Forums > MobyGames > Do you miss the old site?
Daniel Saner (3503) on 12/21/2013 12:05 AM · Permalink · Report
Old as in, until 2 days ago!
I made a GreaseMonkey script that brings the redesigned logo back into the new restored site:
http://pastebin.com/dp1iE4EE
Check it out:
Beautiful!
vileyn0id_8088 (21040) on 12/21/2013 1:06 AM · Permalink · Report
I thought trolling was what the TrollPub was for. :)
Unicorn Lynx (181775) on 12/21/2013 4:31 AM · Permalink · Report
Burn in hell, re-design and everything that reminds us of it! Let's forget it like the nightmare it was!!
Daniel Saner (3503) on 12/21/2013 5:27 PM · edited · Permalink · Report
Absolutely not! Like what?
The logo is part of the image, and image is everything. The new design valiantly pointed the way forward, into the world of mobile computing, AJAX toppling the outmoded page-based nature of HTML, and flying cars! I toiled away for hours on this sophisticated (and 100% free of bugs and malware!) extension so that the distinguished visitors of MobyGames could be constantly reminded that the future is today.
What could be more important than that?
Daniel Saner (3503) on 12/21/2013 5:41 PM · edited · Permalink · Report
So you reckon I should stop work on v 2.0 which would bring back the entire re-design? =P
Just as well. It would probably trip off most virus scanners anyway.
SGruber (3812) on 12/25/2013 12:33 PM · Permalink · Report
Well, I think there was some merit into bringing the design into the 21th century. (this is actually 20th century design, what website can say that!). Tablets and Smartphone accessibility would be a huge bonus to Mobygames.
But that abomination did just about everything wrong that could be done wrong.
(also, this could be the setup for the greatest and cruellest Aprils fools joke ever ....)
Daniel Saner (3503) on 12/25/2013 3:12 PM · edited · Permalink · Report
But I still fail to understand why so many web developers seem to think that narrow fixed-width layout translates to mobile accessibility. I don't know of any post-2007 phone that has any trouble adapting full-width fluid layouts to their screen size.
That's why "don't use absolute dimensions unless you really have to" has been a golden rule pretty much since HTML 3.2. Because the user's browser knows best what works on their end. Almost everytime I visited a website on my phone that offered a special mobile/tablet/touchscreen version, it worked so much worse that I had to switch back to the desktop version to use it properly.
Not to mention that in the same breath they add JavaScript nonsense for every last task that pure HTML deals with perfectly fine, which is ironic, because while my 64-bit Intel i7 with 16 GB of RAM manages to just about handle that fluently, it's hopeless for any mobile device.
The incompetence in the web development world truly dwarves that of the programming world at large.
Parf (7873) on 12/26/2013 9:10 PM · Permalink · Report
I second that... I have yet to find any "mobile friendly" website I've preferred to use on my phone over the "real" version. It's like they always remove the wrong things and make it ten times harder to navigate in their hungry struggle to make it easier. Ironic, one could say...
Daniel Saner (3503) on 12/27/2013 2:47 AM · Permalink · Report
As ironic as the recent trend in user interface design to hide every option and feature under one single button "for easier access"... using 5 times as many clicks and indirections as before.
SGruber (3812) on 12/27/2013 9:06 AM · edited · Permalink · Report
For shits and giggles I just fired up moby on my phone and it works really well. The "core text"(News, reviews, game descriptions) is readable without zooming and the whole site fits snuggly on the screen without panning. For hitting the links or reading the stuff on the side columns zooming and panning is necessary however.
I'm way too tech dumb to know if the font increase on the "core text" is due to my phone or something moby did. (Windows Phone 8, Lumia 920)
Daniel Saner (3503) on 12/27/2013 8:05 PM · Permalink · Report
[Q --start SGruber wrote--]I'm way too tech dumb to know if the font increase on the "core text" is due to my phone or something moby did.[/Q --end SGruber wrote--]
It's your phone. Hence my argument that most things these web developers do in the name of mobile accessibility is completely unnecessary.
I think it's the right way around anyway if each client is responsible for fitting content to its capabilities, rather than content trying to adapt to countless different and ever-changing clients. But I guess historically it just evolved because mobile browsing became a big thing surprisingly quickly, and few sites changed to accomodate it. For example the double-tap-to-fit, which makes reading in multi-column layouts easy and often changes the layout around considerably, was already supported by my 2006 LG dumbphone.
And HTML 5 makes "mobile sites" more obsolete than ever. You design your websites screen-size-agnostically, so that they still look good even on a large panel, while using the new level of detail markup to help browsers on even the most limited devices decide what to do. Your phone can adapt its viewport and font sizes, and even Lynx can render the site legibly. No fixed-width layout necessary!