An idea: Split game and review feeds on IFDB?

Okay, my not-so-bold, but good I think, idea, is a variation of what bg said here.

The starting point is leaving most things how they are, especially the pot-luck grab-all and prominence of “New on IFDB” – except for any size optimisation of elements people want to do. That way, something of everything remains accessible pretty quickly.

My idea is to add two prominent buttons under the ‘New to IFDB’ section, one going to new games, the other to new reviews. Each would open a window with a reverse chrono list of the relevant things, with some sane default number of items limit, or a box where you can pick how much you want to see per page.

It’s really just having a page per type of each of these three most prominent things, where the ‘New on IFDB’ section already has such a page.

When the layout collapses on mobile, these buttons would appear above each other vertically, meaning almost no extra scrolling down to reach other content types than what there is already.

Image attached showing button demo idea:

Summary

-Wade

Adding cover art is pretty straightforward, but it’s the exact opposite of @manonamora’s suggestion to try to match VNDB’s abbreviated lists.

“Showing reviews and ratings together with the game listings” is exactly what the “New on IFDB” section does today, and that’s what’s so great about it.

But showing reviews and games in the same list, sorted by date, creates this other problem: when a bunch of games come in at once, it pushes down all of the recent reviews, and recent reviews push all of the games down.

Here’s another attempt, taking Option 2 (“Repeat reviews”) but trying to style it nicer to minimize wasted space.

In this version, “New on IFDB” occupies the left column. To the right of it, we’ve stacked up two sections, one “Games” column containing just the titles, super brief, and then a list of reviews without dates or snippets. (On mobile, this would all collapse down to one column: New on IFDB, then Games, then Reviews.)

We’ve got 10 items in “New on IFDB,” including snippets, and that’s as tall as the brief “Games” + “Reviews” sections combined. There are 20 games in the “Games” section and 20 reviews in the “Reviews” section.

The first 10 reviews in the “Reviews” section happen to be duplicates of the ones appearing in “New on IFDB,” but the wasted space doesn’t feel quite as bad, since they’re so brief, and there are 10 more reviews after that.

The Search link goes to https://ifdb.org/search, which explains all the search filters we support.

The equivalent link on today’s control panel is the “Advanced Game Search” link, which I think is useful, but I didn’t want to write out “Advanced Game Search” in the “Games” section, where we’re low on space.

They already are today, and they will still be, but for some goofy reason they’re configured not to look like links. (I’ll fix that.)

I think the point of this thread is to make all kinds of things easily noticed, even when there’s a flood of another kind of thing.

  • So, when we’ve just created a zillion games, people should be able to passively notice recent new reviews
  • And when we’ve just posted a zillion reviews, people should be able to passively notice new games

Having “See all new games” and “See all new reviews” would make it possible to check on whether there are new games/reviews, but it won’t make it possible to notice the new stuff.

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I also like the option having cover art to the page, but restricting it to a Title + Author + Release Year/Engine (like the lil image mockup in the response).

The VNDB version works for them because all sections are formatted the same. Just one line with minimal information (Title or Review + reviewer link).
If we mix and match (larger block of information next to extremely minimal information), it won’t look as balanced.

This makes the page even busier :confused:
It looks like we’re cramming information on the right side.
I’d rather have more space for extra games and reviews listed than double the information on the page. Or a shorter webpage (less scrolling → quicker to get to polls/lists)
I’d prefer option 1 without any changes than this, tbh.

Just the game, without other information (release year/author/engine), feels a bit too flat when compared to the other sections on the page.

Here you go. I think this provides a great experience for games and reviews, and a really bad experience for polls and lists, especially on mobile. (I predict we’ll see a significant dropoff in poll voting if we roll this out.)

But, games and reviews are most of what we do, so, maybe this is an acceptable tradeoff.

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Oh, hey, since we still need a “New on IFDB” section for site announcements, I can just set it to only show site announcements, polls, competitions/compnews, and lists, and only show stuff within the last N days. (3 days?)

If there’s nothing to show in “New on IFDB”, we can hide the section.

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Some assorted thoughts:

Column width:
I’m not sure having two columns of equal width and prominence is better than having a wide one and a narrow one. I think having them too “equal” can make it harder to figure out what the focal point is.

Number of games and reviews:
Currently, on the live IFDB site, there are 6 “new items” total. So even if we change the front page to show 6 games and 6 reviews, that would already be twice as many items as we have now. The latest screenshot shows even more than that: 8 games and 8 reviews. Especially if we’re worried about people not scrolling down to see the polls, etc., I’m not sure we need 8 + 8.

Another option:
Have separate sections for games and reviews, but instead of putting them in different columns, put one above the other. Maybe 6 reviews and 4 games. (Maybe something that doesn’t need to be as prominent can go in the narrower column to the right?)

Descriptions:
I don’t think we need the descriptions of the competitions and lists.

Welcome to IFDB:
I know this is collapsible, which helps, but if we’re concerned about people scrolling down, it might be worth mentioning that this still takes up a fair amount of space when open.

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Yeah that’s nicer!
And it’s neat to see it with the cover art! For both the Games and the reviews!

Agreed. At least on desktop/wide-page view, the New Game’s column should be larger.
A 60/40 split.

Agreed. As I also mentioned a while ago, it usually doesn’t add much.
And by removing the descriptions, we can add more competitions to the list.

If we’re worried about scrollability, we could reduce it to 5 as a whole.
Or maybe we only reduce this count for just mobile view?
Like, there 6-8 listing when the IFDB is open on desktop/wide-screens, but just 4-5 when on mobile.

Some further comments:

Avatar/PFP:
I don’t think they should appear on the main page imo.
(It affects right now the News and Recommended lists).

Welcome to IFDB:
The space taken could be reduced through a shorter description of the page:

The Interactive Fiction Database is an IF game catalog and recommendation engine. IFDB is a Wiki-style community project. Tips & More Info

With potentially just the IFTF logo/Donate button on the side at the top.
And the larger description of the IFTF at the bottom of the page.


?

Game News Update:
I would remove the description so it fits with the rest of the Game section.
(and then you have space for one more listing)

New to IF/Top Reviewers
Optionally, we could move that section so it’s right below the Games/Reviews section?

Mobile view:
Could all sections be toggable like Welcome to IFDB?

I think we can continue to tweak it over time, but I think this is shippable.

The Reviews section tends to contain more content, because each entry contains a reviewer, a game title, a review title, and a star rating. Making that section narrower would look cramped, I think.

I’ve removed descriptions throughout.

Why not? They seem fine to me.

I’m not worried about the size of the “Welcome” section because it’s collapsible, and I’m a little nervous to reduce the size of the IFTF ad.

New to IF: Early next year, I’m hoping we can run a special annual IFDB Award for “Best game for beginners.” When that happens, the “New to IF” section will be quite bulky. Include "Games for Beginners" on the home page "New to IF?" section · Issue #415 · iftechfoundation/ifdb · GitHub

Top Reviewers: Similarly, someday I’m hoping to “add top reviewers within the last month,” so that section will also get bigger/taller. Hot Reviewers: Top reviewers in the last N weeks/months · Issue #776 · iftechfoundation/ifdb · GitHub

Welcome to IFDB kinda needs to be collapsible to get to the rest of the page, but I’m struggling to imagine the kind of person who wants to collapse the Games section or the Reviews section permanently. If you just want to get to the next section, you can use those handy links at the top of the page.

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Never mind, this looks like it is in the previous mockup

I’m sorry I read a much further back post so it looks like this might have already been decided.

My usual issue with IFDB that I think might confuse newer users is that there are so many panels and unless you scroll pretty far down, you might not realize there is more content. It’s very “busy” - Discourse is as well but I has some more air to breathe.I think it’s more common nowadays to have tabs across on desktop, and possibly a hamburger/drop down on mobile.

Basically the main stuff, and then all that stuff in the right sidebar could be links in a “Find” tab to it’s not taking up 1/4 of the home page.

I very much like this because it lets the home page breathe and gets rid of the distracting right column that takes up 1/4 of the space. Since less is competing for space right at the top, it encourages scrolling down to see everything.

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Yeah, I think there’s just minor formatting things that could be changed. The bulk of what was needed has been done :clap:

The lower amount of games/reviews on the page does help the page not look too overwhelming too :tada:

:confused:
That’s a fair point. How would it look with maybe a 55/45?

Otherwise, to help the eye go somewhere, increase the font size of the section headers.
Like 150% font-size compared to what it is now (and a bit of an indent too!).
Makes recognising a section much easier imo.

It’s quicker than scrolling.
Also could help hide sections some users are not interested in (like New to IF for veteran players, or the Top reviewers for users who don’t really mind/care about rankings).

They could always be moved around when the content of the section changes?
Imo, it would make more sense to have New to IF close to the top of the page rather than all the way at the bottom.

Some other minor comments:

  • Competition: I don’t think the A new competition page: is required on the line imo.
    • we could replace the text with the dates of the event?
    • also there’s a weird small indent/margin on the left of each line.
  • I would put a small border/<hr> element between the New/Top/Hot… links and the list of new games added.
    • same with the competitions linked at the top of the Competition section (or have those centered in the box)
  • A lil icon next to Add game listing/competition/poll to make the link a bit more obvious?

This was the crux of my idea. Give the things we most do easy extrication via two prominent, high-placed buttons while subtracting nothing from anything else.

I’m not sure I’ve seen any new layout ideas anyone likes yet in this thread because there’s too much of a space fight and too many content types. My idea has no space fight. I still feel games and reviews are so often in the What’s New section, we’re already leaking them on the front, but they’re mixed with each other, and other things, and that’s what’s annoying (to me anyway. Hence my desire to be able to see them separately and comprehensively via prominent UI.)

EDIT - Okay, finally got to the bottom of the thread again and I see the ‘shippable’ idea is looking workable. And nobody hates it yet :slight_smile:

-Wade

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:partying_face:
The changes are live :partying_face:

I hadn’t realised from the previous screenshots that the picture next to the reviews were based on whether the reviewer has a pfp (with the game card as a fall back).
I think it would be better switching it around: display the game card, with a fall back on the user pfp when empty. Cause the review about the game (like showcasing/discussing it).

(I still thing Reviews and other section headers should be bigger)

EDIT:


shouldn’t the top blocks be wider? (it would make that block take less space on the page)
If the max-width for both blocks are set to 100%, they’d look like this:

(also made the Tips/More Info an in-line block so it looks less weird)

4 Likes

Just catching up on this thread now, so I have a lot of thoughts. :sweat_smile: Overall I like the redesign, but it is in my nature to be nitpicky! Starting from the top:

To me, the row of links at the bottom of this screenshot initially reads like it goes with the “Welcome to IFDB” section. Could it be in that top (mostly empty) bar instead? I’d like to see it visually set apart more so that it’s clear these are the main ways to navigate the site.

…Okay, I wrote that before I’d actually clicked any of the links. I wasn’t expecting them to just scroll the page, so maybe stating that’s what they do would be nice? “Scroll to: Games Reviews” etc.

  • The formatting of this section is inconsistent and thus confusing to me. I would bold “IFDB Site News” and not “redesigned home page”, and have the indent/margin match up.

  • I don’t really see a need to duplicate listing new comp pages here. Sometimes new comp pages get added for years-old comps, so I would only put competition news in this section.

  • I’d remove the pfps from this section, because just one item having an image makes it look odd/out of place. I also wouldn’t display the “5 items” for the recommended list.

Games/Reviews/Comps/Polls:

Having each of these four sections be both “here’s the latest listings of this thing” and “here’s how to view this thing generally” is confusing IMO.


Right now it’s not clear that the games and reviews being shown are the most recent ones. I’d update the headings to “New Game Listings” and “Latest Reviews”, and then put the “New”, “Hot”, “Random” etc. links at the bottom of the Games column, after “See the full list”. And is there a reason “Browse games” isn’t included as a link here?

image
Same thing here with giving a title that makes clear this is showing the most recently added comp pages. Also then “A new competition page” wouldn’t be necessary.

  • I’d make “new polls” and “polls with recent votes” bold to set them apart as headings more, and put the “See more” links at the bottoms of their respective lists.

  • The other sections could maybe use an explanatory intro like this one has? Then perhaps titling them “Latest games”, “Latest reviews” etc. wouldn’t be necessary because the intro would say something like “IFDB is primarily a database of IF games. Here are the latest that have been added:”

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(Quoting Tabitha’s useful screenshot.) I liked the polls section better with the bullets. Sometimes the polls wrap onto the next line, and the bullets make it clearer where each one begins. It also helps to set apart the headings (“New Polls,” etc.) from the poll names.

Edit: Also, I’m not sure why some of the links (like “Create a poll” and “More Recommendations”) are in the headings of their sections, and other links are at the bottom of the sections. It might make more sense to me to have all these links at the bottom of each section.

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One quick mention here: where it says ‘IFDB site news’ which is not bolded, that’s not really a new section, it’s just a ‘ifdb site news item’, of which there could be multiple. It is unusual that it’s not indented like the other items. (I don’t know if you read it the same way as me so this message may not be helpful but I wanted to check)

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I agree! And maybe also sticky on the screen?
So you could go from one section to the next without having to scroll (especially for mobile).

I would only have them at the top if the event happened recently (ending within the past 2 weeks maybe?). Otherwise just listed in the Competition section below, yea.

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Ah okay, so there might be multiple items under the “IFDB site news” heading at times? I would still bold it because it’s a sub-heading within the “New on IFDB” section. If I was better at CSS I would quickly mock up what I mean, but basically:

New on IFDB

IFDB Site News

  • Redesigned home page
  • Other news item

Competition news: Ectocomp voting now open
New recommended list: [List name] by [list author]

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Also, I believe the competition links to IFComp, etc. are external links. Before, they were near “IF Links,” in a similar bulleted list, since they led to external websites. I’m not sure where to put them now. It’s not clear that they lead off site.

Oh yeah, I had assumed each led to an IFDB page listing all the pages for each comp! Like this: all IFComp pages.