New Website Design and Navigation

ZOS_GinaBruno

Good morning, everyone!

As you may have noticed, our website received a complete overhaul today. Along with the visual improvements, we’ve also made some changes to the functionality including a new global navigation bar and footer. We’d like to specifically call out the new location of the language selection, which is now located in the bottom left side of the footer:



By clicking on the flag, you can expand the options and switch the language between English, German, and French:



We’d love to hear what you think of today’s changes, and hope you enjoy our new look!

MissBizz

which is now located in the bottom right side of the footer:

Everything in the footer is left aligned for me.. on chrome.

Kinda cool so far, will need to play with it more for more feedback.

Decon98b16_ESO

Not liking how my webpage is now more header and footer. There was less space for reading posts (a lot of scrolling down) before this revolutional change . Now even less. Good thing is I do not come to the forums too much anymore. It is more about who else just got booted from the server, lag, etc. Oh, and the devposts (if there are any useful ones).

SantieClaws

This one finds the moving thingy at the top rather large and also finds its movement somewhat disturbing.

It feels like it is a popup that you want to look for something to close it down again or hide it. But you can't ...

It honestly feels rather bothersome to this one yes.

A forum should stay still unless this one she chooses it to move - or she is drunk.

Yours with paws
Santie Claws

Paulington

A nice overhaul, looks super good!

My only request is that it'd be nice if we could permanently collapse the top bar, instead of having it expand when you scroll to the top. .

ZOS_GinaBruno

MissBizz wrote: »

which is now located in the bottom right side of the footer:

Everything in the footer is left aligned for me.. on chrome.

Kinda cool so far, will need to play with it more for more feedback.

Whoops - left is correct.

Elsonso

An improvement over the old one. I was playing tricks with the old web page to restore some functionality that got lost, but it looks like this isn't needed with the new design.

MissBizz

Alright, so like others, I feel the expanded header is a bit too much before I get to scrolling down.

Though I must say I'm loving the main site. News articles seem much more organized and clearer, love how the updates timeline is laid out. Overall, I really enjoy the overhaul for the ESO site itself. I would love to see the header permanently shrunk for the forums though, or at least a way to set it to stay that way.

[edit] Also not a huge fan of that big chunk of empty space between the expanded header and the start of the forums. To me it's just more wasted screenspace on top of that large header.. that makes for more scrolling to get to actual content. The chunk of space doesn't appear to show up in the rest of the website, or at least it's not noticeable.

Yuls

Somehow the changing in the font size in the header manages to make me motion sick. I don't really like the whole new header but I will get used to it, but this movement thingy when scrolling all the way to the top...

Jim_Pipp

Just came in through my mobile. Really nice to have the simple navigation to recent forum posts and more importantly getting mobile access to the Dev tracker.

Unfortunately the Dev tracker doesn't adjust to my smartphone screen size so I can only see half of the subject and not who authored it. Holding my smartphone sideways fixes the problem, so it's nothing major.

Rouven

Just makes you scroll more. Would be nice if it was minimized by default.

Edit: Other than that it's clean and slick.

Neirymn

Despite the enormous header, I like this new design more than the old one! Much more clearer.

Nifty2g

The changes are nice, but the top navigation is a little weird - It's a bit of a stretch to get to where you want to usability wise, there are buttons all over the place and it's not too clear.

Current

full size: http://i.imgur.com/pxs3hSH.png

Example

full size: http://i.imgur.com/sXW4jbS.png

The left alignment is a little off too, majority of the website is centered apart from the footer, catches you off guard and seems out of place.

Elsonso

Hey! They preserved the awesome functionality of the age gate page! Wooo Hooo!

ahem.

Minyassa

Looks pretty nice. You might want to tighten up some of the empty spaces between text and borders, and between text windows, as that is a lot of extra real estate just sort of hanging around.

Docmandu

Header is much much much too big.. esp the forum navigation one.. think it's really useless that the "CATEGORIES DEV TRACKER RECENT UNASWERED" header takes up so much space in such a large font... first thought my browser hadn't loaded everything and that is was a rendering error.. but guess it's "design"

TheRealPotoroo

Yuls wrote: »

Somehow the changing in the font size in the header manages to make me motion sick. I don't really like the whole new header but I will get used to it, but this movement thingy when scrolling all the way to the top...

Ditto on the motion sickness. Once again ZoS have released something without having an actual human being try it out first. The jerkiness as the header restores itself when you scroll is beyond clumsy, it's like something from thirty years ago.

PS: It's not just the header, it's also the sidebar on the main site when you're trying to read an article. I've got a Windforce GTX 980 but this is so bad it looks like I'm using Intel's very first generation integrated graphics.

@ZOS_GinaBruno this is not just a little bad, this is what the hell have you done verging on unusable bad.

Elsonso

Minyassa wrote: »

Looks pretty nice. You might want to tighten up some of the empty spaces between text and borders, and between text windows, as that is a lot of extra real estate just sort of hanging around.

Yeah, after jumping on my tablet, there is a boatload of space there, with vast swaths of empty space , but more importantly, big huge font readable from across town. Minor exaggeration.

EDIT: Can we finally add "PARTICIPATED" to CATEGORIES, DEV TRACKER, RECENT, UNANSWERED at the top? Last excuse was that it was too crowded. Oodles of room now. Please, @ZOS_GinaBruno ?

Nifty2g

Minyassa wrote: »

Looks pretty nice. You might want to tighten up some of the empty spaces between text and borders, and between text windows, as that is a lot of extra real estate just sort of hanging around.

White space is good, if they were to remove that it would be way too cramped.

Joffi

Also motion sick from obtrusive header resizing.

Besides which, the screen space that header takes up when large is unnecessary; if we are on the forums, we already know where we are without a billboard advertising it.

TheRealPotoroo

Minyassa wrote: »

Looks pretty nice. You might want to tighten up some of the empty spaces between text and borders, and between text windows, as that is a lot of extra real estate just sort of hanging around.

That's the fully scrolled up header. It shrinks to something more reasonable when you start scrolling. The fundamental problem is the god-awful jerkiness.

Docmandu

universal-nav div display none; .... and life is good again.

Sanctum74

The site looks great, but unfortunately I am no longer able to access my account options or check on recently commented threads.

Im on ipad and the banner blocks my account icons. There is no x to close it as others have commented. I am able to scroll down to show the icons, but as soon as I release it scrolls back up covering the icons so I am unable to click on them.

Strider_Roshin

Thank you for the addition of dev tracker for mobile. Dev tracker doesn't fit the screen correctly on mobile, but I'm just thankful to have it.

Astarana

Patch notes for Xbox and PS4 does not show up from the website--> news--> patch notes for last 2 month: http://www.elderscrollsonline.com/en-us/news/category/patch-notes
There is no link to V1.8.1.0 for Xbox or v1.26 for PS4

ZOS_GinaBruno

Hey guys, thanks for all your feedback so far! We're currently working on a fix for the issue on the mobile site where the buttons are getting covered - expect to see a fix later today. As for the jerkiness some of you are seeing, we'll make sure that gets fixed (though that'll likely be later this month, not today).

MissBizz

MissBizz's Novel of Feedback for New Website

**Pictures to come because I'm at work and can't be saving and whatnot here.. so WIP. All feedback is from using chrome and an S8 Android phone.

Main Site
I love the main site. The news section is much easier to navigate and find what I'm looking for. Feels much more user friendly and in order than the grid that existed previously.

It feels a bit weird the sidebar scrolls at a different speed than the content section. I see why that was done, but it definitely feels weird.

I love how guides are set up. I personally think it would make more sense to split up battlemaster's corner from the community spotlight articles. Yes some builds are in those spotlight articles, but it will be easier for someone to navigate just looking for builds.

I love how the updates section look. It shows it in a timeline, hitting the hot topics of what each update brought, and can be clicked on to find out more. It's just beautiful.

The media section is also very nice. I personally think the thumbnails should match the size of the thumbnails in the guides section though. Media is there to show off the media, why keep it so small? I feel it would also add consistency between the pages that share a layout.

The crown store page is weird. The other pages (news, media, guides etc.) do not have a visible border, and have a plain background rather than showing the latest background. It doesn't seem to match the other pages at all.

The buy crowns page could do with slightly smaller images, or more cropped. Honestly the images kind of look crummy.. low quality. Size them down a bit, it would also make more sense when comparing the image size to the text.

Support is well... still support in the Orsinium theme. Is that intentional?

Forums on desktop

That header.... It's kinda too big. It works well on the main website, but the forums are mostly a place for current players who realize where they are. It's taking away from the actual content of the site and is quite clunky. It loads after the rest of the page as well, so it's super clunky if you're already trying to scroll and click on something.

Having it permanently shrunk, or at least something I can click to keep is shrunk would be fantastic.

There's also a weird blank space between that large header and the start of the forums. At this point we're at very minimal content vs header. I'd love to see that blank space go away. That might even help enough for the large header not to seem overly intrusive anymore.

Imagine when you use one of the event popups on the bottom of the page? We'll have like 1/10 of the page to actually see content.

Mobile Forums

There's some issues. At first I was excited because I could reach the dev tracker.. well, there's some bugs.

The new website header currently overlays the old forums menu. This means I can now access the dev tracker, but can no longer access my profile, inbox, notifications, etc. This means the forums are lacking a ton of functionality on mobile.

The dev tracker on mobile is not actually resizing. This means you can only read the first half of the post sentence, and the rest gets cut off.

If we have the dev tracker added to the mobile forums menu and scrap the new website menu specifically when on the forums subdomain, everything would be fine.

More info on these issues here: https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/363604/menu-missing-after-website-maintenance

Also, the "menu" button on mobile for me is a broken image, well, not broken, but not supported by my phone. I get a box with an X in it.. like whenever someone uses an emoji not supported by my phone. According to other in that thread, iphones don't even show that much.

ZOS_GinaBruno

Astarana wrote: »

Patch notes for Xbox and PS4 does not show up from the website--> news--> patch notes for last 2 month: http://www.elderscrollsonline.com/en-us/news/category/patch-notes
There is no link to V1.8.1.0 for Xbox or v1.26 for PS4

That's because we haven't added them yet Will make sure it happens sometime this week!

anitajoneb17_ESO

Short feedback : I like the previous version, I also like this one, not sure it was necessary but... it's fine :-)

Beardimus

I'm.sure its mega on a PC but it's a bit annoying on a phone. Banners jumping about, blocking things jerky action etc.

rhapsodious

Please fix the eyebrow on desktop. I hate how it loads in big and shrinks as soon as you start scrolling, it's extremely jarring. Keep it as the shrunk-down size.

In its shrunk-down state, you have a lot of unused real estate. Perhaps include a small graphic that sizes dynamically to fill the space.

If I already own the game, which I know the site accounts and forums accounts are separated, but there should be some way to tell, you probably shouldn't ask me to buy it now. That's a little tacky. :P

The game-account-forum-store-support being in a different font is distracting.

Forgive my atrocious Paint writing.



The footer is large, and I feel like the ESRB Rating and Certified Privacy images can be instead aligned on the right, in a two-columns deal.