Introduction
A couple of days ago I checked in on Giant Bomb, not expecting any changes, mostly because I've been ignoring my Twitter Feed and everybody knows that Jeff's Twitter Feed is the single best place on the web to get the latest news on Giant Bomb.com. Apparently, the Giant Bomb v2.0 redesign has been improved on, and apparently it doesn't suck anymore. I never cared much for the redesign, my thoughts were that it looked flashier, but sacrificed intuitiveness and it was harder to get around. Also, I was fucking pissed at the absence of yellow (it used to be the color of the Title Font). The first thing that I saw about Giant Bomb v2.5 (that's it's name from now on, I'm callin' it) was on the Home Page the option to connect your account to facebook.
"FUCK YES!" I thought, "Now I have a good reason to use facebook.". So thanks for that Giant Bomb, my account shall not remain inactive.
But that was nothing compared to what I would discover. This improvement on the website is so fucking marvelous I literally came buckets. It has so many new amazing features that I've always wanted and never new I wanted. Hats off to Dave Snider and the gang. This is truly amazing. That is not to say that there isn't rotten stuff in this redesign, I unquestionably noticed some stuff that needs improvement (the spoiler warning is pink now? What?).
I've browsed through the site a lot, as I normally would, and noticed some improvements that have been made in this "patch", and I also noticed some things that need to be corrected. Now, the purpose of this thread is for you to share your thoughts on this, but before, allow me to express mine in an unnecessarily extensive way, with lots of images, to make my post seem even bigger.
The Good Stuff That Totally Earns Snail's Seal of Approval™
NOTE: This list is in no specific order.
DISCLAIMER: This list is subject to edit whenever I see something new that is pretty cool and think "Oh SNAP!".
1. Title Font Underlining
One of the things that annoyed me the most about Giant Bomb v2.0 was that the Yellow Title Font was gone. Seriously, a website can always use more yellow. When the changes were first pushed to the website the tone of grey was barely readable, so Dave eventually changed the brightness a bit. But it still didn't please me, it simply does not highlight anything, its color is way too similar to the background. Today though, I noticed that, although it was not yellow, it captured my attention a lot more.
Maybe its just me, but isn't that underlining brighter than what it used to be? I'm pretty sure it is, I've never noticed any underlining before. That's a small improvement, but small things really add up to a better experience when browsing Giant Bomb. Oh and I don't mean the white underlining caused by some stupid bug by the WYSIWG editor. I mean the natural underline of the title font.
2. Facebook connection thing
As aforementioned in my introduction, the facebook connectivity feature was the first thing that caught my eye. It was the only change done on the Home Page I believe. Anyway, it's a nice little feature. It's really well thought of that you can advertise your threads on your facebook account, I certainly have quite a few friends on facebook that frequently visit Giant Bomb. So going "Hey, dude check out my thread!" with simply a click of the mouse is a pretty amazing feature, and since we're a growing community the odds are you do have someone in your friends list that visits Giant Bomb, if not, well you're advertising Giant Bomb to people who are unaware of the website. Apparently some peoplehave different thoughts on this.
3. Better Thread Creating Interface
One of the things that deeply annoys me in this Message Board is the ridiculous amount of duplicates we often see. This is ridiculous since Giant Bomb, unlike most Message Boards out there has an amazing feature that automatically scans the forums for threads with titles similar to the thread being created. Now this feature has been improved. Not only does it inform you of how many posts the threads found in the search have, it also is easier to browse. Before it was a small window located next to the thread you were creating, now whenever you create a thread you are taken to a whole new page with a larger space to create your thread and the threads that are possibly similar to the one you're creating right below.
By the way, it's not showing up any thread even remotely similar to this one, so I assume this is not a duplicate.
4. Post History
Much like the new brightness on the title font, I am not quite sure wether this was or wasn't available before this patch for GB v2.0. Anyhow, if it was made available before, I only noticed it now.
I wanted to leave this one for last. It's probably the best thing to ever happen to this Message Board. Not probably. Definitely. When I saw that "History" button on the I realized it was the button I have always wanted to see on the website without even realizing it. Just the idea of browsing through *all* of the posts I have ever made, starting on August 1st 2008 seems like such a fun idea for some reason. I like looking at old posts. This feature is really useful for looking for some post you made a while ago on a thread you want to find but you can't. This is a really nice addition, I'm very happy with this.
5. Overall Aesthetic Changes
I noticed some changes in small things. Mostly small stuff, I don't think it affects the website at all, it's not significantly better than what it used to be, but it still looks nicer, so it totally gets Snail's Seal Of Approval™.
- New "Online Now" and "Moderator" notifiers found below the Avatar of a User are now brighter and contrast more with the background.
- Text fields are now grey, and have a pretty nice gradient effect.
- Avatars on forums are now shown in a round-square-thing.
- Trivia interface has been changed aesthetically, in the same way polls have. Answers to the trivia question invert colors when you mouse-over, same goes to polls. Also, polls look better now, with your selection being highlighted in red.
- I notice overall more contrast in the website and there are other small changes that make the website look overall a lot cleaner.
Below are the screenshots of some of these small improvements.
And here are some that I thought deserved a bit more comment than the ones mentioned above.
5.1 Fandom Everywhere
One of the things I found humorous about Giant Bomb and that helped me understand right from the start what kind of website I was joining. I understood that the website would not take itself too seriously and that was great. Now, something that I never really understood is why this feature was never really explored. The color of your username changes depending on your alignment (Red for Nintendo, Blue for Sony, Green for Microsoft, White for PC and Grey is Neutral). One thing that I love is how many people don't assume their fanboyism and pick grey.
Anyhow, my point here is that we rarely got to know a person's alignment, the only places where the color choice was shown was in comments on news articles or videos, and PMs. I think that was all. But that has changed, now it is everywhere. Now we actually use this feature. It really isn't a major improvement but I think it's a fun thing to add.
5.2 Top Users/Staff/Moderators Lists Improved
I occasionally visited these lists. Sometimes to see if there were are new mods, other times to check out some awesome Wiki Pages through the profiles of the users with the most Wiki Points. Anyhow, the lists looked kind of ugly. You could barely read the status update of a user due to the lack of contrast between the font and the background. Now the font is white, so you can read it clearly. Also before it used to read "[Username] [Status Update]" i.e. "Snail I am browsing Giant Bomb". Whereas now only the Status Update is published. Also, the alignment color feature is available there too (pretty much like anywhere on the website now). I would insert a screenshot here, but you can already see the improvements that were made on the lists pages by looking at the image above.
6. Improved Forum Search
Not much to be said here. The forum search is much easier to use now, basically. Now, instead of selecting whether to search for topics or for posts, now you just put in your search terms, hit search and then select a tab "Search Topics" or "Search Posts". Practical.
EDIT 2: "Add New Company" Button Is Finally Brought To Existence
(Thanks to Rallier on this one).
For ages the Giant Bomb users that like to dedicate themselves to Wiki Editing have longed for this button. I can't say that I have been a heavy Wiki Editor, but I have my share of contributions. One thing I remember in the early days was people asking stuff like "How can I add a company?", "How do I change the alias of a game?", "How do I change the main picture of a game?", "How do I change the name of a game?" and "How do I eliminate the data of death of a person who isn't dead yet?". Okay, maybe the last one wasn't addressed to as an issue so often, but I remember us having that problem (the workaround agreed upon was to simply delay the date to a data far in the future). We eventually saw the mods creating threads for pretty much all of these issues "Post to request to [blah blah]" and the Mods would handle it. Anyhow, the point here is that the first issue of these has finally been addressed by the staff. We now have our "Add New Company" button. Rejoice!
EDIT 4: Search Function Majestically Improved (But Can Still Totally Use Some Improvements)
I would type a paragraph right now, but I think this small conversation between me and Rallier pretty much sums it up.
Rallier said:
(...) the search funtion for the wiki has drasticly been impoved (as in it actually works like you would expect to work). All by all editing the wiki has become way less inconvenient. There still are a lot of things that need to be fixed but it is a great start and i hope that they keep up the pace.
I said:
I noticed the improvements on the search function I guess, but it still isn't perfect. I can see that I no longer have to wait for it to process a letter in order for me to enter the next one, but the truth is when I type in "The Beatles" I still get no result. Try it. For some reason it only shows up The Beatles: Rock Band as a result when you type in "Beatles". It still has some weird inconvenient errors such as this one, but I must admit, it is better than what it used to be.
Rallier said:
Looks like the word "the" is still causing issues yeah. Still this new quick search is a major improvement since it looks up the actual name of the page and not how popular it is. The character "Eagle" from the first Street Fighter was impossible to attach to wiki pages because of that for example. Now you also do not have to retry the quick search 10 times to find a lesser visited page, just thinking back to that makes me shiver... It also means that now you wont get a porn game in every quick search you do.
EDIT 5: Search Tool For Videos
Giant Bomb uploads videos daily, as such, it is often hard to find the video you're looking for, even in the way Giant Bomb organizes their videos in tabs. If you want to check out an old "How To Build A Bomb" video, or an older "Giant Bomb Mailbag" video, you'll just have to keep looking for the page the video is in. But with this update, there is a totally sweet new search function which can be found on top of the "Recent Videos" column. This makes browsing videos much easier. Something that the website was beginning to need indeed. Great idea.
How NOT To Build A Bomb Awards™
NOTE: This list is in no specific order.
DISCLAIMER: This list is subject to edit whenever I see something new that is pretty cool and think "Aw SHIT!".
So, the update is not perfect, and I noticed some bugs which I am also reporting in this thread.
1. Bugs
Bugs are annoying. Giant Bomb has always had them. I don't think I can easily remember a period when Giant Bomb was 100% bug-free, for more than a week. With redesigns come bugs and errors. This redesign is no exception. Here is some stuff I noticed.
1.1 Incorrect Formatting in Character Pages
1.2 Incorrect Formatting In "Followed Blogs" Section Of Profiles
1.3 Bugged Out Search Function
Okay. This one is more farfetched than the others.
If you want to search for a Topic or a Post you can use the aforementioned procedure that I praised, OR you can type it in the Text Field you use for looking up Wiki Pages. You type in the term you want to search, hit search and then you will be prompted with something like this:
In the "Forum Search" section it feels as if someone forgot to do the design to the "Search the Forums" button. If you hit that button you get this:
So this could use a fix as well, even if probably no one uses that feature.
2. Spoiler Warning Is Now Pink
I don't know who thought this was a good idea, but I like to think it was Dave himself trying to express some pink love. Nothing wrong with pink, I like pink, in fact, I love pink. The Pink Panther is Pink. That's awesome. But Spoiler Warnings are supposed to give out a message of "HEY! SPOILERS AHEAD MOTHERFUCKER! YOU'VE BEEN WARNED. PROCEED WITH CAUTION", hence the choice of the color red. Pink though... the message being transmitted is something more like "Heyyyyyyyy!~~ Cutesy little spoilers here! <3".
...Wait. What?
I don't know.
Really, I just think and type.
3. The Top Tens Aren't Back Yet
I loved the Top Ten lists on the Home Page. It was really hilarious how "Nudity", "Breast Bounce", "Female Protagonists", "LGTB" and "Sex" were 99.9% of the time on the top ten concepts. When the redesign was up this was one of the things I miss the most. Whenever the Home Page is changed I hope to scroll down and see the top tens. That didn't happen this time, BUT I was sooo stoked when I read this.
Cheers Jeff, it's good to know you guys haven't forgotten about this!
4. Comments In News Articles Are Hidden By Default
What's the point?
This is one of those things that doesn't affect the quality of the website but makes you wonder why they went and changed that. I like to read comments, it lets me know what people are thinking about the article I've just read, why should they be hidden? I have to click something to read the comments? Not that it bothers me, but I don't see the point to it. It does not look any better or any worse aesthetically, it is not practical. It's pointless, right?
5. Browsing Threads is Harder
This is by far the worst and needs to be fixed. Unlike most the other problems I notice with the website, this one was added with this recent patch. Browsing threads actually got worse. You can no longer select which page to go to on the top of the thread, only on the bottom. I don't think I am being to clear here.
Well basically:
Why? What's the point in this? Now I have to scroll down to browse a thread. I like to think someone forgot this, I see no reason for this feature to be removed on purpose. I suppose they forgot, since this feature is still available when browsing comments on news articles, as you can see below.
6. Polls Issues
My, this thread got really big. Holy shit man, this is bigger than my lab report. Fuck. That's messed up.
Anyhow.
The problems listed below do not come with the redesign, but have been around ever since polls were made available on the website, and I honestly think the staff should get around to fixing this, even if it's not a top priority.
6.1 Still No "View Results" Button On Polls
One of the things you see a lot on message boards that incorporate polls is the ability to view the results, the statistics, without actually having to vote. This is a good thing, because often you:
a. Don't really care about the question at hand.
b. Can't Decide.
c. Doesn't know what the fuck the OP is on about.
So you click the "View Results" button to see what the people thinks. When you don't have that button though, and are curious about the results you really have brought a dilemma upon yourself. Do you carry on with your life, or do you submit a false vote, hence fucking up the poll (but being aware of the statistics)? You may choose the earlier and gain IRL Karma points, or Paragon Points or whatever you want to call them (if you see life as a video game life becomes more awesome, in a way), but even if you do the right thing, you're still curious and you still want to know the result. I usually end up giving in, and slightly messing up the poll, if many people do that, then the poll becomes less accurate.
YES! I submit fake answers so I can know the results of a poll!
Boy... *phew*... That felt good. Man.
6.2 Inability To Change Your Vote
This is yet another feature that one should consider a standard in an internet message board that incorporates polls. Giant Bomb is the first forum that I've seen that does not allow me to change my vote on a poll once it is cast. As a consequence we get a lot of "I accidentally clicked [X] but wanted to click [Y]".
EDIT 1: Unable To Browse By PC Game
(Thanks to Bellum on this one).
Did you ever dream about browsing PC games using this list? Well guess what. You're out of luck. Even though I've never noticed it, our dear user Bellum tells us this feature was never made available. And it still isn't. Dream on dreamer, you're still out of luck.
EDIT 3: Only 20 Posts per Page in a Thread
Hey, guess what? This idea totally gets the "Worst Idea in the History of Giant Bomb" Award™! Why would you make pages so small? Now not only do I STILL HAVE TO SCROLL DOWN TO THE BOTTOM OF A THREAD BECAUSE THERE IS NO WAY TO BROWSE PAGES ON THE TOP OF THREADS, I STILL HAVE TO DO IT ALL THE TIME BECAUSE THE PAGES ARE FUCKING MIDGET SIZE NOW.
DAVE. FIX THIS. PLEASE.
EDIT 4: "Send PM" Icon is All Wrong
A star? Seriously? What the hell happened at the little letter with a green arrow icon? I guess someone messed up here.
Conclusion
I'm tired. I just want to submit this, so I'll make this short and sweet.
All in all this is a great update. The website was really needing this. I've always felt that the redesign felt a bit... hammered. It had many loose ends and the interface as a whole had lost quality to give room for a more aesthetically pleasing one. This small update fixes a lot of stuff that was wrong with the Giant Bomb v2.0, and that's just great. This is a great work by the staff. I would still like to see the original profile pages back, but I can't see that happening at all, so I won't even bother to include that in the "Stuff That Should Be Fixed" section of this blog.
I would like to add that I am certain that there is stuff on the website that I still haven't noticed, and I will promptly edit anything I notice into this post. I also think I forgot to mention some stuff but, again, I'm pretty tired. And this conclusion is not short at all. Fuck.
And now, after overanalyzing the shit of a small update, I bid you farewell. Please, share your thoughts on this below.
XOXO,
Snail
P.S.: I sure uploaded a shitload of images for this thread.
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