I like it a lot better now. There are still a few pieces of text in bright blue in both search pages, but you can fix that later.

 

So, what do you think about the redesign for the search results? I didn't want to change too much too fast, but I think it looks better personally.

(Also, the character selector in the Advanced Search now is written so that people can't crash the server. )

 

Pretty good, I like the formatting a lot better than the centered theme you had going before. I was going to say that the icons looked tacky, but I realized that it's just the orange. Maybe try white-on-black (though the updated icon looks okay as it is).

Also, the search results seemed to take significantly longer than before.. probably like six or seven seconds. It doesn't bother me too much, but for people who use it a lot it might become a problem.

 

Yeah, I just switched out the icons with smaller, less tacky ones.

Do those look better?

Also, I'll be tackling the search results times soon.

 

Just wanted to say the layout looks cleaner keep up the good work. I'll look at the search feature now.

 

Better, yes, though the "new" icon could stand to be a bit bigger. It's rather hard to see at the moment.

 

Yeah, I changed it back to the asterisk. The text was too difficult to see.

 

I like it now. Maybe you should make the asterisk Go-light Green to contrast with the red of the No Recent Updates icon?

 

Not a bad idea.

EDIT:

There, that's more in line with the "No Updates" icon.

EDIT2:

Sorry to keep changing them on everybody, but I moved the green checkmark as the "Story is Complete" icon, and the lightning icon for recent updates.

The "Story is Complete" data should be updating for the stories in the db over the next few days. Until Friday I would expect that icon to only be partially accurate.

---------- Post automerged at 05:14 PM ---------- Previous post was at 02:46 PM ----------

Days Per Chapter is now at the bottom of all results. Additionally, I have an "Experimental" sorting option now, which may or may not actually work at any given time as I will frequently be changing its sorting.

We'll eventually see other options there as well.

 

Not even sure why I didn't think of that, but I approve of the new changes too.

 

I changed the "Recently Updated" icon again... (last time I promise!)

I also created Facebook Page, and am working on a brand new sorting option that is a combination of "What stories are most relevant" and "What stories are most frequently updated". (That's the experimental option that's super slow and buggy.)

Would anyone use an RSS feed for custom searches if I made it? The list of stories wouldn't change that often (as in the order) since you'd essentially be bookmarking a certain list of results.

EDIT:

Added icons for story rating. (They are rough icons. I'll refine them, or someone else can if they feel inclines.)

 

Would it be possible to add a "Sort by number of reviews" option to the search? I know that isn't really what the tool is for but it looks like you've already got the information necessary Fanfiction.net still refuses to provide that function.

Either way I love the site. I've found some good stories I wasn't aware of by using it. Keep up the great work!

 

Yeah, I've been considering adding a section that is just a filtering engine instead of a suggestion engine.

What sorts of things would be most valuable for that? (The most difficult information to use in it would be the characters present as that information is difficult to scrape in a meaningful way.)

 

I've just tried your site out and I really like it, although I haven't found any new stories that interested me. It looks great and is easy to use.

I would like to see a function that filters out old stories, because I've stopped browsing through new stories at ff.net, and that means that I haven't read the new stories, but I have read a good part of the older stories (the ones that interest me).

Also is it possible to add more story IDs than the two you have right now?

Thats all I have Keep up the good work.

 

Suggestions from a web-designer (me):

I'd up the padding on the 'contentarea' div. 10px-15px perhaps? Actually, you seem to be using a very small padding (3px) on almost everything.

The donate button looks a little silly being on a separate line because of the double gradients (Edit:It shows up on the top line on Chrome, but that's it. On Firefox and IE9 it's on a second line. Looks like it's a problem with the left/right padding of the buttons and the float:left). If you really want to have it on a separate line (i strongly suggest against it), I'd get rid of the gradient. If you're worried about visibility for the donate button I'd suggest adding it next to search fields and/or page turn buttons instead just the top menu bar.

On a personal note, I can't stand having menus on the right side. It's non-standard and as such can be confusing for stupid people. I'd swap the content and side menu.

Oh, and FYI, I tried to do a story search (methods of rationality for reference) and it took 46(!!) seconds.

 

Pinstripe, thanks for the detailed reply. I'll respond point by point.

1. I agree, the padding needs to be adjusted. I think somewhere between 8-12px is probably right.

2. The donate button is supposed to be in a single line with the others (and is in all my browser test cases). What is your browser/OS configuration?

3. The menu on the right is no longer used for navigational purposes, only utilities, such as the ebook downloader, and "top 5" searches text, advertising, etc. Moving it to the left is something which to me seems like a very sideways move, but if you feel strongly, as you seem to, please expound further on why you think I should move it. I haven't had that complaint so far (most feedback has been related to either the ebooks or to quirks of the search engine sorting that needed to be fixed).

4. That is a very, very long search time... in fact that's the longest I've ever seen. (It also does not appear in my search logs at all, meaning that something major actually borked on your search.) What were your exact parameters?

---------- Post automerged at 06:46 PM ---------- Previous post was at 05:15 PM ----------

Sorry I kind of ignored your post at first. This is a feature that I'm planning on implementing in the future for this very reason (the take out old stories feature).

As for putting in more than two story IDs... I don't think that would actually improve your results from the heuristics work I've done.

 

1. That sounds good

2. Firefox 5 windows 7. I also tested it on ie9, my ipad, and chome. Ie9 and my ipad had the same problem, but chrome looked as it should. One thing you need to remember is that different browsers render text differently, so the width of the button will be different from one browser to the next. I would find a different way of doing that menu's css, one without a fixed width, or one with more play.

3. The menu thing is both a personal and a functionality thing. The eye moves left-right and top-down when reading; conventional wisdom states that the most important links go on top or left. It goes the same for searchboxes and the like. People look to the left first, so they expect things to be there, that's all.

4. I searched using the methods of rationality, took 46 seconds, that's all i remember.

 

Another function that could be cool, would be if you could limit your search to only include oneshots. Oneshots can be really hard to find on ff.net, so if you had a function that only finds completed stories with one chapter?

 

I don't see that being very feasible not all oneshots are listed as such.

 

Thats correct, but you would be able to find all the others.
It's just that i can't think of another simple way to single out the oneshots.