WEBSITE DESIGN COMPLAINTS

Whoever designs this site should be ashamed of themselves. They should actually feel bad.

The "fresh new look" collection page is horrendous. Nothing about the changes are necessary or good.

I know this serves no purpose, I just want the design staff to see this to know how unappreciated they are.

This!! I think it was completely unnecessary. The old collection page was good enough, so why change it?

I was not aware that the My Collection page had changed until I saw this thread.

Just like when the "new and improved" artist pages were introduced, the new design appears to have added too much vertical padding requiring more scrolling than should be necessary.

Each release in the list contains 5 lines of text plus padding which means at full screen on a desktop only 7 releases are displayed at any one time. The compact view also just simply removes the cover images and does not actually compact the view in any way.

I have 5,000+ releases listed in my collection therefore a compact and zoomed out 'birds-eye view' would be very useful.

And rather than focusing on cosmetic upgrades, Discogs really should be concentrating on first addressing and fixing the many bugs that are seriously compromising the usability of the site: https://discogs.versitio.com/forum/thread/1097085

Their priorities are all mixed up.

Posted this in another thread because there was a lot of confusion as to which "view" s were complaining about:

OG Large Cover View - this is purely a design issue with minimal to no functional requirements. The OG Large Cover View was an iconic feature that many collectors value, as reflected in the backlash every time there has been changes to this view over the years. This has been replaced by a Covers Only View, which is in fact not "covers only" and is basically a tiled version of the Text w/Covers View. Keep the OG Large Covers View and just add an additional Covers Only View (or Tiled Text w/Covers View) option

Text w/ Covers View & Text Only View and overall UI - These all have both design and functional requirements. Currently has many issues (too lazy to list them here) and should not have been released. The inventory management functionalities of these tools are vital to both sellers and collectors and I can't imagine why this was released in such a state.

My main complaint is with the Covers Only View, to much white space, too much text. Makes reviewing my collection a chore and a scrollfest. Originally I could view 8 rows of 6 covers in Large Covers View on my tablet, now I can only see 4 rows of 3 covers in the "improved" Covers Only View

Electro-Magnetic
Their priorities are all mixed up.

It's worse than that, basically the functionality of the Collections page has been downgraded:
https://discogs.versitio.com/forum/thread/1093911

Thanks for your posts Observiance. It's all very depressing isn't it.

Observiance
It's worse than that, basically the functionality of the Collections page has been downgraded:
https://discogs.versitio.com/forum/thread/1093911

Thanks for the links to these threads as I wasn't aware of them. For reference, I will place a link to this thread on the thread that is still active.

The // trick in the url to go back to the old view is great!

Would be interested to see a poll... do discogs s want bare bones, functional design or periodic random aesthetic changes that serve no purpose and now the occasional pop up ad for some article... ?

Oh, well... I'll keep the // bookmarked and hopefully that continues to work.

// Will work for now. But it won't work forever. When they decide to roll out the rest of the crap they want to shove on us, the old versions will be deleted from their severs for good, and // will no longer work after that. They are slowly but surely killing this place. They are not interested how s want things to be. They are only interested to add white space, break functionality and make everythng enourmously sized and round cornered.

I'm not impressed with the alterations either. The of this site, much like many others (youtube etc) doesn't seem to believe in the age old saying of "If it ain't broke, don't fix it.", and instead prefers to periodically modify and tinker with various parts of the board, often to the dismay of the base.

Kuulintu
// Will work for now. But it won't work forever. When they decide to roll out the rest of the crap they want to shove on us, the old versions will be deleted from their severs for good, and // will no longer work after that. They are slowly but surely killing this place. They are not interested how s want things to be. They are only interested to add white space, break functionality and make everythng enourmously sized and round cornered.

Damn... the difference in appearance and functionality is a staggering decline for the new design. Hopefully they can at least size down the large album cover setting to a 4 square grid.

The curious thing about ignoring the interests of people who actually use the site is, who benefits?

Here something I posted in one of the other threads:

As a collector, my focus is on the Large Cover View, as I enjoy "reviewing/iring" my collection visually. I can quickly scan my collection and immediately acertain if I have any "gaps" that need to be filled, and like any collector, there is always something missing that I "need" to have. The new Covers Only View is just ugly, too much wasted space, and is a scrollfest.

Original Large Cover View Collections Page
"Improved" Covers Only View Collections Page
"Improved" Covers Only View Collections Page (scrolled down)

FYI, the "Improved" Covers Only View looks even worse on mobile and tablet

toastmg
Would be interested to see a poll...

Interestingly enough, about 6-7 years ago, Discogs shadow dropped a "new" Large Cover View page.
OG Large Cover View Collections Page
"Shadow Dropped" Large Cover View Collections Page

There was massive backlash, with one thread (new collection format ? has this just happened) hitting 7 pages (almost 700 posts). It got so bad that a Strawpoll was set up and the topic even spilled over to the Steve Hoffman Forums. Eventually they reverted back to the OG Large Cover View.

Observiance
I enjoy "reviewing/iring" my collection visually. I can quickly scan my collection and immediately acertain if I have any "gaps" that need to be filled

I agree. Large cover view is great for this.. as long as it's in some kind of grid format, I'm cool with it... but one single cover taking up the entirety of the screen is no good.

Please discogs, stop breaking things that didn't need to be fixed.

babz
The of this site, much like many others (youtube etc) doesn't seem to believe in the age old saying of "If it ain't broke, don't fix it.", and instead prefers to periodically modify and tinker with various parts of the board, often to the dismay of the base.

It's called people trying to justify their job under the guise of "improvement" and a "fresh look"

Observiance
babzThe of this site, much like many others (youtube etc) doesn't seem to believe in the age old saying of "If it ain't broke, don't fix it.", and instead prefers to periodically modify and tinker with various parts of the board, often to the dismay of the base.

It's called people trying to justify their job under the guise of "improvement" and a "fresh look"

This kind of changes should get them fired, not resulting to justify their jobs.

Kuulintu
ObserviancebabzThe of this site, much like many others (youtube etc) doesn't seem to believe in the age old saying of "If it ain't broke, don't fix it.", and instead prefers to periodically modify and tinker with various parts of the board, often to the dismay of the base.

It's called people trying to justify their job under the guise of "improvement" and a "fresh look"

This kind of changes should get them fired, not resulting to justify their jobs.

This, combined with an absolute refusal to acknowledge the glaring issues, should be a terminable offense. It's been a month now since we could edit custom fields.......

At least they fixed the continent spanning white space in the 'label' column, mostly by forcing a size and centering, but still...

yeah, overall the site design - which matches modern design aesthetics, is not great.

cellularsmoke
At least they fixed the continent spanning white space in the 'label' column, mostly by forcing a size and centering, but still...

yeah, overall the site design - which matches modern design aesthetics, is not great.

At this point they probably would have been better off using Squarespace ...

I tested the new and old layout in Firefox (old layout works with double dash in the url). New version took over 20 seconds to load which is absolutely ridiculous. Old version loaded in 2 seconds.

Kuulintu
I tested the new and old layout in Firefox (old layout works with double dash in the url). New version took over 20 seconds to load which is absolutely ridiculous. Old version loaded in 2 seconds.

Hmm.. Still work? I just learned of this a few minsago in this thread, and it doesnt seem to work for me..??

Blue_Stone
KuulintuI tested the new and old layout in Firefox (old layout works with double dash in the url). New version took over 20 seconds to load which is absolutely ridiculous. Old version loaded in 2 seconds.

Hmm.. Still work? I just learned of this a few minsago in this thread, and it doesnt seem to work for me..??

Yes, it works fine. double dash after "" in the url. Loads fast and gives the old layout. For now at least.

Ahh... Thanx!
Hmm...
A lot of the whitespace and elements you *dont* want to see in the new layout, can be easily eliminated with a stylesheet. However, it *does* require installing a browser addon like Stylus. But thats a required addon for me anyway, as I use it to make all the non-dark themed websites I frequent..well.. dark-themed :P

I've been tweaking a Discogs custom dark theme, eliminating wasted whitespace, eliminating, adding & moving around elements I do & dont want to see for myself over the past couple weeks, but i wish they would STOP un-annoucedly rolling out more & more changes. :( It keeps setting me back & wasting my time. I **REALLY** need a dark theme for Discogs. Its one of the WORST, glaringly white, with the worst choice of low-contrast gray text, websites I've seen in a lonngg time.

I just want to be able to see active prices on the marketplace for my collection, now I have to click each one individually to crosscheck prices and its beyond tedious when it was all listed before and scrollable. If anybody has a work around, please let me know or DM me

I mainly collect Japanese releases so it's easier for me to visually review my collection with the OG Cover Only View due to the different obi designs. This new design is slow to load, too much white space, and has too much unneeded text

Blue_Stone
Ahh... Thanx!
Hmm...
A lot of the whitespace and elements you *dont* want to see in the new layout, can be easily eliminated with a stylesheet. However, it *does* require installing a browser addon like Stylus. But thats a required addon for me anyway, as I use it to make all the non-dark themed websites I frequent..well.. dark-themed :P

I've been tweaking a Discogs custom dark theme, eliminating wasted whitespace, eliminating, adding & moving around elements I do & dont want to see for myself over the past couple weeks, but i wish they would STOP un-annoucedly rolling out more & more changes. :( It keeps setting me back & wasting my time. I **REALLY** need a dark theme for Discogs. Its one of the WORST, glaringly white, with the worst choice of low-contrast gray text, websites I've seen in a lonngg time.

Why not provide the styles for those of us using Stylus? I have fixed my collection in cover view and moved some form elements around to be more pleasing to the eye in of alignment. But if someone where to post a Github of some copy/pasta with instructions, that would be fantastic.

I'm not sure those plugins will work anymore here. Discogs revamped their UI layer a few months ago and are now using a component system that creates a bunch of shadow doms...which can make targetting global elements via CSS and JS rather complicated.

sdfone
Why not provide the styles for those of us using Stylus?

Well.. because mine is not finished... Probably never *will* be, between un-anounced site changes/updates, and its been quite time consuming.
Mine is totally based off, tho heavily modified/hacked up by me, of Dr. Sultan's Dark Discogs theme.
I barely know enough CSS to be dangerous. I mostly work by using the shotgun substitution method.
Unfortunately, I get something working just right on *one* page/section of the site, and it ends up changing/breaking/affecting something, negatively, on another.
Also, I am solely adjusting stuff to fit my 1600x900 laptop screen. I have nothing else to test/adjust changes on, and I'm pretty sure there's NOT a large population that uses this screen size/res these days.
Then... theres also my color choices. Not sure those would go over well with a lot of people.

Also, there are only certain pages I am even interested in using, and the Marketplace/Inventory/Store are most certainly NOT in the list, and that seems where a large part of the community seems to focus on.

Incidentally, while trying to compose this lengthy reply in the horrible, four line max, 70px high "slot" that they call a "text" box, I just modified my style, so it goes from looking like the first pic, to the second. :P
https://i.imgur.com/om6CGsL.png
https://i.imgur.com/AWGkoOu.png

This Imgur album shows some of the pages/views in my stylesheet. Theres more I've modfied, but this is a sampling. Still a work in progress, especially with the gray fonts/white backgrounds on the hover-over/drop down boxes.

https://imgur.com/a/isrm0WH

I probably *would* throw it up on Github, but since GH went to requiring 2FA to a few years ago, I cant use my Github anymore, as I dont have a secondary device to use for 2FA.
Not sure I wanna mess with Pastebin or any of the others, either. I had a lot of time & projects setup onmy Github, & not sure ieven wanna bother with anything like that again, when it can all be taken away by just a simple whim of of the site owners.

I *AM*, in Whiskeyomega 's Discord server for Discogs, and he did setup a seperate channel, *just* for people to discuss the Discogs site layout, and specifically to discuss style/theme modifications to the site, so anyone is welcome to me there to discuss Stylus themes/CSS.

DarreLP
I'm not sure those plugins will work anymore here. Discogs revamped their UI layer a few months ago and are now using a component system that creates a bunch of shadow doms...which can make targetting global elements via CSS and JS rather complicated.

Well, as far as CSS in a -style sheet/theme, Dr.SultanAszazin, updated his theme, using CSS *wildcards*, which seems to have fixed/gotten around most if not all the new component naming, and should help to future-proof against further site updates.
JS stuff may be another matter, tho :(

Kuulintu
Yes, it works fine. double dash after "" in the url. Loads fast and gives the old layout. For now at least.

putting a '--' after '' in the URL 404s for me in chromium based browsers and firefox

DarreLP
I'm not sure those plugins will work anymore here. Discogs revamped their UI layer a few months ago and are now using a component system that creates a bunch of shadow doms...which can make targetting global elements via CSS and JS rather complicated.

If you're using Chrome there's 4 dark themes available in Discogs Enhancer that work with the recent shadow dom updates: https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/Discogs%20Enhancer/fljfmblajgejeicncojogelbkhbobejn

corpseliquor
putting a '--' after '' in the URL 404s for me in chromium based browsers and firefox

Not sure about a double dash, but previously if you used double back-slash "//" you were able to view the OG layout. However, they stopped/patched this workaround a few days ago.

Observiance
corpseliquorputting a '--' after '' in the URL 404s for me in chromium based browsers and firefox

Not sure about a double dash, but previously if you used double back-slash "//" you were able to view the OG layout. However, they stopped/patched this workaround a few days ago.

So it's over now. Goodbye Discogs. I'm not going to wait 15 seconds every time the new crappy ALBUM -artist layout is loading itself. Pity they didn't listen to us.

Kuulintu
So it's over now. Goodbye Discogs. I'm not going to wait 15 seconds every time the new crappy ALBUM -artist layout is loading itself. Pity they didn't listen to us.

yeah... I'm poking MusicBrainz right now, as a possible alternative to switch to, myself.

Not only is it the Discogs site itself the only reason, but the self-proclaimed "Discogs Police", who just love to give out EI votes or tactless, rude comments & personal messages over even just minor stuff, with their noses turned up toward even established s, but who just happen to havent been s themselves for ~10yrs or more...

The community has too much unchecked toxicity & subjectiveness in it, and the time & effort to submit anything anymore, just to get lambasted for some minor inconsistency in data *presentation*, even if the data itself is *correct*, is just miserable.

Considering that, over 3 threads, there's been almost 1000 posts about this joke of a "Fresh" look, broken/missing functionalities, slow load times (even for Text Only View), and overall poor execution and design, it's clear Discogs is not focusing on the experience.

Discogs’ Collection Tool Is Primed for New Improvements

Most s use the Collection Page as the gateway into Discogs and if this initial experience is poor and a chore, there is little reason to browse further. Adding in the multiple issues with the Master Pages, Label Pages, Artist Pages, and Inventory issues, I wouldn't be surprised if there was a dramatic drop in site visits/ engagement over the last year.

It's a total shame how Discogs has fallen

The profile picture at the top right of the page just got the circular 'social media' treatment.

Android on phone:
Search bar completely obscures artist - title on release / MR pages and profiles. Lots of unused black space to the right of the Discogs logo though!

spearheaded
The profile picture at the top right of the page just got the circular 'social media' treatment.

I don't like it. The rectangular one was better.

I agree. The new one doesn't fit very well alongside everything else.

also, on an iPad the new picture icon is slightly larger than the old one which seems to elongate the page slightly, therefore making release pages not fit the screen correctly...

How incompetent is the new page layout? On any release or artist page the menu button is now gone and the search field overlaps the top line on these pages that link to the artist on a release page. This is ultimately unusable and the responsible person should be fired. Seriously, how amateurish can you get?

pfue
I don't like it. The rectangular one was better.

Indubitably. There's a thread on it above this one at the moment.

spearheaded
There's a thread on it above this one at the moment

https://discogs.versitio.com/forum/thread/1122630 Thanks for the hint

hafler3o
Android on phone:
Search bar completely obscures artist - title on release / MR pages and profiles. Lots of unused black space to the right of the Discogs logo though!

Yes the same here. Didn't they fiddle with this before and got it wrong.

next thing is they're gonna tell you to flip your phone sideways...

When the high rank contributors are also chiming in, Discogs is in serious trouble. I guess this is one of the "New Improvements" we're supposed to be "Primed" for.

HM-2
Seriously, how amateurish can you get?

Given their choices this past year, I'm sure we can expect more of this level of expertise.

At this point the continued changes are so comically bad that you kinda have to respect the designers for making it worse

Observiance
I guess this is one of the "New Improvements" we're supposed to be "Primed" for.

They meant "prone", not "prime" xD
On a positive note, the top line on release pages isn’t obscured anymore and the menu button also shows up again on an iPhone