new.
Our social media accounts aren't checked often enough to be considered appropriate venues to contact staff. We must ask that you kindly stick to TTs or emails for official site matters.
As to contacting staff on their personal accounts, we do prefer to maintain a work-life balance, so site concerns may not always be answered if you contact someone in their personal space.
Please send in an email to appeals@furaffinity.net, and the admin who handles the email will look into any concerns you have.
The modern UI, to me has a lot of that mid 2010's ''We're pushing for mobile accessibility'' era baggage stuck to it.
The old one is simple, relatively clean and does what it needs to without too much fuss.
I did swap to modern classic, but it felt not intuitively arranged. Things weren't where I'd expected them to be.
And whilst it's nice to be able to see things like the changing banners again like in the old FA days. I'm still not terribly convinced to switch to it.
The UI being on the right side of the screen is pretty unusual. Most websites have it on the left, FA-classic, as we all know has it up top. - The right is not ideal from my perspective. We read left to right, and having the thing you need to be interacting with on the right feels contrary to that assumption.
Yes!
https://www.furaffinity.net/controls/profile/
Change to "Show content without tags" and "Show blocked user content". As for blurring for items that you have tag blocked, you would have to not have anything tag blocked to ensure nothing will show up blurred.
Another is the way the top bar works. I don’t really like the menu style on the left in the new one. I like everything being along the top and immediately accessible, with my messages being on the right side
But here are some of my thoughts, I don't know if they're constructive or not, perhaps it depends on the listener but:
I've always used classic and basically it's existence has made FA my favorite platform on the internet, so I'm sad to see it go. It's probably 50% feelings because its familiar and one of the few reminders of good times in the long past when the world is changing rapidly to a horrible place to be. And the other 50% is that it's functional, easy to read and overall just pleasant design and I wish more places on the internet was designed usability first and not because "it needs to look up to the times!".
I personally don't desire any of the new features, FA to me in classic is already complete with everything it needs to have. Obviously not counting security stuff that needs to keep up to times.
Strong points of classic:
1. Top 1 reason for me is font sizes, the default text size is good and it's balanced properly with header fonts, so if there's a need to ctrl+zoom the sizes scale nicely. Also visited links are distinct.
2. Second best feature is that the classic layout focuses on the most important things, spacing, padding and in many cases also lack of them is optimized to direct your focus on the content you are looking to focus on (thumbnails, art piece or text / comments)
3. Light theme. While I do think the dark theme is cooler, the light theme is unfortunately wayyy more readable. Also I really enjoy that I can see a difference when I'm logged in or not.
A small thing I'd like to be better about the actual current classic theme is that the top/site banner is too large/takes a lot of screen space, it's cool sometimes but overall annoying. It also loads for a fairly long time because not all of us have good internet speed (in fact the quality of internet connection has plummeted in recent years rather). It's ok to wait/load art pieces because that's what you're looking to see but any other elements is ugh, less other pics the better!
Biggest problems of modern (retro): (somewhat repeating..)
1. Major flaw is that on submission page there is a sidebar that takes space away from the art piece, and slightly related the new announcement popup goes over the top of the submission (sometimes you don't immediately remove the notification because you've not had the time to read it yet).
2. Font sizes are waayyy too gigantic it's hard to read them because they're blown out of proportion, especially header/title/link fonts. When I scale down fonts in browser it's impossible to scale them down to an optimal size, either the titles are ok but text is unreadable small or titles are still gigantic and text is decent. Maybe this could be fixed with plugins that poke the html/css but I'm not very good at that stuff :/
3. The layout doesn't stretch to the edges and leaves annoying empty space for no reason.
4. Folders sidebar in gallery is way too wide and obscures too much the browsing the gallery/thumbnails.
Smaller bugs & annoyances of modern (retro):
1. Can't click journal title to access a journals page (user front page)
2. "Stats" box is in awkward placing/too focused, it's fun info but not really necessary to highlight as one of the first things you see on a profile page! Better placement is either where it originally was or further down the profile.
3. Profile info box content and spacing is VERY awkward, there is also content I've not chosen to put there: accepting trades/commissions info. The list of interests wastes too much space and gets weird amount of focus because of it's big spacing, while the info is just for silly purposes (I still like that most people answer the silly preset questions because it's a community element! I just don't like the added focus on them). Also the contact information has colourful distracting logos and puts a lot of focus on alternative platforms, I've listed them to ensure that people know it's me but I would not like to highlight them because most of them are platforms I don't even use (it's just info for fighting scammer issues so I wouldn't really want to remove them either just to make my profile page look cleaner/more readable). And profile box image has no spacing between the box title and the image.
4. "More from" in gallery section is just ugly with distorted thumbnails and seems like useless clutter, this could be replaced with just a link to the main gallery..
5. Unnecessary highlight on submission keywords with their placement/size/colourfulness.
I also feel weirded out that there is supposedly so few who use classic, in my experience when I meet people at conventions, it's a frequent topic which FA layout is used and a lot of people use classic (the alternative is that they didn't know there are themes). Or maybe con goer furries are just a different demographic bubble. But sure most of them are shocked I used the light version, but understand that it's for readability reasons xD
6. Avatars have awkward looking rounded corners. This is also been an annoyance in gallery submission thumbnails. I think if people wanted different shapes they could submit an image with transparency, otherwise the entire picture should be visible.
Most of this can be tweaked on my end or with some of the existing settings, so I really appreciate the effort that's gone into it. But I think the one thing that's still preventing me from switching my account over, completely, is the change from having my username in the nav banner to having only my avatar there.
If there was an option to change that to my username (with or without the avatar, honestly) then I'd finally be willing to adapt and watch as the changes continue to roll out.
For the record, I don't think Modern is perfect - people have raised some very good points about layout and whatnot, and just because it works fine for my typical environment (a maximized window on a 1080p desktop monitor), that doesn't mean it works well for everyone. But it's not nearly the disaster that this comment section might lead some folks to believe.
But that just means 95,4% of people saw modern and never looked back.
Modern FA is cromulent enough, it has flaws but it still looks and feels much better than classic, and I think a few improvements like the mini gallery at the bottom of the image and links changing colors would fix my limited criticism of this UI (I'm one of the 95% of people that logged it one morning, saw the new skin, and never went back to classic)
Makes me wonder of the planned FA rewrite is going to also have a new UI, maybe something closer to Itaku and the Sofurry beta, and current modern will become classic
As for the planned FA rewrite, my understanding is that that's less a "future" project and more a "currently ongoing even in the present" project. I could be wrong, but honestly I'd be very surprised if they do a new UI any time soon. I think it much more likely that as FA continues to be reworked, they'll just continue tweaking the current UI, possibly adding new display options and such.
Also yeah the "fuck mobile users" comments especially are grating, since they objectively are the majority of people online, including FA, and I'm sorry but classic on mobile is objectively unusable.
And yeah, I figured it was something they are working behind the scenes, and I wouldn't be surprised if in 2026 we start to get more teases about it, we'll see about a new UI though, I think it'll be nice but I don't blame the devs for not doing one for a while, especially as they bring features to modern
- biggest thing of all, I just like the older web design. I miss 2010s YouTube. I miss the fairly simplistic webpages. We need more of that, especially since the internet is going "oops all modern design". I do get it's hell to keep the Classic theme updated though, especially due to the larger and more messy codebase it has. I do feel it has its own personality to it that I like. If there was an option to have a Classic theme that was easy to update, I would very likely jump on that.
- the sidebars on the side of journals and submissions and whatnot in the modern theme honestly feel out of place. It makes the content feel like it's being a bit squeezed, if that makes sense, and it doesn't make sense to apply to the navbar.
- I would like to see somewhere between Modern and Classic for font sizing. I do get the accessibility aspect of the larger font, but it does genuinely make everything feel a bit too large in my opinion, especially tied with the sidebars. Classic is on the lower end of usable text sizing for me.
- Emoticon picker is gone. I personally haven't used it much but a way to access it would be nice, especially for other users.
- Tying into the previous as well, the reply/comment box: I'm a bit conflicted on it. The resizable comment box is nice, but I don't particularly care for the rounded corners. The formatting options I feel would work better for me if they were on top of the text input box. The reply/comment box being above the comments though, I do feel works a lot better than having to scroll down a far ways away to be able to comment.
- Comments themselves: They feel a lot larger and yet at the same time smaller in a way, in no small part due to the larger font. I kinda like the little blurb tags right next to the username rather than underneath, I like the bar that has the link text and the comment post date. I kinda like the link and reply buttons being text.
- The navbar on top: I think the icons are kinda neat but the support category I personally feel is a bit cluttered in Modern. I feel like the things in the Community and Community Walls sections would fit more back in a dedicated Community dropdown, and maybe add a way to get to official community pages again. I like the userpage icon, I like the userpage text. The icons for the Account and Account Information, there might be a bit too much there? Not sure how I feel about that. I feel like "My FA" is a bit more concise for that, but I do like the SFW toggle in the hamburger menu. The log out button being in the hamburger menu instead of the far right of the top bar does feel a bit strange though, even if the log out button is inside one of the navbar menus.
- The news bar: this one's just... not great. Having it as an overlay, above content, feels really bad. Even if it's slightly transparent, I would rather have a small section dedicated to the news bar. Having rating is nice though, though admittedly should be a bit unnecessary for simple site news. I tend to just leave the news bar where it is so having it on top of content feels a bit detracting. It also overlays the sidebar.
- Sidebar: I like the little advisory warning icons in the bottom left. The more simple layout of the sidebar is also something I like. Location-wise, I think it's alright. Some content might suit the Classic layout better, some might suit the Modern better. Having two add to favorites buttons, two download buttons, and two send note buttons does feel a bit redundant though. Report tags is definitely useful here. Meta keywords are a big plus. I could go for the "more by artist" section going underneath the submission itself though, underneath the description.
- Submission area: Dual submission titles, they aren't, like... important important, but it would be nice to see a full height submission and know the title of the submission without scrolling down 20 pages. The description section I feel is more reasonably sized in Modern, whereas in Classic there's huge gaps between the inside and outside boxes, and the window edges. I kinda like the double-box though. If doing double-box, make the edges of the box a fixed distance from the side of the window. It looks worse on
- Bottom bar: I kinda like the page load metrics. That's really all I have to say there.
- New Submissions/New Journals page: This one, I would have to say Modern does it a lot better for the button layout on top.
- Banner: Looks neat, though the news bar and the profile info clutter it a little bit.
There's just a lot of 4:3isms for Classic I have small gripes with nowadays, and some of the weird stuff Modern does just doesn't work well for me personally.
Also peeping into this comment to note that the news bar does not overlay into content. It only does if you're adblocking our in-house ads, which collapses the buffer space for the news bar.
No begging to keep Classic. Just a statement of fact.
It's a big change, and giving people an easier time switching back and forth between the two makes might make more willing to test and try it out at least.
However, the new UI seems far too cluttered and takes away the greatest strengths of the Classic layout, which is to 'get out of the way' when viewing content.
My main issues are the following:
- Sidebars really hamper viewing submissions; at the very least we should have the option to display them under submissions so we can see them in greater horizontal resolution. And, no, fullscreening submissions isn't a good alternative(that and the giant red 'X' icon is kinda obtrusive). This is probably the biggest gripe I have against the modern layout. While I am one of those people who dislike sidebars with a passion I understand the necessity and I appreciate the tag blocking tools which are implemented here, but they really should be more compact and more respectful of submissions.
- I'm not really a fan of the blurred 'Windows Aero' effect on the top bar and the news bar; additionally when the news bar is active it cuts off the top of submissions. While the 'floating' top bar is convenient, I'd like to see an option where we can 'pin' it so it isn't, again, 'getting in the way.' I'd also like to see just our username instead of our profile icon.
- The dropdown menus for site settings/etc expanding on hover are also distracting; my suggestion is to set them so they expand with a click instead? There's a reason major sites like Facebook, Youtube, and etc use this behavior instead.
-The fonts really need work, especially where line spacing is concerned. The empty space really adds up to overall clutter, leading to a lot more scrolling than necessary. It leads to a weird 'sour spot' where the text size is small but the character and line spacing are far too much and takes up way too much space. Icons(such as reply/hide comments) are also really large and I'd hope for a more compact solution.
My idea for compromise is to perhaps offer a 'lite' theme(which I understand the Modern Retro mimics, but perhaps not as well as most of us want) which keeps the look and feel of Classic as much as can be possible, with more compact/unobtrusive sidebars(which don't compete for real estate with user submissions), pinned top/news bars, removing the Aero-like transparency effect and perhaps keeping the Classic font style? I don't have a Web/UI design background so I don't know what kind of work would need to go into it, but I figure it would be possible?
This's one of the annoyances I didn't give feedback on in my ticket because I was worried that'd make me look like I'm being annoying for annoying's sake.
Most thoughts I have can be distilled down to 'have a minimalist alternative layout that 'gets out of the way' when viewing submissions and makes any sidebars/headers respect user submissions.' I know ads are pretty much impossible to get away from these days(unless you're super aggressive with ad/script blocking) and sites need revenue to stay in operation, but there has to be some kind of balance which can be found. Personally I also don't like the 'More from(user)' section on the sidebar as I think it's redundant and takes up too much real estate, but I figure I'm in the abject minority when it comes to that).
Heya!
This only occurs when you are adblocking on the site. Our community advertisers (as in artists, not Google ads, ect.) serve as the buffer space for the news bar.
Shields down, Mr Spree.
(EDIT: The phrase "Furry Adjacent" raises some serious red flags.)
Submissions are not blurred on a systemic basis by Fur Affinity; a submission will ever only be blurred for a user when it has been labeled with a tag they have previously added to their tags block list.
I hope this helps setting your mind at ease regarding this situation!
If you've invertedly clicked on it, then that would explain the situation (and I reassure you, you're not alone that might've done that. X3).
And you're very welcome!!
From the outside looking in, that seems like the simplest solution; The design elements of the classic site UI- the literal way the features look- should be relatively easy to re-create on modern infrastructure. And then that can just be made into another theme. Naturally, that's something easier said than done. but at least in my case, I like the easier to navigate menus and straight-forward approach to galleries and content as a whole. [square UI is also preferable, at least to me]. But, i feel like with a better working back-end, re-making a simpler looking/functioning front end shouldn't be a colossal task
But the new one is slower to load and uses more memory (way more JS I guess?) on my systems (well, at least when I tried it, dunno about now), so I use the old one.
I suppose this is just how the world turns though, everything gets slower, and you will use it at gunpoint.
- Classic was more PC-friendly.
Let's just face it. Modern looks like an enlarged version of a mobile, and sadly the whole internet is focusing on mobiles like that nowadays. On mobile it looks pretty fine(though I still don't like that to access your profile you have to tap on three-stripes button on the left), the pictures if you open them show up the way they should and nothing interferes, keeping you from watching the artwork. We're talking about a *gallery* site here, so yeah, watching the art with comfort is important. On PC we have a total different story: the picture opens up being moved to the left side, while the right side is busy with views, keywords, edits, more-froms(which are squeezing the pictures if they're vertical and it just looks bad imo) - it's plain distracting. The thing I loved most about Classic was that the main picture you look at is centered and not pushed out to any side by UI elements. I swear, if the stuff from the right side of Modern was(or at least *could be*) returned to where it was on Classic - I swear I'd love Modern way more and maybe I wouldn't even bother to write this blotch of text.
- Classic had better scaling.
Again, it's a part of a previous comment about Modern being mobile and vertical-focused. On mobiles having bigger fonts and keeping everything bloated is justified: a smaller screen, should make things be more visible, plus the banners here look neat and don't push the artworks too low by being here. But on PC? The text size is huge. The main site banner is huge too and we don't seem to have a toggle to turn it off anymore, only using a side-party app like AdBlock plus will help. The ad banners are bigger too. I'll be honest, I've never blocked the ad itself on this particular site, + I've bought a banner for myself several times before, so ads don't bother me much. The main banner does, though, because the wider your screen is - the bigger this thing gets and you have to scroll down to see the main page with artworks. It just rubs me in a wrong way: again, we're being a gallery here, the main target of gallery is an easy access to artworks. But now it's a huge banner and tiny bits of artworks underneath. A toggle would be nice. Same with text size: the font is pretty and I love it, while it's size bugs me, especially in the titles. Also the hyperlinks being underlined with dotted lines(makes it look piled-up somehow) and not changing their colors after being clicked on are a problem. Tiny, but still a problem.
- Classic was organized better.
While Modern always tries to keep your eyes busy and feeds your ADHD lmao
It feels like too much is going on at the same time and it's plain distracting, nothing more, nothing less. Some may like, some may not.
- TABS IN PROFILE.
Buttons on the right in Modern look cute, but the tabs on the left in Classic were better and I'm gonna miss them ;w;
There's a lot more that I'd like to say, but I guess these four are the main things that bother me in Classic. I'm trying to stay on positive side and hope for the best, so please don't let it slip like it was with DeviantArt years ago when they launched their Eclipse UI, asked for feedback, GOT the feedback(actually lots and lots of it, thousands of people saying the same things over and over and over again which alone kinda showed how horrendous and uncomfortable that update was), and in the end, after a whole year, they listened to basically nothing, forcing everyone on the new design without an option to go back and closing the comments on main journal instead. Please, *PLEASE* don't ignore the feedback, especially when you're asking for it. It might not be too positive at the moment, but people will thank you later if you listen. That I can promise for sure.
Best regards ;w;
And Thanks in little advance for your attention.
Always asking myself if l’m getting old and don't handle change, or, if the change is really bothering me I'm resisting it. (And pretty sure it's the second option, cause when it serves me well, I welcome the change extremely quickly ex: Webmail improved, Vrchat last quick menu, fortnite new quests menus etc... so Yeah I welcome changes when they feel right and are useful even recently.)I spent quite some time here to read the comment above this one, and found often the same feel but I would have some suggestions, if possible and "easy".
The recent banner of try the modern again made me click, annnnnd I hated it, but at the same time allow me to think trough "and roughly complain in some threads" on what's really wrong with it.
So there is a list, non exhaustive and will try to make more advanced feedback suggestion for the appropriate box later.
Plus I did go trough the new design as quickly as possible even for trying to find what I meant by discomfort, cause I couldn't peacefully stand it, panicking that I would not find the classic one again, and the shiny taking a lot of the view button to switch was a trap. ^^' So I would have missed some new "features"
1) The new takes too much inspiration of mobile phone interface, which as previous comments stated, doesn't make any use of the majority of the modern screen space on PC or even tablets.
2) I wish there is an option to still get small text as classic and having a huge amount of text available without scrolling, I might get older but have no prescription still and I don enjoy a lot to have a lot of text in a small box. (13" laptop screen Excel user on the coloumn FF in the same screen, and hates microsoft pushing more than 100% zoom xD) Like the classic.
3) "We're tackling the unseen comments "yet" When I re-activated the new version I felt overwhelmed, not cosy at all, surrounded by oppressive feeling, first not knowing where this feels comes from.
And now I have the clear in mind answer. Comparing the two versions :
Classic :
The art piece is taking the majority of the screen space, you are contemplating the work, and there is no distraction, a little scroll and you have the title, and little options under it, as +fav, download , full view, send note, older.
Under again, some of the recent miniatures of recent artworks.
That's it, simple, art first artist second, and details if further.
I kind of appreciate this true piece in viewing experience.
New :
You arrive where artwork takes MUCH less screen space, and right away (intended) You have full on details informations, content, keywords, tags, text, buttons, it's quite oppressing compared to the classic.
Numbers, Views, comments, favourites, rating
Download submission (first time)
Category,
species,
size
file size
keywords, which can be 5 10 20 30....
Big button to report content
bad tags ?
Meta Keywords, also which can be pleinty
More from : With biger miniatures
Under it you continue, cause the art is taking less space, you always see all
main gallery, download (second time) , older
title under, the description of the artist,
and then the Tos, options etc...
Also forgot to mention but adds to overwhelm feels, no way to scroll away from the top bar, but not mentionned as a bother, cause some people might like that and it, can be, useful.
So it's like : Classic, simple, small text, calm VS New, buttons everywhere, a lot of infos I don't necessarily want when looking at someone piece on first glance.
My suggestion here and On the more detailed further suggestion I will try to stitch an image of web design view which suits the description :
Restore size of art piece to be the n°1 thing we see
Make little buttons on the right side, like the report, download, and some more from the artist in small pics column.
Put the title of the piece Above, really visible Put WAY under, the all details infos views social design like stuff, aside some comments.
And let people set the text size, which will resize comments boxes according to their liking, allowing really small text if wanted.
4) Add an option for small banner menu, which will ease the navigation without scroll for the first things you want to see.
5) Feature some ways to make tabs on profiles, I didn't saw that on modern.
So that's the rough idea, and l’ll suffer Try longer the "New" to make a more in depth comparison and fixing options. Also will read some of the comments still to read on this thread.
Thanks again for reading.
I also agree that the modern interface is too touchscreen focused.
the Precision of a mouse does not need large buttons to press, so the buttons sould be small and uninvasive.
also modern has these big orange blocks next to the tags, which are obtically very intrusive.
Classic showing the previouse and next 3 posts is a good feature, that as far as I know is missing in modern.
having acess to nex nad previouse 3 posts is very helpful for comics and sequences, which there are quite a lot of.
the classic layout is far superior to modern.
in modern the main picture you want to look at shares its space with teh tags and other pictures on teh right side.
the Picture should dominate its area, sicne that is the main thing.
it should dominate its area in the small and big size. there is no reason to have anything next to it.
other information should be above or below it
interface should be optimised for mouse and keyboard.
buttons small and unintrusive.
no compromises should be made for touchscreen.
I never had any problems finding anything in classic.
Modern does show next and last 3 still. Right hand sidebar under "More from [username]". If on the most recent piece then it will show the 6 older ones, as there are no more recent ones.
Out of curiosity since I see button size and layout issues commonly brought up by classic users: What resolution are you operating at?
For example I'm at 3840 x 2160 and have my scaling set to 250% and still find the buttons on modern small.
I also use the 3840x2160 on the laptop, and 1440p on the desktop, both 100% and i like the efficient use of space, on the new, it's big bulky buttons, with space right and left not used.
Also on new, you can not have the right annoying bar hidden, you mush see the art 2/3 his size, just to show all the not directly wanted infos and a lot of space not even used.
Modern: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1AN.....ew?usp=sharing
Classic: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1JB.....ew?usp=sharing
While I can indeed see all the unused space on either side, are you actually reading the text that small? IT seems the issues is beyond the intended sidebars..
I am always open for changes on this site! So I look foward for any that is to come!
Not meaning to be rude or something, but maybe a quality/skill filter would help to be seen, though it might bury smaller artists even deeper in feed = harder to find their audience, so for me it's a no-no thing + it would require way more work for the devs
Also tags don't work for feed too, they're meant only for searching something(and still not doing great: now that we're forced to put at least 3 tags to our submissions, many just type in a basic "furry/gender/species/(N)SFW" which again doesn't help searching, since maby put it into each pic), so I don't know what could possibly help here...
But just want to let you know that you're not alone facing these struggles, nowadays to be seen and to make money from your art you should do way more than just draw pictures. There are too many of us artists and yeah, simply drawing and submitting worked like 10-15 years ago, but now you can draw like a god and still no one would see you because you don't post on 234235489 other socials to promote your artwork and draw people's attention ;w; + you don't post for a month or so - most just forget you because there's so many more...
Welp, that was a sad piece of text, but I still hope everyone finds their audience ;w; Best wishes!
Most of the other suggestions I feel like others have mentioned already.
But as an old internet user Im generally just not a fan of how big most UI is nowadays lol
I immediately hate everything about the mobile version of modern, but the non-mobile version doesn't seem that bad? If I had an option to use that instead on my phone I'd greatly prefer that. I can toggle it manually in my browser, but unfortunately I'm using Firefox which doesn't remember that setting per site so I'd have to constantly wrestle with it.
It's suitable for PCs, and your modern is suitable for smartphones.
I have a 17" PC, and it's practical and convenient for me to use the design I'm sitting on right now. I choose convenience and comfort.
I appreciate that I have the right to choose the design of my website and I don't want it to be taken away from me by forcing me to use something that is not convenient for me.
if I need to see a full-screen image, I'll just click on the image or click Download
If I need to see when the image was added, I'll scroll down and see both the description and the statistics, I don't need the statistics to take up a third of the screen.
There is no need to fix what is not broken
I don't think it's a burden to work with, given that it's minimalistic.
Why was this survey created at all if the moderator answers me directly that we will select the function anyway?
The purpose of the survey was to find what elements of classic people prefer over modern, and improve modern for them.
but why conduct such surveys at all if it doesn't matter and the development team has already decided everything??
Thank for taking away the right to choose styles.
In no uncertain terms: Classic is going away like it or not (as repeatedly stated). This is your chance to suggest features you want in a theme on Modern.
The burden may not be on you, but it most certainly is from a developer standpoint, as also repeatedly stated. Classic simply is not built or designed for the modern web and limits progress made to develop on requested site features, which the team has been diligently working on to correct decades of tech debt (as also described in previous journals). For reference to specific progress made, please see many previous Fender journals with lists.
1: All content is framed with a bit of empty space on both sides with a shadow. Though only a small loss in used screen real estate, it is still irksome especially when viewing artwork and journals where I would prefer the full monitor be utilised.
2: I find the shadows to be ineffective as dividers due to their granular nature. Classic has a very plain layout but it is most certainly legible with lines separating everything into easily recognised sections
3: When viewing a journal the General rating is quite large with significant whitespace to its left which pushes the body of a journal down the page
4: Point 3 paired with the Recent Journals panel to the right further reduces the apparent screen real estate available to the journal you are trying to read*
5: The options such as 'Home Gallery Scraps' etc all being in one visual block makes it a bit more awkward to quickly separate them whereas Classic's tab style has a much clearer delineation (see point 2)
6: The font size for 'Home Gallery' etc is also considerably larger with a shadow (point 2 again) which makes more sense for a mobile layout but on desktop increases the time required to scan the field and if using the mouse, to select the desired item. Paired with the uncertainty of where one option ends and another begins it makes for increased navigational friction. For some numbers, on Modern measuring from the leftmost side of H in Home to the rightmost S in Commissions is 540px for 6 options where on Classic it is 516px from the leftmost side of U in User to the rightmost side of H in Watch for 8 options. Overall that is about 24 more pixels used for 2 fewer options. I did not count tab spacing or shadows in the interest of fairness and also because I do not know how to accurately measure the shadows.
7: The Recent Journals side panel is a good idea but only shows 5 items, once you scroll beyond the fifth item it is just dead space which could otherwise be filled with the journal one is currently trying to read.
8: I find the top bar too intrusive at 52px versus Classic's 40px
9: The X to close the expanded view in Modern being at the bottom middle also feels very mobile first, it is a strange and unintuitive motion to perform on desktop no matter how many times I do it and I keep finding myself fumbling around for a way to exit out of the expanded view for a while before spotting it. Clicking the image again to exit was my immediate guess on how to escape, if that was added it might work more.
10: The view page for a submission is certainly down to taste. Having options like favourite and some samples of the uploader's other work to the right does fall more in line with how sites like ArtStation appear and it allows one to view works more completely than Classic's expanded view which requires a lot of scrolling or 'open image in new tab'ing. Classic's expanded view does, however, also allow you to really study and admire every detail of that great art you found up close which Modern's expanded view does not, all it seems to do is let you view the work a bit closer but not as close as Classic's so you have to crack out the old 'open image in new tab' regardless.
*I will grant that on this journal for instance with the scroll at the top of the page Classic shows 10 lines of body text where Modern shows 13 though I think that is mainly due to the overlap of the author section and the banner which does not occur on Classic. This seems like a better situation on paper, more lines after all but I find when comparing reading this journal on Classic versus Modern, due to the narrower width on Modern I need to return to the start of the next line a lot more frequently than on Classic. This frequency of 'carriage return' if you like, can cause me (or one) to lose my place more often despite the saccades being ostensibly shorter.
In terms of point 10, some kind of interactive zoom feature (for the entire image not just a magnifying glass section) like what some other websites have, amazon.de but much closer zoom for example, would be a pretty 'killer app' if you will for Modern since that way you can view the entire work but weirdos like me can still find fun in counting pixels.
I could probably come up with more points but I have taken so long to write this reply that I said something nice about Amazon. Hopefully my points made sense and Modern can be a theme that even us hardline Classic defenders can enjoy.
Why can't we keep the mobile version for smartphone lovers from Japan? I don't care about the statistics that show that the site is visited by 57% on smartphones than on PCs.
It's strange that none of the moderators responded to your message.
There is simply no need to make compromises for touchscreen.
a mouse has high fidelity. you dont need to make buttons big and optically intrusive when you have a PC.
Smartfojnes and touchscreens are inherently compromising on the Interface because of the clumsiness that comes with touching a screen with your fingers.
as stated, a computer with keyboard and mouse does not have that problem.
all of my gripes of Modern can be traced back to that touchscreen design.
it is really inefficient and distracts from the pictures. you know. the main thing why I am here, because the pictures need to share space with the Big buttons.
~95% of the users of this site aren't commenting here because they are generally satisfied with (or, at worst, ambivalent towards) the user experience and therefore have nothing to say. Your comment is a perfect example of selection bias: because a specific ultra-small minority is the primary group weighing in, you assume that they are actually an underrepresented majority. This is not correct. The users commenting here represent a tiny fraction of a tiny fraction of this site's userbase.
Wow, I didn't think that because of us, the minority (4,5%), there would be such problems, although everything could simply be optimized.
thanks for information
The long and short of it is that at some point in the not-distant future, you will be on Modern whether you like it or not. Fur Affinity is doing here what most sites DON'T do: they're giving this tiny fraction of the site's userbase the opportunity to weigh in about what they don't like about Modern, and they're taking it into consideration before making the switch. Some things, they are looking into changing (they put a list of considerations in the journal, and they've responded positively to some of the suggestions here). Other things - such as removing the sidebar, or remaking the Classic look on the Modern code - are not going to happen, which they've also made clear.
Bottom line: the Classic die-hards aren't going to get everything they want. Full stop. It's simply not going to happen. What they are getting is a chance to weigh in with exactly what they want, with the understanding that some compromises will be made, and that's more than most sites would give you. On any other site, if the site owners wanted to change the look of the site, they'd just do it.
Anyone want a bite? Its Vanilla.
"Select All" button serves as both a "select all" and "select none" button. Bad UX. If I have some selected and want to deselect everything I have to click it twice (and it still says "all" on it regardless). Classic had a dedicated "select none" button.
"Disable Titles" button probably should just be a setting. Does anyone actually use this button regularly..?
SFW toggle is 'harder' to find. Instead of being in the top bar next to user and logout, it and logout have moved down under the hamburger menu. Logout, fine, whatever. SFW toggle though?
"Full view" engine is bad, poor control on zooming in-out and dragging the picture around. The big "X" button at the bottom is in a way (would be better in a corner). But overall I'd just like something akin to the actual classic full view.
The X to close the expanded view in Modern being at the bottom middle also feels very mobile first, it is a strange and unintuitive motion to perform on desktop no matter how many times I do it and I keep finding myself fumbling around for a way to exit out of the expanded view for a while before spotting it. Clicking the image again to exit was my immediate guess on how to escape, if that was added it might work more.
And also:
These two views should be reversed. Why is the full view smaller than the non-full view?
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1C0.....ew?usp=sharing
Seeing the entire image at once, scaled down to fit available space, SHOULD BE THE DEFAULT VIEW.
Velos's comparison images, useful reference, generally agree with the comments. https://www.furaffinity.net/journal.....1#cid:61383756
SinisterShot's comparison images, useful reference, generally agree with the comments. https://www.furaffinity.net/journal.....1#cid:61383953
Why are the "more from" thumbnails cropped? (1) looks particularly bad.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1sP.....ew?usp=sharing
They aren't even scaled to a minimum height/width and cropped in one dimension, they're cropped from multiple sides sometimes; eg. (2) which has been cropped from the left, right, AND bottom (WTF? How?).
Comparison between the site and scaling the original image down to fit height and center-cropping horizontally.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1As.....ew?usp=sharing
Did someone think this was actually better than scaling down slightly more? No really, the image was scaled to a height of 150 and then cropped to a region 120 pixels tall (anchored top center). Who does this intentionally? Scale it to 120 and then crop, sheesh.
User page gallery section handles it correctly just fine, too. Even handles vertically orriented images without any cropping at all.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/19G.....usp=drive_link
Why is the journal title link on the Journal list-page not a link to the journal? Know what is a link? The "X Comments" text right next to the link that says "view journal". They're both links. They both have the same URL. They're separated by a pipe that's not a link. WTH.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/11G.....usp=drive_link
Then it gets better, on the journal page in the sidebar with more journals in it, know what is a link? THE JOURNAL TITLE. Know what isn't? THE NUMBER OF COMMENTS.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1UW.....usp=drive_link
This sidebar is also really stupidly difficult to read. Its all stuck in there with no organization or visual separators, so it all parses as a giant block of text instead of five separate items (and a superfluous "view journal" link, the entire item could be a link, but no its just a hover zone that changes the background color THE WAY A LINK DOES with no other alternative on-click behavior (eg. new submissions/etc. pages where you select them for deletion)).
The more I use the modern layout the more and more I think that the sidebar was added on as a "fuck we have to use this space so people don't complain about the ad placement" quick-fix rather than having been designed intentionally along with everything else. I can't find one well designed feature that it has.
User profile dropdown quick links. Classic has this, modern does not. I use this to jump to people's gallery directly all the time.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1lu.....usp=drive_link
Add new comment box is missing from the bottom of the page. You know. Where you'd be if you read all the comments before adding your own...
Actually went to add this as a new comment and hit [End] got to the bottom of the page and audibly said, "What the hell?" because I couldn't find it.
Drive folder of all above images
https://drive.google.com/drive/fold.....usp=drive_link
Ok, it used to exist. I actually forgot that it disappeared a while back.
Just silently doesn't tell you that it's still private.
Other than the Google Chrome Ad Blocker that comes pre-installed. I don't really use one
Here's a video about it: https://youtu.be/uDydCrCXHyU?si=KojKREkDMCpfc14A
So you know, one point to the good guys, and holy fuck I can't wait for ladybird to come out
Also, still sad how WebKit was the only renderer that bothered supporting JPEG 2000
https://qoiformat.org/
:P
https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/q9428uazxn2l2c5uzz03j/ravens_in_field.qoi?rlkey=4ft37hr9jwy98lifwmvjph7aa&dl=0
And as I have PowerToys installed for the file explorer thumbnail view:
https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/j9b2repwua9dqfkrhyedi/qoi.png?rlkey=yefhy1hezq70zy83efdirbru4&dl=0
Which is neat
Its "feature set" is that it's within 4% of the size of PNG but is 50 times faster to encode and decode. And also the specification is 1 page long and is so easy to understand anyone can create an encoder/decoder, unlike the PNG specification's 92 pages chock full of edge cases, backwards lookups, and so on. QOI only looks at each pixel once, and the data written or read can be determined based on a small cache of recent values. PNG tries to squeeze out slightly better compression by checking sixteen different encodings for each pixel and picking the one that uses the fewest bits. QOI says "fuck that, lets just be fast and good enough."
There are still adversarial images that cause its compression to be worse than the average, but aren't really pictures of anything (and every compression scheme is going to have an adversarial example, just because you can't store 8 different files in only 2 bits worth of space: at best you can store four; but you can save space on average because things that aren't pure random noise have patterns. QOI's optimization is that every pixel is either going to be the same color, the same color with a small change, or radically different, as either the pixel above it or to the left (ie. gradients)). For example, I crafted one switches back and forth between needing to encode alpha and not and which using color values that have a hash-collision with the recent-colors dictionary (so it has to re-encode the entire color value every time). So, it ends up being a checkerboard of magenta and transparent pixels.
By comparison, JPG works on fourier transforms (all images are signals, all signals are waves, and all waves can be decomposed into pure sine waves of different frequencies) and discarding the least-important bits ("this sine wave only contributes 2% to the final pixel value, that's below the tolerance threshold, so we encode a `0`").
The news banners do not overlay the submissions unless you are adblocking our in-house ads, which collapses the built in buffer zone for the news bar. :3
I realize that ads are a away to generate income for your site, but adblockers to way more than block some ads. They protect the privacy by blocking 99.x% of all tracking, protect against adware and scareware... what you are obviously aware of.
Offer a FA+-light where you can pay once a year 25$ just to not see ads and fix the design so everyone wins...
We are not asking you to surf the entire internet without adblockers. However, an FA+ subscription removes our third party advertisers from rotation and lets you only see our in-house/ community ads. In-house is completely hosted and vetted by us, and is extremely rudimentary. As in what is served to you is done on a simple probability rotation.
One of my biggest things right now is I really don't like how huge the thumbnails/preview pics on userpages are. When I'm looking at a userpage on Classic, the thumbnails are comfortably small. On Modern, it feels overwhelmingly large. Almost like there's no point in full viewing something because I can already see all of it. Not sure if it would be possible, but having the option to view the site with smaller thumbnails would rock. For me, it makes browsing less strenuous on my eyes and brain. The large thumbnails on userpages specifically sorta make me tired, as silly as it sounds. (Apologies if this is already a feature somewhere! I haven't explored Modern while logged in, only while logged out.)
Appreciate all of y'all putting in the work to maintain this site. Thanks! :3
just here in the comments or do I need to go to some specific place?
It's still just using transparent EVERYTHING, the colors are wrong, the top bar is just- no.
The search bar is not at the top; it appears on the side when searching. The profile is again transparent, and the buttons are not at the top but are squeezed together. Everything is massive.
The headers, instead of the very nice ones, are not centered, not bold, and do not have the nice border. The journal header looks bad; the News is on the banner and it has to be closed, which makes it crowded, and the submission and info display under the top bar.
The rating used to be a nice banner; now it's on the side and just text. The info is on the side instead of at the bottom, along with the description.
Going to a gallery now, the folders are on the right instead of the left!? Why!?
The info panel CLIPS off-site. I can't even figure out how to get to notes on the new site. Browse now requires me to click Options to find stuff, and it's CENTERED!?
Settings are just mixed so badly. Before, I had the setting nicely boxed; now it's just same text without any border to show, with the option and description corresponding to what. The top bar stays with me, for some reason, I want it to remain at the top. My FA button is gone; instead, I get a useless menu with EVERYTHING, not the nice submenus.
That classic retro didn't even get the COLORS right; almost all are the wrong shades. Also, the submission takes only half of the page instead of the whole page. Because, for some reason, the info is now to the left of it instead of the bottom of it
I'll be honest, the Retro modern looks like someone described how Classic looked, and it was made off that.
Yesterday night I tried the new modern classic or retro version on the site and I don’t know how to say this right, but I felt everything looked too big and close up there with everything, like when I go to the submissions or look at peoples profiles for example.
I’m using mobile and the classic version on this site so I don’t have a computer now, so don’t know well it looks on that when you go on the PC, but everything just doesn’t look a bit right when I’m using the new version on the site when using my phone there.
So if it’s possible, and I don’t mean to like say something bring the classic version back since I read about something like tat in the community notes, but can you possibly shrink things down there and make this look a bit similar to the classic there?
Also I once ask this somewhere in the site before in one of these journals like this who run this site, if people still working on this and making some improvements to the new version of the site
Can you make like an fav icon that’s similar to Twitter, Deviantart and Pixiv where they have like fav icon on a picture and you tap on it instead of going of just going into the page and press “add to favorites”.
I go through the submissions and the profiles of the artists in these accounts who I go to and fav some of there work and when I’m about to follow someone new, and it’s sometimes it’s a hassle to just go in the page and I fav and press with the “add the favorites” and go back.
So if it’s possible can you do something like that to make faving something more easy there? And also just a cute little thing, can the icon design a paw there?
Also one last thing, can you make a search bar for favorites there, if we want to search for something that we faved there?
Okay think that’s all I want say to see some more improvements there for the new version of the site or the modern classic there.
Just want to try to say all this before you guys like change the classic mode to the new version of the site whenever that happens .
(I was going to report this for a ticket for a feedback for this, but the thing didn’t have enough space for stuff I said here, so I’m just going to copy and paste of what I was meant to sent there for this kind of thing
Hopefully the things say here makes sense and this still applies here for feedback since this is related to the new look for the site there and what things it could do to improve and bring for it.
Don’t feel like reediting my words of what I said but hope what I’ve said still makes sense here for this.)
Scroll down to Account Personalization
Under site Layout/Theme there is a template option. Select Classic or Modern.
Below that is a Theme box, select which Theme you prefer (more options under Modern)
I don't know what criticism to give right now, but I hate looking as it is right now and I would really love to revert it back for now.
Navigate to Account Settings (gear wheel in the top right corner, drop down tab "account settings")
Scroll down to Account Personalization
Under site Layout/Theme there is a template option. Select Classic or Modern.
Below that is a Theme box, select which Theme you prefer (more options under Modern)
I have resigned myself to using Modern but I never liked the lateral sidebar next to pictures. What I liked about Classic is how everything felt compact. With Modern, the page layout always feels wrong and oversized when viewed on desktop.
I have tried Retro, and all it does is recreating the looks and colors of Classic, without changing the Modern layout and especially the sidebar.
I understand the sidebar is used to serve ads, but at least there should be a toggle button under the picture to quickly switch to a "Picture wideview" mode to hide the sidebar after you have seen the ad, to let us to enjoy the pic in the full width of the page.
It also felt more natural to have the stats down under the picture along the comments section.
There's a lot of other quirks in the Modern sidebar I that don't like.
Some buttons are too large. Like the tags, I keep clicking by mistake on them because of the oversized surrounding box, and the yellow + thing clashes visually with the page colors. I would prefer if tags were displayed as mere links, like in the Classic theme. The current view (with the yellow add/remove button) should be accessible only in an "edit" mode (that you could toggle with a well placed button).
The "more from $user" section is not useful since the selected pics are random and the thumbnails crop is always wrong. It just takes up space. Do people really use it? Could users have the option to hide it?
Overall I think people could live with Modern better if they were offered an option to customize the layout to some extent, and hide away the bits that they don't like (especially the ones that are divisive like the sidebar).
The more from user is *not* random. It shows the Next 3 and Previous 3 gallery pieces. IF however you are on the most recent 3 pieces it will adjust accordingly and show as far back as the previous 6. So in your own gallery's case if I navigated to "Needy Raptor" then the more from you would show the 3 newer pieces and 3 older pieces. If however I navigated to your most recent piece "Squealin' in the Woods (Art by Kamelotnoah)" then I would see the 6 images previous to that going as far back as "Crow Icon(art by Bull" the 7th piece in your gallery.
I think they just made the developers add their friend code as a contact, put up ads, and just let FA fend for itself.
Which must have stung since a big reason why FA even got sold was that there was hope they'd help pay for the servers, and even get some paid programmers to help fix/rewrite FA
It was needed for FA to survive, just a bit of a shame that they didn't do anything front-facing. I remember there were mentions of things to come that never did, but at least they left FA alone and didn't really micromanage it ala Deviantart
how do I switch back to the old FA version?
It will mean having to get used to a different theme but as mentioned I've had the same theme for 10 years.
I don't know what feedback I can really give, except it was a simple basic design, well spaced out. When I was using the other themes the text was too large the screen felt cluttered almost like it was trying to squeeze everything in there.
I will miss classic theme.
X.Fox
Text is definitely bigger. They went from 10 px to 15 px, so you can get this size by zooming to 67 %
Perhaps the separation between the comments (and replies) in the classic gave more breathing room that is removed in the new design.
The classic also has clear separation between username and the comment with a line.
Classic also have a clear button that says "Reply to this post" instead of jsut an icon, perhaps having the icon and "Reply" next to it would be better?
But at a zoom at 67 % makes the modern closer to the classic, just with less padding between elements.
I also don't suppose theres anyway to move the gallery albums section from the right back to the left? Like on the classic.
-Profile banner is partially covered by black gradient bar.
-Typefont is bigger. Typefont is too comic sans.
-No separation between the comments (and replies)
-No clear separation between username and the comment with a line.
-Too much empty space, the page layout always feels wrong and oversized when viewed on desktop.
-Hamburger menus suck, stop using them.
-Context menus for submissions, folders, et cetera on right instead of left
I think you've done a great job with the new "classic theme", it's just always going to be held back by the webdesign template.
it's literally unusable in it's current state
smaller font and make it fit to screen is a good place to start, about 50% the font size it currently has looked about normal, but I don't want to activate that nightmare again to check
if this is how bad it's gonna get after classic is forcefully taken from us, my account becomes an archive, no way am I using this smartphone slop design
I really hope classic will not be switched off before the "new-classic" has passed a proper feedback process.
I've stayed with classic because I really can't stand the modern layout of components (like the position of the mini gallery, sidebar, browser.) - and the issues that I KNOW about are already mentioned in the list above.
However because of these major issues, I switched back from retro basically immediately after seeing that it's basically just a recolored modern. Because of how unusable modern is for me, I don't really have in-depth experience with modern at all.
But reading through that list, I saw for example that visited links on modern are not working the same way as on classic.
BUT I *REALLY* *REALLY* depend on that as well - my whole daily browsing routine on FA would be broken without it!
I was *SHOCKED* when I saw the item on the list and after a quick check I saw that modern really doesn't distinguish them right now...
I never noticed that modern was even missing that feature, because the overall layout issue was just always bringing me back immediately, so due to lack of usage, I was unaware that the issue even exists.
Right now I fear there might be other things that are wrong with modern that I just never noticed...
So my suggestion is: After you fix the issues listed above - PLEASE - do another feedback AND implementation round before you switch off classic, so everyone can really notice the things they depend on in classic.
It remains to be seen how much they intend to accommodate users of Classic. Are they just giving us a chance to sound off so we will feel as if we actually had a say, when in fact our input wasn't really valued? The hostile and arrogant "just deal with it who do you think you are" comments from some users are not necessarily representative of the admins and coders - but they're still out there.
I know that the admins read these comments - or at least they were reading them; don't know if they are still following this thread they created, a month later. I have seen many responses from them along the lines of "We're looking into that." I do not recall seeing any comments (about specific non-trivial matters) which said "Good news: we fixed that." In all fairness, they may not yet know if they can "fix that" - and if they can, whether they will choose to fix it if that would compromise something they value more highly.
When the time comes, explanations as to why they rejected the things many of us care about would be welcome, if they feel inclined to provide anything more than "Yeah, that wasn't working"; but at this point, I'm no more optimistic about a helpful response than I am about seeing a comfortable version of Modern. I guess we'll have to wait and see what we get. I'd really love to be wrong.
Starting with top bar and message indicators, classic one have comma symbol, which makes a bit more space and adds visibility between them. Moderns - thats string of almost not broken text.
Settings pages in classic do not have this right bar that takes 1/4 to 1/3 page size for several lines at the top and then empty space through the bottom - this is really bad UX.
User page:
* classic: my featured submission is 302x302, in classic its around that size.
* modern - space wasted: featured submission is 888 pixels height (with 302 pixels for the image it self - rest is empty space) - why waste so much?
This image is usually set for longer times, so saving its dimensions and using it there to not waste space should be mandatory.
* classic: shout box at the bottom - in constant place, not depending on page length - always at the bottom
* modern: shout box always in different place depending on current profile settings and how much text is written on journals/information
* classic: Statistics takes same space on the right of portfolio bio - but usually bio is long not wide, so.... for most it is great place for that part
* modern: statistics moved before the Recent Journal taking space.
* Classic: featured submission and last journal visible with profile bio (if not too long) and statistics (sometimes also artist information are visible).
* Modern: only bio visible and stats - nothing more is on the screen - so much space is wasted.
Messages (not submissions)
* Classic: No useless menu bar opened all the time taking 1/4 of the page.
Select all and Remove button - far away from NUKE ALL button. And also at the bottom of the section they are from which allows you to go though them and then use, while now one would need to scroll back to do that.
* Modern: Useless menu bar opened on the right taking 1/4 of the page space. Nuke All button not same size as others, maybe put Select All and Remove a bit away from it?
Global section looks strange
Notes
* Classic - very well set position for editor on the right. Very useful and easy to navigate. List of messages scrolled with main scroll of the whole page.
* Modern - putting editor at the bottom with preview of the message at the bottom,, kaes it VERY hard to go around the message. Page reloads VERY slow on click (very very long).
Message list must be scrolled INSIDE the already scrollable page - not very good design especially without any indicator in which message we are actually in. Also forced to scroll down to read the message after reload of page with new message and same list (list also do not scroll to the last position it was in).
Even with the scrolled list in scrolled page - the whole page height is LARGER than the classic one was - especially when so bit paddings/margins are used to waste space.
Create/Update Journal
* Classic: bar with list of recent journals divided into 3 sections: title, published at, options - takes a bit too much space than it should, but very visible - great UX
* Modern: total mess in the bar, there is no indicator when something is ending and starting, there is no ,,one line - one journal'' its a waste of space, and previously 3 visibly separated field types - are now messed up one under another. Very hard to visibly read that. bad UX - make that bar use twice space it has now, and visibly distinguish the columns of data for clear and fast view.
Browse Arts (non search)
* Classic - nothing fancy.
* Modern: wasted space on the right for search engine - if that would float with the view, but not - after 1st part of the page there is just empty unused space. Maybe add option allowing ppl to select if they want this waste of space UX there or move that search options back to top of the page? (adding ability for the search to float with viewport would be neat though) - also one caveat -> on classic - changing several setting in search resets the page back to 1, on modern - it does not! (treating that as a bug).
Submission (submit):
* Classic - short clean page with : Visual, Textual, Audio visibly separated, And Files to upload taking some space without empty parts around (centered looking good).
* Modern: wall of text no visual distinguish for selecting type of upload. Half (right) of the page is visibly empty - and upload button is on the right (just where the most of empty space is - instead of under the space for cover image upload space - bad UX and UI for that button. At least move that to the left. - so all clicks would be in the same side of the page.
Favourites, Gallery etc:
* classic: disable titles button on the top of the page so can be clicked the moment page loads (and does not change its own position when clicked), next/prev button close to themselves in the page center.
* modern: disable button at the bottom of the page - clicking it - moves that button in different place - BAD UX. Prev and Back button - VERY far away!
Submission Statistics:
* classic: each row takes 177 pixels height with everything need in proper place (thought submission date could be aligned to the rigth and title to the left for better column visibility).
* modern: same view but with MUCH MORE wasted space as row takes 305 pixels height to show exactly the same amount of data. (one difference - image is max 204x204, while in classic it was max 200x200. Please bring back better view and positioning of the publish entry statistics. Image +data on the left, submission text on the right - and make less wasted space not like currently - twice bigger for the same amount of visual data.
Submission View:
* classic: ability to set big/smaller gallery images to be visible. No floating image on click. Menu for editing the submission.
* modern: click on image opens the same image - why? totally not needed, bring back classic option to make it smaller/bigger in place. I can understand move of some statistics to the right and editor to the top, plus adding smaller editors to reply (more understandable than same editor for each +1) but classic had option to EDIT the submission - where is that option in modern?
Due to this problems with modern i got back to classic today after using it for several minutes (around 30) to make this detailed comment.
As I do not think we should be placing user's # of views, # of submissions and # of favs where people can glance at it and then leave, I would highly suggest moving stats to the bottom of the page, and moving the User Profile header to the top of the right side of the page above Journal, Or at the VERY LEAST it should not be placed above "Journal", where users often update their followers, and "User Profile"- which is the dedicated about-me space that helps to make this site feel so tight-knit and less social-media like.
Also, User Profile should allow for "current mood" if it does not already.
If you don't know the difference then it doesn't really matter anyway, don't worry about it xD
Last time I tested the Modern theme (closer to when this news post was made), it was triggering my astigmatism and palinopsia combo instantly. Navigation was so difficult that by the time I finally found the settings page to change the theme, about a minute or so, it had already triggered migraines and nausea.
I cannot use Modern long enough to give feedback as what would need to change to fix it.
In the past, I and other with similar issues have given feedback on these problems with new UI since some of early betas, seemingly little has changed or has been made worse during the many years its been in slow development.
Homepage + universal layout stuff
- Font for the section headers (i.e. Recent Submissions) is not good. I'd recommend replacing Open Sans with something more appealing, like say, Verdana.
- There should be a more clear delineation between the section header and the container below it, like even a thin line the same colour as the border.
- I originally had a thing here about how the colour of the header and content pane felt too dark and too light, respectively, but then I tried Retro and that negated my issues with it.
- However, even with Retro's fixes, the header colour itself feels too solid. How about a small thin bit of a different colour around it, like #2e3b41?
- Similarly, the font of the header text feels awkward. Using Verdana for that too would look better. So would spacing out the pieces better.
- Finally, the notification bar feels much worse. Each of the different types blends into each other. The order each notification is in doesn't matter, but they should be spaced further apart, maybe have a comma between them, and given a better-looking font like Helvetica.
Viewing artwork page
- Same font stuff and border stuff as the homepage. Verdana font, add a little thin bit of colour around the header, add a thin border between header and body.
- But now a good thing. Images seem to load a little faster. I'm not sure how that difference was accomplished, and I may be mistaken, but it definitely feels good.
- The submission information being to the right of the image is horrendous. It really does need to be to the right of the text box at the bottom. It's an eyesore while next to the image.
- The image itself looks so flat and uninteresting on the background. Having a tiny border around it might help it pop out better.
- It would also be nice if there was like another box around the submission with a header, having the submission title in that header as well.
- Comments seem too uniform. It would be nice if the username was separated from the comment by something, maybe a small rectangle through the comment, possibly with a shade of #6a7283. Maybe even place the date the comment was made and the ability to hide it within that rectangle.
- Right now, usernames only redirect to their userpage. It would be nice to have something like a drop-down menu where you could also go to their gallery or journal, or even send them a note.
- The only ways you can see other submissions from the user, other than clicking "main gallery", are the "newer" and "older" buttons, neither of which gives a preview of what the next newer or next older submission would be before clicking it. It would be better if, say, there was a box that instead listed the three submissions immediately newer and three immediately older than the currently viewed one would appear as thumbnails so that users could see at a glance if they might be interested in that. It seems that you are aware this is an issue from your list of "received feedback", but I'm not sure if that's referring to the same thing that I am.
- Similarly, this is a very minor thing, but it might be a nice quality-of-life feature to be able to see the number of submissions the user has underneath the "main gallery" button.
- There's also the "more from this artist" section in the bottom right, and it's not good. I know that it technically fills the role I mentioned about having thumbnails for older and newer, but two problems with that: first, these "more from" thumbnails could be anything from the user's gallery rather than the set three that were newer and older than the current submission; secondly, it makes the site feel more like DeviantART, and if you know what DeviantART has become, you do NOT want to be like them.
Written submissions page
- Mostly the same stuff as visual artwork, but with one exception - the in-browser viewer for files like .docx is actually fantastic. That was a great addition.
User pages
- Same font and border stuff as before.
- The links to Home, Gallery, Scraps, etc. right under the username feel so big and awkward and don't even feel like links at first glance. Having them be smaller and placing them in, say, tabs above the username instead would make them feel more like you're actually browsing through an artist's portfolio in a way.
Browsing/searching page.
- Same font and border stuff.
- The browse options being on the right is awful. It's a bad layout for them to be there. It fits much better to have them above the browsing pane.
- The SEARCH options on the other hand, while they still feel somewhat awkward on the right, aren't as problematic there. The fact that so many advanced options can be seen there is a nice quality-of-life improvement, and it's clear that those wouldn't all fit above the browsing pane. It's too bad that staff is trying to combine Browse and Search into one, especially since historically, Browse was always so much better than Search, which I have rarely used since 2012. If they were differentiated as such that Search would have this new right-hand pane with the search options, but Browse could have it's smaller selection of boxes up on top, it could really be a nice little thing. But that seems unlikely, especially if the site's codebase really was that awful spaghetti in the past.
Finally, this is NOT related to the site redesign, as it applies regardless of site version used, but staff have mentioned in the past that they are allowing certain two-letter tags be searchable, such as TG and TF. I can tell you right now that these tags are still not searchable - trying brings up 0 results.
This is about everything I could find. You are absolutely correct that just saying something sucks without giving actual specifics isn't constructive, and I easily fall into that mindset. This is why I hope that actually taking the time to check out the new UI and give exact reasons why I don't think it works actually holds water - it would be encouraging to know it wasn't a waste of time to do it.
I consider the current UI of classic to be the ideal. anything approximating that would would go in the right direction.
the following is a general layout of rules for a good design.
-No Compromises must be made for touchscreens: Mouse and keyboard are precise Interfaces. the UI should keep that in mind.
thouchscreens are always a negotiation with the inherent clumsiness and inprecision of it. these negotiations are not encessary for mouse and keyboard and must not influence the design process.
any compromise in that reguard is a detroment.
-The image must Dominate its area.
that means no otehr destractions to the side.
there has to be a configuration in which I see only the Image.
this is after all the main Point.
my commentary does not really effect stories, since they are displayed in an entierly seperate document anyway.
-Information structure: when looking for images or when viewing an image soem informations are more important than others. that should match how and when they are represented
-Relevant : The image in question. FA is an art gallery. the picture takes awlays priority
Title
Picture
Artist
this Setup includes the preview structure
underneath a description of the Picture
underneath comments
-Trivial : Information that are of lesser Quality but I might want to haev acess to on demand.
as such, they Need to be timid. they must under no circumstance draw too much Attention, or they become a distraction (this would be bad).
such would be Keywords (tags) to find similar artwork.
General Picture Information, like upload date or such
These informations do not really interrest anyone immedietly
I am not necessarily interrested in views or Resolution or those Information.
so they should be treated as trivial Information.
Maybe they could be includet in a foldable menue but should etaher way be sorted under the Picture and take less space than teh Picture description.
-imminent criticism on the current UI
remove the box button design.
a simple Hyperlink where the text itself is teh link, is way more aesthetically pleasing and more efficient.
the big boxes actually increase misclick Chance and are just visual distractions.
- ESPECIALLY those under the Picture. just have Hyperlinks like in the Original design.
add to facv, download, full view.
those are all you Need.
-the entire Panel on teh Right of the Picture Need to go.
I know why ist there and I am gonna Play my Card.
I pay for FA.
so the least I should expect is to not be bothered by ads.
if the design of the US is compromised by ADs. I think thats the least I can expect.
-the redundnacy of Options.
Favorite, download and note button are already under the Picture. I dont see why you Need them twice.
-Visually offensive design: aside from the big box Buttons, whcih Need to go, the big orange Buttons next to teh tags Need to go. Tage are a trivial Information and the bright orange is a very intrusive Color. Nothing else has that Color I dont know why they Need to have that.
you might also just make the tags a collapsable menue.
- the random Picture Display: this is just an all around bad idea. the way the original worked was much better.
Display the next and previouse 3 Posts under the Picture.
quite a few Pictures on FA are Comics or sequences. the Option to preveiw and select the next and previouse 3 Posts is very useful.
a random selection is not.
also again, it should not be sharing ist space with the Picture.
-the "Report this content" button.
this feature Needs to go in a submenue soemwhere.
it is not a feature you Need immediate acess to. at least I hope you dont Need quick acess to such a button.
the Suggestion of such a button in this Position are not Pretty.
Overall the bar on teh Right is just not well designed and thought out at all.
in short.
no bar on the Right
- no distracting Colors (ornage)
- no redundant Options
- no box Buttons
- Picture dominates ist area
- consolidate the tags
- make the tags a collapsable menue
- less visual distractions
- no quick acess for Situation specific Features (Report and Send note. I know where These Options are I dont Need quick acess to them)
- remove random Gallery exam. reintoduce next and previouse 3 post UNDER the Picture
if I want to view the Gallery I can easily do that by just Opening the Gallery
- Always ask yourself "how would a real user actually navigate this with a mouse and keyboard"
- NEVER design with Touchscreens in mind
Personally I left DeviantArt back when they decided they too were getting rid of the "classic" layout of the site and changed to modern only. I haven't looked back and personally, I probably won't. I just privated my profiles there. (Which is obviously detrimental here when I switched usernames and the team completely wiped my art and everything off it....)
The things I like about classic are that it's so straight forward, so much less clutter and everything is easily organized or readily available from just 1 or 2 drop downs. It's an art website, I am focused on the art and the ease of observing and uploading. I don't need fancy animations or 20 menus to navigate for that. I don't need complications, I like the streamlined version.
The ideal solution, obviously, is to try to recreate the layout and feel of classic into the organization and ease of updating as the modern version. I'm not entirely sure why this isn't possible. I know why you don't want to work with classic, but surely recreating the layout in a new language would be far easier and to the liking of both devs and users who wish to keep that look and feel especially without losing them on the platform (...if you even want them to stay, that is)
It's a sad time to sunset classic... but maybe just try to implement it on a better system and coding than taking it away entirely.
As for constructive criticism, everything I have to say or suggest has already been delivered by much smarter people up above in these comments... so that's why I didn't leave any, sorry! ^^;
But one comment did stand out to me... Had it not been for the username function, I think there would be many more users still using classic (as stated on their own pages/journals, too). So I would heavily take "Only x amount of users use this" with a HUGE grain of salt. Because there will always be people who use an alternative for one minor difference.
I think what you should be asking is if you could create classic on the new back-end system what are things people actually like, if at all, about using Modern over classic and THAT will probably yield you what you need to hear
...Also maybe make a poll(s)...For some reason I'm just highly concerned that all these comments are for naught anyways... And you guys seem to enjoy the numbers you can see and define more.
Probably like a series of polls... Cause you're not going to please every user out there... and by getting rid of an entire half a way your users use and like your website... worries me you don't care about them rather than ease for your team... Which is why I compared it to DeviantArt. When a large amount of users left because they didn't feel heard when giving feedback for updates.
They've said in other comments that it might be possible to recreate Classic on the new backend 'eventually', but the way Modern is coded means that the UI is wrapped around the backend and it's not just a case of making a new skin for it? I think? This stuff goes way WAY over my head (I would love a simpler explanation of that for the tech illiterate amongst us) but that's my understanding of it.
A poll and serious consideration into remaking Classic rather than scrapping it altogether (or changing Modern when it's clear that the problems a lot of us have with it, go beyond just a couple of tweaks here and there) would be fantastic... it's encouraging that the idea has been brought up by staff but I admit it's hard to put a lot of faith into it right now, when it's a vague "Yeah we might look into that, maybe, in the future, after Classic's been taken down..." it's hard not to feel like it might not ever actually happen.
I am hopeful that the FA staff do want to work with us on this, I really don't want another dA Eclipse system (Oh god I hate Eclipse so much!!!), that this entry was made at all is very encouraging to me, so I hope they do listen to us and find a way to try and make as many of us happy as possible.
i'm definitely one of those 4.6%
Like old old Deviantart where people had page dolls and such?
I know the new tag system is supposed to get away from things like that, but please don't take away our ability to search for two-letter terms. There are sixty million images from before the new tags, and some aren't tagged at all. Being able to search the titles and descriptions is a necessity :[
Could you please move the "listed in folders" panel back to the side panel, where in was before, under tags? It's really disturbing, it feels wrong and not in a place it should be. When watching an art/ych/anything - you scroll down to see or leave a comment, and then you see info you're not really interested in - folders. So it feels more like visual noise/junk than something really necessary. ^^'