Petopia Usability Improvements

[Mania]

Sure!

And re "fixes": *sigh* I fixed that before but only remotely and I copied over it today when I uploaded. Thanks for pointing it out; I'll go fix it now.

[Karathyriel]

You are, as always, welcome, lady Mania.

And I just saw the search-thingy by google.
Neat! Or has it been there all the time?

[Mania]

The sites been set up to use Google custom search for quite a while, but the only input field for it was hidden on the bottom of the front page. Google also recently added the bit where your search results are output on the page you are searching instead of sending you off to a separate page. I'm not sure whether I like that or not yet, but it looks pretty snazzy.

[FuzzyDolly]

Awesome job! A++++++++

[Vephriel]

Ooh, I love the new functionality. It's really organized and streamlined now, great job!

Oh, one little thing. Do you think you'll be adding a link to Arcania? I know they're technically separate sites, but I'm lazy and usually used the External Resources page to quickly hop over and check the blog. x)

[Sarayana]

I'm going to sound like I'm just jumping on the bandwagon by now, but that's seriously great work Mania! I really like it. I was like "ooh the front page is different!" *clicks a family* "oooooh the family page is different" *cursor over a pet* "OOOOOOH!!!!!!" It's great!

[Golden]

I'm going to sound like I'm just jumping on the bandwagon by now, but that's seriously great work Mania! I really like it. I was like "ooh the front page is different!" *clicks a family* "oooooh the family page is different" *cursor over a pet* "OOOOOOH!!!!!!" It's great!

Amg, I didn't even notice the hover effect!

Mania, if it's possible, you may want to mention sonewhere, that some parts of the site require the user to allow scripts from yahooapis.com to display everything right. I use NoScript and the info you get while hovering a specific skin shows just the HTML if Yahooapis.com is blocked. Also I'd rather change the "______ That Can Be Tamed" to "Tameable ________", but that's just me going into the tiniest details. :P

And one more suggestion: instead of having an icon for every food a family eats, you could just have a single "diet" icon to hover for the family's diet. That way the amount of the icons up there would stay uniform most of the time, making things easier to understand.

[zedxrgal]

I <3 <3 <3 it! Way to go.

[Kayb]

yup, all good here. no longer do i need to scroll down the page so much anymore

[Mania]

Oh, one little thing. Do you think you'll be adding a link to Arcania? I know they're technically separate sites, but I'm lazy and usually used the External Resources page to quickly hop over and check the blog. x)

*nod* When I started running really really late getting this up I decided to skip the links for the moment, but they are on my list to add back in. And I'll try to remember Arcania.

Mania, if it's possible, you may want to mention sonewhere, that some parts of the site require the user to allow scripts from yahooapis.com to display everything right. I use NoScript and the info you get while hovering a specific skin shows just the HTML if Yahooapis.com is blocked.

Whoops. I didn't realize quite how bad that looked. I just hacked the tooltips a bit: for the moment if JavaScript is disabled you won't get the fancy tooltips, but you also won't get a nasty block of HTML code either. I'll see what else I can do with this -- at the very least the talent trees need some sort of labels on the talents. But for now its not quite so ugly.

And one more suggestion: instead of having an icon for every food a family eats, you could just have a single "diet" icon to hover for the family's diet. That way the amount of the icons up there would stay uniform most of the time, making things easier to understand.

Do you think the changing number of icons are more confusing than they are useful to see the different types of foods? I went back and forth on that quite a bit myself and I'm still not sure how I feel about it, so I'd love to know how the members here might use that information.

[Kalliope]

I missed seeing this, so I saw the new Petopia completely cold!

Initial impression: me likey. The only downside was having trouble finding the Cataclysm information above the ad; didn't take too long to locate it, though, so it wasn't a dealbreaker or anything. I love that the pets are all on the main page now, since that's really why we're all there in the first place. Also, the pictures make it shiny.

So, excellent work, Mania!

(And good re: Arcania returning; I was distraught seeing the link go missing and immediately reupdated my bookmarks. xD)

Edit: *dies* I hadn't even gotten to clicking on the individual families yet. Niiiiiiiiiiiice! That's REALLY handy, especially for drooling over untameable pets. >_>

Edit edit: Are your personal notes going to go back on the pages at all? Or are the links to wowhead, etc. going to be it?

[Shadowkaizen]

Wow...mania I logged into today to look for a new friend and I was like O.O "whoa...petopia is sexy." Haha I love the new changes Mania...great job!

[Moonlost]

It'll take me a while to get used to the new look, but I like it. A lot. I'm particuarly fond of the "Non-*pet family*s With Similar Looks" that are on relevent pages. I'd like to see the ghost saber added to the spirit beast page, under "Non-Spirit Beasts With Similar Looks".

But yeah, nice work. Do like.

[FuzzyDolly]

I just went to look up a pet. As I said before it looks awesome, however... when you're looking at an animals page, there is no longer the thottbot link to get to a map of the pet's location. I used that feature almost every time I checked Petopia. Any chance on putting it back or even just linking to a map directly?

[Kalliope]

I just went to look up a pet. As I said before it looks awesome, however... when you're looking at an animals page, there is no longer the thottbot link to get to a map of the pet's location. I used that feature almost every time I checked Petopia. Any chance on putting it back or even just linking to a map directly?

Thottbot is the first of the three off-site links listed under "Notes." The other two are Allakhazam and Wowhead.

[FuzzyDolly]

Ok so they're just in another spot? I must have missed them. I only referrence thottbot becuase that's the one I always click on.

[Undra]

The site redesign is amazing and much easier to get around in. Good job, mania

[Sarayana]

A slight bug: When I was browsing warp stalkers (don't know about any other families) the pop-up didn't work properly. It didn't pop up for the three at the bottom until I had hovered over the top left one, and once it did, it just was the same pop-up as that top left one. The text I mean.

I've allowed everything on the site and cookies and all that. Only thing blocked is ads.

[Golden]

Tested the bug Sarayana posted about and yes, happens to me too. It seems that when you first hover a tameable skin for the available mobs and after that hover an untameable skin on the same page, you get the npcs of your latest hovered tameable skin.

Also it seems that the Nether Rays have no npcs shown at all. :) No idea if you just haven't gotten to making them yet, though.

[Sarayana]

But it was working earlier! Mania, what'd you do? *shakes head*