I am not happy with the recent changes to the web site...

1.  The new small boxes for commenting are very poor, they do not allow you to see very much of what you have written and cause me to be constantly scrolling or just terminate a comment rather than bother.

2.  I very much dislike the font that was chosen for commenting, a "t" that is almost the same size of vowels, and an "r" that practically disappears. That is a decorative font unsuitable for general reading. Times or Arial is much more suitable, which is why everyone else uses them!

3.  The thumbnail titles of the gallery pages constantly clip off descenders from the line above, so artists such as "jayfar" appear as "iavfar" and "Jay-el-Jay" becomes Jav-el-Jav." Had he not used capitals, it would have become "iav-el-iav" instead. Just check the Photography gallery to see what I mean. Use a font that fits so everything can be read.

4.  The main page colors now present us with very high contrast due to too much white next to a medium dark blue.

5.  As another member pointed out, you can no longer hover over a thumbnail to see statistics about the upload. Why was that deleted?

6.  For me the most off-putting thing is the poor legibility of the font selection. It could be a deal-breaker for me because it is as difficult to read as something written with all capitals. Lots of research has been done regarding legibility of different fonts.

7.  I am seeing a continual decline in the number of users on at any one time, yet even though fewer are on-line at any given time, the site seems to run at a snail's pace and I am wondering if people are leaving because of the annoyance of slow response times? I also wonder if the site has reduced the number of servers?

These are my feelings!

Wayne (whaleman)

And so say all of us

Logged in today to be blinded by changes . . . I see some improvements, but the all in all largeness of the header section and two rowa of text links instead of 1 is annoying and the brightness of the background is just plain blinding . . .

just my opinion, of course . . . but, I cam in needing to get to my account and where is it?  if it's in the drop down my my username, the banner is overlaying it and I can't see what's there.

I am all with you whaleman.

Can Renderosity staff listen and read this.

Why not ask anyone to suggest changes or improvements.

God Bless.

Most changes are made after listening to things that come up in the suggestion box or written directly to Admin. After a year or so, staff evaluates the areas with the most complaints and those items are addressed. Sometimes, to fix those problems, other changes have to be made in the programming.  As far as I know and from my own experience, changes are all based on community input. And not everyone is happy when that happens.

My suggestion is that we, the members, also share with admin when things are working well and we like what we have.

I completely agree with whaleman's thoughtful comments. This was not a well thought out change. Is there a test system where these types of changes are tried out before implementing on the actual live system? If so, does anyone review the changes before they're implemented? One suggestion I have is to solicit volunteers from the user community to review changes for a few days on the test system before implementing them live.

Tooooooooo Late to test-Everyone is testing it together

LOL

I have always disliked the blue color... It screems at me, so when we got these blues,  I got it fixed.. forgot by who I got the new settings, so most of my site was the gray tones. LOVE it, as i could stay in here fo a long time, without my eyes began to get tired. No disturbing different colors and Wayne is so right about the way too different contrasts.  I am not good at these codes. It would take me ages to change it to my own colors again, because now much of it seems to have been overwritten. But still i have one grey left. The text box, but only AFTER the text is written.  

Either it must be a dark site or a light site, but not both....PU-LEEEAAZZZZZE!!

The upper head part is absolutely terribly white for the eyes against the blue or my own grey box. Or is it at all my own anymore?  Is it so, that you on purpose made it grey, screeming blue and screeming white. WHY?? all these colors.... think about these colors against a foggy landscape... It spoils totally the pictures, in my opinion. 

Yes, and the suddently narrow commenting box..... FOR WHAT USE?????????? WHY?

Again I agree with Wayne. That didnt do any good either. Neither the color of it. Atleast HERE, the box remains in the usual size.

Helle

I'm with Wayne, and the change in the layout, i.e. the big borders around the smaller central "business area" are quite off-putting on my computers.  And I have ALWAYS hated the blues.  I mentioned in my upload today that I don't believe the needs of photographers are considered on this site, I believe it was created for other types of digital artists, and we are the poor stepchildren.  There are certainly ways this could be dealt with if anyone cared, but no one asks us.  I am increasingly moving to other sites where it is easier to see what I'm doing!

For the love of commerce, please just change it back.  This new stuff is hideous.

In addition to the 7 excellent points above (I agree with all of them), there is another poor change to the store:

1. The product descriptions no longer display the percentage of sale. This might be done so that people don't pay attention and buy even when the sale is small, but most of us are literate enought to count our own money. Seeing the sale percentage right there was a convenience that allowed me to buy easily and with confidence. I will still buy during the sales I find acceptable percentage- or benefits-wise (unless I need something right now and don't care whether it's on sale at all), but having to do an extra counting step WILL serve to put me off and there will be many more times when I will simply NOT BOTHER, just skipping on the purchase altogether.

And yes, high contrast light sections on dark background look horrible. This is no longer an inviting site. I want to get out of this flashi nonsense as soon as possible.

So: No more browsing the marketplace. No more reading of news. No more leisurely looks at the galleries and clicking on credited products to check them out.

I used to have my Portfolio here, but if the design doesn't change, I'll be moving it over to other sites, because this is downright embarrassing for anyone who works in any graphics field.

I might add that I spend at least one hour per day on this site, often more, so it is kind of a home for me in many ways, and my community. The community is important for a guy living alone like me. I'm sure there are many others like me who resent 'our home' being renovated without our opinion, let alone our consent.

As Harry Belafonte sang so many years ago, "You must wait for the masses, man! Because if you don't and they catch up with you they will trample you to death!" Well, Renderosity does not have to worry about being trampled to death, but the silent sound of people tramping off to other sites (which abound) is not something to be taken lightly.

And to those who do decide to leave, please leave us a goodbye message along with your destination so we can hook up again, thanks!

Wayne (whaleman)

Wayne i feel the same.

Renderosity is a site where i feel comfortable to share my pictures and interact on the photography forums. I am honest to say this is the only site where i try to upload a picture every day. Not  that I am alone. I have a wife and 2 wonderful daughters.,but i like to interact and comunnicate with my fellow Renderosity artists.So I trust the admins would attent to the ponts that you and other Renderosity members including myself have mentioned on the topic "Web site changes". Blessed day and weekend. God Bless.

Okay, just accidentally tried to put an item that was already in my cart into my cart again. Website caught it, fine, excellent. Problem is the text is dark (olive?) on dark blue. It's almost impossible to read unless you highlight it with your mouse. Not good color scheme at all guys.... :(

Edited to add a thought. Not a fan of bright white, but here's a simple fix. Change the white spots on the website with blue (not the lettering) and the blue spots with white. At least then you could mostly read the text. Also, no website beta feedback? Really??

Quote - I completely agree with whaleman's thoughtful comments. This was not a well thought out change. Is there a test system where these types of changes are tried out before implementing on the actual live system? If so, does anyone review the changes before they're implemented? One suggestion I have is to solicit volunteers from the user community to review changes for a few days on the test system before implementing them live.

I am not sure what they do here, but typically development goes like this:

• Design
• Development on Staging Server
• Debugging
• QA review
• Bug Fixing
• Then once all the changes are done and well tested. Deploy to the Production server(s).

Massive design and functionaility issues are not a good user or customer experience. You don't want the userbase to deal with that on a prolonged basis so you test everything very well prior to deployment.

"And to those who do decide to leave, please leave us a goodbye message along with your destination so we can hook up again, thanks!"

You are cordialy invited to "Follow me here"

http://www.flickr.com/photos/87216658@N02/

To the designers of these hideous pages.

1 I admire you perfect 20/20 vision.  Mine is severe astigmatism.  This crap does not help, it hurts my eyes!!!!!!!!!!!

2  We will be told to give this time to tweak it.  TWEAK it back to how it was.

3  And the most important piece of advice you seemed to miss "If it isn't broke, DON'T FIX IT"

4 Lastly I have unchecked the box to notify me when someone answers.  I shall not be back.  I came back here because I liked it, now it is a painful business to view.

It's so painful I had to prepare all this text in a word processor in order to spend as little time here as I could to alleviate the pain.

5 This site has never ever been “User friendly” The uploading system is archaic and fundamentally confusing to some people. Forget to change ONE thing, and you are forced to start over, I recollect when I was a co-ordinator here, one moron who shall remain nameless, implied I was a liar when I said that one of the changes made was not correctly functioning. One wonders where this disaster will lead attitude to members. I guess if you have paid your subscription, you have a modest level of respect.

Bye y'all  See you at flickr.

I just tried readig my profile prefs and the colors are so close I can't read anything without constantly highlighting things to I can read it!  Is there a way to change this area?  There is no way I can read it the way it is.

Thanks Ronnie, I made a new link!

Quote - Thanks Ronnie, I made a new link!

Whaleman do you have a flickr account?

I am there as well.

God Bless.

Why is it that Rendo' seem to have the habit of retrogressive 'improvements'? A couple of years back we had the change in the Search capabilities that 'enabled' you to find less items than you could previously. Worse , this was never rectified.

Now we have a set of changes to a smart and funtional looking website that are crime to aesthetics and retinas everywhere. I have to say that while the items prices remain the same, the site looks extremely 'low-budget'. Like an overlit, concrete-bunker shop selling poor imitation knock-offs.

As a long standing customer here I'm appalled, however if I was one of the artists selling here, I would be LIVID!

I don't care that money has been spent to make these changes happen, that is no excuse to refuse to listen to the overwhelming feedback everyone is giving you. Think of the costs incurred as a lesson hard learnt and put the site back the way it was!

Christo, I do not have an account there, yet. I will go and check it out. I hear it is very popular, so probably one will have to add a logo if I post there. I would rather stay with Renderosity and force changes that make sense.

Still better than one of the competitor sites (who shall remain unnamed but has 4 letters and 1 number in it's name). At least here the site still works (reasonably). There it took a year for them to get key features to work. They really ignore customers there too.

The new look is most unaesthetically pleasing and it does hurt the eyes - in several ways. I see you toned down the white a bit with some greyish masks but it really does little to improve this look. All I've heard/read is complaints.

My main points of complaint:

1. The colors in the forum boxes would be nice to use on the site. They're very readable and don't hurt the eyes. Some of us spend hours on our computers as it is: setting up and doing renders, working on figures, working in Photoshop, emails, and other things. To come here and have them assaulted with these colors is not good. Dark grey or black page backgrounds show images off much better than these blues - for both 3D art and photographers. Even a soft pearl grey would be better.

2. My biggest issue is the text boxes and the size of the page at 100% however.  I have to crank my zoom in my browser up to 150% just to fill up the screen and be able to actually see an image and read comments, text, etc. The comment and 'Notes' boxes are ridiculously small. The comment box takes up a fourth of the space there - the rest is wasted. The Notes box for uploads is particularly awful and that slider bar on the bottom just makes it worse - especially if you are a writer. The slider bar jumps to the left as soon as you load your text, and somehow paragraphs are reformatted. It's hard to see what you're doing/writing. Please fix these boxes.

If you made your changes for Windows 8 and the pads/tablets and phones you have only enabled the online shopping experience from those devices. I only know one person out of all those I know who could afford a tablet or pad that might be capable of rendering in any 3D program and he doesn't do 3D art. I only know of one person here who even uses a laptop. We are on pcs and macs here and you have effectively made this an unpleasant experience.

In addition, on my iPad I found I could not reply to an email question. What is that about?

*HORROR I thought I was on the wrong site when the next day I came here and saw, WHITE & BLUE!!!! I think of Rendo has black, and when it changed to that blue color before, it did not flatter most of the thimbnails on products. Now here we have WHITE and blue!!! It looks AWFUL! It hurts my eyes. I agree about the comment boxes and much of what was said above. We are artists! Who designed this and why was I not notified for an opinion??!!! O_0

Hello? Are there any admins monitoring this thread? We have a whole bunch of unhappy folks here who are waiting for some kind of response. At least one has left vowing never to return & it sounds like others are at least contemplating leaving. At the very least, it would be nice to hear a "We're listening & are working on a remedy"...

points to above

Would be great to have a "thanks" button here too please.

I just commented on one photo and it seems the font has been changed back to a non decorative font but the commenting box is still ridiculously small. Also the main page header has had the contrast reduced a bit. Someone is paying attention, so let's keep up the pressure until the other items are properly resolved!

Nope, I was wrong, still the same lame difficult-to-read font is being used, and still in a tiny claustrophobic box, but here in the forum (where it is less serious) we have a proper widely-accepted font. Why?

I hope someone is listening! 

I was very pleased to get the floating info back above the thumbs, so that's a start.

Another very irritating thing is the close proximity of the adverts down the side which impinge on the view. There is plenty of space to move them to the right leaving a bigger border, and them perhaps we could have more black round our images.

I'm just trying to edit my profile and it is very hard to read a dark gray text on a dark blue background.

I hope someone is listening. Would be nice to get feedback from the admins.

Quote - I'm just trying to edit my profile and it is very hard to read a dark gray text on a dark blue background.  I hope someone is listening. Would be nice to get feedback from the admins.

That is exactly what I was referring to earlier in this thread.  It's beyond frustrating having to highlight text just to be able to read it.  Plus I'm prone to migraines which this doesn't help.  I need contrast.  Having aging eyes doesn't help either.  Would it be so difficult to offer an option to change skins?  Even if only a few style sheets were coded it shouldn't be too much to request.

I agree with the above, very glaring on the eyes.

Quote - I just tried readig my profile prefs and the colors are so close I can't read anything without constantly highlighting things to I can read it!  Is there a way to change this area?  There is no way I can read it the way it is.

Neither can I. Even with 20/20 vision this would be a challenge. Some designers are not able to see colors correctly (not actually color blind but color vision challenged). I had to deal with this problem for 15 years.

The olive? on blue brought all these memories back to me. What a horror.

I totally agree with whaleman.

The colors aren't eye-friendly. The font is to small and difficult to read, I suggest this forum font also in the galleries. The comment box is way small, I suggest the same size of the reply box here in the forum.

I find the menu navigation to be very painful. I think the dropdowns should appear on rollover, and the titles themselves should link directly to the corresponding topic (you click on galleries to go to the gallery homepage). Having a dropdown menu is great, this one however is not very well done. Who designs this site??? They need some serious help. 

Thank you all for your thoughts on site issues. We are aware of the issues and are currently working on fixing all areas of the site. Please bear with us as these chanages take place.

Thanks!

Thank you Kimberly!

Quote - Thank you all for your thoughts on site issues. We are aware of the issues and are currently working on fixing all areas of the site. Please bear with us as these chanages take place.

Thanks!

Thank you Kimberly.

God Bless.

I received a comment on a past posting and wanted to read that comment.  Since the comment was on page two of that postings comments – I can’t get to it.  I can only see page one of my comments.  What have you done to us???????  

Dana Pommet

danapommet - I'm unsure what your trying to say. Why are you unable to get to the second page of a thread? Is it not clickable? Are you unable to see the link? Can you please explain to me so I understand better.

Dana, I went into your gallery and checked two of your uploads which have more than one page of comments and I was able to see the second page of each, with both my desktop and with my iPad, and I could type into the comment boxes as well. Maybe time to hit restart perhaps?

Wayne

Dana, I agree with Wayne. I had no probs in your gallery! Just hate the tiny, itty bitty comment boxes!

So good to see Admin on here! TY Kimberly for letting us know. :)

And while we are whining:

1. What happened to the Edit option on our posts?

2. We can no longer get price information by hovering over a thumnail in the 'What's Hot' listings.

3. It seems once a day since the improvements I'm getting a SQL error 'Too Many Connections' and can't access the site.

I believe the problem was, that the second page is with white colors, like it was NOT used yet. SO Dana might already have been on the second page?

It might have made confusion... It did to me at first. It is against common rules. It use to be none colored (white or black) until you have clicked on it. Here it is the opposite.

But thanks to Kimberly for responce.

Helle

This is a far cry Better better better!!!!!!!!!!  Just the annoying little comment box that I have to keep resizing everytime I try to use it, colour wise.  I am extremely happy with this.  Thank you for actually listening to us, that counts foa lot in my opinion.  This is still a bit contrasty, but a lot more comfortable on the eyes.

Kudos chaps and chapesses.

Just a thought.

The texture over the site headers and footers, applied to the rest of the white areas would look nice and a lot easier on the eye.  Just my ten cents.

Thank you Admin (Kimberly) for seeing this griping thread and acting so promptly.  I retract my quasi- derision in my original post

Ronnie