Certainly no sigar
After the layout update debacle of Jan 12th and an intermediate update, it’s time to have look on how things stand now.
Honesty compels me to admit that I was surprised to see that Groundspeak recognized that the thing they’ve launched a fortnight ago wasn’t exactly a hit number. I was also pleasantly that the gc.com community uttered their displeasure about it for once. Usually one acts as meek as a lamb like previous week by applauding the intermediate fix and act like hand and glove. There is no reason for it (yet) though.
Let’s face it. What are currently the gains when one compares it to the pre ‘revamped’ version? As far as I’m concerned not a lot, in the contrary. There are still some problems with the site that shouldn’t be there anyway. And I’m talking about the cosmetic part of things only. Here is a small overview on how things are shown a standard 19” screen with a resolution of 1280 x 1024.
Search caches found by a user:
- A lot of space is wasted by a big blue box with nothing more info than that you’ve searched for a specific user and that you can do search again. Why can’t one put this info on the same line as the ‘All Geocaches’ title. What’s the use of making this title so huge anway?
- The left menu pane takes too much precious space which can be better used in the rest of the screen
- Note the wasted space in the icons column, which makes the ‘Last Found’ column a mess spread over multiple lines. This is caused by:
The amount of jeep TBs in there. Why does one need specify them over there? Is it some illicit plug? A simple indications that there some TBs and GC suffices in an overview. If you want details, go to the detailed page of the (event in this case) geocache. The web developer also doesn’t seem to realize something like absolute specification of column width would prevent such mess.
My (excuse me -> Your) profile:
- Why is it needed to repeat the title over here? It takes too much space and I’m not senile so I know that this is my profile. There are better ways to indicate this if needed.
- The ‘Visit log’ is spread over two line since the web developer doesn’t use the tag. The word ‘Log’ is more than clarifying enough btw.
- Why does the right hand pane needs to be so wide as if it’s more important than the rest of the screen? What’s the use of ‘Hello searchjaunt’? I know who I am and it is stated at the top right of the page that I’m logged in as searchjaunt.
- Why is the stat bar needed over here, since all it does is repeating the info just above? A simple link to the profile page in the account options does the same work. Speaking of the right hand pane; it contains a lot of duplicate functionality which wastes precious space.
A cache detail page:
- Yet another example of empty space waste. Same thing counts for the space between the cache description an the right hand pane.
- Is there a reason to spread this info over 4 lines, whereas things can fit in half the space?
- See 2.
- Apparently is the disclaimer –which is repeated at the bottom of the screen anyway – more important than the cache description itself.
Concluding, I can only take note that we’re not even back to square one after these two ‘updates’. Nothing useful was added, in the contrary. It caused a lot of frustrations and work for the developers of the Greasemonkey scripts, GSAK scripts and other external tools which provide functionality which isn’t provided by the gc.com site. Wouldn’t it be nice if Groudspeak focus on that next time instead of screwing around?
January 31st, 2010 at 8:58 am
My guess (and from rumors I picked up here and there) is that Geocaching.com is preparing to have a multi-lingual version of their web site. So they probably changed fundamentally the way their dynamic HTML are compiled and generated. They tried to reproduced the existing web site with their new engine. And it failed.
January 31st, 2010 at 12:38 pm
What’s the use of having a site multi-lingual when one considers 3/4 of the world is a colony of the country/countries on the N/W part (see also http://searchjaunt.idizaai.be/not-evincive/)?
January 31st, 2010 at 8:45 pm
Might be that they saw the Light
February 12th, 2010 at 3:52 pm
Barely a week or 2 ago, we had a cacher discover one of our caches, saying that this was his third cache without using a GPS, because he was too stingy to purchase 1 (his own words)! This cache is in a forested area, and Google maps don’t display the street view there yet…thus we’re not for sure how he detected it. He pronounced it took twenty minutes from when he departed his auto. It’s only a minute or two walk, if you know where it is.
February 12th, 2010 at 6:58 pm
Thanks for sharing, but pls submit next time a comment to the subject/content of the blog post
February 16th, 2010 at 3:11 pm
I rather don’t agree with all of the spacing comments. To make a site user friendly, usable and readable, you should foresee whitespace and not try to squeeze as much information together as possible. However, in some cases you mention, whitespace is indeed exaggerated it is relevant.
Nevertheless, I think the look&feel and the navigation of the geocaching.com site could be majorly improved. For a first-time user it takes ages to find out about pocket queries or to find back which trackables you have in your inventory, just because they are way deep in the navigation/site.
I guess the idea about the site change is like Capitaine Igloo mentions. They are probably changing the architecture of the site to add improvements a lot easier in the future.
Nice blogpost/blog!
SOSv2
February 16th, 2010 at 5:24 pm
In my experience as a web developer I know that there better ways so show a lot of info in the limited space available, without endangering usability and readability.