Anime and manga info pages have an updated design

[Power27]

I do not like this change. One of the man reasons for still using the site was being able to see everything related to a show in one page. This is a unique feature no other site did.
I also this your trying to make it look more pretty than it needs to be, this is a recording database and thus should be about finding data.

Appriciate the work you guys do, but just not a fan.

I am sure i will get used to it though...

 

[koeshi]

Agreed. I don't know why you guys hate tables and lists so much. Tables and lists are nice.

This very much. I like tables and lists for providing dense information in a quick to understand manner. If this new design is final it would be greatly appreciated to be able to switch back to the old table system.

Is it me or does the website feel oddly white? I'm not sure if anything ways changed in this regard recently. This is more of a 'modern website' pet peeve but making everything white feels like a hiarchy of vision wasn't even bothered with and everything is dumped onto the page. At least if the negative space was gray, that would be easier on the eyes.

This is a common issue with modern UI design (I blame Apple and Google). All this white-on-white is rather unpleasant on the eyes, in addition to removing how easily different areas are differentiated from each other. I am currently using this dark mode extension (https://mybrowseraddon.com/dark-mode.html), it works pretty well with A-P for the most part, but a native dark mode would be better.

 

[Kari5]

This is a common issue with modern UI design (I blame Apple and Google). All this white-on-white is rather unpleasant on the eyes, in addition to removing how easily different areas are differentiated from each other. I am currently using this dark mode extension (https://mybrowseraddon.com/dark-mode.html), it works pretty well with A-P for the most part, but a native dark mode would be better.

Its been mentioned multiple times, but while devs would love to add a dark mode, they don't have enough manpower at the moment. But they do know its a feature users are looking for. :)

 

[Starra]

Suggestion: These tags might be better under Content Warning:

-Borderline H
-Drug Use?
-Ecchi
-Guro
-Panty Shots? It falls under ecchi and sexual stuff usually.
-Sexual Content
-Smut

I may have missed the reasoning behind not including these, however. I do think anything related to nudity and sex should be tagged, since I know a lot of younger people use AP and I want them to read the warnings properly. Some of these are probably debatable, but Borderline H, Ecchi, Guro, Sexual Content and Smut should definitely be considered Content Warnings.

This is just my opinion though, I could be completely wrong about things, lol.

 

[Amethystkitty]

I like the changes!

 

[DW75]

https://www.statista.com/statistics/284202/mobile-phone-internet-user-penetration-worldwide/
Already the majority of world-wide Internet access is happening through mobile devices, with growing tendency. It's important to also optimize for mobile to stay competitive.

And their own data is that 30% of access is still NOT from mobiles or tablets.
That is almost 1/3 of the total, and you're basically saying ignore those in favour of mobile users...

Remember, the developers and admins have actually hard data which features get used and which not.

And how exactly does people LOOKING at that part of the page get registered you think?
Oh right, it doesn't. And depending on what exactly the site is tracking, it's quite possible that >95% of my use of that part doesn't get registered, as it does not actively interact with the status settings.

 

[ChalamiuS]

That is almost 1/3 of the total, and you're basically saying ignore those in favour of mobile users...

No, it simply means that mobile/responsive design is a priority target over desktop-only. By contrast designing something that would only work on desktop (e.g., wide tables of data) would be ignoring 67% of the site users.

 

[DW75]

No, it simply means that mobile/responsive design is a priority target over desktop-only. By contrast designing something that would only work on desktop (e.g., wide tables of data) would be ignoring 67% of the site users.

My point was that it is perfectly possible to do something functional for both.
OVERspecialisation in any direction is just plain bad.

 

[sothis]

My point was that it is perfectly possible to do something functional for both.
OVERspecialisation in any direction is just plain bad.

Who said that wasn't the goal, and who ever said we're only designing for mobile now? The announcement says that there's a greatly enhanced mobile experience. No one ever said 'at the expense of desktop'. The design was done for desktop, as well. These are incorrect assumptions you're making, and I'm not really sure why.

 

[DW75]

Who said that wasn't the goal, and who ever said we're only designing for mobile now? The announcement says that there's a greatly enhanced mobile experience. No one ever said 'at the expense of desktop'. The design was done for desktop, as well. These are incorrect assumptions you're making, and I'm not really sure why.

You said so yes. The problem was that some changes seem to be completely aimed at mobiles ONLY and then the folks i replied to above talks like ~"of course that's how it's supposed to be, why should we care about the rest" which got really annoying.
To clarify, my biggest issue about this was with how those i replied to appeared to reason, not anything specific in regards to the site.

 

[sothis]

The problem was that some changes seem to be completely aimed at mobiles ONLY

Straight from the creator's mouth: that wasn't the case. We never make changes that impact desktop but only for mobile. To be clear, I'm one of the 30% that only uses the site on desktop. There is no way I would work with the designers or team on something that messed up the desktop experience.

Assumptions are just that - assumptions. Happy to provide insight anytime on the rationale behind decisions, but I think that's already summarized in the first post with why we did what we did originally.

 

[ChalamiuS]

My point was that it is perfectly possible to do something functional for both.
OVERspecialisation in any direction is just plain bad.

Emphasis on functional for both, that means the lowest common denominator or otherwise risk having to maintain completely disparate systems. Huge, wide tables are simply not compatible with responsive design and maintaining multiple means of conveying the same information is simply not possible with limited manpower.

Is there work being done on improving the "overview of what I've watched so far" situation with relations on the entry pages? Yes.

Is there work being done for those that used it for marking? Yes, that's why https://www.anime-planet.com/forum/...-anything-in-a-franchise-feature-here.335062/ exists. To gather requirements for that use case and put it elsewhere, the entry page was simply getting too complex (and straying from its original purpose... to show information about an entry).

When will these things be ready? Hopefully soon (and would get released separately so no waiting for both), but as previously mentioned we have quite a limited amount of developers with available time.

 

[sothis]

Hi all,

We've heard your feedback and have made / are working on some changes, both to the entry page, and also to solve the problem we didn't realize the related content section was solving for many of you:

• A temporary visual change is now live, that shows a colored bar on the right side of the related content cards based on your status. We tried getting the status info (status name, ep count, rating) into the card itself but it looks too cluttered. We hope this temporarily solves the problem for those of you who wanted a quick way to see "where you're at" with related titles.

• Our UX researcher is looking into an alternate way of displaying the related content for easier scanning - for example, we might switch to a new table view that is more visual than the current table view on anime/all, but is still scannable and usable. Or, a sub-page that is tabular, with only a few cards on the entry homepage. Etc. That is being investigated as we speak.

• The main problem we're looking to solve is providing a "see everything in the entire franchise" view, which many of you had been using the entry-specific relations for. We're actively working on a prototype for this, and will take careful consideration into the design and UX so that it's clear to you what we'll display in the entry (direct relations, easy links to other related franchises) and the "full list of everything" (will likely live at /anime/franchises/name, etc). If you have feedback on how this "see all" should work, reply in this other thread.

Thanks for your feedback and support of Anime-Planet

 

[Xnub]

No, it simply means that mobile/responsive design is a priority target over desktop-only. By contrast designing something that would only work on desktop (e.g., wide tables of data) would be ignoring 67% of the site users.

Question, if mobile is so important why not make a standard mobile app or a progressive web app ? (I kind of know the answer already....)

If already talked about sry, didn't read all the thread.

 

[sothis]

Question, if mobile is so important why not make a standard mobile app or a progressive web app ? (I kind of know the answer already....)

If already talked about sry, didn't read all the thread.

We have around 3 active developers at a time for a site that reaches 4 million users a month. Maintaining an app is a lot of work and requires a large amount of maintenance to keep it up to date. We prefer to create a responsive mobile-first design that works for all screen sizes and doesn't require an app.

 

[Mayank]

I do not like this change. One of the man reasons for still using the site was being able to see everything related to a show in one page. This is a unique feature no other site did.

Being able to update related anime/manga (especially seasons and OVAs) without having to open new page every time for each title was super convenient. Hope it's made available again in the new design in the future if possible.

 

[Xnub]

We have around 3 active developers at a time for a site that reaches 4 million users a month. Maintaining an app is a lot of work and requires a large amount of maintenance to keep it up to date. We prefer to create a responsive mobile-first design that works for all screen sizes and doesn't require an app.

Ya i kind of figured the answer was you guys were going hard RWD with this update and didn't have manpower/time to do app or try PWA over RWD.

Just wanted to ask anyways.

 

[Xnub]

Being able to update related anime/manga (especially seasons and OVAs) without having to open new page every time for each title was super convenient. Hope it's made available again in the new design in the future if possible.

The simple, fast and easy to use features like this were great and are the reason i use A-P over other sites.

That and the fact the site is clean and less cluttered then others.

 

[mangle]

• A temporary visual change is now live, that shows a colored bar on the right side of the related content cards based on your status. We tried getting the status info (status name, ep count, rating) into the card itself but it looks too cluttered. We hope this temporarily solves the problem for those of you who wanted a quick way to see "where you're at" with related titles.

I think this is a clear improvement.

• Our UX researcher is looking into an alternate way of displaying the related content for easier scanning - for example, we might switch to a new table view that is more visual than the current table view on anime/all, but is still scannable and usable. Or, a sub-page that is tabular, with only a few cards on the entry homepage. Etc. That is being investigated as we speak.

Cool. I look forward to it. Trying to be as open minded about the changes as I can, but honestly, 100% of the features of AP that I use have a table view. Not sure that's a causal relationship, but it's at least interesting.

So, out of curiosity, I actually visited the site on mobile for the first time in a while, and I have to say that it looks pretty nice. My only real comment is that on mobile, I really wished I could click on the section titles to collapse the section, so I didn't need to scroll through the whole list of related manga, for instance.

 

[JohnTitor]

Those colored bars are wonderful :).

I also have something to say about related content, but I'll create a new topic for that.