Coming Soon: Site header redesign (UPDATED FIRST POST 7/1)

[pupmonkey]

I don't like the idea. The thought bubble is part of what makes Gaia, Gaia. And if that changes Gaia Online will be deteriorating from the inside out.

[poppylike]

I don't want this because I'm already suffering from BAWWW and RAEG! and change fatigue.

But since you're going to do it anyway, if it sucks and no one likes it, will you actually make it go away? Or just wait until the protesting dies down without so much as a peep and let it live on because it's going to happen regardless? neutral

EDIT: Remember how we could no longer have symbols in our usernames because we were going to get email?

[awhCB]

It would be very helpful in some ways to some people, but Gaia has always been very unique.
& Plus Facebook, MyYearBook, AND Myspace all have the footer at the bottom.
It can be very annoying and it can cause lag, big time.
Here's an idea Myspace and MyYearBook have parts in the sites where you can choose to use the footer or not, if you do that, it might make people happier.
I like change, but I've been on Gaia since 2005, and sometimes I'd rather keep everything the same.
I don't really like the footer on the other 3 websites, so I probably wouldn't like it on here.

[rainbow_in_the_dark]

Have you ever danced with the devil in the pale moonlight?

I'm going to start with thank you for the update.

However I am going to express my concern that if you get a general outcry from the Gaia public will you actually take it out or will you just go "well it's in place now so we're not taking it down" and basically renege on what you have now said.

It is saddening that saying that exemplifies just how much trust I have in yall right now.

I ,as a user, plan on giving the floater an honest try before I make up my mind on it since a valid point was made about it just being a picture. However I would really like to believe that if the feedback is overwhelming negative after giving it a test run that you take it down.

However I would like to put forth that even if the response is overwhelmingly positive I would like for you to consider implementing some of the suggestions that would make other users happy. Provided of course there was a close margin like 49 % against to 51% for. No need to do it if it is 90% for and 10% against.

I don't know what that means I just like saying it.

[Barmy]

KagomeYoukai

Well, I'm glad you've read our opinions.

Since you are keen on releasing it soon, please please make sure we have the option to turn it off in the future. I want to close it and forget about it just like forum pulse. @_@

A keen point; I am glad someone reminded me of it. I had nearly forgotten about the forum pulse, as I had turned it off long ago. This suggests that an off switch for the footer would be a very good thing. Perhaps it could be an account option: A-bubble, B-footer. That way people could choose their own prefered view.

Seriously, is the site dedicated to the individual user or not? Would the bubble really be such a burden? Have I just missed someone listing a bunch of advantages to the footer?

Perhaps the business side of Gaia is pushing for this change, and if so, then I would ask them to weigh whatever benefits they think that they will gain against (what I would guess to be) greater future growth resulting from providing a website that users are able to feel ownership of due to a greater ability to customize their interface.

Fair enough; I'm certainly not going to quit using the site just because you are trying out a potential change, but I suspect that I will feel less inclined to invest cash in a site that is unresponsive to its users.

[[ M i n t` ]]

I've never seen a floater thing before so I'm pretty interested in seeing and using it. It actually looks pretty organized.

Please correct me if I'm wrong. I read a few posts and some people said this change would make it more like facebook. My sister and my mom frequently use facebook, and if there's a floater on there they've never complained about it.
I really doubt this change with gaia is going to be a big deal.

They only thing I don't like is how in the top right corner, where your gold is displayed, is BLUE.
The rest of the header and floater are PURPLE. So why would you just randomly make that part blue? It doesnt look nice at all.

Other than that,the change really doesnt seem that bad at all.
I'm just a little worried it will load slowly.

[quog]

gracewar7

UPDATE 6/22:

Thanks, everyone, for your valuable feedback. You've provided a lot of food for thought. The biggest concerns I seem to be hearing are:
1) You want to see your notifications, particularly PMs, up in the header as usual and not moving down to the footer.
2) You don't want a floating footer for a few reasons:
a) It is too Facebook-like and takes away from Gaia's identity.
b) You're worried about the lag.
c) You're concerned about the space it will take up at the bottom of the page and the fact that it follows you everywhere on the site.

After digesting this feedback and speaking to the various teams, here's what we will do before the first release: We will put PM notifications back in the bubble in the header.

In addition, we considered making changes to the footer based on your feedback. However, we realized that it's tough to evaluate something when you're not interacting with it and just looking at a mock (which someone pointed out is in pretty low resolution). We'd like to take a chance and release it, let it live and breathe a little bit. We'll be releasing it together with an official feedback thread with the announcement. Based on the feedback from the broader Gaia community, we will decide what to do next. There were great suggestions from you, including an option to turn it off or to hide/minimize it, etc. All of these will be considered - we'd simply like to gather more feedback post-launch when you've actually had a chance to try this.

I hope that goes a little way in alleviating some of your concerns. Thanks for all your thoughts.

-Gracewar

If you really were looking for feedback you'd have announced this thread to start with as i suggested 20+ pages ago.

You beg us to trust you yet you still do as you please and are still forcing this on us as you planned from the very begining.
If you want our trust please dont lie to us and then treat us as stupid.

Since you insist on releasing this can we have an opt out?
Can we decide weither we use it or not?

Pages already dont load properly for no reason people lag for no reason adding more and more things to each page load is just creating more lag not to mention increasing your bandwidth which costs you know.
People run multiple tabs of gaia and with eash update and change the number goes down do you want us single browsing only gaia?

Also.
In 40 pages you have three moderators saying it does not look user friendly and will hinder their moderation
As well as only four replies from admin/devs (one of which is the above quote) which answer none of the questions put forth to you.
There are less than 30 replies that actually like the idea, doesnt that tell you something?

[AngelSong0]

I don't like the idea. Gaia already lags like crazy for me and glitches/doesn't load right. I don't need more things popping up and making my Gaia experience miserable. I don't like the look of that header or friends list thing - whatever you're trying to push on us. I have no use for such a thing so if you're going to push it on us regardless - let us disable it and keep our bubbles if we want to do so. I like the way my header is now. Or - don't change anything at all and scrap this idea. (So no, I'm not going to trust you on this. Sorry.) 3nodding

[Facey Face]

I prefer having my notices in ONE place so I can attend to them when I need to, and not have them floating at the bottom of the page. I always disable the footer on other websites. I just don't like the idea, period. I have no problem with the design, if you could keep it at the top of the page, in the header.

[K. Ueno]

I actually like this new idea. The world map is such an outdated feature that it's just taking up space/load time. I love the idea of a floating footer as I don't always want to have to scroll to the top of the page everytime I want to go somewhere. Really, I focus far more on the bottom of my screen than I do the top so, to me, this would feel natural.

What I don't like are the chosen colors and what's been done to the logo. That new grape-y purple was unnecessary; why not use the exact same color as what's in the header already...? The blue also seems out of place. At least it's within the same value as the purple, but I think the neutral gray/white we have now would look far better. I hope the colors are just for show now and will be changed when it's finally released.

Also, why are you shifting the logo and putting it in that large purple tab? If that extra space is going to be used for something, it'd be nice to know what--if anything at all. Even if you will actually use it for something in the future, I'm imagining it's just going to throw off the balance of that side and likely clutter an already small space. If nothing will go in that area, I don't see any point to doing anything to the logo.

[IC510]

Please leave the header as it is. The new one just looks too empty, taking away the map and the shortcuts menu will just make the header look pointless. The logo will also look f*** ugly in that purple blob, plus I like having my notifications all in one place, rather than having to look at both the top of the screen and the bottom.

The map, it is what makes Gaia itself, the ability to explore the world and get your bearings is something unique and will be lost if removed.

Please work on something worthwhile, like updating the games and other parts of the site which are so much in need of a face-lift. To be perfectly honest, when I see that header with that footer, I cringe. It's simply unpleasing to even look at and, in my opinion, just makes me want to click "Logout".

Please bring the old Gaia back, I didn't sign up for it to be like this 3 years later.

[UPC Betsy]

First off, I would like to say thank you for the update. It is refreshing that this time you guys seem to be listening to our feedback.

With that said however, I still don't understand why this new design a) wasn't announced to the general public so that you could get a comprehensive amount of feedback and b) is even needed in the first place.

You say it's for lots of new features, but you have a tendency to say updates are because of upcoming new features but those features rarely, if ever, show up. As someone stated earlier, remember when you guys updated the naming system so we couldn't have spaces or symbols in our usernames? You said it was because we were getting an email system, but that has yet to come out.

All in all, the header is fine as is right now. The color scheme is simple (white and silver can't clash with anything, unlike blue and purple) and the notification system works. The map might be an outdated feature but if you take it away so that the page loads quicker, that's kinda negated by the footer, hmm?

TL;DR: Thanks for responding to our feedback, but in all honesty stop fixing what isn't broken.

[The Artomic-Bomb]

I really dislike the idea of the footer. I'va been on this website since '04 and have seen a lot of changes in Gaia that annoy me a lot, but this one just makes me want to puke. If you put that footer, Gaia will just turn into another Myspace or Facebook. If I wanted Myspace and Facebook, I would just go to those sites instead of this one. IMO a footer is very user unfriendly and gets agitating.