Liking the new menu bar, still room for improvement

I do like the new menu bar, less dense, less overloaded, easier to read and navigate. My favourite part is displaying favourites in the Library dropdown. But I do have some suggestions:

• Under Play D&D, give homebrew it's own icon like My Characters, My Campaigns, and Maps VTT. There's enough space for it
• Swap Favourites and Recently opened, giving more space for the former. I feel like the average DM will be more likely to want to access their favourite books than a recently opened one so more space for more favourited books would be great
• For rules, remove the article links, shift resources over to the right side, and give the compendium options graphical assets to make them easier to access quickly
• Put articles in Community and make the Follow Us section a vertical column of icons. The horizontal spread isn't a good use of space IMO. Also match the font size of the connect column with the support column.

Otherwise I think it's a great refinement of the menu bar

Edit: Obvious RIP to my site nav muscle memory, lol

Edit 2: Mobile navigation is vastly improved. Submenus opening as lateral overlays rather than dropdowns and it taking up the whole screen width is fantastic. Much easier to get around.

I fear change! Where have my homebrew creations gone?

Quote from BugmanKneeslicer >>

I fear change! Where have my homebrew creations gone?

 Play D&D, then look under More Tools on the right. You'll see a homebrew link. This will take you to the homebrew top level menu

I create a huge number of homebrew items and monsters/NPCs, and with the current design, it's going to become really tedious and annoying.

Thank you, but aim talking specifically about things I've created. There used to be a link to 'My Homebrew Creations', I can't find that now.

Quote from BugmanKneeslicer >>

Thank you, but aim talking specifically about things I've created. There used to be a link to 'My Homebrew Creations', I can't find that now.

 It's at the top of that page where it says "View My Homebrew Creations" and "View My Homebrew Collection"

Found it, thank you. Either it's just appeared or I am blind 😁

Those two buttons have always been there, that page isn't new, it's just people haven't really had reason to use it because there's been more direct ways to access the relevant pages.

Sorry, but I prefer the old menu bar. Burying popular choices within other menus means it is going to take longer to find or get to the areas we need. Especially bad is the Library. Now looking up info in a sourcebook takes a lot longer. It was easier to find the right book by having most displayed in a list of text (titles), now i'm forced to scroll through pages of tiles or needing to type out the name of the title in the search bar (both of which take a lot longer than the old method).

I'm a big fan of process improvements - but they have to actually be improvements. All this does is add more confusion as to where things are, and adds more time to get there. Those are not improvements.

Quote from HarmAssassin >>

Sorry, but I prefer the old menu bar. Burying popular choices within other menus means it is going to take longer to find or get to the areas we need. Especially bad is the Library. Now looking up info in a sourcebook takes a lot longer. It was easier to find the right book by having most displayed in a list of text (titles), now i'm forced to scroll through pages of tiles or needing to type out the name of the title in the search bar (both of which take a lot longer than the old method).

I'm a big fan of process improvements - but they have to actually be improvements. All this does is add more confusion as to where things are, and adds more time to get there. Those are not improvements.

If the goal is to be the one-stop digital info source for use by players and DMs for use while they game, then clarity and speed are more important than increasing the amount of time one spends browsing a site.

What would be your suggestions for improving the new implementation? Other than "Change it back"? I provided some suggestions, what would you add to that list?

Quote from Davyd >>

I do like the new menu bar, less dense, less overloaded, easier to read and navigate. My favourite part is displaying favourites in the Library dropdown. But I do have some suggestions:

• Under Play D&D, give homebrew it's own icon like My Characters, My Campaigns, and Maps VTT. There's enough space for it
• Swap Favourites and Recently opened, giving more space for the former. I feel like the average DM will be more likely to want to access their favourite books than a recently opened one so more space for more favourited books would be great
• For rules, remove the article links, shift resources over to the right side, and give the compendium options graphical assets to make them easier to access quickly
• Put articles in Community and make the Follow Us section a vertical column of icons. The horizontal spread isn't a good use of space IMO. Also match the font size of the connect column with the support column.

Otherwise I think it's a great refinement of the menu bar

Edit: Obvious RIP to my site nav muscle memory, lol

I agree with all of this, and I have a couple more very minor suggestions:

• Don't show the "SUBSCRIBE" link to logged in users who are already subscribed
• Get rid of the "Hi" in front of the username in the account menu; it makes you sound like Amazon

Oh yeah, agree with hiding the subscribe button, I feel it'd be better where it used to be—at the bottom of the user dropdown menu.

And yes please, I don't want my sites/apps/hardware "talking" to me.

Something else I've noticed is that clicking on a book from the "Favorited" section of the new Library menu does not seem to trip its "last viewed date" or whatever is keeping track of that, so accessing it that way never puts it into the "recently opened" section, nor does it move to the top of the "recently viewed" sort on the My Library screen.

That seems like something that would be hard to do accidentally, given that it works correctly when you just visit the book's URL directly without interacting with anything, so I wonder if that was done intentionally for some reason?

Oh! Also. Also.

BRING BACK THE PARTY WIZARD

RIP, Party Time Wizard.

I think the changes are fine. It looks pretty clean, and I'm sure it'll just take a bit to get used to.

I agree with Davyd saying to put the Articles in the Community space instead of the Rules. 

I always appreciate work done by the Devs to make the site easier to use and more functional. Thanks for all the efforts you put in!

Quote from wagnarokkr >>

Something else I've noticed is that clicking on a book from the "Favorited" section of the new Library menu does not seem to trip its "last viewed date" or whatever is keeping track of that, so accessing it that way never puts it into the "recently opened" section, nor does it move to the top of the "recently viewed" sort on the My Library screen.

That seems like something that would be hard to do accidentally, given that it works correctly when you just visit the book's URL directly without interacting with anything, so I wonder if that was done intentionally for some reason?

 Yeah, I can't see to get the recently opened to update either, which I do feel somewhat defeats the purpose. It might be having issues, as new features are wont to do. That's why I feel showcasing favourite books would be more practical

Quote from spamandtuna >>

I just opened the Library page, clicked a book, and it was immediately added to Recents. Is that not happening for you?

I've also noticed it shows different Recents on my laptop vs. my phone. It might be per-device.

 Nope, it's displaying the PHB (5e), DMG (5e), and Van Richten's. I have looked at those books in the last week or so, but they're not my most recent books. I've intentionally gone into other books to see if it updates and they stay the same

Quote from spamandtuna >>

I just opened the Library page, clicked a book, and it was immediately added to Recents. Is that not happening for you?

I've also noticed it shows different Recents on my laptop vs. my phone. It might be per-device.

Clicking on it from the actual My Library page does it.

Clicking on it from the "Favorited" section of the new Library drop-down menu at the top of the screen does not.