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.

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.

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?

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.

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

One thing I'm noticing now, I get a little red dot next to my account name to indicate I have a notification. Going to the Notifications page does not remove the red dot, only by clicking on all of the notifications does the dot go away. I seem to remember on the old system that when I went to the notifications page, the red dot on the little Notifications "bell" would disappear. 

Navigating to a book directly by URL also does not add it to favorites.

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

 
Sorry but I absolutely hate the way that the favourites thing is there now. I don't want that kind of stuff there. It's too easy to manipulate later into a dropdown of 'here's the things we think you use most' which then corrupts into 'here's the things we want you to read'.

The new menu bar increases clicks, increases time it takes to do the things I want to do. This then falls into the category or poor design. A design 'improvement' should never increase the amount of time or effort it takes to do something that users frequently do. This menu does that and as such breaks a long established design rule for UI and UX. Simply put it highlights the lack of thought that went into this redesign.

Things that now take longer or require more from the user which ought to have been considered:

• Takes longer to get to the Forums, sure it's 'only' an extra click, but the forums get used pretty heavily, they need to be a top-level menu item.
• Takes long to get to the library items I want. And heck no I will not be using the 'favourites'. This is fisher price design and needs to be reverted.
• Reading notifications (usually posts from the forum) is now hidden away rather than the nice obvious bell. Again there's no reason to hide those notifications behind an extra click in another drop down. 
• 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. This is a fundamental thing and shows the low skill level of the team behind the site and its design. Accessibility tools aren't a choice in this day and age. Heck, we've had screen readers and scaling tools for decades at this point. The site doesn't even have correctly accessibly labelled buttons in its code. These are the errors of a high-school coder, not a team of professionals.

What I do think works

• The new rules section. I preferred the old version with the nice art, but you know what this does get people places quicker and can see the logic and sense. I'd rather not see the useless 'resources' list. Most of that won't ever get visited, but it's nice that it's there as quick option for those who do need it.
• The 'Play D&D' again, not to my tastes and I can't fathom why this section get some images where other sections don't but seems to contain all the stuff having to do with the actual playing with the game. Fair enough. 

Overall, much like the new 'Library' page, the menu redesign is pretty poorly thought through in my opinion. If accessibility was the goal it fails utterly and spectacularly from an objective standpoint. There are laws and regulations for a reason. They standardise accessibility approaches. So if any designer or dev of the site, or any fan wants to claim this redesign as 'more accessible' just know from an objective legal standpoint, you're wrong. The site as it stands risk legal action should those with access needs want to take such action (sadly true of most US-centric sites...there's so much money to be made from these cases being taken). I genuinely can't see the design going back now, which is a shame. It's going to divide opinion and I'll be honest has me personally seriously considering other solutions to a compendium and character builder for my players.