branchandroot | Oh sweet fuck, tell me this is a joke

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design: ao3: argh

Oh sweet fuck, tell me this is a joke

*looking at the "new and improved" archive skin in horror*

Gray! The background is GRAY!

And the "this is one of your own things" background is PINK!

*horrified beyond words*

ETA: A Quick Fix Skin I ran up is available here until it actually goes public.

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*rueful* Yeah, the execution leaves a lot to be desired all over. Pretty sad when you're wishing for the ff.net interface.

Yeah - I opened the AO3 to do Yuletide noms and had to go change it to something that didn't make my eyes bleed before I could nom' things. The pink? WTF? PINK? There are so many things wrong with that, not the least of which is that it's kind of offensive in a 'all girls like pink, right?' kind of way. Ugh.

And way to fail on the page navigation 'hovering' over there under the filters in a little square. *headdesk*

i'm too tired to be more polite than that

The pink is just... omg, there are no words. I went and took it out of everywhere I could find, even for my "quick fix" skin.

I /think/ I got the navigation to play well. But yeah, that one was /major/ fail, and fixing it was way more difficult than it should have been.

I just don't really like pink that much anyway.

And I hate that there is no navigation at the top of the pages. WHY? If I already KNOW that I need to go to page not!1, why do I have to scroll to the bottom of the page to go to the page that isn't 1? WHY?

Oh, I HATE that "only 1000 fics at a time" bullshit. I mean, if goddamn fanfiction.net can return me every last fic they have in a single fandom, then surely AO3 ought to be able to manage the same trick? And I DO want to go read (or at least look at the summary of) every damn fic in a an archive when I stumble into a new fandom. *seethes*

I can't code beyond ultra-basic html to do italics and stuff. I don't really even want to learn how to code; I have other things I would prefer to spend time on. I should not HAVE to learn how to code to get a functional archive interface. The old one wasn't perfect, but it was for sure a hell of a lot better than THIS. *seethes more*

*\o/* :)

So far I've managed to wrangle the fonts and, largely, actual work text pages, so I can at least read fic (although it looks like ass on my phone, ugh, and the index pages are un-navigable -- a mobile stylesheet is going to be non-negotiable, which, sigh, argh, sigh, shouldn't-complain-at-least-I-can-make-one). I will not complain if I get to throw all this crap out and start over with yours, though! :D

Yeah, this was seriously not an optimal trade off of /anything/.

The one I submitted is /really minimal/. It just changes the colors and gives everything wider margins, and navigation a bit more elbow room. Well, and ups the story font size and gets rid of the pink. But based on that you should have an easier time adding on the fonts you want!

I spent most of my childhood viciously insisting that I hated pink. Hated, hated, hated. Because otherwise eighty percent of everything I owned would have ended up pink, just by the pressure of "oh, girls like pink, it's cute!" that sloshes around in contemporary American culture.

I do not actually hate pink. But I think it is a color best used in moderation, and only when people actively choose it. It is NOT my idea of a good default.

*wry* De-pink-ified skin coming up as soon as someone reviews it. I couldn't stand it any longer.

You say "really minimal", but I've been digging into this crap all evening, and I know how many places that pink is lurking! :D *\o/*

At least it's not just me! I don't get how every other archive can at least show me every single story- but not AO3.

Doesn't that suck for authors as well? Say your story is the main pairing, average length, uploaded a while ago and say hurt/comfort or angst-in a big fandom there is no way your story will show up in those 50 pages.

When I find a new fandom, I got through all 50 pages (which will get me the last 1000 fics uploaded/updated) then I sort by order of size and go through that. Beyond that, I won't see you story. And I shouldn't have to sort by date updated-all 50 pages, then reverse that-all 50 pages, then by size-all 50 pages, then reverse size-all 50 pages and so on. I'll end up seeing lots of the same stories and still missing lots.

And that blue bar is there, taunting me about it :(

Some skins only got a cursory brush, the default skin was tested by quite a lot of people on different systems. But test feedback needs to be heard and fixes need the time for implementation and re-testing. Preferably without Yuletide breathing down one's neck, because Yuletide wasn't to be run without tag sets and tag sets already used the re-designs.

And some things did actually get changed before they got onto beta.

That...that was actually my second thought when I saw the changes. :(

Okay, my skin was disabled - at least that explains it. *sigh*

They are making it really really hard to like the AO3. And I want to, because it seems to have become the place to go. But oh, my poor eyes.

I actually liked the old look quite a bit. It had a nice, relaxed, "step out of the way for the user content and give it room to breathe" feeling that seemed appropriate to the project --- not that it was perfect of course, but it was more pleasant to look at than it is now (and the "Default 1.0" skin does not bring that feeling back). I can probably get used to it, but... Ick. And things getting randomly hidden under their own identifying icons, happened to me once while browsing the public skins...

(And this is their idea of how to appeal to Anime/Manga fans??)

GRR ARGH. 75% of what I'm putting into the skin requires bloody important tags!

On the plus side, I have managed to:
*get date posted, authors, and titles on works in a large font (I skim by date posted first on the rarely-posted fandoms I follow)
*get relationships to stand-out (skimming to avoid pairings/characters I don't like)
*turn all the FRICKIN' red to purple
*get rid of the logo and my icon in the header
*put commas back into the tag lists
*PUT SOME BLOODY SPACING BETWEEN PARAGRAPHS OH MY GOD WHY ARE THEY SO CLOSE TOGETHER
*narrow margins on works so the lines are only 75% of the screen
*get rid of all those drop-shadow 2.0 nonsense things

Next up, figuring out how to align all my header nav buttons to the left where they belong AND shrinking that stupid footer, seriously why is it 800 feet high. I'm aggravated that my filters have somehow ended up on the bottom of the page, instead of a sidebar, but I only ever use them to remove non-English fics from the list (I mean, YAYYYYYYY for multiple languages on the Archive, but I can't read them so I don't personally need them in the list), so it's not AS big an issue.

Of course, nothing I do whatsoever makes the site usable on my iPod. Glad that wasn't my primary fic-reading device or anything. *headdeskheaddesk*

I briefly wondered if someone on the site was COMPLETELY confused about what anime/manga fans liked, and if the "PANDA MADNESS" skin was actually an attempt at attracting said. If so, WOW, more problems than CSS are afoot. (Not that I actually think this could be accurate, but my first horrified thoughts of staring at skins led me there.)

I surely hope none of this was billed as something to "increase diversity". Because, um. No.

*cheers you on*

Yeah, I got a skin run up with some really basic fixes to color and font and margins (including the footer, omgwtfbbq). Now... now I'm back to wrangling with my modular skin. *buckles her DOM inspector on grimly*

Well, I don't recall seeing it in the public release notes or anything (yet), but like in the election candidate chats/Q&As there was a bit of "How will you outreach to Anime/Manga fans?" "They like graphic design and we're getting these skins!" I was personally unimpressed by that, to say the least --- before I saw these skins we were getting.

Well according to the email I got regarding my feedback, they say they tested it. They don't say who or how many.

Of course that email also contains several paragraphs about how to use the MEMBERS ONLY wizard to make a new skin...completely ignoring the part of my email where I made it clear that I'm NOT a member, so I'm relying on the default to not be horrible?

Very quick to get a reply though.

*shakes head* Some testers were asleep at the wheel, then. I mean, the pagination menu glitch alone would make me sink of shame, to have put that live.

I'm getting some "yes, we've got a lot of feedback, we're, um, collating it" messages too. I'm hoping this results in at least a slight reduction in the horrible.

The default colors were pretty dismal, but I actually thought it was fine, once I picked another skin. Until I looked at it on my phone and it was unreadable. Ouch.

Here via unfunnyfandom.

And. I'm so glad I'm not alone. (My reading page and my roommate's cries of horror told me that I was not alone, but it's nice to know that people outside of my immediate sandbox are also upset.)

I've implemented the various stylish scripts, but holy god, I should not have to do that in order to not get a migraine. And I don't even read on Ao3; I flip over to it to pull off Kindle-formatted fics. In the five minutes it takes me to assemble a day or two's worth of fic, my head started pounding. Not okay. (And I know I cannot possibly be alone. Isn't the OTW or Ao3 committed to accessibility? Because grey on grey is seriously inaccessible. And let's not consider the panda skin. I'm trying to forget the panda skin.)

I have to ask: What were they thinking?

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