Everything raocow v2.0 - Suggestions and Feedback Thread

[Thissa]

So yeah, Everything raocow v2.0 has finally arrived:

http://everything.raocow.com/

There's a full list of changes and whatnot here, but highlights include:
- rebuilt the backend code from scratch, it "Doesn't Suck" now
- it looks a lot more like the rest of raocow.com
- new stats
- more info about LPs/episodes on their respective listing pages
- video size and other settings you can change that get saved into a cookie

This is basically the start of a whole rewrite of raocow.com, ultimately we're going to merge the main site, the video archive, and ATXS all into one site. And bring on a designer to make it look even more awesome.

Known Issues:
- the main site iframe is kind of bugged, TLs4's working on it
- thumbnails are temporarily disabled because of a performance issue
- the new admin area isn't ready yet

[Jesuiscontent]

Whoa, that's neat, props to you. Here's my nitpicking :

To me the font of the buttons at the top of the screen kind of clash with the banner thingy they are integrated into. I think what would fit the best would be a font similar to the "it's a thing" line, but I can guess that it may be a bit complicated to do.

The screenshots for each game are a bit small, especially considering the size of the rectangles which look really empty between the games' info and the screenshots.

Also, game author of Nitroid is Desunoya and game author of Psycho waluigi is Thunder dragon.

One last thing, on Internet explorer the buttons at the top-right of the screen ("by game", "calendar", ..) are "bleeding out"(I can't find the right word.) of the right of the screen. That is, if you care about Internet explorer, which I could understand if you don't !

[yoshicookiezeus]

It seems like the game list is kind of broken: after changing page once, the link URLs start getting messed up (always adding ?pg=[number] to the current URL), redirecting you back to the first page.

EDIT: Also, is the "uncategorised videos" entry supposed to have links to all those unrelated LP threads?

EDIT2: And trying to access a page beyond the first on any game page gives an Invalid Game ID error.

[Bean]

All right, all right. I turned off Adblock Plus on that page after seeing the message you had on the bottom there. I'm going to have to agree that it's on the slow side right now. It took around a half minute to load just the front page.

I like the condensed version and telling me how many episodes are in each list before I even click on it. It also has a sleeker design going for it that I like. Nice work.

[Thissa]

Thanks for the bug reports guys, keep them coming :)

Re: broken paginator - I see what's going wrong, and I'll fix it tonight.
Re: wrong game authors - I'll fix this too
Re: screenshots - looks fine on my system? Might be an IE thing.
Re: IE - what version are you running? I tested with IE8/9 and it looked acceptable. 6/7 is badly broken though, and it will remain that way. Also keep im mind a designer's going to come in at some point and make the whole thing look prettier.
Re: uncategorized videos thread list - that's definitely a bug too, will fix it tonight.

[Ditocoaf]

I've got to admit, I kind of miss having the "by game" list include ALL the games on one page, each one only taking up a tiny amount of space. The new version looks nice, but takes a lot more time to scroll through, and requires me to load five pages to look through the whole list.

In general, the old version just was more convenient, I'd say. Other features I used a lot and now miss:
> Being able to control-F find any game on the By Game list instantly.
> Being able to click, from the By Game list, and have a compact list of episodes pop out.
> Having the embedded videos on the episode list, making it hyper-convenient to archive binge. (Since there's usually only one video per episode, and the slowest thing to load is the website itself.)
> Having links to the YouTube pages on the episode list. (Also, a link to the forum threads would would be pretty neat!)

Would it be possible to merge the new look with the old functionality in any way? Or to have a "compact" version of the By Game list?

I don't mean to disparage the new site at all, you're doing really great work here! Just letting you know how I tended to use the old everything.raocow site, for Feedback.

[Marluxia.Kyoshu]

I've got to admit, I kind of miss having the "by game" list include ALL the games on one page, each one only taking up a tiny amount of space. The new version looks nice, but takes a lot more time to scroll through, and requires me to load five pages to look through the whole list.

In general, the old version just was more convenient, I'd say. Other features I used a lot and now miss:
> Being able to control-F find any game on the By Game list instantly.
> Being able to click, from the By Game list, and have a compact list of episodes pop out.
> Having the embedded videos on the episode list, making it hyper-convenient to archive binge. (Since there's usually only one video per episode, and the slowest thing to load is the website itself.)
> Having links to the YouTube pages on the episode list. (Also, a link to the forum threads would would be pretty neat!)

Would it be possible to merge the new look with the old functionality in any way? Or to have a "compact" version of the By Game list?

I don't mean to disparage the new site at all, you're doing really great work here! Just letting you know how I tended to use the old everything.raocow site, for Feedback.

Agree on all points, kind of just wish we could have the old one back :<

[Jesuiscontent]

Re: screenshots - looks fine on my system? Might be an IE thing.

I checked and it's the same on Mozilla. Maybe it's a problem on my end for some reason, they really look small. Here's how I see them : http://www.imagup.com/data/1148671512.html

Re: IE - what version are you running? I tested with IE8/9 and it looked acceptable. 6/7 is badly broken though, and it will remain that way. Also keep im mind a designer's going to come in at some point and make the whole thing look prettier.

Yeah it's not that bad, but it looks a bit weird with some buttons out of the layout like this, so I thought it was worth poiting out.

[raocow]

Figured I'd convey this message from the internet, even though the points brought up reiterate what are now known issues:

I am not sure who to contact about this, but I'm letting you know that for some reason, the site "everything raocow" does not navigate well. When I say that, I mean that the links to go to the next page in a game do not give the correct URL to the browser and the site gives me an "Invalid Game ID" error.

I liked the old version better where you could list the videos and play them down the line on the same page. Oh, well...those are just my thoughts... :/

[Thissa]

EDIT: PAGINATOR IS NOW FIXED
EDIT #2: GOING TO TAKE E-R DOWN FOR A BIT WHILE I DO SOME PERFORMANCE ANALYSIS, DO NOT BE ALARMED!!
EDIT #3: BACK UP, BUT WITHOUT THUMBNAILS (see next post)

Okay, yeah, i've been bombarded with messages about the broken paginator. I literally just got home from work + family easter dinner, so I'm going to look into that now, and should have it fixed shortly.

Also, completely surprised at how many of you want the option to load all the videos for a game into a single page. I'll look into making a setting for that, but it won't be fixed tonight (give me a day or two).

[Thissa]

Okay, so I figured out what was making things really slow: turns out YouTube's oEmbed API is really, terribly slow. But only when we call it from everything.raocow.com and NOT when I call it from my development server for some reason.

Anyway, to address the performance issues, I've temporarily turned off thumbnails (except for the really old games that had them manually uploaded). Pages with lots of video embeds will still be slow (this is just the raocow.com homepage). I'm going to look into a caching system to fix this properly, but for now, no thumbnails.

The "view all videos on one page" will have to wait until this gets fixed, too.

(And before you whine, "How come it used to work just fine?!?!?" that's because we basically put youtube's embed code in by hand before, whereas now we ask them for it so that we get the newest version of their player and we're future-compatible with any weird url changes they might pull. Also it means we get the same embed code for all the other hosts.)

[Envisioned]

Crucially missing is a next/previous episode button from the 'view video' page. It's really inconvenient to have to close the tab or go back compared to before, when it was all on one page.

Really though there's a ton of basic design and layout stuff that just seems so inefficient and space-hoggy. Why is the game information presented again on the view episode page? Why is the description before the video? Why is the episode description title a link that takes me to the very page I am on? Why are those boxes so large? Why do I have to scroll so far just to get to the video?

I'm trying to be as constructive as possible, but 2.0 is a big step back in my opinion. Hopefully there will be more tightening and tweaking with it, but if it's what you want to go with then at least put up a next/previous option.

[Ditocoaf]

Also, completely surprised at how many of you want the option to load all the videos for a game into a single page. I'll look into making a setting for that, but it won't be fixed tonight (give me a day or two).

Not all the videos for a game on a single page. But like it was before: if I'm viewing episodes 1 through 10 of ASMT, those videos should be there. I wouldn't be viewing the page with episodes 1 through 10 if I didn't intend to watch them.

I feel like the new site basically makes you go one page deeper for things. (Want to see a list of episodes? You used to get that on the "all games" page, now you have to go that game's specific episode list. Want to watch a video? You used to get that on the episode list, now you have to go to an episode's specific page.) This seems to have been done in order to make room for a bunch of extra information to be listed along with the games and episodes.

In particular, the old "by games" page was ten times as convenient. In a single page, you could see a list of EVERY game, at least a dozen or two games at a time depending on your monitor size. And you could quickly expand any one of those to give a list of EVERY episode, without going to a new page. Now, the games are split between five pages, and the episodes can only be seen in a list that's split between multiple pages.

Info like "Start Date, Last Updated, Game Author, Info/Download" shouldn't be on the master, top-level index of games. Move that to the game's own page, then you'd have room to list every single game on one "by games" page. And I don't need the "description" of an episode on any page without the video itself (since it's usually just extra commentary).


I'm sorry, I don't mean to act entitled and belittle your design or anything. But as a frequent user of everything.raocow.com (I intend to eventually watch the entire archives, over time), that's my honest appraisal: you're burying the important information deeper into the structure, and cluttering things with less important information that should be buried.


EDIT: Also, on the main page, you don't need to have ANOTHER box around each individual video, saying "part 1" (there's usually only one part, and we can figure out what it means if there are two videos). Boxes within boxes usually means too many boxes.

[Thissa]

All right, so to address these most recent criticisms:

- I'm a programmer, NOT a designer. TLs4 and I brought a designer on board back around christmastime, with the intent that I'd code up the site and he'd do the design. But he went AWOL after 4 months which is why we finally went "screw it!" and released what we had as-is right now. We're trying to get him back and/or get another designer, to actually make the site look pretty. Though personally I think what's there is an improvement over what was there before.

- I HATED the old "All Games" page - because it literally pulled down everything in the system, it was horribly slow to load. The new one does in more manageable page-at-a-time bits. I do see a couple problems that I intend to address, though:
--- It's not using space very efficiently on larger monitors. I'll see about switching it to dual-column by default, like the videos do.
--- Some people like having literally every game on a single page. I'll put in an option on the settings page, so that each user can customize how many games/episodes they want to see per page.

- Not going to add every game's episodes back to the All Games page - that's what each game's own page is for (and I'll add the number-per-page config to it as well)

- Extra info is staying on the All Games page, because without it you end up just having game names and that gives you nothing. As someone visiting that page, how do you decide which LP you would like to watch? Ultimately I'd like to have categories here as well.

- Description stays on episode listings, because (especially on one-offs) that can help you decide whether the video is worth watching or not.

- Similarly, game info will stay on episode listings, and episode info will stay on video listings, because it helps to give you context to what you are going to watch. That being said, I agree that this information may not be *presented* in the best way - and that requires the input of a designer or usability expert - but it's not going to disappear alltogether.

- The extra box on the homepages contain the video-specific options, such as selecting a different mirror if multiple mirrors exist for the video. I realize that generally, this isn't going to be the case, but once again, that info should be there, it's just a matter of how we present it to the user.

- Going to look into pagination for videos themselves!

[Ditocoaf]

Wow, that doesn't sound like how I use the site at all. When I go there, I'm like, "hmm, people keep offhandedly mentioning the "MariAri" LP, I wonder what that's like". So I go to everything.raocow by_game, and I hit ctl+f, then I type "mariari". Nothing shows up, so I ctl+f "marisa" and then I click on the LP. Then I watch the videos on that page, then I click the "next page" button and watch some videos on that page, then I bookmark it and watch some more tomorrow.

To do the same with the new site, I'd have to ctl+f "mariari" on five different pages, then ctl+f "marisa" on three different pages, before I found it. Then I'd have to click through to a separate page for each individual video. The "start date" info and "game author" info just mostly gets in the way, and tells me nothing useful. And I don't WANT to read the "description" until after I've watched the video, since usually it's more of a footnote or a P.S. to the vid's commentary.

If most people use the site like you're describing, then I'll put up with it, for the sake of the majority of users. But you might want to ask around and find out if more people's experiences are like mine, or like what you're describing.

I suppose the key difference shows in how you HATED the old "all games" page, whereas that was my absolute favorite feature. Since I'm going to be searching through all the games anyway, I'd rather load them all at once (into one, easily-scrollable page) than have to load them in five separate chunks. Though you're right, I wouldn't want to list every single game if you're also going to show all that other info. Would it be possible to JUST get a list of all the games? And then for each game, JUST a list of all the episodes? It's just so much easier to navigate that way, when you already know what you're looking for!

Especially the episodes. You don't need information to decide which episode to watch. If you're watching the VVVVVV LP, the episode you want to watch is "the first one" then "the next one" then "the one after that one" etc. That's it. 99% of people will just watch the episodes in order.

And again, I'm sorry, I realize I'm being unnecessarily harsh here, I'm kind of tired and can't help myself. I know you're a Programmer first, and just trying to make things work better than they worked before. I'm trying to be helpful and give Pertinent Feedback, but it's coming out as more Entitled Complaints. I mean, since you DON'T have a designer on staff or anything (heck, it's not a "staff", it's just one person working their butt off). But I suppose I'm just making this more of a hassle, I'll stop if you'd like.

[Thissa]

Hmm. You know, it sounds like the "All Games" page needs to be sorted by title, as opposed to by date. That way, you wouldn't have to CTRL-F for it, as long as you know what letter it started with. And the calendar page is a better experience if you want to look up something by date anyway.

For your example use case though, if you heard about a "MariAri" LP, I would go to the Search page, enter "MariAri", scroll through the results until an episode comes up that matches it (3rd result), and click on the green link (the game's full name) to get to the episode listing for that LP.

I do appreciate the feedback, if I didn't, I wouldn't make these threads. It's vital to me to know how people Actually Use the site.

[Bean]

I'm on the side that likes it more than not. Now that you've got it up and running (even if it is still a work in progress), I'll get ready to finally give you all those links I promised months ago when you said you were making the change.

[AlchemistHohenheim]

Any chance we can get the old "recent.php" page (the one it used to default to after the intro/splash page, with the last three days worth of videos loaded) back?

I realize that it was just a regurgitation of what's displayed on the raocow.com homepage, and that going to the current date in the "Calendar"view accomplishes basically the same thing, but I personally found the old way a bit more convenient since I just bookmark Everything raocow and bypass the homepage entirely.

[Argumentable]

I want every game on the same page

[Alice]

On larger resolutions (1920x1080 for me) there's a ton of wasted space. Any chance you could set it to be two columns next to each other on higher resolutions?

And as other people suggested, a next/previous episode link would be useful. As would some way to mark videos as view through cookies or something.

Edit: Also, could you center the video player in the window? Having it off center looks rather off to me.

[Sebby19]

For me, the video section on the main page takes good while to load, while before, it was all instantaneous.

[Thissa]

For me, the video section on the main page takes good while to load, while before, it was all instantaneous.

Yeah this is because of the YouTube oAuth API being slow as I mentioned in an earlier post. I'm going to implement a caching system to fix it. This will also fix the thumbnails, as well as allow me to put video embeds back on the episode page.

Any chance we can get the old "recent.php" page (the one it used to default to after the intro/splash page, with the last three days worth of videos loaded) back?

How about a redirect from recent.php back to raocow.com? I got rid of that because it's silly having two identical copies of the same page.

Now that you've got it up and running (even if it is still a work in progress), I'll get ready to finally give you all those links I promised months ago when you said you were making the change.

Ahh I totally forgot about that. Might still be a while before I can get to it, I want to get all the bugfixes and such worked out here first, and then start work on a new admin area for raocow and co.

[Alice]

Edit: Also, could you center the video player in the window? Having it off center looks rather off to me.

Oh, oops. This one was me having it set to two columns when there was only one video. Never mind on that part then.

[Thissa]

Why did you take out the splash page, Thissa?

A lot of people complained about it! Also it didn't really serve any purpose.

[AUS]

Meh, how many is a 'lot' ? I'll be willing to bet it's just a loud minority. Not like it's that big of a deal, though.