UI improvements (in Changelog)

The sidebar was getting cluttered.

Most of that stuff has been moved to the new Home. (The old Home is now Equip.)

That's pretty much all you need to know, except if Home (the new one) looks super ugly in the Stats section, refresh just that frame to get your browser to read the new css settings.

Any change of getting the forums link back on the sidebar?
I'm a little addicted to clicking on it in between fights...

just click Home and get chatmail goodness too

I am sorry to criticize but I thought it was great before. Now the sidebar is nearly empty and I don't know how to access anything. I think that it didn't need changing so why fix it.

Will the terrible changes ever stop?

What is the point of the left frame any more if it is going to become "uncluttered" (i.e apparently no longer very functional?)

Just bring back a straight, single page with the fight list having focus.

I'm probably chicken-littling again, but with all due respect, Jonathan, what do you mean the left frame was getting cluttered? When is the last time you used it for two years straight as a fighter/forger/auctioneer/poster? The word I would use for it since January 1, 2005 would be "excellent". Now the word I would use would be "meh".

At some point, it seems like change for the sake of change. Did one, single person complain about the sidebar becoming too busy? Just curious. I'll try to adjust tomorrow.

It's not that bad. It actually helps me out quite a bit since my monitor is a 32" flat screen TV and some days I can't always navigate around on CB all that well :)

On the equip page, did you mean for the items to show below the minions attributes?

Sut: think Opera Mini...

I like it. less junk that I never click on removed.

> On the equip page, did you mean for the items to show below the minions attributes?

I'm not sure what you mean. Equip layout hasn't changed meaningfully.

add a way to select a forum fast like it was before, not i have to navigate thru crap i could care less for, the old style was simple and 100% effective, forums> FS...FTW! now its home>all forums>fs FTL!!!!

the equipment is showing up below the minion attributes instead of being on the right hand side

> What is the point of the left frame any more

So, the left frame had two purposes.

One is the fight console and Quick Links.

The other is a summary of useful information.

Like Apple's dock though it suffered from trying to do too much. Add the Goals section and many new users couldn't see everything.

So the "summary of useful information" is now in Home, where with a whole page to itself it can do a much better job.

maybe add the BA count to the left bar, so that way we can jump right into fighting or forging without having to go to the equip page. and i understand the changes, not bad but a quick way to get our fix is always good :)

equipment must be an unintended side effect of a css change.

To be honest, I haven't been playing CB for too long, just a couple of weeks, but I have to say, I kind of liked it better before... I suppose the changed layout will grow on me eventually... I hope.

Anyway, how about a customisable sidebar instead, and ability to change our "default" page too ?
Just let us add/remove whatever it is we want to the sidebar.
Or would that be too much work coding ?

it's awkward, but it makes sense. cleaning up the new "home" section would be nice. Also, a quick-link for forum would still be appreciated in the quick link section, even though the recent forums are posted in home.

Or, an even better improvement, return the forums thing to where it was as well as in the home page, but have it load as a "closed" toolbar, unlike opponents and quicklinks, which load as "open" toolbars.

to clean up the excessive blank space on the left side tool-bar, it would make sense to make the quick-links one coulomb of (9?) rows instead of 2 coulombs of 5 rows. This would allow for more room in the actual play screen.

Or, instead of having it on the left side, thin it out and put it on top, with drop-down menu's for quick-links/forums/etc and the same thin "opponent" and outlay.


just some brain food. what do you think?

fixed the Equip css bug

Err, sorry, could not find any way to edit a post, so I had to make a new one.

I think I can put a finger on what exactly makes me "not like" the new layout: the fact you don't see BA amount in the "home" page, and you have to make an extra click for that.

I guess what I'm saying is, I'd love a "compressed" view of character/account status on the default/home page... namely BA/score/PR/MPR/cash/NW, somewhere on the top.
Especially BA.
Then it would be just perfect.

i would recommend swapping the location of the first and second columns in the left sidebar under quick links. i think most of us use the current leftmost column links quite a bit more often than the right. so basically place the more frequently used ones closer to the center of the page and our usual mouse location. i hope this makes sense.

Hmm, would it be too hard to code a "Set this page as Home" function that say, supporters or all players could have?

That way, we could set our homepage to the equip page (what it was before), to the forums (if the community is what is most important to us and the game is a lesser attraction now), to the forge (for those forgers out there), to Auctions (and so forth)

I'm on IE7, and it's pretty awkward to hit "train" or "equip" if you want to (especially on the far left)... I end up clicking the other one, or accidentally "home" instead, and so on.

I couldn't care less about the "home" page, it's "train" I use most actively, and "equip" as second most used (check leftover BA and other numbers).
And those two links are in the weirdest possible place, and all cluttered.

I think the stats part could be divided into 2 or 3 rows instead of it being 1 now.

row | row | row (is what i mean just in case i mix up rows and columns again)

reason is that your full page now indeed is a full, or at least a long page...

Umm, BA on the Home page and not on the Equip page, makes no sense. Change the Home link back to your minion view, change Equip to be called Overview or something like that, and switch the left and right columns under Quick Links so that Home, Train, Overview, Get More BA are on the right.

BA needs to go on the left tab imo then.

I was going to recommend what Shade said about the rows suggestion.

Would be easier if the stats row shared with the clan and winning streaks. Would Look better.

It's certainly awkward right now, but I suppose I will get used to it.

Anywho, now I have just about 2/3 of a blank sidebar. Was this with the intention of adding some new links/features, or shall we continue to have this 'void'?

When I click "My PR History" on the home page I don't get my character's history, it has given me two random characters' so far.

if you are seeing the stats all in one column that means you need to reload the right frame to get the new css.

I miss 'Active threads.' Can this be added as a quick link?

'Active Threads' is the (more) on the Home page.

"When I click "My PR History" on the home page I don't get my character's history, it has given me two random characters' so far."

Does this for me as well, seems to display the PR history of whatever character is on the top of my fight list

Merging ammo throws you back to the Home page. It should be changed so that it keeps you on the equip page.

I'm not sure I like this whole new UI. Maybe it will grow on me... maybe...

I don't see the point of the new default 'home' page.

It was just all the useless cluttering stuff I never really clicked on anyway.

Can we have a way (as suggested above) to choose our default 'home' page, so I can get it back on my minions?

I suppose the only use I'll have for the new home page is to click on it to check my CM.

I also agree that if this stays, BA amounts should be moved to the fight section of the left hand pane, maybe above the target box.

And maybe rename 'Opponents' to 'fight', and have an opponents heading above the target box?

BUG:
When merging ammo, after you merge it, instead of going back to the "Equip" page, it goes to "Home" page where the news is and stuff.

i dunno if someone has mentioned it yet or not, 36 posts is a lot to read. maybe in the forums where it shows who created it, "by AdminJonathan on 12:10 AM EST", maybe you could indent that a little bit so its not directly underneath the post's subject line. i think it would be easier to scroll through the list of subject lines that way when im showing all or more of them.

oh, maybe this is where jon gets rid of BA all together =)

I'd love to have an "Active threads" button in a place where I don't have to dig for it again, but otherwise I don't mind the change.

Yes, an Active Threads link would be much appreciated.

nope i don't like it. First of all the Home button isn't easy to find secondly equip button? Where?
Third I don't want to see active threads in the right screen Where can i find everything else?

Ouch. This may be the worst change I've seen in CB. The new homepage and the new Quick Links sidebar section are both painfully ugly and unorganized.

The forums are the best part of CB, and now we need to click several times to find the forum we want.

At the very least, you must restore the forum menu to the sidebar.

After posting in a thread, you can return to that particular forum, but to get to another you have to either go to your home page, and hope it's listed under active threads (or then click on show all), or click on the discussion forums link at the top.

Having the direct access to a forum from the drop down list in the left pane back would be really appreciated.

I think it look pretty good. Even if I did like the side bar with more sections. I guess I just need to get used to it.

Suggestions:

(1) Move "Top Clans", "Winning Steaks", and other similar stats to a second column so it all fits into one screen without having to scroll.

(2) Forum definitely need to be available on the sidebar. That is the most visited section in CB, so it makes total sense to include it in there. New users also need to be able to find forums fast, and the links they see the most are the ones in the sidebar.

Suggestion (1) applies to the new Home page.

(3) I liked it better when the equipped equipment was displayed in a second column. It is a lot better when viewing all minions. The current way takes way too much space.

and somehow fighting is bugged, for instance I can attack someone and get a draw in 3 rounds, but if he attacks me (and I thought the defender has a slight advantage) he wins in 2 rounds. What is up with that?

So basically what's happened here is everyone's Home page has been hijacked to be a community page. The only different information that's included is our BA...! Why would that make any sense? Everyone's home page should be different. Otherwise it's not a home page. It's a community page. I'm not sure how much clearer that can be made...

I'm pretty sure all the huge flaws have been covered previously-- Active Threads, BA in the wrong place, etc.

The real question to be asked is why wasn't the random stats window just removed to clean up the alleged clutter? I'm 99% certain no one would have had a problem with that... Heck, I didn't even think it was cluttered in the first place...

Oh, and if I complain that my screen doesn't have enough on it will you just Ctrl+Z this change?

(4) When I change characters, I would like to see the equipment page for that character automatically load like before. Reloading the Home page is not very useful.

How bout change 'more' to 'More' or 'Active Threads', and 'all forums' to 'All Forums', lol.

I'm sure there's some plan behind all this. Maybe it's only half finished.
At the moment though, as far as UI design concerns go, we've gone from minimal # of clicks for many things to more or many more clicks.
I don't see the advantage.
I guess in time we'll get used to it and say, "Remember back in the bad old days that you would click through to the forums and see what was new and your BA still hadn't had time to refresh!"

As some people have already mentioned, forum links should go back on the left side bar. They are much more useful there and there was no problem with the way they were already implemented.

Also, the new Active Threads page needs work. It is very hard to quickly scan through the list of threads.

There needs to be more space between each thread listed, and the "By Whomever at Whenever" needs to be indented so that you can quickly distinguish between the thread title and the extra information.

For example:
RoBF change...
by JetBlack on Dec 13
Changelog UI improvements
by AdminJonathan on 12:10 AM EST
FS/WTB Fire Sale!
by [Quoth]The Raven on 4:16 AM EST

vs.

RoBF change...
      by JetBlack on Dec 13

Changelog UI improvements
      by AdminJonathan on 12:10 AM EST

FS/WTB Fire Sale!
      by [Quoth]The Raven on 4:16 AM EST

BUG:
Clicking on the "My PR History" link on the new home page gives me a graph of a different character's score and MPR each time... that aren't even my characters. I have to check the "Add my character" check box and uncheck the other character's name in order to get my graph.

> Merging ammo throws you back to the Home page. It should be changed so that it keeps you on the equip page.

Done

> When I change characters, I would like to see the equipment page for that character automatically load like before.

Done

> Clicking on the "My PR History" link on the new home page gives me a graph of a different character's score and MPR each time

Fixed

I can't take it. I need my active threads button on my sidebar, I use it literally hundreds of time a day. Ask hatch how he feels... No more posting at the same time as him :(

Other than that, the changes are pretty good. Can we please get the active threads button? :) kthnxbye.

"> When I change characters, I would like to see the equipment page for that character automatically load like before.

Done "

Not working.

fixed better

(and to forestall misunderstandings -- it's supposed to reload the current page, if the current page is sensitive to which character you select. otherwise it is not supposed to autoload anything.)

"fixed better "

Ok. Working well now. Thanks for also putting the equipped stuff in another column. Much better now.

the reply button doesnt work if you click on it when replying to CMs, but it works if you hit "Enter" when done typing, but it sends you to the user page instead of saying on the Home page as "Reply Sent"

Talion, now my equipped items are all in the same column as my trained spells... They WERE in another column, but not now.

{cb1}smallpau1, refresh your side bar.

Woohoo! Home page looks much better now.

If the control+Z is out of the question can we at least get our BA on the Equip page? That way I won't ever have to use the new Home page.

Aye, I don't like having to flip back and forth between Home and Equip to see my BA and my untrained EXP/stats/character/old homepage.

I'm trying to deal, I'm really trying, but I definitely want my Active Threads Quick Link back in the side bar! Please?

Fexy's script should be able to be used to bookmark active threads...
That's what I'm planning on doing to resurrect my beloved forums link

Can we get a tab or something to easily move to the forums? (If there is one, then I havent noticed-- just the link to the See All Forums Page

Also, maybe rename the Equip page to Minions page. This could help noobs find their team (equip might be too vague. IMO it should be like CLICK HERE TO SEE YOUR TEAM, or super obvious so new players can assimilate easier. =) I like the change though.

added Forums quick link

Thank you.

Well, there goes most of my incentive to complain... Why won't you give me something worth complaining about! I wanna whine! hmmph! :P

"Well, there goes most of my incentive to complain..."

Except no BA on Equip.

Can the readability/usability of the active threads page be improved to something as good as the old version was?

> Can the readability/usability of the active threads page be improved to something as good as the old version was?

I took my best shot. I'm happy to see alternatives.

Can we get our BA back on our battle page?

It is essential for those of us who play CB from time to time on our cell phones.

As drudge and Kultur suggested just indent the names slightly

I second that about the BA on the fight page.

I can't find BA anywhere all of a sudden. ???

Refresh side-bar.

Sorry, needed to reload left pane.

BA is very hard to pick out, and yes, left pane is bad bad bad for cell phone players.

BA on the forge page as well... o.O

Refresh -- it's removed, and clicking forge options also automatically reduces BA in side-frame now.

I find myself starting to like the left pane as "CB module"...mainly for fighting with quick links to other things.

But it always exists with the right pane, can't be separated.

If we are going to go with an efficient left pane for fighting, then make a super quick way of showing battle results right there, in the left pane. Let me load THAT on my cell phone.

The reason most cell phone players use a bookmarked list of people to fight is because the fill left and right pane takes up too much real estate and is slower to refresh/load.

I am talking pie in the sky, I know, but now that BA is added as a counter on the left, it looks like a very useful little module over there...almost the same size as my iPhone... *smile*

> If we are going to go with an efficient left pane for fighting, then make a super quick way of showing battle results right there, in the left pane. Let me load THAT on my cell phone.

That's the eventual idea.

Once the sidebar is re-themed (that's next) the code should be in good enough shape to do this.

I've had a couple people volunteer to do the work so I'm crossing my fingers there. I'm more excited to try a facebook integration myself.

You ready for 6-figures in users with zero moderation? *smile*

Jonathan, I appreciate all you do, sorry for my knee-jerk grumpo on this... I'm such a NUB! *grin*

I actually really like the new layout. Just don't go changing my fight interface; that might annoy me!

One little thing though; the forum stats links - when I click them i get:


'"topic" required but not supplied'

Considering it's the one area where I'm top dog in something I'm missing being able to access them! Lol....

Also, not sure if the live site is up for this as you develop new things, but if you need usability testing (iPhone style), let me know any special links, etc. I failed you as a potential developer, but as a user, heck yeah I can help out. *smile*

Even if the testing is on a dev site, I'll burn through some meaningless BA for you...

facebook is already full of multis, thats gonna be a crappy cb game when you start getting 6 figures without moderation.

wow maybe its time to get do a face book acct

WoW, no BA on the forge page is REALLY gonna mess us forgers up, for fighters all it does is take them to the out-of-BA page.

whats all this about faceblender?

Ok, i didn't know the BA was on the sidebar after i refreshed it. Still kinda feels outta place, I like the idea though. =)

If I may say a word about "FaceBlender"...

I have been playing Warbook for about 3 months now... It's fun. A guy named TJ is the "god" there, and I think he has help. The game has had a lot of issues, but recently it has enjoyed decent uptime (previously, it's comparitive uptime was AWFUL).

The non-moderation portion I mentioned is on the posting board there. I'm not sure how Facebook would deal with allowing the greatness CB already has. Facebook controls communication and controls the game interface (by interface I don't mean UI, I mean the way it hooks into the Facebook spider-web). So, I'm guessing it isn't just a pure "we give you this request you give us HTML back" type of thing. I really have no idea.

But I am betting Jonathan does.

Gameplay-wise, Warbook is fun for me mainly because it is new. I have been playing CB for 4.5 years. I'm still here. I doubt I would give Warbook that time. Logging, communication, and gameplay depth is non-existent compared to CB. Warbook can win the "quick" crowd, but CB could win the "deep" crowd. My God, the hooks into Facebook could be myriad and halcyon given what we are used to here. Chatmails, sharing pics, contests... Imagine that on a inter-continental social network with those mechanisms _built-in_.

Jonathan, I'll test anything you want, and give any feedback I can offer. These are exciting times.

Meh, so now I have to manually refresh the whole front page to see how many BA I still have left... great :(

Sickone, the left pane is a counter... It updates when it needs to. I understand what you are saying, but wrap your head 'round the new paradigm and it makes some sense.

It updates WHEN I use the fight list to fight.
Since I am not a supporter, fighting from the fightlist would be painful, searching for opponents each time.

I therefore open all enemies from recent fights list in separate windows, click fight, and refresh those windows for the next round of combat.
Like this, the BA counter never updates unless I reload the main frame for some reason.

It's just a minor inconvenience, really.

Well Sick, sounds like a fantastic reason to become a supporter! :)
That and the well know fact that being a supporter makes you better looking...
(hmmm, reminds me, i should buy several more supporterships.)

How about making everything in the same window and using ajax calls to re-load sections of the page depending on actions from a dropdown or treeview menu system. I have never understood the need for frames, it is so 90's web design.

> How about making everything in the same window and using ajax calls to re-load sections of the page

sure dude, you have svn access. make a branch and call me when it's done.

in the meantime i will keep using frames since it is MUCH simpler, even if it's 90s technology.

Jon, a start would be to increase the number of posts shown on active threads. Currently I can't play CB while at work, and the limit of 20 threads doesn't sound like it will cover the 13 hours I'm away from CB each day...
A step backwards from the old version is that's it's much harder to quickly scan the list of posts. Please put each post on 1 line, so it's easier to scan just the list of subjects for example.

We now can see our amount of BA in the left tab.

Can we also see our current amount of money in the left tab?

Also I'm missing the stats part of the left tab... ?

[edit: never mind, found it on the new 'home' tab]

Yay! Forums are back on the sidebar. And I think other things were reorganized? Or maybe I just took a look for the first time. Anyway, the sidebar seems to be quite nice now, but the new homepage still looks clunky. Home now seems to be the holding place for info that doesn't fit into the other quick links. If the idea is to simplify the interface to stop scaring away new users, then the new homepage does not help.

- I suggest moving the stats links to a new quick link section. Right now, that's quite an intimidating list on the home page.
- Clan stats, winning streaks, and tourney scores are OK on home, and it makes sense to have news on home.
- I'd like to see more forum threads on home.
- The bold forum titles look good on home, but it's too much on the full forum thread page. Can thread titles only be bolded on home?
- I like BA on the sidebar, and things seem quite fast while fighting.
- In fight results, we now have a line that only states how much money we have. That does not relate to the fight, so is it needed on each fight screen?
- Eventually, it would be cool if there were individual user settings to specify which page we wanted as our homepage, and/or a setting to specify the number of threads shown on home.

QBsutekh137, Dec 14
If we are going to go with an efficient left pane for fighting, then make a super quick way of showing battle results right there, in the left pane. Let me load THAT on my cell phone.

AdminJonathan, Dec 14
That's the eventual idea.

Do I understand this correctly? The plan is to replace the passive links in the left pane with more active data - such as the BA counter and also fight results..?

This is really causing me a problem, and my ability to fight efficiently is suffering as a result.
My cell phone will not allow me to view the left sidebar at all (it never has) and as a result I have a whole host of bookmarked links that I use to do everything from fight, buy BA, view CM's and forums etc. With the previous changes and introduction of the TABs I lost the ability to train my minions using my cell phone (I decided I could live with that), but now I can't see how much BA I have at any time.
It's all fine and well to say "keep count" but that's hardly an acceptable solution given that I'm not being unkind if I say BA regeneration can be "random" on occasion.
Today (Saturday) it's important to arrive at the end of money time with a full compliment of 160 BA to maximise EXP rewards, I'm not sure I managed that - I couldn't tell how many BA I had... Tuesdays will be even worse for me as the start of EXP time arrives for me at 11:00am - how can I ensure I maximise my BA efficiency?

Of course this is only a problem for me on my cell phone (I like the changes as a PC user) but I don't know how to work around this? If no change to the current is proposed, can anyone suggest how I can come up with a workaround please. I'm thinking a separate url or something where I can view how many BA I have left...

Jon, feel free to comment if there's any way you can help solve my problems.
Everyone else, this thread isn't the place to debug my cell phone issues (am I the only one that has a sidebar problem on his cell phone?) so if you think you can help please drop me a CM and I'll start a new thread to discuss :)

G Beee, try this: sidebar

Perfect Maelstrom. Thanks !!

It doesn't view on my phone the same way it does on the PC but actually also shows views of all the drop down content from the items on the right side of the Quick Links. - Forums, Business, Community, Auctions, Clans.
This content sits above the sidebar data and is unclickable and clearly "broken".

I don't care about that though - I can see how many BA I currently have. It's an extra tow clicks, but I can live with that.

Thanks again.

Ooooh, that is a nice tip, Mael!

All the points about the fight page not having BA are still good ones, I think, but that will be rectified if and when ALL fight activities can be done in mini-fashion from the "left" pane ("left" in quotes since Mael has supplied the link to make that pane "only" instead of "left" *smile*)

Hey, don't give me so much credit. It's just a sidebar, which is just another webpage. In FireFox, all you have to do to see it is right click in the sidebar, select This Frame, and click Show Only This Frame, or click Open Frame in New Tab. Then you can the address for the page in the address bar.

I think Jon has mentioned that when the sidebar is eventually re-themed, it will use a special CSS tag section (or whatever, I don't know the proper terminology). When that happens, it may no longer be a separate webpage, so going to that address may no longer work. But hopefully when that happens, the site should be set up to better support mobile devices.

Yeah, the call to it is simple, but I didn't think of it. *wink* So take your kudos!

One simple request,

Could you change the link in the store from Home to Equip, so I can merge and equip the ammo I just bought...

Thanks for your time ;-)

when looking at the list of forums and trying to click on the number of posts it should take me to statistics page for the said forum. Instead I get this ""topic" required but not supplied".

Where is 'Items -> Overview/Normal, and so forth? The statistics I love so much?

Additionally, when trying to reply to Chatmail sent to the Homepage, I cannot click 'Reply' and send from the little box on the page. This maybe is a bug?


I really want my statistics/information back!!

Haha, just kidding. After actually going to the Home page (I like the Equip page better, feels like the old home) I found them. Ignore that part of my last post ;'D

would it happen to be "item overview", which is one of the links on the home page?

I think ranger brought this one up in another thread but.
The side bar displayed 16 BA and I tried fighting but that led to the "out of BA page".

In the future, will we be able to customize our sidebar?

Personally I like the Equip page as my "home page".