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mobygames new interface

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First post, by awgamer

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Well, what do people think? More consolidated for some info, pop up info windows, but overall worse as it stands, harder to search, more obtuse, missing info. I had been slowly trawling through windows games by year sorted alphabetically, with the old listing numbering the game listing that allowed me to easily break and come back again where I left off, now it just gives a non indexed listing of page x of y rather than 25-50. You can work it out, apparently they want moby users to practice arithmetic, but it's now an extra step, and limited to only selecting prev and next in the listing with no more select/jump to a particular page through mobys interface, now moby would have you click "next" N times to get back to where you left off(to get around it change the page number in the url after calculating game index.) Decidedly worse/less useful/less user friendly. The presented game list also seems to be dumbed down/simple like they're catering to mobile. Hardware specs seem to be gone or I don't know where they went, for example, a search for sound blaster or gravis ultrasound ominously returns nothing now. I hope this is a work in progress where their new interface is a "just get it up and running" skeleton which they'll back fill in the old functionality.

Reply 1 of 50, by dr.zeissler

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I had problems yesterday getting informations about the system-requirements for filtered macgames...I think it was possible before, now it's not anymore.

Retro-Gamer 😀 ...on different machines

Reply 2 of 50, by Shponglefan

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awgamer wrote on 2023-02-22, 09:32:

Hardware specs seem to be gone or I don't know where they went

Hardware specs are still there. It's just now under the "Metadata" tab for each game, then under "Attributes/Specs".

You can also still search by attribute, but it just returns an unsorted list of 25 results per page, so not the most useful thing...

I do agree than on balance, the design seems less usable. They sacrificed UX for UI.

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Reply 3 of 50, by awgamer

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>metadata
non descriptive useless extra layer. just, no. checked out sound cards, the game listing for x sound card is their new horrible cut down mobile esk dumbed down listing with only next and prev, search "gravis ultrasound" still gives no results/bad cut down mobile next prev listing search results or if there is a gravis ultrasound entry you'll have to click next enough times to maybe find out. This is so much a worse interface.

Reply 4 of 50, by Joseph_Joestar

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You can still get a list of games which support the GUS by clicking on it under the Metadata tab, but it's not as clean as it was before. For example, it no longer displays how many games (total) in their database support the GUS, and just shows a page with the first 20 entries or so. You have to click Next > Next > Next to get to the end.

I'm glad all the data is (seemingly) still there, but yeah, the new interface feels like a step back in terms of usability. At least for us PC retro gamers.

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Reply 5 of 50, by awgamer

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Yes, you can, the cut down mobile-esk prev next only listing. What's "funny" is I have been slowly going through mobygames using launchbox to build a faster more functional editable local games database, since I found the old mobygames interface trying, and then they did this. Good thing I started down this road but the new interface is going to make continuing to do so, so much more painful. I guess it's time to get into serious scraping dump setup, cleaning up the mess after having grabbed everything.

Reply 6 of 50, by Big Pink

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I sure do love it when a website has to fix what isn't broken. I wondered why thumbnails weren't loading... praise be, it's webp!

I thought IBM was born with the world

Reply 7 of 50, by Errius

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IMDB also radically changed their interface a couple of years ago, making it annoying to use. However you can get the old interface back by adding /reference to the URL

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0043014/
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0043014/reference/

Is this too much voodoo?

Reply 8 of 50, by Big Pink

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Errius wrote on 2023-02-22, 18:24:

However you can get the old interface back by adding /reference to the URL

Thank you so much. I've been going through a lot of film listings and the current bloated site takes ages to load. Now it actually loads like I have 70 megabit broadband rather than dial-up.

I thought IBM was born with the world

Reply 10 of 50, by Errius

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Big Pink wrote on 2023-02-22, 19:44:
Errius wrote on 2023-02-22, 18:24:

However you can get the old interface back by adding /reference to the URL

Thank you so much. I've been going through a lot of film listings and the current bloated site takes ages to load. Now it actually loads like I have 70 megabit broadband rather than dial-up.

If you have an account, there's an option to permanently enable this mode so you don't have to keep editing the URL.

Is this too much voodoo?

Reply 11 of 50, by elszgensa

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The new search seems barely usable? I'd have no idea how to drill down to find a game I didn't already know the name of... Other than that, I'm in what seems to be the minority that likes the new design. So far - search excluded - I have not noticed any regressions, and it seems a bit cleaner. I don't mind either but am slightly in favor of the new one. That said I always keep Javascript disabled unless absolutely necessary, so my experience may be nonstandard - the mentions of popups and whatnot do sound pretty bad, but I don't get to see those, sooo...

edit: ah, I see, all the "good" search options are only available with JS now, us noscripters can gtfo. That's a change I cannot get behind.

Last edited by elszgensa on 2023-02-22, 21:46. Edited 2 times in total.

Reply 12 of 50, by Grzyb

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I WANT THE PREVIOUS INTERFACE BACK!

(yes, I'm perfectly aware that nobody cares, and that in the Retarded New World(TM) there's no room for non-fucked up websites 😜 )

Żywotwór planetarny, jego gnijące błoto, jest świtem egzystencji, fazą wstępną, i wyłoni się z krwawych ciastomózgowych miedź miłująca...

Reply 13 of 50, by Dominus

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AFAIU the change was necessary to bring the website into this decade.

Time to accept it, it likely won't turn back to the old interface...

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Reply 14 of 50, by awgamer

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>making the site less usable was necessary
No.
>Time to accept it
No. I was already working around the old interface let alone this new one. It's just pushing me to spend the time to learn scraping website data and then workout injecting it into launchbox.

Reply 15 of 50, by Shponglefan

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feda wrote on 2023-02-22, 20:35:

Seems Moby moved Specs back to where they belong. Search is still bad and everything takes a hundred years to load.

At least they are responding to feedback.

Hopefully they do fix and improve the search capabilities especially for browsing by specs.

Pentium 4 Multi-OS Build
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486 DX-33 with 5 sound cards

Reply 16 of 50, by Dominus

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awgamer wrote on 2023-02-22, 22:48:

>making the site less usable was necessary
No.

My information came from Jim Leonard but I guess you know more about how the site works. 🤷‍♂️

>Time to accept it
No. I was already working around the old interface let alone this new one. It's just pushing me to spend the time to learn scraping website data and then workout injecting it into launchbox.

Then don‘t accept it and make them undo the change. Good luck.

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Reply 17 of 50, by awgamer

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My information comes from using the interface as described in this thread of how it's bad that anyone can see and experience themselves. The old interface was usable enough to get by using it rather than going through the trouble of scraping moby and injecting into launchbox/other, the new interface is bad enough that it's more compelling to take the time to setup the scraping and injecting to avoid the new interface altogether.

Reply 18 of 50, by Dominus

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You do you, show‘em!

In the meantime I‘ll enjoy mobygames as I enjoyed it before the switch. Works for me and I like the new look.

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DOSBox SVN snapshot for macOS (10.4-11.x ppc/intel 32/64bit) notarized for gatekeeper

Reply 19 of 50, by Jo22

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Didn't the same happen with English Wikipedia, too? The new interface is a mess and switching to the old layout requires an account.
Gratefully, the German Wikipedia ist still the same.

Anyway, that's the current trend, it seems. DeviantArt homepage used to be such a tidy, happy place. And very quick at scrolling, too.
Then, after the owner change (I guess?), it got dark as the gyphy site..

Ebay wasn't any better. The mid 2000s design was both logical and colorful.
Then, everything went wishy-washy. Away with the outlines, away with layout etc.

This is a classic play of verschlimmbessern.
All the site creators really fear is being outdated, losing visitors.
So they adapt to the latest, the greatest and so on.
And it works, the casual visitors come en masse.
But the loyal long time visitors, the contributors etc. may go away on the long run. Let's just wait and see.

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In what to one race is no time at all, another race can rise and fall..." - The Minstrel

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