Feedback Redesign

If there was one thing bothering me about watch2gether it was the clutter. You had all the video suggestions and icons in the bottom, a row of text and thumbnails to the left and the chat that i most often don’t even use to the right.

With the redesign a majority of the clutter has been resolved, I can now just hide the members (older addition, but still quality) and have only the playlist to the right, which is way less visually exhausting.

I just wanted to say good job and I enjoy it very much, works like a charm too.
What do you guys think, do you enjoy the new layout?

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I certainly do enjoy the new design. :sweat_smile:

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Thanks a lot for that feedback!

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Great redesign.
Now instead of having dedicated areas to look at things or change them I have to switch tabs on the goddamn chat. Instead of having the left side of the site be a nice hide-able playlist area I have to switch tabs on the chat to get to videos if I wanna move or delete them and it’s such a small area it’s even hard to click on them to drag them around or delete them. GREAT!
Now instead of scrolling down in general to get to videos I have searched for I need to have my mouse honed in on the middle of the site before I can scroll down to click them, then add them to the playlist I have to switch tabs out of the chat to look at. Fantastic!
Now instead of being able to see the whole site, the chat taking up the majority of the right side it’s only a portion of it, with empty space on top that’s not used up at all and the videos take up a MINUSCULE portion of the already unused space on-screen. MMM ARTISTIC!
Hey I have an idea. Stop breaking things, who gave this garbage the green light? WHY would you let me pop out the chat if I can’t move it? It still blocks the playlist, minimising it is THE SAME THING as switching the tab! It was at least passable before, now it looks like some kinda stupid XAT interface but actively trying to avoid using onscreen space. What the hell.

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the chat and playlists
these are always the things that are messed up

something like having the chat in the same space as the playlist makes little sense for anyone who uses them
and that is the problem, these are imprescindible for those who need them, but the ui seems always designed for people who don’t use the interface, so they’re almost an afterthought

the newest redesign is particularly egregious, most of the layout is empty space and makes the video screen even smaller, and the playlist tab is inmensely less useful

my suggestions:

  • reduce empty space
  • separate, hideable playlist, that doesn’t obstruct the chat
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Thanks a lot for your feedback as well!

Did you see that you can detach the chat into a popup? (Click on the little icon the top right of the chat area) You can then even toggle the popup up and down with the keyboard shortcut “c”

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Do you mean detach into its own window or do you mean the overlay over the playlist, because neither I nor my pals really see how to properly detach it (into it’s own window).

@user_77dfdf4c7c72ee0 Like this:

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I don’t understand the redesign, it makes things less easy to see (as i cant have chat and playlist open at the same time) but it somehow makes my screen smaller at the same time with these huge grey bars left and right of wasted space. Why :frowning:

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I think the new update really helps with the clutter that was present with the previous redesign. It reminds me of back when the video player was centered previously. Overall it’s a really nice update and I commend those of you running this site for listening to user feedback, this cannot be overstated.

My only suggestion would be to do something with the users ‘tab’ (I am not sure what to call it, but it’s where you see all the people in the room)

I would much rather it be fixed rather than constantly floating. If you put it right under the video player in its own section it would be much nicer not to have that annoying window floating over the video suggestions. This is especially annoying on mobile when it’s much more difficult to close the users page. Having it in a fixed position that follows the natural flow of the website would be much better, and allowing users to still hide it after the fact too would be awesome.

Ps. When are you guys going to fix fullscreen on iOS? It currently works on all devices except iPhone. The iPad works perfectly fine even before the latest update, but not iPhone? Similar websites to Watch Together don’t have an issue, but I love this website over the others.

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the popup chat mode is, unfortunately, very much insufficient: the size of the chat in that mode is very small, it cannot be moved (to the vast empty space) nor resized (to make it larger), and obscures the playlist area

it does bring into question also that the popup mode has the ability to hide chat which already is hidden by tabbing to the playlist

personally my inconvenience is having to to hide the chat to access the playlist, but I can live with it; I can see that being far more trouble for people who manage active rooms which have to manage both

the inmense amount of blank space is still a problem, the video is even smaller, and if I’m honest, makes the page look just empty

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Honestly, the new redesign is trash. The empty space makes everything look smaller. The playlist is DEFINITELY way smaller and i struggle to read it, let alone move videos around. It has a more minimalist feel but there wasn’t much wrong with the more comfy feeling before… everything was collapsible and could be minimized but it was way easier to use and more intuitive. Please reverse or give an option for us to edit the UI and font.

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New design of watch2gether is so bad.

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I think it’s pretty good.

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Who was this designed for? Who asked for this?
You could’ve made improvements to the old layout but instead you made a cluttered mess that makes it incredibly difficult to watch videos on a big screen.
You could’ve improved intractability with the playlist on the right but instead you made people have to leave the chat to look at and change the playlist, and then come back to it.
And no, popping out the chat does nothing because you can’t MOVE it out of the way, in other words it’s the same thing as if you hadn’t done it, it’s just annoying in a different way.
I’d like to personally get to know whoever greenlights these ideas because I want whatever they’re smoking.

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Thanks everyone for your feedback. I read through all of it and appreciate that you took some time to write down your thoughts.

The main focus on the update was to remove some clutter and to simplify the UI as requested by many users. Yes, this creates more white space but in most cases does not reduce the player size since this is mainly limited by the height of your view port.

I understand that there might be issues when you have both, a busy chat and many interactions with the playlist. This should be resolved with the introduction of a new playlist editor which is under development right now. This editor can be opened in a separate window and offers many advanced ways to manage and edit your playlists.

A few users reported some kind sluggish UI behavior after the update. So far i was not able to reproduce this even in long running tests. Happy to learn more if anyone else is experiencing this.

As always when reporting bugs, please include your browser & version and the resolution of your screen.

Thanks!

Florian

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I really don’t like all the white space really. the video player is smaller now and it’s distracting seeing all the white space around the ui. like i get you are trying to make the site look better but the scaling isn’t the greatest thing right now.

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What’s your screen resolution 43DarkNero?

I found out that removing the padding is a kind of trivial thing to do* and once done + unrestricting video max height it looks surprisingly very nice, I may make an Stylus layout or something

* the relevant rules are:
.w2g-main-lower { padding: 0 3em 0 3em; }
.w2g-player-search { max-width: calc((100vh - 300px) * 1.77); }
.w2g-video-container { max-height: calc(100vh - 292px); }

it should be noted my display is pretty wide, so it makes sense to preffer a landscape-style layout where horizontal space is used the most possible (perhaps there could be a toggle?)
this explains also why the padding looked so bad, since beyond 16:9 the vertical height makes everything too small with very large empty space

The playlist is still a problem, but from what I read that’s apparently getting an overhaul. Perhaps being able to detach it (and move around) would help? (maybe a playlist manager window and have that also contain the search results? i don’t know)

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For users who utilize the chat and playlist features, I feel like this update is really inconvenient. I have to switch tabs or minimize the popup chat in order to fully see my playlist. Before, I was able to manage playlists and view/interact with the chat easily. It seems like a hassle now.

Perhaps put the playlist and chat on separate sides again, and give users the option to minimize them if they don’t want to use those features so it doesn’t seem cluttered? But I’d rather have easier access to those features rather than have blank space on both sides.

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