The drop down menus on the top bar are still problematic

Ever since the site got redesigned, we've had the drop down bars for things like notifications/forums/videos etc

Theyr'e still hard to use on a desktop. I understand that modern GB is probably designed for phones, which is fine, but using the site on a desktop can sometimes be an exercise in frustration.

I got a notification earlier today, so I moused over the bell icon to let it drop down. I must have gone from pushing the bell to the notification....7/8 times before the window stayed displayed for long enough to click it. It's only a few millimetres from the bell to the link guiding you to the notification, so it's a little frustrating to have such a problem with them

I hope I'm articulating what I mean, because it's pretty hard to show it via screenshots.

Chrome on Win 10

The dropdown menus have had a problem with which areas "activate" them since they've been implemented. There's almost no delay between mousing away and the dropdown closing, which leads to a lot of accidentally moving the mouse one pixel off of the menu and losing the whole thing.

Agreed. Particularly a problem when switching back to a GB tab in browser then quickly move the pointer down to the player.

Using the tiny drop-down chevron to edit your post is even more annoying and I regularly have to mouse over at least 3 times before I catch the pixel edge of the drop down.

Also while we are all here - the way the green bar with MESSAGE POSTED obscures the navigation bar forcing you to wait for it to disappear before you can go back to the forum index is also annoying. It's just a second or so.. but man I've been hating it for years.

I've replied, agreeing wholeheartedly, to every previous thread on the nav opening and closing too quickly, and I see no reason to stop now. One day... one day...

I agree. A little slower would be cool

No ideas/update? The drop down bars are so frustrating that I'm just not engaging with the website at all anymore

I haven't "used" the site since the redesign, i just have two bookmarks one for forums and one for latest videos, everything else is a headache.

After Will Carle left and the site was re-acquired again by Red Ventures I don’t even know who is working/responsible for the development at this point. There has been very little to zero communication about what they are working on or what the future roadmap is. The redesign was kind of a rushed disaster and it has taken years for the site to become nominally usable again.. and that bare minimum is kind of where it stopped.

Maybe I’m wrong and there is a ton of work being done at the back end but if that’s the case I haven’t felt it and it isn’t been communicated very well. As far as I know embiggen is still broken and it’s been years at this point.

I guess why bother developing the actual website when they can just squeeze out a handful of livestreams a week that are only available to premium people

@sombre: While I’m not as negative on it as all that I do think communication has been a consistent issue on Giant Bomb for years. I had been asking for a while to have a thing for “site updates” and when Vinny made a thread for what they are working on it was great - but then very shortly that too was abandoned and we went back to things popping onto the schedule several hours before they aired. Even recently Vinny joked on the Beastcast that if you want timestamps then bug Jeff Bakalar.. but yah.. timestamps are a very basic quality of life improvement that many podcasts feature and I would like them but it has been years and they’re still oddly resistant to committing to them. I know it’s extra work but the product is better for it so wouldn’t it be worth it?

I think it's also telling how much the staff seem to just have utter disdain for the community. It's been like this ever since Ryan would block people on twitter for fun

@sombre: I don't think it's disdain I think it's more about their backgrounds. They all came up during an earlier part of the web when they made content to be consumed and weren't involved in a back and forth parasocial relationship with their community like modern streamers are. They've evolved that somewhat (including live recording podcasts and responding to the chat during them) but for things like Twitter engagement etc...? It's just not the job they're doing.

From the beginning they were always pretty involved with the community compared to peers (with things like Thursday Night Throwdown) and having chat open during podcast recording is more involved than many podcasters, not to mention the sheer number of questions they take, but it's during specific work hours and events, not all the time. I think that's healthy.

Those kinds of things and complaints about the quality of the product are distinct from the issues of site usability and communication about what they're up to.

Site usability is pretty bad right now and it's unclear how many engineering resources they have to fix it. This site has a ton of content associated with it so it's not so easy to update compared to if you were building something new. It's super easy to break stuff on a site this old.

Lack of communication about what they're doing and what they'll be putting out has been a constant issue since they stopped doing the I Love Mondays feature way back in the day. I think Ryan, despite Twitter blocks, did a good job of organizing information and letting people know what was going on, and that function has never been replaced.

When it comes to the bell menu, you easily lose the dropdown because the hoverable area is tiny. You have a 16px wide space space that your mouse pointer needs to stay in while you move it down to the dropdown.

I just added a larger width value to the container around the bell icon via my browser inspector and the experience of moving my mouse over it and going down the dropdown menu was far more pleasant.

Another fix would be to add a text label next to the icons to add the width. So you'd have Avatar - Username | Bell icon - Notifications | Speech bubble icon - Messages. There is more than enough space in the navbar for something like that.

Yeah, this is a strange, obvious problem to create and then ignore for years.

@permanentsigh Nice.