all while being represented in [...] web-2.0 style.
I greatly dislike almost everything about this page compared to the old one:
- Very little navigation. No immediate data like screenshots or other things; just text.
- Serif fonts. I hate serif fonts. Hate. Hate hate hate.
- Publishers have more data on the front page than submitters; days-since-published instead of days-since-submitted
- Days-since instead of concrete dates
- No immediate sensible sorting; new users don't care about when, they care about what
- Movie links are all over the place instead of organized into one area
- Category data is missing
- Trivial information like movie number is made to be part of the title instead of something useful like the name
- No rating data at all on the movie page, along with a bunch of other missing data
- --verbose
- Very cluttered, hard to follow
As an upside, submission pages are a bit better, but would be improved further still if they were like the following:
* Movie data
* Rerecords, etc.
* Status
!!! Author's comments
[text]
As it is now, they're disjointed. Information is hiding to the left and worded weird ("Click to view publication", for one).
In short: I hate almost everything about it, and I strongly recommend that if anything like this ever reaches the front page, there be an immediate and easy-to-use option that returns it to how it is now.
Note: I like the pages feature, too. I think it should be used on the main site, but with an option to select "All" as well (but by default, page 1).
I'll comment on just this one part, since it has a question, but I have not ignored the other things written.
stickyman05 wrote:
"Articles" should be written as "FAQS", as it was before. this is more descriptive of the true purpose, IMO, of that page.
Actually, why is there both a FAQ button (blue on blue) and an Article button?
The TASvideos website has two major kinds of content:
― Movies
― Articles
And other minor kinds:
― Online tools (such as password generators)
― Downloads (such as emulator links)
Movies does not need explanation.
Articles is not just for FAQ. It includes things like Super Mario Bros tricks, Umihara Kawase maps, guidelines, etc.
The default Articles link just happened to take to the FAQ because I couldn't think of a better target for that link.
There wouldn't really be need for that link, but there is a need for an articles section, because it is one of the site's major types of content. At the birth of this site, the guidelines and cheat faq text sections were an order of magnitude larger than the movie section was :)
Articles is not just for FAQ. It includes things like Super Mario Bros tricks, Umihara Kawase maps, guidelines, etc.
The default Articles link just happened to take to the FAQ because I couldn't think of a better target for that link.
There wouldn't really be need for that link, but there is a need for an articles section, because it is one of the site's major types of content.
Then perhaps it should point to Common Tricks, which should (obviously) have a link to the more specific ones as well.
Then perhaps it should point to Common Tricks, which should (obviously) have a link to the more specific ones as well.
Perhaps. However, it is a minor detail compared to all of the large scale changes that will be required.
stickyman05 wrote:
Actually, one of the greatest features of your site, IMO, is how all the movies are directly on one page. No hunting is necessary, since you only have to scroll down. I do realize that some dial ups could have problems, but you give some you take some.
It's not just dial ups. The server literally takes 5 to 20 seconds to generate the page. And my upload bandwidth is small, too. Even if you've got a 100 MB line, it'll still load slowly.
The thing is, I really want each movie to have an article-like page that allows posting long article texts. The current format limits movie descriptions to some 15 lines, because longer than that makes the movie listing pages too long. For some movies, such as Super Demo World, the submission texts are something like 32 kilobytes long, and it's sad to not be able to present all of that in the actual publication. Sure, there's the author's comments link, but as practice has shown, nobody updates the author's comments after the movie is published (and since it's a submission message, it's not really supposed to, either). Still, explanations for the tricks performed in each stage could be revised months to come.
I don't know about everyone but I really enjoyed the new site :) I couldnt quite make out the directions for the keyboard shortcuts but would definitely appreciate shortcuts incorporated into the site.
I noticed the player was some version of the youtube player and assumed you hosted the audio there... digging around a bit though I couldnt find the corresponding youtube vid and was confused :)
Overall a great effort! I tend to load pages in background tabs and it took me a while to find the source of that speaking :)
This signature is much better than its previous version.
I noticed the player was some version of the youtube player and assumed you hosted the audio there... digging around a bit though I couldnt find the corresponding youtube vid and was confused :)
The playing software was indeed ripped from Youtube, but I hacked it to use my servers instead of Youtube servers. TASvideos generated automatically the feeds and provided them itself.
There are probably better solutions, but that was the only one at that moment I knew I could get working.
It's not just dial ups. The server literally takes 5 to 20 seconds to generate the page. And my upload bandwidth is small, too. Even if you've got a 100 MB line, it'll still load slowly.
The thing is, I really want each movie to have an article-like page that allows posting long article texts. The current format limits movie descriptions to some 15 lines, because longer than that makes the movie listing pages too long. For some movies, such as Super Demo World, the submission texts are something like 32 kilobytes long, and it's sad to not be able to present all of that in the actual publication. Sure, there's the author's comments link, but as practice has shown, nobody updates the author's comments after the movie is published (and since it's a submission message, it's not really supposed to, either). Still, explanations for the tricks performed in each stage could be revised months to come.
So are you saying that the movie description would be replaced by the author's submission notes? EX:
Nes' The Addams Family: "This extremely difficult game is about Gomez Addams, who must rescue his wife..."
Would be replaced completely with Ventuz's author comments?
adelikat wrote:
I very much agree with this post.
Bobmario511 wrote:
Forget party hats, Christmas tree hats all the way man.
Joined: 3/9/2004
Posts: 4588
Location: In his lab studying psychology to find new ways to torture TASers and forumers
Tub wrote:
IMHO the encoders/publishers should be listed somewhere, but less prominently than the runner.
This is a good point.
It's nice to list encoder/publishers somewhere, as it makes the encoders/publishers feel good that they get recognition for their work. But displaying it as a key point I think is a bad idea.
In general the idea of displaying an encoder of a video is closely tied to the illegal movie ripping community. Each group sticks their name into the file so they get recognition, so they can become better equipped to pirate upcoming movies, and the users also know who ripped it as some groups do better encodes than others, and they may go with certain groups because they like the quality.
This view is completely different from what we do. Our videos aren't made illegally (unless of course you don't own the game you're dealing with, or some encoder pirated some encoding software, despite the fact it can be done excellently with all free tools). Thus displaying the encoder in itself can carry a bad connotation that there's something illegal about it. Also, here we stress very high quality encodes, and we all use x264 as our encoder these days, we should never have any low quality videos up, unless they're very hard to compress (I'm looking at you X2). Therefor specifying who encoded it so prominently says that certain encoders do a bad job, so you know who to avoid, which simply isn't the case with us.
Lastly, equating the encoder with the person who did the real tedious work of making the run is insulting. 95% of the time, 95% of the encoding process is automated, and maybe requires 10-15 minutes of actual work, as opposed to just leaving your machine to do its job.
So I'm all for listing the encoder, but not on the main page, and on the particular movie's page, it should be off to the side where it's not a prominent point.
Warning: Opinions expressed by Nach or others in this post do not necessarily reflect the views, opinions, or position of Nach himself on the matter(s) being discussed therein.
Joined: 11/18/2006
Posts: 2426
Location: Back where I belong
Bisqwit wrote:
stickyman05 wrote:
So are you saying that the movie description would be replaced by the author's submission notes?
No. I'm saying it should be possible for a movie page to have a whole pageful of information about the movie instead of a small slot in a table.
Would this "whole pageful" of information be generated new for each movie? If you're not thinking about using the author's submission notes, it seems so, as many of the current publications have very little in terms of substance for their movie text.
If all this new information has to be user generated, I don't see it being feasible. When movies still don't have screenshots three months after they've been published, I imagine that a lot of very popular games would get great discriptions. After that, I don't think too many people will want to spend a lot of time researching the not so popular games, and then the project would die quickly, leading to 10% of the publications looking great and the other 90% having to fall back on the old system.
I didnt understand that post*, Bisqwit, but responding to bossman's idea.. the only way, IMO, that the stubs would be more feasible is if anyone could edit the movie descriptions (just like wikipedia). That way more people could offer insight on games they loved as a kid that some people might not know well enough to make a great looking stub-text. However, I still think that we would run into the same problems that bossman pointed out, Mario would have an orgy of a good time with it's stub, while most other games would get a good effort, but nothing to write home about.
* Don't bother trying to explain that link time stuff... it is all above my head ;)
adelikat wrote:
I very much agree with this post.
Bobmario511 wrote:
Forget party hats, Christmas tree hats all the way man.
Personally, I kinda like the style. It does, however, as previously stated, need the screenshots brought back. Sorting would be nice, as Xkeeper said...
...and I agree with the proposed removal of the sidebar. On a sidenote, I bookmarked it. Yes, really.
I greatly dislike almost everything about this page compared to the old one:
- Very little navigation. No immediate data like screenshots or other things; just text.
- Serif fonts. I hate serif fonts. Hate. Hate hate hate.
- Publishers have more data on the front page than submitters; days-since-published instead of days-since-submitted
- Days-since instead of concrete dates
- No immediate sensible sorting; new users don't care about when, they care about what
- Movie links are all over the place instead of organized into one area
- Category data is missing
- Trivial information like movie number is made to be part of the title instead of something useful like the name
- No rating data at all on the movie page, along with a bunch of other missing data
- --verbose
- Very cluttered, hard to follow
As an upside, submission pages are a bit better, but would be improved further still if they were like the following:
