New AniRec is live!!

[sothis]

I'm very, very pleased to announce that the new AniRec is finally live. You can visit it at http://www.anime-planet.com/anirec/.
There are some MAJOR MAJOR changes to this version, with many more to come:

• Completely new design
  
• AJAX and jquery are now heavily used for dynamic loading and the sweet dropdown effects.
  
• No more popups!!
  
• Relations and helpful info are now separated
  
• Helpful key in the left side nav
  
• I know there's probably more, but I'm too tired to think about it right now

There are also some known issues. Please post about anything you find OTHER than these:

• The dropdowns sometimes load very slowly. This is an AJAX thing, and I suspect is related to the server. I'll investigate.
  
• Old links (animerec/) work still, but only if you don't click around a bunch. I'll need to set up a redirect sometime soon.
  
• About 15-20 of the series don't have enough screenshots, so some of the thumbnails will show up as broken. I hope to find screens for these soon.

Please post in the forum thread with any problems you find, including broken images, broken links, error code, or anything you see that's missing. One big thing to note is that THE VOTING SYSTEM IS DOWN for a few weeks, while I build the back end for users and the brand new voting system. The old system works off the old database, so I need to rewrite it for the new database.

Going to bed now as it's late, but please look around and enjoy! This is the culmination of 1.5 years of work.

[Skelma]

/me cheers for sothis!

[Cythraul]

It looks simply amazing, I don't know what else to say

And now that's out of the way, here come the bugs (or other odd behaviours), in order of finding them:

I haven't managed to reproduce this yet, but the first time I tried opening Sokyou no Fafner the mid-down thumbnail was displayed as one pixel. When I moved the mouse on top of it, I got a tooltip that said "Thumb" and which wouldn't go away no matter what I did. I could still open that thumbnail, however. EDIT: I assume it's just that the image failed to load for whatever reason. So the persistent tooltip is probably the only "error" here.

One other thing I noticed is that the "click here to read why!" (which by the way should probably be capitalized) doesn't give any visual clue that something has happened when you click it. If the series you're clicking on is at the bottom of your screen, you have no way of knowing what happened (you can't see the new text box opening below the series). Ok, you can see the scroll bar move slightly as the page gets longer, but I feel something more noticeable is needed.

This behaviour is even more problematic for people who habitually doubleclick everything...Maybe it could be made to register doubleclick as a single click, so it won't open and then immediately close it?

I think it would be better if the anidb link opened in a new window/tab, or if not, there should at least be a note telling the user that he'll be taken away from anime-planet.

I'm using flashblock (I see a little icon in place of a flash animation everytime a site uses one, which I can then click on to make it open), and the ad in the middle of the page doesn't become visible even if I click on the icon. It opens to take up the space it's supposed to take, but it's unseeable/unclickable. It becomes visible only when I reload the page after clicking on the icon or go to some other series' page. Not that I particularly want to see that ad :)

[Cetonis]

ooo, it's all pretty... good work ^_^ I really like how everything is on one page now and you don't have to open new windows to see comments or the rest of the recs.

[sothis]

I haven't managed to reproduce this yet, but the first time I tried opening Sokyou no Fafner the mid-down thumbnail was displayed as one pixel. When I moved the mouse on top of it, I got a tooltip that said "Thumb" and which wouldn't go away no matter what I did. I could still open that thumbnail, however. EDIT: I assume it's just that the image failed to load for whatever reason. So the persistent tooltip is probably the only "error" here.

well i know that for around 15-20 series there aren't 6 screenshots, so broken thumbnails will show up. i've seen this issue a few times though, where the thumbnail exists but it ends up not loading. since a LOT of ajax calls are going on at one time throughout the site/users, i can imagine that this sort of a thing might happen. the best i can do is see if there's code i can do to check if an image didn't load, and then try to reload it.

this wouldn't help in situations where someone might click a panel too quickly and the whole thing messes up, though. not sure how i'd protect against that.

One other thing I noticed is that the "click here to read why!" (which by the way should probably be capitalized) doesn't give any visual clue that something has happened when you click it. If the series you're clicking on is at the bottom of your screen, you have no way of knowing what happened (you can't see the new text box opening below the series). Ok, you can see the scroll bar move slightly as the page gets longer, but I feel something more noticeable is needed.

i can capitalize it if you all think it would make the text more noticeable. my goal with having the "click here" text on the outside of the panel was that it would be more noticeable and make people understand that PEOPLE make these votes.

i can see what i can do about the page jumps. perhaps i can set up an anchor that will push the browser down to the top of the dropdown panel.

This behaviour is even more problematic for people who habitually doubleclick everything...Maybe it could be made to register doubleclick as a single click, so it won't open and then immediately close it?

i can see what i can do about this, but i'd lean towards assuming people know how to use the internet and don't double click :p (as that basically never works anywhere as a double click and ends up duplicating what htey are doing). the main thing that might need to go into place is a "loading" type indicator if something is lagging.

I think it would be better if the anidb link opened in a new window/tab, or if not, there should at least be a note telling the user that he'll be taken away from anime-planet.

agreed -- this actually does open in a new window in IE, just not firefox. i investigated yesterday and discovered that firefox doesn't honor the "target' attribute. i'll have to to add some custom javascript to accomplish this.

I'm using flashblock (I see a little icon in place of a flash animation everytime a site uses one, which I can then click on to make it open), and the ad in the middle of the page doesn't become visible even if I click on the icon. It opens to take up the space it's supposed to take, but it's unseeable/unclickable. It becomes visible only when I reload the page after clicking on the icon or go to some other series' page. Not that I particularly want to see that ad :)

honestly what i'd rather do is put some text there, if it's possible, for people who have the ad blocked. i do all my work on the site for free (and im talking 5-7 hours a night EVERY NIGHT), and i'm finally starting to get a tiny bit of $ from bandai, for that ad. it's only for bandai stuff and i think only cycles through two different game ads, and i really, really would like people to let it load and click it (as i get a tiny bit of $ from clicks, not from it loading). so if anything i'd like to have a big note for people who block, saying "please click this, it's the only way i'll be motivated to continue spending my entire life on this" ;)

[sothis]

I really like how everything is on one page now and you don't have to open new windows to see comments or the rest of the recs.

this is actualy not on purpose and is a quick fix... i need to get pages set up for the recs, mostly so (in some cases) 40 main images aren't loaded for one page load. eventually itll be the top 5 but there will be a numbered list at the bottom and/or top which you can easily click to see others.

all commetns and stuff though, yeah, will be in the dropdowns :)

[Lord_Vegita]

wow, i am thoroughly shocked with how awesome the new DB is. i'm really glad you used Ajax for it ^^_.

do you have plans to implement Ajax into the whole site so it has seemless transitions between sections of the site?

is there a way to release a style sheet of some kind or something we could use to make out own themes for the site and then submit them too you? don't know what exactly it involves to make one on the new site.

[Ripzter]

Good work once again! It looks really good and, in lack of a better word, fresh. I see that you reduced the space between the recommendations, it was really too long before (you showed the layout some weeks back in IRC). Though I'd rather see it even slightly reduced, but hey... that's just ranting of the small things because there's nothing else to rant about :P

Excellent job!

[HellAgent]

Ok just have to say, that tho this is probably my first post, ive used anime-planet, and anirec extensively, so thank you SO insanely much for keeping fire ablaze, and the major update on anirec is fantastic, thanks alot!!!!http://

[XMrNiceguyX]

I was browsing a bit through the new DB and did notice some clipping:
http://www.anime-planet.com/anirec/547.html
fex. Prolly due to the sizxe of that sshot