Forums » Suggestions & Development Discussion » "Basic View" for Profiles

Let me start off by saying I am SO sorry if I'm being a massively oblivious derp right now. I've searched and searched for it, but I just don't see any options on this site for it. So... I hope I'm not missing it and this suggestion is all for naught because of it. xD

Anyway! My suggestion is pretty simple. There are two main reasons why I'm going to suggest this, 'this' being a means to revert a profile to a very basic, bare bones appearance- much like many forums have, disabling anything fancy and just leaving you with the raw text and a basic background. However, it's not the background I'm having issues with. My two main issues are as follows:

• Gifs Galore!! @~@
Don't get me wrong here, I love me some gifs. Unfortunately, I have HORRIBLE internet, which means loading the page can be a hassle or downright impossible when people have gone a bit gif crazy. Which... I find a lot of people on this site love to do. Nothin' wrong with that! But those of us in the sticks or simply with less than fortunate internet speeds can really struggle with this.

• Gifs... again, but for a different reason.
Distractions! As beautiful as they can be, when placed next to / near text, I don't know what it is... I just can't focus on reading. The repetitive motion of some gifs sometimes put me into a seizure like state of... well, it's difficult to explain and off topic, so I'll withhold. Point is, a way to revert to a basic view would make this much easier on people like myself (if I'm not a massive minority... which I probably am- so I could understand this being low priority if any at all), rather than having to copy paste the text elsewhere just to read over it.

Other than my two main reasons for posting this suggestion, a basic view could possibly help for those profiles where they are unfortunately colored or designed to a degree that reading text is yet again a case of either you don't, or you have to copy paste it somewhere else.

Anyway, I think that about covers it. Sorry again if this is already a feature or was already suggested. I swear I searched for it but just couldn't find anything about it or how to do it if it IS already a thing.

Anyway, happy friday all! Have a good morning/day/night, whichever it may be for you at the time of reading this.

I would REALLY love for profiles to be able to viewed in a basic template format, but I also think there are some challenges that would make this not as efficient as we'd like.

1. Many people create art galleries by hosting images on other sites. These images could be non-animated gif files. Some character art is animated and legitimate. There is no easy way to identify the intrusive gifs from the off-site hosted art galleries, so there's no effective way to not show images. It's either show no images at all, or show all of them. Considering that the idea of a basic template is to improve accessibility, I think this would actually not improve accessibility at all.

2. I also have issues with templates that have super tiny texts or awful color contrasts or way too many special effects. (Blurring images and links seems to be very trendy right now, but it makes me leave a profile immediately. It's too gimmicky for me and slows down my devices when browsing.) A lot of templates also aren't mobile compatible when custom, so I see a lot of merit in toggling a default template (like the basic gray one all profiles start out with). However, BBCode can be as responsible for unreadable profiles as CSS itself, so where do you draw the line? Some BBCode formatting will have to be removed, but then you risk ending up with an even bigger mess because now the order of text or the placement no longer makes sense. Think of columns or aligning images specifically alongside text. This has the potential to make accessibility, yet again, much worse.

I honestly would love for this, but I don't know what it would take on Kim's end to accomplish something like this. The root cause of this lies with the people who create the profiles in the end. They alter a user-friendly base in ways that are no longer user-friendly to people with visual impairments, lower end devices etc. Some template designers don't take impairments and mobile friendliness into account and put visual aesthetics before accessibility, leading to chunky templates that only work for a limited number of viewers.

Maybe the best thing we can do is encourage people to create friendlier profiles instead of asking for fixes on the UI end. If someone has a profile you can't view because it's so heavily riddled with animated gifs, send them a friendly message letting them know you love the effort they put into it, but it's too impractical for you to view and you're sad you can't get to know their character. Would they consider reducing the animated gifs? If a template designer is creating templates that hurt your eyes, let them know you admire their skills but would they perhaps consider making it friendlier on the eyes so that everybody can enjoy their work?

Of course everyone can create templates and profiles they way they love, but I also think many people are just unaware of how much they limit their profiles or don't think accessibility is that important. Pretty profiles are amazing to look at, but if only 2 out of 10 visitors can actually read it then it defeats the purpose of having a profile with info, doesn't it? People won't know something isn't practical if they're not told, and then they can't make any adjustments or keep that in mind.

I can see how accessibility would be affected by this, but when I go to look at someone's user/character profile, I'm really only interested in the raw text, not the art. The text is where the most important information is going to be. If it were possible to have the option to hide all images except for the important server ones, and small things such as icons I'd be all over this. Some gifs might sneak through but it'll still be easier on the eyes/laptops than without the option.

The gallery widget could remain as it at least gives you the choice to expand the images for a closer look at the character. As is, profiles are pretty risky clicks because I'm never sure how hard my browser's performance is gonna tank due to dozens of tumblr/imgur gifs or youtube videos.

It also means people won't feel they should restrict what they can put on their profiles, since it's their personal space and it would be IMO unfair to ask them to limit themselves, though I do agree that many are likely unaware that their profiles aren't eye-friendly.

I don't think people will refrain from visual content -- it's one of the most vital things for marketing a character ( and online marketing in general ). I have no relevant stats for RPR to hand, but I would guess with information from content marketing statistics that the engagement rate for profiles with images and decoration is much higher than those without.

You hear about it often that characters without their own personal artwork or plain profiles will not receive as much attention as those with.

Maybe there may be an extension available in your browser you can look into!

As far as visual impairments etc goes, I have an extension that does this across all sites, so irrespective of what colours there are, it won't hurt my eyes. It also minimizes loading time. This is called Dark Theme Everywhere:


Other extensions for accessibility.

I have also found a tutorial available that may help with the gifs if you're using a computer: How to Stop Animated GIFs From Playing in Your Web Browser

thank you for sharing! i'm using this for firefox now. all gifs are paused by default and can be toggled either by a click or a hover, so it's a quick fix for the PC!

There are some issues with this though.

Lots of people put important text on an image. Removing all images means you lose a lot of the important info. This is horrible for SEO and discouraged for websites as a rule of thumb for a very good reason, but people still do it.

Then, many people who can't afford/don't have enough space to host all their images on RPR's server host the images off-site. It's pretty much impossible to code in allowing only those images to stay, because automated code can't tell the difference between a fancy image for decoration and a necessary gallery item. People already struggle with basic BBCode often, so manually marking off-site hosted images as gallery items to get around removing essential images is only going to cause more confusion and struggles, especially for new members. The only way to get around this to my knowledge is by dedicating an entire widget to off-site hosted gallery images, but this also takes away flexibility for the user to program specific ways of displaying images with BBCode and I imagine it might take away incentive to purchase Epicness as well (because now a widget does all the hard work for you as long as you dump your images elsewhere). So I still personally think this just won't work out the way we would like it to, unless Kim knows a way that gets around these issues. I'd love that super much actually.

I don't think there is anything restrictive about informing them you can't view their profile (well) and would like to be able to see it, though. I have never forced anyone to change their profile even if I can't for the life of me read what it says without zooming in ten times, but I have told people what issues I'm having and sent them links to helpful articles with guidelines on how to make it friendlier if they want to do that. Plenty have never taken steps to change a thing, plenty have been surprised and are now kicking ass at creating both gorgeous and friendly profiles that everyone can enjoy. I'd rather people make informed decisions on what they want their personal space to look like, than to wonder why nobody's getting in touch with them or develop difficult to break habits when they want to change things later on.

I work with websites all the time and a majority of clients honest to god just have no clue what they're asking us until we inform them that it won't work, and show them why it doesn't. Informing them leads better requests and incredibly beautiful websites with well laid out content that generates a lot of traffic. I think everyone should have the chance to learn this even if they choose not to use the info.

Here are some useful resources for people who want to learn about this, in case anyone wants to check or pass the info on:

http://sunriseprowebsites.com/website-design-important/

http://www.dmnews.com/marketing-automation/infographic-5-data-backed-reasons-why-good-website-design-is-so-important/article/366903/

https://digitalsynopsis.com/design/important-good-web-design-impact-people-profits/

Contrast checker to see whether your color choices are user friendly or not: http://webaim.org/resources/contrastchecker/

(They're mostly aimed at the professional marked but the data is still incredibly useful for hobby website creators. )


Thank you so much for the resources! It really goes a long way being able to use extensions. I regularly check for them on Android/iOS but most don't do much to affect themselves themselves, they just change the browser or OS itself. I hope they'll come with alternatives to the desktop versions of these. Are there any for Firefox too? It looks like these are only for Chrome.

Although people are indeed allowed to do almost anything they want with their own profiles, in my mind, the point of a profile is to communicate character information to other people; if that's the goal, then making the profile easy to load, read and understand has to be pretty high on the list of criteria for design. But what's easy for one person isn't the same as for everyone else.

With that in mind, I have definitely considered offering an option where you could say you don't want to see templates other than the most basic ones, for characters and for groups. It's hard to RP in a forum with colors you can't read very well, after all! Not showing any embedded images would be a separate option. I'm interested to see that there's a demand for this.

@Sanne - Fair point about the info images, and I forgot that the gallery widget has a limit!

I agree that letting people know is important, but ultimately if someone decides to keep their profile as it is because that's how they like it then the problem of accessibility remains unresolved. I meant mainly that it's best if the solution isn't dependent on people redesigning their pages. It'd be better for both parties if that issue can be alleviated on the viewer's end instead of hoping the profile owner will agree, even if it would benefit everyone for them to change, and so that the profile can still be read in the meantime.

@Kim - It's great to know that there's possibilities for this!

Edit: Forget it

Tiny text can also be solved by adjusting text size on your device so that the smallest font is readable.

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/text-mode/adelhekhakakocomdfejiipdnaadiiib

This add on is also useful:
@sanne:
I'm not sure as I don't use Mozilla Firefox, if anyone can contribute on that front itd be great!

I agree with you! I'd really love for this option precisely because enough people don't bother with accessibility. I'm just worried about all the 'what if's that have to be considered being too complex to make it work, or make it equally as inaccessible. (Although Kim is an excellent programmer and has a good eye for this kinda stuff! If there's a way she'll find it.)

I definitely think encouraging accessible profiles and offering an alternative on the UI side can go hand in hand to get the best of both worlds.

Oh, wow. I'm SUPER late to getting back to this, so sorry everyone! I hadn't realized how much it'd blown up, and had forgotten about it during a short hiatus of sorts. xD

Anyway! Thank you Sanne for your offered insight! I hadn't really considered all of the technical what-ifs and such of that. I was thinking of filtering gifs rather than other image files such as .jpeg or .png files and the likes, but you're right. That does bring to mind a lot of technical considerations that hadn't really crossed my mind. I'm afraid I'm not any good for considering just how it'd work since I definitely don't have that skill set. I hope there's still some way, though. My internet is just not having some of these profiles- ESPECIALLY guest book pages where people are posting 1-2 gifs per post and all. @_@ Like I said, I have NO problem with this but my internet most certainly does! haha.

Thank you very much Fiebs for the suggestion of extensions and the likes! That's yet another thing I never considered. I didn't even know stuff like that existed. xD Very helpful indeed!

Thank all of you for your input~ Perhaps one day we might find an answer to this dilemma, but I do feel that what Sanne said is right, too- that a lot of it comes down to people being mindful of how they decorate their sites. I would never feel right asking somebody to refrain from something they liked aesthetically just because my internet (or eyes) can't handle it, but, that said- I don't think there's anything wrong from nicely telling somebody that hey, that tiny or brightly/dimly colored text is really hard to read! or something along those lines isn't horrible either. Or... maybe refrain from posting that 5th gif on the same page. xD (I really do love how they make some pages look but I don't know why my eyes can't process it very well when trying to read nearby text @_@) I think those extensions Fiebs offered may come in handy, or at the very least stopping auto-play of gifs most definitely.

Thank you again!