Topic: "I don't like the theme." and how you can help.

Posted under General

notmenotyou said:
We aim to please.

Edit: But seriously, we need to find a sensible balance because the one before was objectively terrible and this one is evidently not visible enough. We'll have to see how we can solve this without having to break the site to get important things across.
Sending emails is definitely not something we want to start with, unless it's something actually time sensitive like a password breach or malware we found.

I always make a habit of checking for new News posts, but I don't even dismiss in case I ever need to reference a news item for whatever reason. I agree though that it is currently less visible now that the information is collapsed.

I dont see why they redid the site, it worked perfect on all my devices, now its more annoying to use both on pc and mobile.

Can there be atleast an option to go back?

I miss the main screen, not just because of the mascot but also because sometimes I'm getting on for a SFW image, and being brought straight to recent uploads is almost always gonna show nsfw. Everything feels too, big. It's a bit hard for me to explain but now it feels like the results barely fit on the screen. I prefer the older look so for now if there's a way to switch back I would appreciate that.

The longer this goes on, the more this Hitchhiker's Guide quote is relevant:

There’s no point in acting surprised about it. All the planning charts and demolition orders have been on display at your local planning department in Alpha Centauri for 50 of your Earth years, so you’ve had plenty of time to lodge any formal complaint and it’s far too late to start making a fuss about it now. … What do you mean you’ve never been to Alpha Centauri? Oh, for heaven’s sake, mankind, it’s only four light years away, you know. I’m sorry, but if you can’t be bothered to take an interest in local affairs, that’s your own lookout. Energize the demolition beams.

Again, this highlights just how badly these things were handled. The quote is basically saying how not to do something like this, but that has been played completely straight at first. Getting a straightforward explanation should be the first thing, along with the exact date with ample warning before the update goes live. Is that asking for a lot?

Soms things I feel would help with the new site layout from a mobile use point.

The search results bar at the top of the posts page is really cool and really helpful, and we need a second one below the image.
it's really annoying having to scroll back up to the top of the web page just to go to the next search result, especially if I happen to be looking at a really tall comic page.

Currently under the account advanced settings your let us turn comments off or on. I think there should be a third option to hide comments until you push a button to reveal them.
This is because I actually do like reading comments on the site they can be funny sometimes but with the current mobile layout I have to scroll past what could potentially be 25 or more comments to get to the artist tag to tap it and get those search results.
Another solution to this would be to let us hide tags in that way and move them above the comments section.

Keep up the good work peeps, can't wait to see the site in its "100% done" state.

dangertim said:
I dont see why they redid the site, it worked perfect on all my devices, now its more annoying to use both on pc and mobile.

Can there be atleast an option to go back?

For the millionth time in this thread, no. But they can improve this one

helloanonmyoldfriend said:
I have a request for an additional image scaling preset: Scale to fit vertically, so that a tall image fits in a browser without retreating to the sample image or having to open the image in a new tab. For instance, Paheal uses it (original image, fit width, fit height, and fit both).

smaugthedragon said: This would be my ideal view mode.

helloanonmyoldfriend said: I'm not sure if that would be possible to do through custom CSS since the Change Size Mode button uses JavaScript.

Adding a new scaling option isn't possible with CSS, that much is true. However, what I could do is override the "scale to fit" mode with a "scale vertically" one. That tweak isn't in the main stylesheet yet, since I don't know if people would miss the "scale horizontally" method that is currently being used.

Opinions?

bitwolfy said:
Adding a new scaling option isn't possible with CSS, that much is true. However, what I could do is override the "scale to fit" mode with a "scale vertically" one.

Please no. I use Scale To Fit to keep from having to scroll horizontally, but I wouldn't like tall images (comic pages, etc) to get squished to unreadable or excessive degrees to also fit vertically. Especially since I need to scroll vertically anyway to see things like comments and such.

bitwolfy said:
Adding a new scaling option isn't possible with CSS, that much is true. However, what I could do is override the "scale to fit" mode with a "scale vertically" one. That tweak isn't in the main stylesheet yet, since I don't know if people would miss the "scale horizontally" method that is currently being used.

Opinions?

I wanted to suggest replacing the Sample view with it, because I thought that option is kind of pointless anyway (Wanna see original size? No problem, tick the option for that in the user settings; Wanna see scaled down version of the image with the option to restore it? Keep the original user settings), but then I noticed that the user settings I mentioned doesn't exist anymore since the decision whether to load orig or sample size image is now a part of the whole scaling option.

Why? What version of the image to display and how to scale the image in CSS are two very different things, why are they merged into one hybrid setting?

My suggestion for the staff, then:
Setting #1: Load original or scaled down version of the image by default? With anonymous users using the latter, like usual.
Setting #2: Desired scaling option (fit to width, fit to height, fit to both, view original)

I don't want to see my blacklist on the posts page. Keep it in the Settings page where it belongs. Also, how can I make thumbnails bigger? My monitor is 4k so they're hard to see even when sitting straight up at optimal distance, unless I zoom in the whole site to at least 133%.

I like how this change manages to screw up my experience in the most perfect way possible. It's like it was designed to make sure I couldn't find a way around it.

About half of the images that were my favorites on this site and are the reason I keep coming back to it are now blacklisted if I don't log in apparently. I have to use proxies to get into this site. So far in every single proxy I have used the images in this site outright don't show up, with only one proxy as an exception. I would like to point out that the images were perfectly fine on most proxies before the update. And that exceptional proxy? I can't login. It returns an unexpected error. Login ID: none.

If I can find a proxy that can log in and show images at the same time then this maybe worth the effort. Otherwise, I don't imagine I will come back to this site for some time if I outright can't see 50% of the images that I wanna see. I just wish I could have taken the names of the authors so I could find their posts elsewhere.

Thanks for fucking up my experience in the most sure way possible. You couldn't have done it any better.

I like how this change manages to screw up my experience in the most perfect way possible. It's like it was designed to make sure I couldn't find a way around it.

About half of the images that were my favorites on this site and are the reason I keep coming back to it are now blacklisted if I don't log in apparently. I have to use proxies to get into this site. So far in every single proxy I have used the images in this site outright don't show up, with only one proxy as an exception. I would like to point out that the images were perfectly fine on most proxies before the update. And that exceptional proxy? I can't login. It returns an unexpected error. Login ID: none.

If I can find a proxy that can log in and show images at the same time then this maybe worth the effort. Otherwise, I don't imagine I will come back to this site for some time if I outright can't see 50% of the images that I wanna see. I just wish I could have taken the names of the authors so I could find their posts elsewhere.

Thanks for fucking up my experience in the most sure way possible. You couldn't have done it any better.

I am all for updating and improving a site I frequent for years on end; however is it possible to have the option to use the old version? I use Image Host Grabber and it is broken for this version; which I'm sure can be fixed, but means I have to go learn Regex. lol In the meantime; I'm like...damn it.

watsit said:
Please no. I use Scale To Fit to keep from having to scroll horizontally, but I wouldn't like tall images (comic pages, etc) to get squished to unreadable or excessive degrees to also fit vertically. Especially since I need to scroll vertically anyway to see things like comments and such.

That's a very good point.

helloanonmyoldfriend said:
I wanted to suggest replacing the Sample view with it, because I thought that option is kind of pointless anyway (Wanna see original size? No problem, tick the option for that in the user settings; Wanna see scaled down version of the image with the option to restore it? Keep the original user settings), but then I noticed that the user settings I mentioned doesn't exist anymore since the decision whether to load orig or sample size image is now a part of the whole scaling option.

Unfortunately, replacing the sample view isn't practical. The sample is a completely separate image, scaled-down server-side.
Sometimes. Other times it isn't. The behavior on this one is kind of inconsistent. Oh, and some samples are just straight up missing at the moment.
So, scaling it back up to fix the height is going to result in a blurry image.

Going to have to wait for an official implementation of the vertical-fit options, I guess.

pink_party_pony said:
I like how this change manages to screw up my experience in the most perfect way possible. It's like it was designed to make sure I couldn't find a way around it.

About half of the images that were my favorites on this site and are the reason I keep coming back to it are now blacklisted if I don't log in apparently. I have to use proxies to get into this site. So far in every single proxy I have used the images in this site outright don't show up, with only one proxy as an exception. I would like to point out that the images were perfectly fine on most proxies before the update. And that exceptional proxy? I can't login. It returns an unexpected error. Login ID: none.

If I can find a proxy that can log in and show images at the same time then this maybe worth the effort. Otherwise, I don't imagine I will come back to this site for some time if I outright can't see 50% of the images that I wanna see. I just wish I could have taken the names of the authors so I could find their posts elsewhere.

Thanks for fucking up my experience in the most sure way possible. You couldn't have done it any better.

The auto blacklist was definitely a big mistake. Leave that up to people thanks

I'll try to keep this short.

  • The favorite button looks a bit strange and is somewhat difficult to visually read whether you've favorited it or not.
    • Solution: Change the favorited icon's color to be #3366ff by default, and #33cc33 when you've favorited the post.
  • Liking posts is kind of difficult due to the small button and awkward location.
    • Solution: Move the upvote and downvote buttons to the same row that the favorites button is in. In addition, make them larger and maybe add a shortcut key to upvote/downvote.
  • I liked the landing page that the site used to have.
    • Solution: Pretty please add a landing page.

Well, I was going to reply to more of Watsit's comments but:

omniscient said:
Wanna be janitor/admin is cute.

Huh. Well waste of time there I guess.

To anyone who IS staff: stop making excuses about how people were told. People were NOT told, and they're all here in this thread. And that's on you, because you run the site. You could have made a manual click-through, a bright red urgent news bar, a GRAPHIC to grab attention, you could have PM'd everyone, any number of things. And you could have watched to see if people were actually reading the info because again, you run the site. That's a thing you can do (and should have). Instead, you tossed some shit up somewhere, buried where you knew no one would read it, and called it good enough. Don't act surprised, you brought this on yourself 100%.

Again, for clarity, the situation:

1. You didn't communicate beforehand.
2. You tried to recreate the old site on a new back end and published it well before it was ready, as if there was some phantom deadline.
3. You REDESIGNED the site at the same time, adding and removing features unrelated to the attempted recreation, and did so with no meaningful communication or input from the user base.

You took the site you maintain, massively reworked it into something worse in secret, published it, and then told everyone to suck it, this is the way it is now (except for minor tweaks and improvements). How did you in any way think this was a good idea, and how do you STILL think it's defensible?

abscondler said:
So I pulled up one of my old tabs and uh, gee, I wonder why nobody noticed the news update. Maybe because there's no way to see when there's a new update, unless you memorize when the last news update was posted.

Hell, even when you expand it, there's only a small mention about a beta 'nearing completion' (yeah, it's looking very """complete""" guys). No big warning that, hey, we're about to switch the entire site over to a new system in less than a month. "A few changes and calls for help" is the biggest understatement of the year; good lord, were you trying to downplay it? Any normal user that saw this would just think "oh cool, there's going to be an option to test out a new beta version of the site soon." This is the kind of thing that should be announced in big, bold letters, not passively mentioned in a collapsed news blurb. But nah, it's 95% of the userbase's fault for not expecting this.

Well, there it is. This is the thing you think justifies all this Staff? This little fig leaf on the giant dick that has fucked us all?

At this point, I don't think there's much left to discuss. The admins/staff are clearly living in a reality all their own, where fucking over your users and horribly mis-managing your site are perfectly reasonable and justified and everything is the fault of those stupid, mean, porn-loving users.

I'm out. I'll check back in a month or so; Maybe eventually the site will be back to something that doesn't rape the eyes and we can get on with things. Probably not though, and even if it is, I doubt the changes made (like the black lists) will be reversed. My hopes for this site ever being the useful tool it once was are pretty slim at this point. Congrads Staff, you may have managed to do what years of drama, legal threats and digital attacks never could: kill the most useful site in the fandom.

Rest in Peace e621, you had a good run.

nyalice said:
why can't we get the old layout back? serious question.

Because that would require the admins admitting that they were wrong. And as has been conclusively proved in this thread, the admins are not capable of that.

bitshift said:
Rest in Peace e621, you had a good run.

the posts on the site are still here

There's no way I can defend the really poor communication, the mods dropped the ball there, and the number of bugs and issues that survived through the "beta" are... iffy. But like, you can still go through your favourites and navigate through the search bar and beat your meat (slam your clam?) to whatever tickles your fancy. Is there anything truly stopping you from doing any of that? The only true roadblock is the global blacklist, and it's a choice between that and literally having no site at all. Nobody's going to get anywhere with the hyperbole.

I like the intention behind the UI/theme update, but I found some issues in the mobile version.

For example, I had all my searches saved in the search bar suggestions, with that I could know if I searched for something or some user before, but it has disappeared and doesn't seem to remember any search, but I like the new suggestions I get now, but it doesn't fix anything for me

Also, the new 4-column grid it's excessive in my opinion, 3 were good

Now, when I see an animated post in the grid, I can't see if it's a gif or a video, because I only see a "play" icon, but I don't have the "Anim" and "webm" tags in the corner as they should be

I really appreciate the work of changing the them to improve it, but these issues are disturbing me, and more users I guess

need to have a search page again like the old home page, as it feels more like you just want to copy R34 now. It does look painfully bland, with no themes and just flat colors unlike what we had before hand, and search memory would be nice to have back again. However the suggestion of what tags you want is a great improvement over all, but looks like it could use some work to keep from cluttering up the screen, maybe make the auto finish screen as you type smaller so it's not so distracting?

"We are still working on the theme and working on adding support for multiple themes back into the site. It's a large task, so it will take some time to complete."

I don't know about you, but I think it would be common sense to make this new layout
O P T I O N A L seeing as how it is still in EARLY DEVELOPMENT.
I'm frustrated because of all the
(correct) complaints of the commenters revealing the immense incompetence behind the people making and implementing this new layout (possibly without warning).

This is the kind of nonsense that I would expect from YOUTUBE.

yakokitsune said:
For example, I had all my searches saved in the search bar suggestions, with that I could know if I searched for something or some user before, but it has disappeared and doesn't seem to remember any search, but I like the new suggestions I get now, but it doesn't fix anything for me

Unfortunately, because of the way autocomplete works, it's either it or the saved searches, but not both.
If you really want to get the saved suggestions back, you can turn off autocomplete in the settings.

yakokitsune said:
Also, the new 4-column grid it's excessive in my opinion, 3 were good

Strange, I'm getting a 3-column grid.

The two main issues I have with the overhauls are
1. The blacklist page doesn't have a button to clean and sort anymore
2. Post pages don't show the user who uploaded the image anymore so now to find that you have to go into the tag edit history, assuming the uploader even tagged it with anything

void_termina said:
I don't know about you, but I think it would be common sense to make this new layout
O P T I O N A L seeing as how it is still in EARLY DEVELOPMENT.
I'm frustrated because of all the
(correct) complaints of the commenters revealing the immense incompetence behind the people making and implementing this new layout (possibly without warning).

There's nothing optional to have. Unless the new code base had a default Danbooru theme or something, which would've gone over swimmingly. To be clear, this update was not about giving us a new layout. This isn't FA, where big updates are mostly just theme and frontend tweaks. The update here was to completely rewrite the backend to be less rickety and prone to catastrophic error, and allowing new features that the old site couldn't hope to do, and that rewrite necessitated making a new layout because the original can't work with it. If it was possible to keep the old layout working, it would've stayed without hesitation. It was not, so instead they made a basic port of the old layout to work on the new site, and as work continues, the theme will become more and more like it used to be. If you want a preview, check out the Redesign Fixes, which will be incorporated directly into the site when the more serious issues are fixed.

I very much preferred how the comments appeared in the following pages from the Account tab:
“Comments on my posts”
“Search for myself in comments”

These showed the thread of comments involved in the post with a threshold to hide previous comments by default if too many to show on the page. That including the option to show the rest of the comments with the “Show Hidden comments” button.

It also showed the rating of each comment with the option to rate up/down any from the same page.
This is also now gone for the comments page from a specific user.

Also, from each post it used to show the uploader account as a link to the user, which is also now gone.

I’d very much like to see these small features return if possible.

So I'm not going to lie, this entire UI "update" is far, far worse than the original UI inalmost every conceivable way. Just from a quick look around: the great home page is gone, everything is far too big, the favorite button and a bunch of other things are big ugly white buttons, and there aren't any themes anymore... this might just be a problem for me since im a mobile user but I'm inclined to think that most other people on this forum are in agreement about the fact that this update sucks. It's made even worse by the fact that it just happened without any prior warning from what I can tell. You should have had the new UI be a new theme or even an entirely separate part of the site.

I consostantly use the website on my phone, I do not have accsess to a computer at all.

The popular page is limited to 1 collum in landscape mode and in portrait it still is limited to one oddly sized collum all the way down. This is where I always used to start. Home page > more > popular by day. I can't even see the thumbnails well enough because I am vision impaired it isnt working for me.

Tbe new search function on the surface is amazing... but there is no obvious next button. order:random female gives me a list of 60 ish results with my black list filtering out some. But I have looked and looked and I cannot find a next button to take me to a new page. I should be able to view hundreds of pages with just a female tag.

Keep landscape users in mind! I use my phone sideways and many websites force me to have to flip my phone, This habit for me is so strong I will often read things sideways and scroll from right to left to avoid flipping my phone to a position I have to cramp my thumb to scroll. It also gives more viewing space etc.

Pardon typos and the like my auto correct is also not working on this new version of the site. I am also on a phone so it is difficult to edit as much.

Is the dumb 18+ dialog going to go away at all? Hopefully once we get the homepage back at least. It's annoying as hell to click it every single time.

- make the tag on the results page for animated posts more visible

- make the upvote/downvote arrows bigger and colored differently from text

- make "favorite" a separate button, make it bigger, color it for visibility

- move favorite button to below voting buttons, instead of being part of options menu

I noticed two simple but quite annoying things.

Whenever I'm in "Remove from set" mode whenever I remove a single picture from a selected set the selected set in the mode menu resets to the first set in the list.
The same goes for adding pictures to sets individually. The dropdown list have to be used every time. It wastes quite a lot of time.

I would love to give a CSS snippet but I really have no idea what could make this work I1m guessing it also needs some javasript for the memory.

Oh and also it seems that the pictures in the set are not added in the right order. But that may be caused by lag between inputs I really don't know tbh.

hexdragon said:
I noticed two simple but quite annoying things.

Whenever I'm in "Remove from set" mode whenever I remove a single picture from a selected set the selected set in the mode menu resets to the first set in the list.
The same goes for adding pictures to sets individually. The dropdown list have to be used every time. It wastes quite a lot of time.

I would love to give a CSS snippet but I really have no idea what could make this work I1m guessing it also needs some javasript for the memory.

Oh and also it seems that images in public sets if sent with a set link doesn't have the navigation bar when people are not logged in for example https://e621.net/posts/2174905?q=set%3Adailyfeed
If you open this link in an inkongnito window it doesn't display the naviation bar.

Interestingly it worked just half a day ago.

Updated

I honestly don't mind the new theme. Everything kind of looks big but that doesn't bother me. I do wish I can change the color of the theme again. I always used bloodlust and stars since this deep blue was still too bright for me, but now I can't change it from the normal blue.

You could re-add the option to hit + or - next to the tags. It's really useful for easily adding or removing tags you like/don't like to see.

I can understand why some people don’t like the new look but several much needed quality of life improvements have been installed specifically regarding tagging. The biggest thing that you should work on is the mobile version and once you change it to desktop mode it feels very nice, it’s evenly spaced, well organized, and doesn’t feel claustrophobic. The mobile version has everything crammed into one space as well as the user descriptions are extremely narrow making reading it very difficult. I have no major problems with the new look, it’s just the placement of things within the new look. The mobile needs to be decluttered and maybe make it the second option to change the look instead of the first. I’ve spoken with many people who hold these opinions and primary towards the mobile version and the lack of a home screen. A lot of improvements were brought with this update but I think people feel homesickness for the old design, I would say the layout and once you add in the little effects like the old version I don’t think people will complain. I just think that people have made a home in the previous version and now they feel homeless or in an awkward house they have no attachment to. I think many people miss the hexagon grid design. And a big personal problem is that we can’t see who favorited a post, now it just states how many people favorited it but not who they are

^Yea, I miss that feature in favs. I'm guessing it was done for a reason (perhaps even an obvious one), but it could lead to finding more works and such, rather than just relying on who's in the comments.

paintedwithlust said:
I think many people miss the hexagon grid design.

I've never been particularly aware of that as an aesthetic, but BitWolfy's custom CSS (which you just paste into a field in your settings) will give you the hexagons back AFAICS -- among other things.

The who-faved thing is about the performance hit (which was incurred by every single render of a /post/show/12345 page, so it was multiplied by a LOT). So far this seems unlikely to return.

Am I the weirdo for not using favs all that much? Never realized how popular those were until now.

Not sure if this thread is the right one for all of this, but...
(Much of this is quite minor, and might just be more specific to me)

- When colored usernames are turned on, the red for janitors is a bit difficult to read against the blue background.

- Similar to the above, the green text below thumbnails is sometimes difficult to read. Not sure if it's just the color for this one, though, or if the size and lack of bold text is causing some of my problems.

- I'd like to see the green/yellow/red for the ratings to return on the posts themselves (in their Information area). It makes the rating stand out more, and is easier to check at a glance.

- Maybe it's just me, but I preferred how the Information/Statistics area was arranged before the update, with the sources and date at the top and the size at the bottom. Mostly because when there happens to be four or five source links, you just get this big block of text directly in the middle. That said, I could probably learn to get used to the current ordering.

- And, on the topic of the sources... It'd be nice if the links had a background when hovered over like they used to. There doesn't seem much point in the links overlapping the image if they're generally hard to read when they do.

- If possible, I'd also like if how e926 displayed posts when browsing could be brought back (i.e., skipping over questionable / explicit images and filling each page with safe ones). As it is now, sometimes there could be as little as 15 posts per page, sometimes even less. Made even more annoying by seeing "65 post(s) on this page were hidden by safe mode (e926)" on basically every page. For guest users, I'd understand it more, but if I'm logged in... I know which side of the site I'm on. I know how to switch, and will when I want to/can. I don't need a reminder of it on every page, or for my default of 75 posts per page being cut down to around 10-20. I'm aware that actually turning on safe mode seems to drastically reduce the amount of hidden posts, but... That's the whole point of me going to e926. I don't want to have to turn off safe mode every time I switch back to 621, and then back on when I'm on 926. This is probably the one thing I'd really like to see changed / fixed, out of everything else.

Just some things I noticed, in any case, and that I haven't yet seen get brought up (I could've missed something, though).

i love getting upvotes but when i check the "Comments" page, i can't see how many upvotes my comments have anymore;
can this be fixed

also why can't i downvote people on the forum or upvote them anymore

Updated

ugandaknucklesyt said:
also why can't i downvote people on the forum or upvote them anymore

You haven't been able to upvote or downvote on the forum, at least since I joined the middle of last year. If you could before then, I wouldn't know, but it wasn't removed with the update.

I guess, anything I could say has been said many times by now.. I could digest all of the changes and get used to them I guess. I appreciate the site and want to note I thank everyone for the work into it before I complain, but...

Moving the pool/parent/child navigation is kind of jarring where it is now.
I mostly use my tablet for fapfuel while winding down to sleep and the padding in some places is just far too much.
Selecting the search bar no longer brings up suggestions, even if you entered common tags.. Maybe I did it wrong? Only suggests after 3 letters typed. At that point, moving your favorite tags up is kind of useless.
Most importantly to me, I could get used to the other things... But I have never seen, on my tablet, the error "Chrome is not responding" so many times. It's almost unusable with the lag it has and nearly killing the browser used whether on the main posts page, even when only showing 45 images rather than the max I had prior.

leon_genesis said:
I miss the main screen, not just because of the mascot but also because sometimes I'm getting on for a SFW image, and being brought straight to recent uploads is almost always gonna show nsfw. Everything feels too, big. It's a bit hard for me to explain but now it feels like the results barely fit on the screen. I prefer the older look so for now if there's a way to switch back I would appreciate that.

The homescreen is actually being worked on i made a thread (which got locked again why? Idk) but one of the admins said it is being worked on

As a side note, can we go back to at least name above the picture. I don't care what your avatar is, it is better to see the name up top. And possibly rank, at least for admin's and janitors. I know who you are, but I have seen multiple time that new people just think you are normal users

I wasnt a fan of how the posts were top aligned so i used the following rule to get flexbox going. A bit easier for the eye to scan through. Still looking around to see if there is anything that conflicts but seems to work thus far.

#posts-container{
display: flex;
flex-direction: row;
flex-wrap: wrap;
align-items: flex-end;
justify-content: space-evenly;
}

I legitimately don't think it's possible to still show user icons if their profile image has a blacklisted tag. That greatly annoys me. As a side note, why the hell does the up and down arrow exist in the field where you put your avatar post ID? Who would honestly ever use that?

ok so after a bit of seeing the new site heres my beef. the new search system kinda sucks. it helps in some cases but i liked the older search when it came down to stuff you typed and brought it up so you can go right to what you liked when you have either forgotten the artiest or just want a quicker way to it. minor beef with the comment section. i liked the old one when you can leave a comment and not have to back up twice. glad the comment with over 3 likes gets hidden thing is back though. also dont like when you cant tell a video from a gif like you could before so you got to guess. glad it didnt do that with flash thank goodness. and i know its been talked about before but i do miss the themes. hope you guys bring that back soon.

moonwolfriki said:
ok so after a bit of seeing the new site heres my beef. the new search system kinda sucks. it helps in some cases but i liked the older search when it came down to stuff you typed and brought it up so you can go right to what you liked when you have either forgotten the artiest or just want a quicker way to it.

If you disable autocomplete in the settings, you'll get your old saved searches back. It's one or the other, though, you can't have both.

watsit said:
You haven't been able to upvote or downvote on the forum, at least since I joined the middle of last year. If you could before then, I wouldn't know, but it wasn't removed with the update.

I've been a member just over two years, and it was never like that when I started.

crystali_cast said:
I've been a member just over two years, and it was never like that when I started.

You've never been able to vote on forum posts. Comments, yes, but never forums.

The real issue with the changes was that you braindead faggots forced me to make an account on your retarded furry website just so i could look at porn. What the fuck.

tonycoon said:
You've never been able to vote on forum posts. Comments, yes, but never forums.

Doesn't surprise me. They're probably remembering things wrong.

That would be a little silly if you could, anyhow.

A major issue I have with the new site is the new way tags are handled.

I really don't enjoy not being able to override my own tags (when they work, and I've been seeing a lot of tagged stuff appear anyways, even after checking and confirming the tags), without completely disabling them. Makes reading comics a pain.

Edit: Having actually read through the forum, holy shit, the staff here are rude, thin skinned assholes. You people specifically ask for feed back, and when provided with it, you lash out and treat your users, ya know, the ones who's traffic nets y'all your income, like they're assholes for providing it. And, no, you did not do your due diligence alerting us to this travesty.

I've been on here at least twice a week for roughly three or four years, and I'm only *now* realizing this site has a forums, for obvious reasons. This is an art depository, not a forum. No one's coming here to shoot the shit. As for your header, you mean the header that's closed by default for the vast majority of your userbase? You didn't think to even force it to pop open so people could see? Maybe put a little warning on your front page? Hell, change the title of your news header to something a little more eye-catching that the business as usual shit that's up there. How about 'Alert!' 'Urgent!' 'Please read!'

I had no idea a beta was happening, and I *do* read the news updates. Not all the time, but enough I'd have seen it if it were up there regularly. Maybe you should've left it in there permanently?

Look, staff, I like E6. It's a great place to find art, both dirty and clean, but just because you're one of the big names, and certainly the most convient, don't think that makes you irreplaceable.

I'm not going to bluster about how I'm going to quit, or how the site is going to die now. But if you keep being pricks to your userbase, I'd say you could expect, at the very least, a sudden increase in ad-blockers. I know I white-list E6, because y'all provide a wonderful service for free, and I'm going to continue doing so.

But fucks sake, is it that hard to just say 'our bad', and let it go? Here's two quick lessons for you:

One: Customer is King. Not only are your users the ones allowing the site to exist, but they're the ones who advertise for you. Even if you did flash a big banner alerting us, it's in your best interest, as a business, not to tell people they're fucking stupid for not seeing it, and another reason for that is...

Two: You have more customers than you have staff. You're not going to be able to shout everyone down. At some point, it's just a better time investment to apologize, even if you don't mean it. If nothing else, that'll get people to come to your defense that AREN'T braindead white knights like..uh..I had his name, but I can't remember whatsit...ah well, not important.

Updated

I just got done viewing an image that looked like it was part of a series but I did not see the others. I check artist or character tag and there was the other related images. There's no pool so I check for parent/child post info and manage to find it, completely missed it the first time it was nearly invisible.

I used to be obvious since it had it's own box on the topleft, but now it's pretty small and hidden underneath the image.
Would be nice to also have profile settings to make them expanded by default at the top of an image.

Aye, my blacklist keeps disabling and re-enabling on its own between pages. Does the condition stay persistent until you switch it next time? It's not a bad option, but I think it would be a good option to have the blacklist reset to enabled after I view a blacklisted post (for convenience).

I've used this site for YEARS and I'm super fucked up it's changed so much in one swoop. I'm just a lurker, and i didn't want to make an account for any reason but here I am. I use moble and it's really bad. And now I need an account to view shit? Is that what I'm seeing? I'm legit confused. The mobile site is legit bad. If u wanna see a good mobile site (this isn't a jab at you, this is a real opinion) enable the desktop site only option in your browser. It's 100 times better and what it should look like.

Man, dude. This just blows. My favorite site just took a big hit imo.

Please bring back the +/- buttons next to tags while searching, that saved a ton of hassle being able to just click those to add or remove tags rather than scrolling back up and typing them out.

When I click 'download' under an image, I don't like that it opens the image in a new tab. I liked when it just took me to the page with the image in the same tab. Again, it was just a convenience thing.

Also please make the blacklists show up under a collapsible tab again when I'm browsing in a search. I don't want to see them.

Really would have appreciated better warning that this was coming. I don't interact with this community, I don't read the news blurbs, and I never saw anything that gave any impression of importance to the information it was going to convey. I haven't seen a website pull the "update with minimal warning and then fight the userbase" stunt in years.

To offer a perspective of someone who has been in a similar position as staff before (I run Derpibooru, and was involved in a complete site code rewrite this past fall):

  • Websites like e621 and Derpibooru have an extremely large anonymous audience (in the case of Derpi, larger than its audience of actual registered users, though I can't speak for e621) that can't be reached by technological means like DMail or comparable private messaging systems, meaning it would be unproductive
  • People don't respond to almost any form of non-intrusive or intrusive wide-scale notification, whether that be site banner messages (like we use at Derpi) or actual private messages (read rate is <1% for the times in the past we've tried this, and it's likely the same thing would happen here at e621 too)
  • Even if we go out of our way to make users do something crazy like submit a captcha to acknowledge they read the notification, I can almost guarantee you they *still* wouldn't read it. See psychological phenomenon: banner blindness

These "but wait you didn't provide enough notice" complaints drive me crazy on my end of things, and I'm sure staff here feel the same way.
Other broad-brush topics I have seen that I'll respond to:

- "Why did you deploy something that you couldn't change back?"

The reason these sorts of upgrades are typically infeasible to change back was because they involve database schema changes, which make them incompatible with the old software. Yes, you could change it back... if you wanted more downtime, and a reversion to substantially aging software. Now, see, as users, you probably don't care that software is old. That proves it's reliable, right? Well, yes, but when you talk about websites, it makes them seriously vulnerable to a wide range of attacks. I would prefer (and I think in retrospect that most of you would, too) keeping things up to date and having some irreversible software changes to mitigate the risk of all of your data being leaked and sold online.

- "Why did you have to change the UI?"

To be honest, I wasn't expecting the UI change, but I actually really like it, especially the new mobile layout. Full disclosure: due to my personal frustration with key aspects of the e621 website, I authored a couple of new components for the code, including the new search engine backend, and some development environment setup tools. At the time I did that work (now over a year ago), the UI was in its "default Danbooru" state, the gray on a white background theme. I asked a staff member about it some time ago, and from what I could gather, the template system that existed in Danbooru when the original e621 was forked was so incompatible with the new template system that it was only really feasible to reference the HTML output, and not the input templates, which I do understand.

- "I hate it"/"change it back"/"mods suck"/etc.

Contrary to what you may think, posting this type of content actually makes it less likely staff will fix things. It is very depressing to look for public criticism to fix the things you broke, and then to just be constantly shit on for making a change at all. There's a reason developers don't like interacting with users much, and it's because they are so resistant to change that many will look for an excuse to justify any sort of petty attack on staff for modifying the software.

- Specific UI criticisms/subtly or overtly broken things/CSS snippets/etc.

Carry on. You're awesome.

Adjusting to the new UI pretty fine. The only two things/options I'd like to see are having favorites on the profile page displayed horizontally instead of vertically, and an option to see exact tag counts instead of "1.1k"

leotheairwolf said:
Adjusting to the new UI pretty fine. The only two things/options I'd like to see are having favorites on the profile page displayed horizontally instead of vertically

Like this?

Okay. Hold on. Now that just made me angry when I was intended to just skim this thread.

byte said:
These "but wait you didn't provide enough notice" complaints drive me crazy on my end of things, and I'm sure staff here feel the same way.

Don't blame the userbase. I would have qualified that statement with edge cases or special exemptions but, thinking it over a bit, I realized unless it was the users DIRECTLY hijacking the domain or otherwise messing with the codebase, there's NO good case for blaming your users. Ever. It's unprofessional and catty.

The mentality and energy of "My design is PERFECT, it's just that these knuckleheads don't know how to use it" never really ends well; it's on the designers and how things are implemented/presented. Always. If you run into any kind of dev, engineer, writer, artist, architect, or other such designer who feels or thinks this way, keep walking; those folks are just not good to work with. They're so ready to discount everyone else's takes that they don't really open themselves up to even the possibility of learning something new, examining someone else's point of view, or even compromise (if it somehow does happen, it's less compromise and more changing fringe details about what is almost entirely their design).

If you want to make the best possible version of something, you have to be ready to kill your (metaphorical) baby. Dead. On the floor. Complete 180 and rework it to maybe kill it again. That is the iterative process, and it's not pretty. If you're too caught up in an idea because it's your idea, then there is a very large chance that there are glaring flaws in it you can't/don't see. And to be able to see them, you have to remember:

You can always be wrong.

Even if you're 110% sure of something as being correct or objectively measurable, be open to the possibility that, hey, you messed up or there was something at play that was outside the scope of your vision. It happens. All the time. And the folks who don't accept that are some of the most antagonistic, hot-headed, and inflexible people I've ever had the displeasure of so much glancing at.

Don't be that guy.

I would prefer (and I think in retrospect that most of you would, too) keeping things up to date and having some irreversible software changes to mitigate the risk of all of your data being leaked and sold online.

That addresses how difficult it is to revert, but not the question of why so eager to hard commit to something that's not completely ready.

If you see the road ahead and KNOW an event will happen at some point, it would stand to reason that you're going to make sure that you're ready for it to throw anything at you (or at least not walk straight into the issue as if you had no time to prepare at all). Otherwise, you just look like a fool.

If you know it's going to rain tomorrow, maybe don't hang out the laundry to dry today. If the turkey needs to bake for 5 hours, don't plan to go out with friends as soon as you start the oven. If you're headed towards a yellow light at an intersection, consider slowing down to a stop. And if you know users are very averse to change, it'd be wise to make the transition as smooth as possible, if not outright invisible.

So no, I do not believe your answer addresses why the team was so eager to go forward with something super sudden and sweeping and being surprised that the blowback has been so loud and widespread as it is. Users don't like change. People don't like change in general. And if the admins didn't expect this reaction, then count me among the baffled.

To be honest, I wasn't expecting the UI change, but I actually really like it, especially the new mobile layout. Full disclosure: due to my personal frustration with key aspects of the e621 website, I authored a couple of new components for the code, including the new search engine backend. . .

There are many things I find immediately disconcerting about just this tidbit alone:

1.) A programmer talking about UI. Programmers don't exactly make the prettiest things, hence "programmer art" being a euphemism for unsightly, but somewhat functional, illustrations. The frames of mind you need to do something organic and intuitive is the direct opposite of the arbitrary and convoluted world of technology and code; almost oil and water. Function is put over form by trade; great for programming, not so great with visuals.

2.) If you're part of the team that implemented this change, I feel like there's a conflict of interest when it comes to singing the praises of the redesign. After all, to reprimand it would be to reprimand yourself for fixes and tweaks that you, yourself, could have made at the time. Feels a little disingenuous.

3.) Having the mobile layout--something that has been consistently criticized on just this thread alone--as your favorite part of the redesign already shows a major disconnect with the userbase's wants, needs, and expectations. An outright inversion, really.

4.) You like it? More power to you. But the site isn't a pet project for you, it's something used by thousands upon thousands of people who are distinctly not you. So if those folks feel like things aren't being made to their sensibilities and convenience, how you feel about it won't change their opinions all too much. Let us play with our toys wrong. Stuff crayons up our noses. Wear our pants inside-out. If we're enjoying the experience, however "wrong" it may be, it's still a positive experience for us. Something is being done the "right" way isn't really the enjoyable way to do things just on the merit of being "correct".

the template system that existed in Danbooru when the original e621 was forked was so incompatible with the new template system that it was only really feasible to reference the HTML output, and not the input templates, which I do understand.

Which is something I find weird when it comes to making a complete site rewrite. Usually, I expect these kinds of compatibility and feature parity problems from two different--but complete--frameworks being mashed together like a square peg into a round hole. But if the flexibility and insight/foresight that comes with a head-to-toe refactor ends up causing the same situation, I feel a bit concerned. Granted, it's speculation/extrapolation on your part, but I feel some behind the scenes mismanagement would have to be involved for Play-Doh not to be able to fit a hole of any shape.

Contrary to what you may think, posting this type of content actually makes it less likely staff will fix things. It is very depressing to look for public criticism to fix the things you broke, and then to just be constantly shit on for making a change at all.

Hmm. Well. Sorry to say, but if you break something, and ship it broken, yes, those eBay review scores are going to tank a bit. It's more baffling to not hear any outcry from shipping a half baked product. And if you turn around on those people just to blame them for daring to be angry at you for that broken product, it will indeed make those people angrier.

It's the "Mom Vs Comicbooks" effect. You have lots of comics you like and you collect them; keep them in a nice stack on the shelf and everything. You enjoy collecting! And then, one day, it's not there anymore; instead being replaced by some dry textbooks about the Impressionist artistic movement or something similar. Turns out, your mom threw them out; ALL of them. Without telling you. Or even asking. Because she found them crass and dreadful, so obviously it'd be much better for you if instead you read the books she wanted you to read. No, you never even expressed interest in those kinds of books. But she tells you to be grateful and not complain about getting what her idea of good literature was. For whatever reason, she's surprised you didn't appreciate her doing that.

So. Yeah. That's this situation in a nutshell from a user's POV. It's not great.

celadonsissy said:
Don't blame the userbase.

My intent is not to blame users for failing to notice anything. It's to point out that the chances are pretty high that they wouldn't notice any attempts to inform them of upcoming change, even if more effort was made, making the extra effort (of intrusive notification etc.) not worth it.

celadonsissy said:
The mentality and energy of "My design is PERFECT, it's just that these knuckleheads don't know how to use it" never really ends well ...

I never say the design is perfect, and I don't recall anywhere where e621 staff say the design is perfect. I don't think it's perfect. Designs are never perfect, they are eventually at some point just "good enough."

celadonsissy said:
That addresses how difficult it is to revert, but not the question of why so eager to hard commit to something that's not completely ready.

Okay. Here's why they committed to something that wasn't completely ready. The old Danbooru fork e621 has been running has been using the same version of the software library Rails since about a decade ago. While Rails is a nice library to work with, it is not immune to security flaws. The version of Rails that was moved off of has had something like 50 known vulnerabilities, and was also holding back the upgrade to new Ruby versions as well (and Ruby has also had important security vulnerabilities in that time period). Fixing these vulnerabilities and using modern Ruby, which offers both fixes for vulnerabilites and substantial performance improvements, was deemed to be more important than deploying broken, but fixable software. The old e621 code has been dead in the water for a significant amount of time now.

celadonsissy said:
And if you know users are very averse to change, it'd be wise to make the transition as smooth as possible, if not outright invisible.

If it were in my hands I would not have done it like this.

celadonsissy said:
1.) A programmer talking about UI. Programmers don't exactly make the prettiest things

I'm an artist first and a programmer second.

celadonsissy said:
2.) If you're part of the team that implemented this change, I feel like there's a conflict of interest when it comes to singing the praises of the redesign

I had no hand in the visual resdesign. I didn't even know there was going to be a redesign until it was deployed. I thought the old layout would be replicated.

celadonsissy said:
3.) Having the mobile layout--something that has been consistently criticized on just this thread alone--as your favorite part of the redesign already shows a major disconnect with the userbase's wants, needs, and expectations. An outright inversion, really.
4.) You like it? More power to you.

I'm just stating my opinion.

celadonsissy said:
Which is something I find weird when it comes to making a complete site rewrite

I found it odd too. Again, were it in my hands, this is not how I would have preferred to do the deploy of the new code. My point when I deployed Philomena on Derpibooru was to make it look identical and behave identical to the code it replaced, and I feel based on the small volume of complaints I received (most of which referred to functional errors, not new cosmetic glitches) I largely succeeded at that. You can disagree with my methods, but this is how I would prefer to do it, and I recognize that such steps were not taken here.

celadonsissy said:
Hmm. Well. Sorry to say, but if you break something, and ship it broken, yes, those eBay review scores are going to tank a bit.

It turns out that software is different from merchandise. Who knew? Yes, there were problems with this deploy. I expect they will be resolved, and the comic books will be salvaged from the dump. Give it some time.

This might be very low on the list, but... could the Posts per page option in account settings be changed to something like an input field with a min/max limit instead of the 225 items long drop-down abomination it is now?

Im a basic anon user, I come here, search one tag, and browse. And yet im disgusted.

Bad:

I need to login to remove The blacklist, This. Is. Stupid. censorship is bad in every and any implication. Dont concede ground preemptively or lose respect. If someone is so sensitive (or controlling) that they need to censor the world around us don't you dare inconvenience me for it.

Matching thumbnail sizes are stupid and you should feel stupid (mobile), don't crop stuff for aesthetics, how the hell am I supposed to tell its a scat image if its cropped out. Or if its a stacked panel comic?

The layout of content and UI is awful for ultrawide monitors, I have to set zoom to 150% to see anything, and having your pool menu stretched across feet of real distance is dumb. I really enjoyed the little navbox for pools because it was compact, easy to spot, and only appeared when needed.

Comment sections are ugly now, I cant compare side by side but its more distracting to the eyes. Could be the box in a box in a box styling?

I see no benefit in removing the landing page.

Making an account was simple, but now I have another thing I need to log in to yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaayyyyy bye bye incognito mode for modesty.

Good:

the site seems to be up.

Updated

picklestomp said:
I need to login to remove The blacklist, This. Is. Stupid. censorship is bad in every and any implication. Dont concede ground preemptively or lose respect. If someone is so sensitive (or controlling) that they need to censor the world around us don't you dare inconvenience me for it

I'm going to quote what another user posted to help give you some perspective on that little blacklist thing. It's a choice between that and literally having no site at all.

If they didn't do this, then whatever country you're in could be the next on a ban list and you wouldn't be able to access it at all, full stop. I think never being able to access the site ever again without the help of a VPN would be a much bigger inconvenience than simply having to take 10 seconds to log in

motherofech said:
I'm going to quote what another user posted to help give you some perspective on that little blacklist thing. It's a choice between that and literally having no site at all.

If they didn't do this, then whatever country you're in could be the next on a ban list and you wouldn't be able to access it at all, full stop. I think never being able to access the site ever again without the help of a VPN would be a much bigger inconvenience than simply having to take 10 seconds to log in

Even without seeing that post, honestly, of all the complaints, the auto-blacklist is the most baffling to me. Until they made all accounts cost money, logging in is just a net positive for all involved, and takes zero time or effort.

Will there be a way to utilize the old theme?

If not the favorite button needs to be colored like in the old theme it's a bit hard to find like this.

Same with upvote arrows.

And i liked the resize image function.

Found the resize button now and also the second fav button, still would be better for them to be on the side.

Updated