Having everything in one column may seem like it's good for a fishing sea and player use but in terms of pressing or interacting with the device. It's now longer.
If I would have tried to explain think of buttons pressed as same as scrolling. How many times do you need to scroll down to get to the bit of information you want versus when you have the tabs you only needed to click one button for each category. You wish to get to.
So the previous version was far more optimized to get to any section of the monster with one person a button. Almost no need to scroll. If you did you needed to scroll once.
And if the monster didn't even have any descriptions some need even less.
With this new change everything is just plastered there not very neatly or pleasing to the eyes.
And the bigger more complicated creatures are much longer. To scroll through.
At the end of the day the only real benefit I see here.
Reading between the lines is that this is the cut cost.
Wow, this new front page is HORRIBLE. They added an extra click to get to things and there are no images or separation for the categories. It's just text that you have to read through every time.
You know what really sucks, having posted this back in October when they leaked the new design and seeing that instead of actually considering any of the feedback from people who didn't like the new menu, just ploughing on ahead with it regardless.
I just checked the site and yeah... I would look into getting a better UX Dev or giving them an appropriate amount of time\resources, because the new site makes me cringe. There is so much wasted space and menu elements lack the contrast they should have. I'll give a thumbs up to the library allowing you now to pick out favorite books and the search actually working, but everything accessible through the main page is just bad.
I still dislike how animated and busy the website feels, especially on its home page. There's always something moving in the background in a distracting manner.
Also, yeah, this just got changed. I went around hoping there would be actual improvements... and nope. Just generally more confusing, and even less appealing than it was before.
While there's an extra click to access most things, I would mention that navigation on the mobile version does seem easier to do/less cramped. But finding things is presently awkward, since they relabeled to an extent.
Want to add my voice to the chorus; the new design that seems to have shown up today is much worse than it was just a few days ago. The one thing that's been pretty consistently good around here is the excellent styling so this new minimalist approach is pretty jarring. The new menus seem like they were designed by people who dislike us and want us to experience frustration. I accept it's probably just desktop folks being sacrificed in order to make it easier to cater to mobile users, but I thought that was what the app was for. I can kind of understand the library outgrowing the ability to show us most of what's in our libraries like it used to but it doesn't excuse only allowing 6 favorites (that we don't seem to actively pick if we have more than 6 favorites) and 3 most recently viewed options.
Doing some thinking, I think this is trying to apply mobile device conventions to their main site so they don't need to have two site layouts. On mobile, the design wastes much less space and the menus feel less cumbersome... The issue is that shouldn't be their only concern.
But as they say, Money talks, BS Walks. I just canceled my sub and won't buy anything else from them until they fix their mess.
Three click to get to my characters and books AND the top bar is just useless. Not live search, recently used links or even decorative, just dead and dull space.
Its KnowYourMeme all over again. Ignore what works for some disgustingly bland dropbar that doesn't add to anything.
No pictures for the other pages that gives you a hint before you click on it, can't just click a book when you go to library so you need to go to a seperate page unless its favorited, just overall ugly and corporate. Someone on the previous page said it best, it feels more like I'm looking at a law firm instead of a site for a fantasy game outside of the front page.
Menus are now a click, not a hover. I'm on laptop and it used to bug me when I move my mouse and my screen gets taken up by a menu I did not need, then having to scroll the cursor down to leave the menu so it goes away, to then bring the cursor back up to what I actually tried to click on. Now the menus need a click, there's no accidental menus blocking my screen.
You can favourite books and have the links appear in the library menu for fast access to 6 of them and a link to your faves list if you have more than 6.
The menus were getting rather cluttered with the addition of new books and even new pages. Now the menus are more organised and consistent with room for additions.
Stuff I don't like:
Lot of empty space. Some of it could be for future links but lot of it seems very unnecessary.
The quick links to create specific homebrew are gone. Now takes 3 clicks to get to the right one (homebrew creations > create homebrew > the thing i want to make) instead of 1. 4 clicks if counting the menu.
No more party wizard / mode. That was an always on feature for me. This one is unforgivable!
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Click ✨ HERE ✨ For My Youtube Videos featuring Guides, Tips & Tricks for using D&D Beyond. Need help with Homebrew? Check out ✨ thisFAQ/Guide thread ✨ by IamSposta.
The site is even more ADA-noncompliant than it was before.
MIGHT want to do that instead of worrying about making sure the website looks the same on PC and mobile to save hypothetical lost customers.
This change helps no one. Please instead focus on ADA & its international equivalents' compliance standards, as well as listening to users over executives & charts.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
DM, player & homebrewer(Current homebrew project is an unofficial conversion of SBURB/SGRUB from Homestuck into DND 5e)
Once made Maxwell's Silver Hammer come down upon Strahd's head to make sure he was dead.
Always study & sharpen philosophical razors. They save a lot of trouble.
Menus are now a click, not a hover. I'm on laptop and it used to bug me when I move my mouse and my screen gets taken up by a menu I did not need, then having to scroll the cursor down to leave the menu so it goes away, to then bring the cursor back up to what I actually tried to click on. Now the menus need a click, there's no accidental menus blocking my screen.
You can favourite books and have the links appear in the library menu for fast access to 6 of them and a link to your faves list if you have more than 6.
The menus were getting rather cluttered with the addition of new books and even new pages. Now the menus are more organised and consistent with room for additions.
Stuff I don't like:
Lot of empty space. Some of it could be for future links but lot of it seems very unnecessary.
The quick links to create specific homebrew are gone. Now takes 3 clicks to get to the right one (homebrew creations > create homebrew > the thing i want to make) instead of 1. 4 clicks if counting the menu.
No more party wizard / mode. That was an always on feature for me. This one is unforgivable!
I like the options with the library too, HOWEVER I also wish that there was an option to list just names instead of book images and include more than 6.
Recently viewed takes up too much screen space on PC.
Menus are now a click, not a hover. I'm on laptop and it used to bug me when I move my mouse and my screen gets taken up by a menu I did not need, then having to scroll the cursor down to leave the menu so it goes away, to then bring the cursor back up to what I actually tried to click on. Now the menus need a click, there's no accidental menus blocking my screen.
You can favourite books and have the links appear in the library menu for fast access to 6 of them and a link to your faves list if you have more than 6.
The menus were getting rather cluttered with the addition of new books and even new pages. Now the menus are more organised and consistent with room for additions.
Stuff I don't like:
Lot of empty space. Some of it could be for future links but lot of it seems very unnecessary.
The quick links to create specific homebrew are gone. Now takes 3 clicks to get to the right one (homebrew creations > create homebrew > the thing i want to make) instead of 1. 4 clicks if counting the menu.
No more party wizard / mode. That was an always on feature for me. This one is unforgivable!
I also really love the favorites in the drop down, and the recently opened too. Both were helpful as I bounced back and forth between texts while DMing in my PBP today. Also, the Party Wizard cannot be defeated. He will rise again!
The site is even more ADA-noncompliant than it was before.
MIGHT want to do that instead of worrying about making sure the website looks the same on PC and mobile to save hypothetical lost customers.
This change helps no one. Please instead focus on ADA & its international equivalents' compliance standards, as well as listening to users over executives & charts.
Might be worth pointing out what is NON compliant since frankly a quick search for me shows that they have color contrast in the bar, are not using color alone to convey things, have text along side images, I haven't clicked on videos so I am not sure if they have captions but I'm sure they do.
Critical feedback can only be helpful if you actually yell someone what is wrong, not just say "that's wrong."
"The site is still not compliant with accessibility laws in the USA, UK or EU. Screen readers and other such accessibility tools still cannot parse the site correctly".
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
DM, player & homebrewer(Current homebrew project is an unofficial conversion of SBURB/SGRUB from Homestuck into DND 5e)
Once made Maxwell's Silver Hammer come down upon Strahd's head to make sure he was dead.
Always study & sharpen philosophical razors. They save a lot of trouble.
Might be worth pointing out what is NON compliant since frankly a quick search for me shows that they have color contrast in the bar, are not using color alone to convey things, have text along side images, I haven't clicked on videos so I am not sure if they have captions but I'm sure they do.
Critical feedback can only be helpful if you actually yell someone what is wrong, not just say "that's wrong."
Honestly there is so much that it could be a book length issue. Accessibility is a broad remit so here's some basics:
- Screen Readers, does the site work with them? In short no. - Does the site respond well with different desktop, display, or browser scaling, again the answer is no. In fact beyond 150% browser scaling the menu disappears. - Are buttons and images labelled correctly with alt-text and similar? Again no. - Do all the fonts (headings are usually the big problem) respond to browser based alterations? Again no.
Basically readability of this website for accessibility tools fails across 250 of 300 standards. Titles fail entirely. Clickable elements are only about 50% compliant. Forms and hidden elements like the menus fail across the board.
Here's the thing there are good accessibility checkers out there. Of something like 500 standards, this site fails the majority of them. Given they've had this design in the works at least since before October they messed up here. They've had six months minimum to work on that and failed to do so. Granted making a site this complex complaint will always be difficult and I can't imagine WotC or Hasbro are keen to do that.
The reason why it's so important to get ahead of the crowd of fanboys who'll scream that this is more accessible for people is to say 'hey, the site isn't accessible and here's why we know'. People will say how they like the site for it looking easier to use, except it isn't. Which means most viewpoints beyond that of ease of use of accessibility all come down to personal preference. I like to offer feedback based on actual provable things. This is one of those areas. I worked as a web designer and developer for over 12 years. I know how big a task they've got, but if I as an under-resourced self employed person could still turn out complaint websites then there's no excuse for professionals working for a company so large in my opinion.
I never post, but this UX redesign has prompted a +1 from me. If the site is a reflection of brand identity, this is awful. A lot of text in empty space. Functionality of adjusting the Library is nice, but the tiles in the rest of the menu were helpful by visual context. I recognize the compendium is in order of the PHB chapters, but doesn't help my eyes any looking for specific links.
- Does the site respond well with different desktop, display, or browser scaling, again the answer is no. In fact beyond 150% browser scaling the menu disappears.
To make matters worse, the scaling losing the menu appears to be dependent on screen resolution. On my main computer, I normally browse this site with it set at 170% zoom and the menu now vanishes at 240% for on this machine. But on my old 720p laptop, the menu is gone at 120% zoom.
One thing that makes the readability worse for me is that the new menu appears to have 9 different text styles in use across its various tabs, there's a major need for some uniformity.
I was fine with the change. Search actually worked.
Having everything in one column may seem like it's good for a fishing sea and player use but in terms of pressing or interacting with the device. It's now longer.
If I would have tried to explain think of buttons pressed as same as scrolling. How many times do you need to scroll down to get to the bit of information you want versus when you have the tabs you only needed to click one button for each category. You wish to get to.
So the previous version was far more optimized to get to any section of the monster with one person a button. Almost no need to scroll. If you did you needed to scroll once.
And if the monster didn't even have any descriptions some need even less.
With this new change everything is just plastered there not very neatly or pleasing to the eyes.
And the bigger more complicated creatures are much longer. To scroll through.
At the end of the day the only real benefit I see here.
Reading between the lines is that this is the cut cost.
Pov they didnt know what they had lol, this new one is worse in my opinion lol
Wow, this new front page is HORRIBLE. They added an extra click to get to things and there are no images or separation for the categories. It's just text that you have to read through every time.
You know what really sucks, having posted this back in October when they leaked the new design and seeing that instead of actually considering any of the feedback from people who didn't like the new menu, just ploughing on ahead with it regardless.
DM session planning template - My version of maps for 'Lost Mine of Phandelver' - Send your party to The Circus - Other DM Resources - Maps, Tokens, Quests - 'Better' Player Character Injury Tables?
Actor, Writer, Director & Teacher by day - GM/DM in my off hours.
I just checked the site and yeah... I would look into getting a better UX Dev or giving them an appropriate amount of time\resources, because the new site makes me cringe. There is so much wasted space and menu elements lack the contrast they should have. I'll give a thumbs up to the library allowing you now to pick out favorite books and the search actually working, but everything accessible through the main page is just bad.
I still dislike how animated and busy the website feels, especially on its home page. There's always something moving in the background in a distracting manner.
Also, yeah, this just got changed. I went around hoping there would be actual improvements... and nope. Just generally more confusing, and even less appealing than it was before.
While there's an extra click to access most things, I would mention that navigation on the mobile version does seem easier to do/less cramped. But finding things is presently awkward, since they relabeled to an extent.
Still not happy with this.
Want to add my voice to the chorus; the new design that seems to have shown up today is much worse than it was just a few days ago. The one thing that's been pretty consistently good around here is the excellent styling so this new minimalist approach is pretty jarring. The new menus seem like they were designed by people who dislike us and want us to experience frustration. I accept it's probably just desktop folks being sacrificed in order to make it easier to cater to mobile users, but I thought that was what the app was for. I can kind of understand the library outgrowing the ability to show us most of what's in our libraries like it used to but it doesn't excuse only allowing 6 favorites (that we don't seem to actively pick if we have more than 6 favorites) and 3 most recently viewed options.
Doing some thinking, I think this is trying to apply mobile device conventions to their main site so they don't need to have two site layouts. On mobile, the design wastes much less space and the menus feel less cumbersome... The issue is that shouldn't be their only concern.
But as they say, Money talks, BS Walks. I just canceled my sub and won't buy anything else from them until they fix their mess.
Three click to get to my characters and books AND the top bar is just useless.
Not live search, recently used links or even decorative, just dead and dull space.
Its KnowYourMeme all over again. Ignore what works for some disgustingly bland dropbar that doesn't add to anything.
No pictures for the other pages that gives you a hint before you click on it, can't just click a book when you go to library so you need to go to a seperate page unless its favorited, just overall ugly and corporate. Someone on the previous page said it best, it feels more like I'm looking at a law firm instead of a site for a fantasy game outside of the front page.
Stuff I like:
Menus are now a click, not a hover. I'm on laptop and it used to bug me when I move my mouse and my screen gets taken up by a menu I did not need, then having to scroll the cursor down to leave the menu so it goes away, to then bring the cursor back up to what I actually tried to click on. Now the menus need a click, there's no accidental menus blocking my screen.
You can favourite books and have the links appear in the library menu for fast access to 6 of them and a link to your faves list if you have more than 6.
The menus were getting rather cluttered with the addition of new books and even new pages. Now the menus are more organised and consistent with room for additions.
Stuff I don't like:
Lot of empty space. Some of it could be for future links but lot of it seems very unnecessary.
The quick links to create specific homebrew are gone. Now takes 3 clicks to get to the right one (homebrew creations > create homebrew > the thing i want to make) instead of 1. 4 clicks if counting the menu.
No more party wizard / mode. That was an always on feature for me.
This one is unforgivable!
Click ✨ HERE ✨ For My Youtube Videos featuring Guides, Tips & Tricks for using D&D Beyond.
Need help with Homebrew? Check out ✨ this FAQ/Guide thread ✨ by IamSposta.
The site is even more ADA-noncompliant than it was before.
MIGHT want to do that instead of worrying about making sure the website looks the same on PC and mobile to save hypothetical lost customers.
This change helps no one. Please instead focus on ADA & its international equivalents' compliance standards, as well as listening to users over executives & charts.
DM, player & homebrewer(Current homebrew project is an unofficial conversion of SBURB/SGRUB from Homestuck into DND 5e)
Once made Maxwell's Silver Hammer come down upon Strahd's head to make sure he was dead.
Always study & sharpen philosophical razors. They save a lot of trouble.
I like the options with the library too, HOWEVER I also wish that there was an option to list just names instead of book images and include more than 6.
Recently viewed takes up too much screen space on PC.
I also really love the favorites in the drop down, and the recently opened too. Both were helpful as I bounced back and forth between texts while DMing in my PBP today. Also, the Party Wizard cannot be defeated. He will rise again!
DM mostly, Player occasionally | Session 0 form | He/Him/They/Them
EXTENDED SIGNATURE!
Doctor/Published Scholar/Science and Healthcare Advocate/Critter/Trekkie/Gandalf with a Glock
Try DDB free: Free Rules (2024), premade PCs, adventures, one shots, encounters, SC, homebrew, more
Answers: physical books, purchases, and subbing.
Check out my life-changing
Might be worth pointing out what is NON compliant since frankly a quick search for me shows that they have color contrast in the bar, are not using color alone to convey things, have text along side images, I haven't clicked on videos so I am not sure if they have captions but I'm sure they do.
Critical feedback can only be helpful if you actually yell someone what is wrong, not just say "that's wrong."
Quoting Martintheactor:
"The site is still not compliant with accessibility laws in the USA, UK or EU. Screen readers and other such accessibility tools still cannot parse the site correctly".
DM, player & homebrewer(Current homebrew project is an unofficial conversion of SBURB/SGRUB from Homestuck into DND 5e)
Once made Maxwell's Silver Hammer come down upon Strahd's head to make sure he was dead.
Always study & sharpen philosophical razors. They save a lot of trouble.
Honestly there is so much that it could be a book length issue. Accessibility is a broad remit so here's some basics:
- Screen Readers, does the site work with them? In short no.
- Does the site respond well with different desktop, display, or browser scaling, again the answer is no. In fact beyond 150% browser scaling the menu disappears.
- Are buttons and images labelled correctly with alt-text and similar? Again no.
- Do all the fonts (headings are usually the big problem) respond to browser based alterations? Again no.
Basically readability of this website for accessibility tools fails across 250 of 300 standards. Titles fail entirely. Clickable elements are only about 50% compliant. Forms and hidden elements like the menus fail across the board.
Here's the thing there are good accessibility checkers out there. Of something like 500 standards, this site fails the majority of them. Given they've had this design in the works at least since before October they messed up here. They've had six months minimum to work on that and failed to do so. Granted making a site this complex complaint will always be difficult and I can't imagine WotC or Hasbro are keen to do that.
The reason why it's so important to get ahead of the crowd of fanboys who'll scream that this is more accessible for people is to say 'hey, the site isn't accessible and here's why we know'. People will say how they like the site for it looking easier to use, except it isn't. Which means most viewpoints beyond that of ease of use of accessibility all come down to personal preference. I like to offer feedback based on actual provable things. This is one of those areas. I worked as a web designer and developer for over 12 years. I know how big a task they've got, but if I as an under-resourced self employed person could still turn out complaint websites then there's no excuse for professionals working for a company so large in my opinion.
DM session planning template - My version of maps for 'Lost Mine of Phandelver' - Send your party to The Circus - Other DM Resources - Maps, Tokens, Quests - 'Better' Player Character Injury Tables?
Actor, Writer, Director & Teacher by day - GM/DM in my off hours.
I never post, but this UX redesign has prompted a +1 from me. If the site is a reflection of brand identity, this is awful. A lot of text in empty space. Functionality of adjusting the Library is nice, but the tiles in the rest of the menu were helpful by visual context. I recognize the compendium is in order of the PHB chapters, but doesn't help my eyes any looking for specific links.
To make matters worse, the scaling losing the menu appears to be dependent on screen resolution. On my main computer, I normally browse this site with it set at 170% zoom and the menu now vanishes at 240% for on this machine. But on my old 720p laptop, the menu is gone at 120% zoom.
One thing that makes the readability worse for me is that the new menu appears to have 9 different text styles in use across its various tabs, there's a major need for some uniformity.