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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I saw this post linked by someone on twitter (lost who sorry) and I am so happy there are people who also hate it. I don't get who thought making the font smaller and shrinking the margins was a good idea :(

And the 1.0 skin doesn't change either of those.

I agree with the person above- I use the AO3 to read- why should I have to spend hours learning about skins and coding (it all looks like gibberish to me!) to make the site readable? And they make it sound so easy "if you want to make a new skin just browse this!" when it clearly isn't.

There was only one thing I wanted changed-and that has stayed the same.

Sorry for the random person ranting-just happy to find other people who also aren't happy.

The font, oh my god! The whole thing is a mess! And the pink! And the margins! Argh.

And yes, the "just make a skin" cheer is, um, really not the way to make people happier when the interface is still so non-user-friendly. The /site css/ is non-user-friendly, and I say this as someone who /does/ code.

Please, feel free to rant. It'll keep me company while I try to find all the places where they screwed with the /opacity/ of all things to change the background colors.

Yea, I know there will be people who like coding, and understand it-but I am not one of them ;). And it's one thing to say 'hey if you like coding, here's the instructions and hints for making your own skin' and quite another to be like 'hey everyone! go make your own skin if you don't like the default!' which is what I feel like they are insinuating.

Just-did anyone LOOK at that font before uploading the new design? So, so tiny.

You say you code-are these things normally just uploaded or are they user tested first? This feels like someone did it without asking anyone else input (this may not be the case, but its how i feel.)

(Seriously- the only thing I want changed is that stupid blue bar that tells me whenever I click on my fandom's "this search has returned 1000 fics. refine your search to find others". That blue bar irritates me EVERY TIME because it reminds me that there is no way to search all the fics in a fandom if there is more than 1000. And if you are like me, when I discover a new fandom, I actually do want to go through every single page and read every single summary. But I can't. And that blue bar reminds me of that every time! Sorry, slight derail - i think it's rant about AO3 day.)

They /should/ be user tested. This new default should have been announced in the testing stage on the blog, for people to poke at, if anyone had their head screwed on straight. It appears that no one did.

(Oh god, I hear you. And there is no good reason for it! I mean, it's not like the archive needs to return all 2000 at once! And all I've ever gotten is a chirpy "well, use the filters and advanced search to refine your results!" Which misses the point, because that's not what I want to do. I just want to browse!)

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*

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

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 :(

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.

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