Top right zone update

[Doubleshoe]

As someone who plays multiple turnbased games this (UNANNOUNCED!) update removed the single most critical feature of the site: The ability to tell, at a glance, from even just a fraction of the page, or at a distance, whether it is my turn at a table. The old banner told me exactly whether I was expected at a table, which table was the most urgent, and how many tables at which it was my turn. The new buttons contains NONE of this information, and is next to invisible even without vision impairment. It is possible that the friends and messaging menu is better. But this is a website for playing boardgames. If you are sacrificing functionality facilitating the playing of boardgames for the sake of activity that is not playing boardgames you are doing something wrong. I can, and basically always will use other apps for communicating. I cannot (currently) go to another decent page for your boardgame service. But if this is the trajectory you plan to follow in terms of functionality, it would not surprise me if someone sees the opportunity to take your market share by actually doing it properly again.

Oh and as an addendum: "We totally redesigned this [the table] icon to make it more meaningful, informative and usable."
The old icon was literally a table. The new icon might charitably be interpreted as someone gathered around something, but it is not a table. it also does not convey any information the old site did not have, in a better way.

[megamau]

Can the numbers next to the icons (orange table and blue people) be in a *different* color ?
Very hard to read now

[Frosti_Austi]

To me the change doesn't do anything. Just reskinned.

I'd still like to see "Games Played" moved to the top half of a player's profile. "Recent Activity" should be the "Games Played" section, as that section truly shows the most recent activity, whereas "Recent activity" really only shows you useless activity that is days, months, years, old.

[Luclid]

I'm sorry, but I also have trouble with the new interface with lots of turn based games. It makes it much more difficult to know when I have games to play. Can we have the option of having the old interface to use? That is what some other websites do as well. That would be much appreciated. Thank you for the effort of updating the website!

[taloncarde]

Really enjoy this new feature. Thank you!

[vliam]

I like the changes in general.

However, the removal of the "It's your turn" message bar is a huge step backwards. I used to leave my tab open and just glance at it occasionally to look for the message bar. I play a lot of tournaments with people all over the world. I try to be mindful of their time and keep things moving along.

That yellow blob with a possible digit is indiscernible at more than two feet. It's basically useless when I'm not staring at it. Maybe if it changed to green or something, it might be apparent. As it stands, I can only think that it is going to lead to slower play times across the board. We have enough problems as it stands with completing tournament games given our often incompatible active hours. This isn't going to help with that.

It might help if the audible notification system worked consistently but that's a whole different issue. I've given up on that ever working.

[caseytel]

It's a change; I'll get used to it. But...

Here are some bugs & suggestions, some of which others have already mentioned:

• If you have no active turns to take, then clicking the orange blob should take you to https://boardgamearena.com/gameinprogress, not bring up the same panel that clicking your avatar does.

• If you have no active turns to take, the orange blob should be greyed out, similar to the behavior of the friends icon when no friends are online.

• The friends panel should retain the expand/collapse state of the Online and Offline groups so they are expanded or collapsed as you left it when you open the panel again.

• I agree with others that the green dot at the top right of my avatar is unnecessary and distracting. I know that I'm online.

• Clicking ANYWHERE outside of the panel should close the panel. I should not have to click on the friend icon or my avatar a second time to close the respective panel.

• The four icons on the avatar panel (the blob, exclaimation, speech bubble, and control panel) should be greyed out when inactive and blue (or purple, whatever) when active. The underline on the active icon is nice.

On mobile (Google Chrome on Samsung Galaxy S21):

• The avatar panel shows, but I cannot scroll to see the contents. I can see the webpage behind the panel scrolling, but the panel is "stuck" in place.

• UPDATE: this appears to be resolved now. /UPDATE The avatar panel does not close when tapping the avatar icon a 2nd time. The icon shrinks and moves back into position, but the panel stays visible. Only way to clear t is to refresh the page in the browser.

Thank you

These are great suggestions. I think part of my confusion came from the lack of ability to distinguish the table icon from the avatar icon functionality.

[ahmadNZ]

Dear BGA

IT'S YOUR TURN (to restore the It's Your Turn function/hyperlink)

[Mazarin26]

Hi BGA,

Thanks for your efforts. I agree with most of what people have already said. In my opinion the most important things are:
1. Make it easy to know when it is my turn for turn based games. I hear you that the banner shifting things up and down made it difficult for the website, so find some other way of indicating it.
2. Make the table icon a table again. An orange blob is Not Intuitive.
3. When you click on the table icon, you need to go to your list of tables. Not open the side bar
4. The side bar is difficult to read, with too many colours, and you have to scroll to see everything. Its not ideal.
5. A lot of prime real estate on the side bar is taken up by my icon, my XP, and my karma score. Those are not things that change very often and I do not need to see them at the top.

Finally, if you are going to make changes to the website, it would be good if you made an announcement and told people that a change was happening. Maybe even show us a few screenshots of what to expect. Thanks.

[Vynce]

This isn't working for me at all. I have done a force-reload multiple times, and i still cannot get the profile or the friends list buttons to do anything at all. The mouse turns into the hotspot finger when i hover over them, but clicking does nothing.

Chrome: Version 96.0.4664.55 (Official Build) (x86_64)
MacOS X: 10.13.6

I'm seeing errors in the browser developer console, and a note in the console saying "FB loaded". I thought we agreed months ago to not put facebook spyware in the pages. I do not want facebook to know anything about me. They are serial violators of all sorts of privacy laws, too.

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