New Site Design Feedback

i give up <..< in general , might have not been here since it first open, but it feels like a down hill  spiral thing. i'll try not to care anymore <3 good luck to those who do. feelings of useless come to mind, meh guess small voices are irony 

I understand that the change was made for some obvious reasons that we all won't or can't understand.  I do wish that some prior notification had been given so that I wasn't totally shocked when logging on this evening.  I'm sure it will take everyone some getting used to, but so far looks ok.

Everything is taking forever to load though.  I'm not sure if it's due to the volume of people that are on the site, but it's like a few seconds of delay before things adjust or appear in the right places.  Just typing this post is sluggish.  Is everyone having this problem? 

I do love the site, and look for things to improve with time.

Thanks,

Steve

to erik or staff, there seem to be a few things that won't work for IE, so far for example chat room won't work nor the 'table' layout for the online games. Will you be working on that ? but I am using google chrome it work fine for me so far.    

I don't know for sure, but my guess is because programming costs are expensive and Erik is running a business that puts food on his table and a roof over his head.  I imagine that employing another programmer so that Chess.com can have two different appearances but effectively the same content and functionality is probably pretty low on his priority list.

My guess is he'd rather his team were working on fixes, new features, content improvements, browser compatibility and making sure that Chess.com remains at the top, rather than dealing with a heap of subjective criticsism about whether a colour is quite right or the gap between the top menu and the content is perhaps a few pixels too big.

also his top proirity would be live-chess.

"Not technically feasible" to allow the old format?   I really find that hard to believe.   People are not the sheep you appear to treat them as.     

Erik, hang in there!  I think you've made substantial improvements to design and function - A notably better UI.  Sure, there are some bugs, and you'll iron them out,  but as someone who's been involved in site development at all levels of the business, I'm truly impressed with what you've done with this platform given staff size.  It's a feat; remember a lot of folks likely don't realize the scope.   Much better on I-pad, I'd add.  Haven't checked on all the issues I've found, but many are resolved or improved.  Don't forget you'll never please everyone.

I made a comment about can't "paste" when posting in comment box.

It doesn't work on foxfire browser, but it does work in explorer browser?

ie, when posting votes in Vote Chess

In the old design, the Tactics Trainer ratings were already public, just not as easily accessible. You would have to to to Tactics Trainer and look up a member to find their rating but it was public. Mentor probably wasn't but I don't know for sure.

One of the first things I noticed (in a game of E-chess) was how much faster it was! I love the work yall are doing! Keep it up! 

+ 1

I generally like the design and appearance of the new interface but I do have a couple of suggestions.

On the homepage I was used to seeing a list of titles of forum topics, of blogs of news, of visoes, and of articles. It was easy to catch up with what was newly posted and to find what I was interested in. Now I am only seeing one individual item in each category. I think this is a step backwards and an ineffective use of the space. When I clicked "view all" I was expecting to see a list on the home page but instead it jumped me to a different page. I can't see all of the content in one place. My suggestion would be to add a single page that has lists of the titles of all the available new content.  

I would like to see the forums back on the home page. One of the things I liked most about chess.com was the opportunity to help the nonmasters players with their questions. The new design makes the questions harder to find. I would suggest removing the chesspoll feature from then homepage and replacing it with the forums or, better yet, making the homepage customizable so you can choose which type of content to view. I would much rather see chess forums and hide chess news but other people would have different preferences.

Group chat could have a representation of who's admin or super admin...would be useful.

Ok, Erik, moving games back to center of Home (instead of demoting them to footnote status) was the single most important issue, for me at least. Thank you and the team for restoring this. You will do as you deem proper but, for the site's sake which we all love, do not allow anyone in the future to move games from centerstage where they belong and for all eternity deserve to be... Now, two minor fixes, when you have the time, concerning Team appearance: 1. Admins need to see the matches in progress counter on the groups home page, as before, not only through the public profile. 2. Forum activity needs to be separated from News activity, as before,  otherwise they get no visibility... Be well, Haris

I haven't had problems. I like the new layout. The only thing I would like is for all text, numerics and backgrounds to be changed by my themes. Otherwise whatever I choose there is always something of low contrast. Eg The basic information on pages of tournaments I'm in, and the standings numbers. On home page whilst scrolling through games an automatic whitehighlighter box appears, we don't need this if we have chosen our own highlights.

@KCO this is a gaming and social networking site. From what i see it's about 70 30. Even if a lot of the posts that go back and forth aren't all flowers and lollipops, still social networking.

Thanks Erik, basically I think I get a lot more value than the 13 dollars a month I pay.

I just discovered that if you select something from inside a block of quoted text, and delete it, all the quoted text formatting goes away, and it looks like the quoted text is something the user has written himself.

This isn't something I would consider a high priority, but it's worth noting.

I'm starting to really like this new design. I just wanted to ask of one thing. Please do not get rid of the ability to set a status on here. I really like using it to let my friends know what I've been up to and how I've been feeling, etc. Thanks! :)

Moving online games to the center was a huge improvement.  Thank you.

I have a strong desire to see live chess and notes change places.  That would put both types of games front and center, and put notes off to the side.

I'd like to suggest offering a mechanism for swapping Online and Live, to control which one is at top center.  This would be appropriate even without making the layout change I requested, because I'm fairly certain there must be users who prefer live chess, and make that a higher priority.  Whether they're stacked or side by side, the most important one to that user is the one they would likely prefer to be at top center.

blasphemy.

The biggest thing that is noticeable with the new changes is a decrease of support for a player's focus.

What I mean is that a lot is now "at one's fingertips", a-la Facebook (the site mirrors Facebook in a lot of respects, which I presume is intentional from perspetives like usability, business development, etc.).

The issue here is that while Facebook and other social networking sites are about... well, social networking, gossiping, etc. -- chess is fundamentally about none of those.  Chess is a game of focus, of a noble competition between intellects, of the ability to imagine (and perhaps share) ideas, etc.  That suggests a need for cleaner experience, to support this focus; what I see now instead is a more cluttered experience, especially on the Home Page.  Luckily, I can escape the Home Page fast, which is what I now typically do...

The game pages have retained their clean and focused look-and-feel, and this is great! 

After the general feedback above, here's some specific feedback on things that seem odd and can be easily fixed:

- In the Game Exporer, the fields for "FEN" and "Link to Page" seem unnecessarily narrow, and obstruct the ability to actually see what's there. If the intent is to add in more graphical elements and hence the rest of the space is reserved, though not yet visible to us, then that may be fine.

- Again in the Game Explorer, the sequence of moves used to be above the present move options, which made it easy and natural to go back between one and the other.  Now, with the sequence of moves below the chess board, one  has to constantly move back and forth (both eyes and mouse) left down then right up, in order to coordinate an exploration of options -- which is the core point of Game *Explorer* (also indicated in its name).  So, from a usability perspective, that change seems counterintuitive and one that would benefit from reversing.