Hey Lichess Team,
I’m writing to ask if you could change back the way the "Challenge," "Message," "Block," and "Follow" buttons are set up on player profiles. The new dropdown menu makes things harder and less user-friendly. Here’s why:
Accessibility: Before, these buttons were right there, easy to see and use. Now, with the dropdown menu, it takes extra steps to do simple things like following or blocking someone.
Efficiency: Quick actions like challenging or messaging a player now take longer because we have to navigate through a dropdown. This slows everything down and can be pretty annoying, especially for those of us who use these features a lot.
User Experience: Having to hover and scroll without losing focus on the menu is tricky and not user-friendly. It's easy to mess up, like accidentally closing the menu or clicking the wrong thing.
Visibility: Important actions are hidden in the dropdown. When these buttons were visible, it was quicker and easier to find and use them.
Consistency: We’re used to the old setup. Changing it suddenly can be confusing and makes things harder instead of easier.
Immediate Status Check: When we open a player’s profile, it’s really -important- to instantly see if we’ve blocked or followed them. The old setup made this clear right away, but now we have to dig through a menu to find out.
I know that when you’ve put time into a project, it’s difficult to let it go, but reversing this change will be for the best.
So, I’m really hoping you’ll consider going back to the old design where these buttons (or at least the "Watch" and "Block") were right there on the profile page. It would make things simpler and quicker for everyone.
Thanks.-
I absolutely agree with you and mentioned this in https://lichess.org/forum/lichess-feedback/the-only-way-to-stop-rogue-developers?page=4#34 as well.
a lot of people never knew what half those buttons actually did before. i like it better now.
@XeRo13g said in #1
completely agree.
@schlawg said in #3:
> a lot of people never knew what half those buttons actually did before. i like it better now.
i'm pretty sure people knew what they did.
OK, so the problem here is not really the dropdown menu. One can easily change the style a little bit and revert to something similar to the original.
The problem is that the .relation-actions component is used not only in the dropdown menu, but also in the player lists, in Friends and Favorite Opponents, which now look horrible. I had to use some inventive CSS to remove the ugly text and make sure the buttons are not wrapped.
It was a rushed UI change. Regardless of whether people like it or not, it just doesn't work as intended.
Someone mentioned accessibility. While I am really not an accessibility maniac, I do find it jarring that this new hamburger menu works differently from other hamburger menus in the web site. Maybe I am a consistency maniac, then :-?
@schlawg said in #3:
> a lot of people never knew what half those buttons actually did before. i like it better now.
Counterpoint: I don't know what the hamburger button does.
Hamburger menus are usually a last resort for designers. They are used when you absolutely need to cram in more stuff and have no other way to do it. Although I don't know why, many people still don't know how they work.
Here is is not a typical hamburger menu, though. It's more a regular drop down menu. So the usage of the hamburger menu icon is a bit more confusing than normally. Some "Action + [arrow down icon]" might be easier to grasp.
@schlawg said in #3:
> a lot of people never knew what half those buttons actually did before. i like it better now.
This is not a subjective "I like"/"I don't like" change. #1 summarized well why it is worse now.
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