Topic: Opinions on the new UI buttons? (v. 25.08.13 - v. 25.08.27 Discussion)

cinder said:
It's not always the only button there.

One of the complaints had been that the toolbar overflows into a new line on small screens. A solution to this was to move some of the lesser-used buttons (fullscreen and note toggle) into that menu on smaller screens.
On desktop, the download button may be the only entry there for now. In the future, we'll add more stuff that may end up going into that menu.

What a lot of sites do for this kind of situation (especially WordPress sites from what I've noticed) is have a mobile version of the toolbar that's hidden on desktop and vice versa. It would be better IMO to have the 3-dot menu hidden entirely in desktop mode and only put those buttons in a 3-dot menu in mobile mode. The buttons are already generally flex containers from what I see so it wouldn't be too hard to implement that.

Okay, the new iteration of the favorites button is a step in the right direction, (star icon design could be improved)

More muted and blended base colors are a progress; new shades of green and red are much better

The compromise with splitting the download button is acceptable, but why hide one of them? It's another super annoying extra click that serves no purpose. This is fine for the mobile version of the site, but it's absolutely unacceptable for the desktop version.

I still think that the 3D effect is not suitable for this site; the same goals can be achieved with a flat design. Over more than a decade, thousands of examples have accumulated showing how this can be done properly

This 3D effect is especially pointless for the drop-down menu buttons

Due to the high latency of the E621, clicking on these buttons is still frustrating

aacafah said:
"Is bad, make good" is not a very useful critique. If you just want to vent, you've achieved your goal, pay this no mind; if you want us to make informed decisions about the future of the UI, could you be even slightly more specific? If you look back, you'll notice a wide variety of opinions about exactly what was good before & what is bad now (with some even preferring certain elements of the current design over the former), so we can't read your mind and determine what you specifically do & don't like.

When the context is "we changed this", and people are expressing they dislike the changes, that typically means they dislike the changes. That is to say, they preferred things as they were. That does not typically need much further elaboration, and expecting anyone who dislikes the new direction something is going in to formulate an alternative path, instead of simply expressing discontent over the change happening at all, comes across as a bit dismissive, if I'm being blunt, as though it has already been decided anyone who objects to the changes is wrong for disliking change for the sake of it. Text is a difficult medium to convey emotions through, but I will advise that your response here reads... less than pleasantly, it comes across very "Well what would YOU do, huh?".

All I can offer is to regurgitate prior-stated points of "this feels pointless, like the last few cosmetic changes, why do we even have a mobile mode if mobile functionality is being forced with mobile mode disabled, please stop changing things just to change things, I'm impressed it looks like it both takes up too much and too little room" and I'll add; you really should use the newspost function to state when you're pushing a change like this to the test/sfw site so users can go and look at it before it goes live, and input can be offered prior to staging, the staunch refusal to do this is baffling at this point and seems aggressively anti-input. As in, it feels like it doesn't matter much what users say, anyway, it's going to happen anyway, and anyone who says anything on the forums when it is pushed without any notice beyond "just keep checking the other site now and then or download an external chat programme lol" is just going to be percieved as whining or allergic to change.

I really, really don't like butting heads with you guys, but this is getting plain silly at this point. Hell, you know that annoying forum notification dot that made people complain? Maybe have an extra tab that just says "test site" and have that light up whenever something changes that will alter the actual user-to-site interface (buttons, resolutions, cosmetics, so on) outside of bugfixes or behind-the-scennes stuff so people have both a direct, clear link to the test site and some very obvious notice something new that will affect their usage of the site is being played with? Literally just do ANYTHING at this point.

votp said...

I have been trying very hard to honestly and respectfully engage with critique on this thread.

See also:
https://e621.net/forum_topics/58971?page=1#forum_post_463610
https://e621.net/forum_topics/58971?page=1#forum_post_463615
https://e621.net/forum_topics/58971?page=1#forum_post_463652
https://e621.net/forum_topics/58971?page=2#forum_post_463744
https://e621.net/forum_topics/58971?page=2#forum_post_463786
https://e621.net/forum_topics/58971?page=2#forum_post_463886
https://e621.net/forum_topics/58971?page=2#forum_post_463896
https://e621.net/forum_topics/58971?page=2#forum_post_463989
https://e621.net/forum_topics/58971?page=2#forum_post_464095
https://e621.net/forum_topics/58971?page=2#forum_post_464321
https://e621.net/forum_topics/58971?page=3#forum_post_464329
https://e621.net/forum_topics/58971?page=3#forum_post_464346

Forgive me for coming off as tired of people giving me nothing to work with.

When the context is "we changed this", and people are expressing they dislike the changes, that typically means they dislike the changes.

Which changes? From how far back? Some people liked the changes from 2 weeks ago, some like the ones from a week ago, some hated all of them. I don't even know which old version they mean. They could mean the one from a month ago, or they could mean the most recent one (you know, since they only left feedback now & didn't specify). I can't engage with people if I don't know what their talking about, & I'm genuinely trying, just like I have been for weeks.

Additionally, many, many, many users, completely unprompted, provide specific points they dislike. (e.g. Nikpol; I see you, & I appreciate the hell out of you).

[E]xpecting anyone who dislikes the new direction something is going in to formulate an alternative path...

I have never done this. If you equate "Can you tell me what parts you dislike & why?" with "Well, what's your big idea?", that's a you problem, plain and simple. I really try to be open to accepting fault, like "maybe I didn't phrase it clearly", but this is on you. Do you assume that someone asking you how you liked a meal is daring you to cook up something better?

...comes across as a bit dismissive...

Asking for people to clearly express their feelings & what provoked them is dismissing the opinions of others, got it.

...as though it has already been decided anyone who objects to the changes is wrong for disliking change for the sake of it.

Considering the fact that it keeps changing, it's pretty clear we're not dead-set on things. Especially since many of the more recent changes were in direct response to feedback in this thread.

t comes across very "Well what would YOU do, huh?".

Again, there's not many ways I can read this other than "I've decided you're insincere & don't really care to challenge that perception". I've been trying really hard to be congratulatory and appreciative to people here (no, you don't get to contest that if you're unwilling to look at a larger sampling of my responses here), & when people have criticized my tone, I have apologized and clarified.

...disliking change for the sake of it.

...please stop changing things just to change things...

I've put so much time explaining the rationale of these design decisions to people, & I'm not spending more time doing it again. If you don't wanna read it, that's perfectly fine (it's a lot of text, because I care a lot & really want to understand where people are coming from), but you then forfeit the right to say they're being made "for the sake of it".

Maybe have an extra tab that just says "test site" and have that light up whenever something changes that will alter the actual user-to-site interface (buttons, resolutions, cosmetics, so on) outside of bugfixes or behind-the-scennes stuff so people have both a direct, clear link to the test site and some very obvious notice something new that will affect their usage of the site is being played with? Literally just do ANYTHING at this point.

...I'm so tired. I'm so tired. I'm so tired.
Since linking it every twelve seconds isn't getting the job done, let me paste my explanation in full, one more time:

aacafah said:

norse72 said:
...maybe have a color wheel picker in the settings somewhere if you really want...
...Looking forward to having more custom css instead of just a toggle somewhere for being on a mobile display, as a desktop user I really dislike just not having 2 separate ui's that look better on their respective formats.

twigleaf said:
...Personally I feel it would be nice it they give us an option whether to use this new UI or not, like some sort of theme. It would make the experience much better, plus we would get to have personalisation options now if this would end up happening!

Let me just put this out here so I can link it the next time.

I am a huge proponent of user choice & freedom. I'd love to allow users (myself included) to customize changes to their heart's content; I think that's an ideal worthy of striving towards.

That being said, I'm not the head honcho, so there's that.

The problem isn't a lack of desire; we already have some theme customization (I'm still rocking the pride logo myself w/ the Bloodlust color scheme as my theme; go here & you can do the same). The problem is how to expand that practically.

Here's a little inside baseball for you; e621ng (which is open source btw; you're more than welcome to contribute to the direction the site takes) is written with Ruby On Rails, or just Rails for short. Rails is a multi-page app framework that renders everything on the server. We'll circle back to this.

The main problem is that e621 has 1 dedicated developer (that's Cinder) & a motley crew of volunteer contributors (such as myself). Having Cinder validating that these hobbyists work isn't going to make the system explode is already a ton of work. Separating out UI changes, many of which are also tightly tied to changes in how the backend server works (because everything is handled on the server, Rails & many MPA's tightly couple front-end & back-end) even further shrinks the time he can spend adding new things to the site. Adding some kind of beta site/granular UI toggle for every potentially contentious change is a herculean task that would completely halt development for weeks at the very least, probably closer to months. For a beta site, it would also require approval from & cooperation with the technical staff at Bad Dragon (the site's owners). For a granular toggle system, it would implicitly demand supporting deprecated UI elements & styles, with users rightfully imo getting very angry when we break their specific combination of UI settings while iterating the site's design & features. I'll also remind you that any & all bug fixes need to be handled by him too, meaning either those also need to put on hold, or those will eat away at the dev time for our solution.

On top of that, because Rails is rendered on the server & has tooling to facilitate that, all of the HTML (& some of the JS iirc) is embedded in .erb files that need to be processed by the server, & a lot of the JS also is tightly coupled to changes in the backend logic. Therefore, we'd need to update the server itself every single time there's a UI update regardless of whether or not the backend logic actually changed. We shouldn't lose uptime everytime, but in software development, you learn not to rely on what "should" happen pretty quick. So, instead of developing & updating the server logic & the UI at the same time, we'd have to develop the UI independently of the backend logic for much as possible, & update the server logic & UI separately. This is simply not practical, at least for the time being.

Besides, with the Settings -> Advanced -> Custom CSS option, we've already given more user customization than any other site on the planet; you can almost always get back to exactly what you want yourself without placing this burden on development.

So yeah.

Tl;dr, we'd love to have our version of Discord PTB, or the Steam Client Beta, but that is simply not a task we have the resources to undergo, & we place greater priority on moving the site forward than carving out exceptions so users can avoid changes.

And before you say it:

donovan_dmc said:

nacre said:
So make those changes for the mobile site and not the desktop one.

before anyone says "oh but it's more to maintain" It's two buttons that worked fine for 15 years before this.

You're applying that logic to just this change when it really applies to the entire site, consider that mobile first changes are made in various places of the site, each may be just a few things on their own but combined it's a lot of things

I'm sorry if I'm coming off as upset, but I'm just so tired of trying. I'm deeply grateful for those that actually engaged with me, & they were very helpful in helping understand the myriad places this discontent comes from, but I'm clearly both not getting useful feedback by engaging anymore & not assuaging users that we're listening to them. I don't have time to help users with their custom CSS while they shit on me for my troubles, I don't have time to write lengthy posts explaining our thought processes that get ignored, I don't have time to try and understand everyone's point of view. Finally, I don't have the patience to maintain a consistent demeanor anymore, which isn't helpful to anyone.

I'm genuinely sorry if any of you felt slighted by me here; despite my dissatisfaction, taking it out on others was never my intent, and I apologize if you feel at any point I did.

I'm not reading this anymore.
If anyone wants to discuss these UI changes with me, come to me on Discord or the DMails & we'll talk so I know you're listening & you know I'm listening.
If you just want to complain, I yield the thread to you.

I feel like we should probably go back to the system of pushing stuff to e926 early so we can have more controlled discussions will less cross-talk and repeated points.

I'm honestly fine with the change, the favourite button being a less in your face (for the lack of thinking of a better description) yellow and orange to the current version when the star is filled in when you favourited it. Still think the 3D effect is a bit wired but nothing major.
And while the three dots only hiding the download option is kinda awkward, it being apparently (and hopefully) a temporary thing as more options getting added to there, I can live with it.

dba_afish said:
I feel like we should probably go back to the system of pushing stuff to e926 early so we can have more controlled discussions will less cross-talk and repeated points.

That only works if they tell us ahead of time about the changes (one of the things we've been asking for), and are willing to walk them back/not do them in e621 if the response isn't positive (there's not much point asking for feedback if they're going to do it regardless of what the feedback is, beyond maybe throwing some scraps at us making a few tweaks that don't solve the main issue). People won't check e926 if they don't have a reason to, let alone know what to look for, and if they bring the changes over regardless of feedback, it'll be a largely pointless exercise for us.

watsit said:
That only works if they tell us ahead of time about the changes (one of the things we've been asking for), and are willing to walk them back/not do them in e621 if the response isn't positive (there's not much point asking for feedback if they're going to do it regardless of what the feedback is, beyond maybe throwing some scraps at us making a few tweaks that don't solve the main issue). People won't check e926 if they don't have a reason to, let alone know what to look for, and if they bring the changes over regardless of feedback, it'll be a largely pointless exercise for us.

we did have that with the devlog threads we had about half a year ago for a couple weeks before they stopped.

I don't care for this new change. It makes it more harder to find the download feature.

watsit said:
That only works if they tell us ahead of time about the changes (one of the things we've been asking for), and are willing to walk them back/not do them in e621 if the response isn't positive (there's not much point asking for feedback if they're going to do it regardless of what the feedback is, beyond maybe throwing some scraps at us making a few tweaks that don't solve the main issue). People won't check e926 if they don't have a reason to, let alone know what to look for, and if they bring the changes over regardless of feedback, it'll be a largely pointless exercise for us.

Literally all I want, man, all ANYONE wants. We haven't reached Youtube levels yet, thankfully, but this way of handling things puts the genuine concern in me that's not an impossibility.

Nope. I can't get used to the appearance of the fav button. A simple clear red was just fine... A single glance was all I needed, but this method is a tad harder to notice when I find favs in a search. But having it customisable will be better if it has enough variety.

beepbep said:
The green 'favorited' button was clear as day when something had been favorited. Red is not a color I associate with successful website functions. I could maybe forgive the red one if it still filled in the star when favorited, but changing both is just straight-up bad UI.

I will add that in the header menu, favorites has a heart icon, but below posts the favorite button is a star.

could we just have the options scroll when they start overflowing rather than just getting sucked into a submenu, or would that conflict with the gesture navigation?

has anybody else noticed that w/s scrolling (pressing these on an image page will generally let you scroll up/down unless you have your focus stuck on a button for or something) has changed?

sometimes i use it over the scroll wheel because a/d move forward and back in a comic, and i usually like to use fit horizontal for image scaling (most comics are portrait) and i feel like it's infinitely worse now for some reason. Like there's lag? It doesn't scroll nicely, and it also has a weird inverse behavior where if you spam it faster, it slows down the scrolling??? Used to be that you would hit the button, and it would just scroll down x amount, there may have been a short cooldown, but it's like, actually pretty unusable now.

I'm thinking they tried animating it to "make it smoother" not realizing that it just makes it worse most of the time.

I think they're ok now. But there are some potential improvements:
1. The popup that breaks down upvotes and downvotes should also be shown on hover. +should hide on click anywhere, not just the button that summons it.
2. Fullscreen button should change to icon on mobile, instead of hiding. It would still fit if you squeeze other buttons a bit. For now fixed with the following CSS:

/* (Post) Unhides mobile "View" button from popup, changes it to icon */
@media only screen and (max-width: 50rem) {
#ptbr-wrapper .ptbr-favorite-button, #ptbr-wrapper .ptbr-etc-toggle {padding: .5rem 0}
.ptbr-fullscreen {display: revert;}
.ptbr-fullscreen-button {font-size: 0; min-width: 2rem; position: relative;}
.ptbr-fullscreen-button:before {content: "⛶"; font-size: 1.75rem; position: absolute; left: unset; right: unset; top: unset;}
.ptbr-etc-menu .ptbr-etc-fullscreen {display: none;}
#ptbr-wrapper .ptbr-resize select {max-width: 22vw;} }

Apsolute garbage. Especially now that the download image button is gone into dropdown menu wich gets butchered on mobile screens.

Is there a user style or greasemonkey-script that reverts this?

radnumbirish said:
Is there a user style or greasemonkey-script that reverts this?

they're literally all over this thread.

here's css I posted most recently but there's more from other users.

I don't know the reason for the up/downvotes redesign, but they kind of nailed it with the new favorite button. Feels snappy and instead of a message popping up, the filled in star is a great indicator.

I'm having issues with image scaling which could just be the browser's fault. In the past, fit vertically would shrink the image to the landscape orientation and I would only need to adjust it a little. Now it just fills up the full width and I have to scroll to see the full image.

EDIT: actually does shrink the image,( must have been input lag,) but now the image shows all the way to the left. They used to be centered. Is there a new toggle somewhere to customize the image back to being centered?

Also, finding the search function for forums hidden away in the hamburger drop down button feels odd. I think I remember a search bar somewhere on the top left of the page.

I don't really care for most of it, but I'm really tired of just not having a download button anymore. Hiding it being the ellipses is REALLY dumb and annoying. I've been using the site a lot less because of this. I know I'm kicking a dead horse, but just add a download button back.

Anyone got a CSS script for the old UI that works after the last bout of changes? I used this one but after yesterday's changes it's now broken.

Very glad "just use custom CSS to revert it" is working so well by making me replace it every couple days because it broke again by even more changes.
This is very annoying.

thine-dude said:
Very glad "just use custom CSS to revert it" is working so well by making me replace it every couple days because it broke again by even more changes.
This is very annoying.

my css still works for me.

dba_afish said:
my css still works for me.

The most recent changes have made the "pressed" favorite button a locked small size, ignoring the size set in my css, so pressing anyone except the very far left of the button will result in a failure to favorite because the button is no longer where I clicked it.

dba_afish said:
my css still works for me.

Ditto

thine-dude said:
The most recent changes have made the "pressed" favorite button a locked small size, ignoring the size set in my css, so pressing anyone except the very far left of the button will result in a failure to favorite because the button is no longer where I clicked it.

if I had to hazzard a guess, this is an issue related to using width: unset combined with something that's causing the width of the contained elements to become zero/very small (or not exist).

the solution would likely to set an actual hard width value, and/or make sure that the content: "<whatever>" is actually being applied to all states of the element.

thine-dude said:
The most recent changes have made the "pressed" favorite button a locked small size, ignoring the size set in my css, so pressing anyone except the very far left of the button will result in a failure to favorite because the button is no longer where I clicked it.

My problem is slightly different; when I click favourite the button shrinks momentarily (and the text jumps outside it) and then returns to normal. If the click was on the leftmost part, the post will then be favourited. If I click elsewhere, the button remains green and the post is not faved.

Also I have noticed the upvote button seems to lag by a second or so, but I don't know if this is related.

dba_afish said:
if I had to hazzard a guess, this is an issue related to using width: unset combined with something that's causing the width of the contained elements to become zero/very small (or not exist).

the solution would likely to set an actual hard width value, and/or make sure that the content: "<whatever>" is actually being applied to all states of the element.

I know very little about CSS so I don't really know how to follow your advice. Can you tell more about what exactly I should add/change and where?

Alternatively, can you share what CSS are you using since it is apparently still working fine?

The new design fixes nothing for me. I want to go back to t he old design. This one looks terrible, and adds extra clicks i don't want or need.

So, will these buttons be further developed or are we forever stuck with this half-baked version?

Thumbnail stats should indicate when you already upvoted/downvoted an image.

redphoenix42 said:
Thumbnail stats should indicate when you already upvoted/downvoted an image.

Posts do not have a list of individual votes, just a total count, this would require an extra query on each page load
This kind of change has been either denied or skipped over numerous times, and it has been said by previous developers that favorites in the api/data might go away at some point if the performance issues surrounding them get significantly worse

oh am I blind and this change was made a bit ago or did it get condensed recently with options being put under a new submenu??

windluck said:
oh am I blind and this change was made a bit ago or did it get condensed recently with options being put under a new submenu??

This thread was about UI changes that were made two months ago.

If you are taking about the recent change that happened a day ago, see topic #59981 & topic #59987.

Here we go again. Bumping this thread so people can post their scripts to fix the latest changes.

It still works for viewing posts but all search and pool pages got broken.

This thread should be locked since it is already outdated.

supina said:
Here we go again. Bumping this thread so people can post their scripts to fix the latest changes.

For reference, this is what I was using so far.

[class*=ptbr],
[id*=ptbr],
.st-button,
.kinetic {
border-radius: 0.35rem !important;
box-shadow: none !important;
font-family: Verdana, system-ui !important;
translate: none !important;
}
#ptbr-wrapper .ptbr-etc {
/* Right-click or Long press -> Save Image As... */
display: none !important;
}
#ptbr-wrapper .ptbr-fullscreen-button,
#ptbr-wrapper .ptbr-favorite-button {
padding: 0 0.6rem;
width: unset;
}
#ptbr-wrapper .ptbr-fullscreen-button:hover {
background-color: var(--palette-background-orange-d5) !important;
color: #000;
}
#ptbr-wrapper .ptbr-favorite button::before {
content: "Favorite";
position: absolute;
top: 8px;
}
#ptbr-wrapper .ptbr-favorite-button {
color: #fff !important;
}
#ptbr-wrapper .ptbr-favorite-button[favorited=true]::before {
content: "Favorited";
}
#ptbr-wrapper .ptbr-favorite-button svg {
display: none;
}
#ptbr-wrapper .ptbr-favorite-button[favorited=false] {
background-color: var(--palette-background-green-d5);
color: var(--palette-text-white);
width: 81px;
height: 32px;
}
#ptbr-wrapper .ptbr-favorite-button[favorited=false]:hover {
background-color: var(--palette-background-green-d10);
}
#ptbr-wrapper .ptbr-favorite-button[favorited=true] {
background-color: var(--palette-background-red-d5);
width: 89px;
height: 32px;
}
#ptbr-wrapper .ptbr-favorite-button[favorited=true]:hover {
background-color: var(--palette-background-red-d10);
}
#ptbr-wrapper .ptbr-score {
background-color: unset !important;
font-size: inherit !important;
margin: 0 !important;
padding: 0 !important;
height: unset !important;
}
#ptbr-wrapper .st-button,
#ptbr-wrapper .ptbr-resize-select {
align-items: center;
}
@media (min-width: 700px) {
#ptbr-wrapper .st-button,
#ptbr-wrapper .ptbr-resize-select {
height: 1.85rem !important;
}
}

It still works for viewing posts but all search and pool pages got broken.

If you want to talk about the recent UI change dated 5th November 2025, see topic #60307.
If you need help fixing your CSS due to this update, see topic #58330.