The new look of the PRD, good or bad?

[Hazor]

Apologies if this is the wrong place to post this or if my search-fu missed another thread on the topic, as I do not frequent the forums, but..

Regarding the recent change to the appearance of the PRD:

My thoughts are that the big red buttons waste an enormous amount of vertical space, in contrast to the old text links fitting nicely into a window that wasn't maximized. Even worse, the plain white background is harder on the eyes than the old, beige, textured background which was very pleasant to read from.

Would someone who works on the website be willing to comment on the reason(s) for the changes and prospects on reverting them or adding in a way to use the old stylesheet?

Do any of my fellow users have thoughts or opinions to add?

[Marc Radle]

I actually think the new look is a huge improvement. It's more visually pleasing overall and at the same time, much cleaner.

In particular, I tend to greatly prefer the white background.

I for one was very happy when the new look debuted and would be disappointed if they reverted back ...

[Gorbacz]

1. The new design gives a 1000000x better UX on mobile platforms.

2. It's clean, sharp, flat and modern. The previous one was oh so 90s fantasy website, minus sparkling fonts and MIDI of David Arkenstone playing in the background.

3. The bg is actually beige, not white. Beige is sexy.

4. It's still missing CR indexes of Bestiary 2-4 :(

5. But, again, mobile UX. I'm using a tablet to run my games and the last PRD update did marvels for me.

[Chris Lambertz]

Hi there! We actually have a long going thread for feedback/bug reports for the PRD here. Since I'm the one spearheading the PRD project and ultimately the one responsible for the redesign, I'll break down some of the rationale behind this rehaul.

In general, updating the old layout for mobile/desktop platforms was laborious in itself. Much of the redesign has been done to increase our ability to get updates in more quickly/easily. We were updating multiple copies of the same navigation for these platforms, and to be honest, they weren't quite cutting it when we got reports from mobile users. There also weren't resources to make sure that the scripts that made this all "go" were updated as regularly as they needed to be.

We also recognize the increasing use of the PRD on mobile platforms versus desktops. It doesn't make sense to continue to ignore this, and especially since Organized Play references the site so often, we had to switch to a more responsive layout. The old layout depended on heavy graphics, heavy scripts, and didn't work on many tablets and phones.

Visually, the decision to more away from heavy graphics did tie into site performance. But there was also consideration to the way the print layout for our products has been moving. There were many cues taken from the Beginner Box, Ultimate Equipment and the yet-to-be-released Strategy Guide, and I anticipate further adjustment on this side.

I do agree with you that there are still some spacial problems with the layout on desktop. However, not all screen heights will be the same, and we still will continue to add books as they are published. There are growth considerations here too. I'm not sure there's a "one-size-fits-all" solution for this, but I can tell you that it will very likely change up a bit as time goes on.

In short, I can absolutely understand where your feedback comes from and appreciate it! It definitely helps when going back to see what can be improved upon, and I'm sure we'll see changes for the better in the next few updates :)