All Comments on 'New Stories Page Now Mobile-Friendly'

Sorry, but the new pages suck. The biggest annoyance is that viewed and non-viewed links are the same color. That's not too big of a deal on the new stories page, but when doing tag searches it's extremely annoying to have to remember every last story you already checked out just because Literotica decided that a standard feature like link coloring is too useful to be allowed.

Sure, it's easy to switch to Classic. The problem is that they broke Classic to ensure you switch back to the new PoS version.

Only thing I would like to see is the current ranking of the stories.

Looks good though

Suggestions:

1. Include the stories’ rating score in the listing on the new stories page (no idea why you took this away).

2. Allow users to filter the New Stories to exclude categories they are not interested in.

I fully agree that the ratings figure for each story should be on the initial listing page rather than having to go to each author’s page to find it.

We need the H icon back!

Yes, we need the H icon to be there, please.

@HeddMstr Thank you for the suggestions. I don't believe we showed ratings on the New Stories Page in the past. Were you able to see ratings on the New Stories Page before the new design was rolled out? Our long term experience has been that stats only become really useful after thousands of Literotica Readers have had a chance to read a story. Most sites that cover film, for example, will not show aggregate review data until a certain amount or time or number of ratings have been submitted.

That new story presentation is fantastic. Great work. Thanks.

I don't like it. The opt out button doesn't work, and the current rating of a story needs to be put back in place. New and improved seldom is.

@R410a Thank you for the comment. Where did you see the rating in the Classic design of the New Stories Page? Can you post a direct link to the New Stories Page that shows Story Ratings?

The Classic version no longer works at all.

First, you have to submit feedback and have the Opt-out checkbox checked to get to the classic page.

Then, you only get the first page of listings in the classic format. If you click on any other page of listings, it either reloads the first page of the classic list, or it loads the new page format.

And please, please, please, turn on visited link colors site-wide. There is no reason that should be turned off at all. I use a browser extension to add back this basic functionality.

For the new format, move the category over to the left. Not all of us are using our phones to access the site, and needing to move my eyes across the screen to see that the story is in a category I'm not interested in is tiring and a waste of time.

On the right side you have selection options for what types of items to display. You have 'Stories' and 'Audio', but then you show Audio with stories when 'Stories' is selected. It defeats the purpose to have a filtering option that adds in items that don't match that selection.

@18rabbit @Prfsr Thank you both. We're looking at possible ways to return the HOT icon without adding a full row of stats here on the New Stories Page.

What does the H icon indicate?

These issues apply both to Firefox and Edge on W10 platforms. All software fully up to date.

Since this new release using Classic Literotica you cannot get past page one. Any attempt to go to any other page just leaves you back at page 1.

On the New Stories page as you go from page to page the dates of the stories do not stay chronological.. Page 1 may show 12/14 stories, page 2 12/11 stories, page 3 12/12 stories and so on and so forth. Backing up a page, the dates will change to a different day.

So this release has made the site un-usable for at least my W10 / Edge / Firefox browsers.

Any chance to default back to the black page and white script on mobile device viewing? Really appreciated that feature.

Where is the hot button?

I'm not seeing any new stories for 12/14

Bug or none have dropped?

I agree the H icon and the current rating being returned would be good.

I also think putting the category on the right side is a mistake (on desktop). Browsing the page requires a lot of eye movement / strain now, flicking between left side and right side, and even then it's a little hard to see how they line up due to how far apart they are the lack of striping.

I suggest just adding another row on the left beneath each story, with category, rating, icons, etc. Or go retro and squeeze the column narrower, and just not use the entire width of the screen. Please don't get sucked into poor UI design fallacies where you feel like you need to use as much of the space as possible or minimize scrolling; think more about UX and how users are accessing your page.

Or find a way to group the New Stories page by category. That would work too.

Like the cleanness of the new design but wish for return of the icons where authors/stories can show their achievements.

Getting rid of the current story rating and the highly rated marker was a huge mistake.

Please bring back the old original format. I don't like the new format all.

Agree with the others, the story rating and "H" icon are greatly missed

Please,

- add category info to story page!

- add category info to contest lists!

>Where did you see the rating in the Classic design of the New Stories Page?

It's the first/ only accessible screen when you click "Go to classic". Hard to miss.

You can get to pages 3 and later of classic new stories by editing the URL manually. The first day the new version of new stories launched, you could get to page 2 that way as well. However, they did something so that page 2 now always redirects to page 1.

I’d prefer the category be directly under the title and author instead of all the way to the right side.

Strongly encourage a rollback until issues with the new look are resolved. And any useful feedback considered for incorporation.

I definitely relied on the Hot ratings when browsing. But if a story received 100 or 1000 votes, wouldn’t that, (or SOME number), qualify as “enough” ratings to actually include the numerical rating for every story? I’ve read a lot of 4.0 - 4.4 stories and liked some. So the Hot tag is valuable for quick visual inspections, but seeing the actual rating would be helpful.

It would be helpful if the new stories page had the same stats (ratings, views, favorites, lists, and comments) that are in the tags pages.

It would also be great if we could sort them the way we can in the tags pages (views, ratings, favorites, and — of course — newest).

Best news ever, in time for the holidays.

Happy Holiday season Literotica community.

I liked seeing a rating for the stories

1. Where have the flags gone? Language choice isn't available anymore.

2. The mobile pages take too much space and need lots of scrolling

3. Why can the story lists not be sorted in order of publishibg dates. It would be so much easier to find the latest stories, you haven't already read. It's crap that the new story section in every category is so short

I don’t see the old label for highest rated stories on this new page. It allowed readers to scroll by stories not rated highly by previous readers, and click on the ones that were deemed very good.

We appreciate the feedback. For anyone asking about the story ratings, we did not show story voting scores on the Classic New Stories Page. I double checked by going back to the Classic Lit design and there are no scores there. Can someone share a screenshot or explain in detail what the comments asking to bring the story ratings back to the New Stories Page are about? Thank you again for the helpful comments.

@Anonymous Thank you for your feedback and suggestions. The language flags were available on the Story Index in the past. Now there is a language switcher available in the footer of every page using the new design. We plan to move the language switcher into the header eventually, but we need to get more of the mobile friendly interface out first.

As far as vertical space, that is a requirement for usability on phones and other touch devices. We cannot push everything too close together because then people using touch devices cannot click on the small links, or they click on the wrong ones when they are too close together. We generally go with the minimum amount of space recommended by the various accessibility and usage guidelines. There are some sites that love huge fonts, huge margins, and white space, but our mobile design goals have been to use the minimum amount of vertical space needed to make the site usable on touch devices.

@pastlifeuknow Thank you and Happy Holidays to you too! We can't believe this is our 25th Holiday Season with the amazing Lit Community. 😀

The issue with the pagination on the Classic New Stories Page was resolved earlier. If you still notice any other issues on the Classic Page, please let me know. Thanks for those reports!

Do not like it at allo

The ratings were not shown on the old version, but the stories scoring 4.5 or higher were flagged.

I really miss seeing the tags for stories that are rated 4.5 or above. That was one of the features I used the most on the old "new stories" page. Can we get that feature on the new page please?

"As far as vertical space, that is a requirement for usability on phones and other touch devices. We cannot push everything too close together because then people using touch devices cannot click on the small links, or they click on the wrong ones when they are too close together. We generally go with the minimum amount of space recommended by the various accessibility and usage guidelines. There are some sites that love huge fonts, huge margins, and white space, but our mobile design goals have been to use the minimum amount of vertical space needed to make the site usable on touch devices."

I'm more concerned with the horizontal space on desktop. On mobile, the category information is squeezed left by small width. On desktop though, the category information's all the way to the right, far away from the rest of the information.

This breaks visual hierarchy of information. I wouldn't know for certain, but I'd guess that categories are very important to Literotica readers: people who want gay male stories probably really want them, and people who don't want them probably really don't want them. Same with lesbian sex, audio, transgender & crossdressers, non-erotic, etc. Putting the category information far to the right is inappropriate for such relatively important information.

I'm not suggesting adding vertical -space-. I'm suggesting making each entry bigger vertically, by shoving category information under author. Or shrink the width of the column / flexbox on desktop to bring the category information closer to the left side of the page (and the other important information), like it is on mobile. Literotica story descriptions are short anyways and don't go past half the screen (unlike SOL/AO3, whose layouts use the whole page horizontally).

Or, grouping by category or allowing people to filter out categories on the New Stories page, etc. would also resolve the issue, by making the category information less important.

We are talking about these Hot badges for the stories that can be seen on classic New Stories page. They are not shown on New Story page

https://i.imgur.com/8NuTRbj.png

We want them to came back

for reading on a computer, which I almost exclusively do, I find the new look decidedly UNfriendly. It's too spaced out, especially vertically. And in Chrome, my preferred browser, the opt-out to Classic view only lasts for a couple of days before I'm unceremoniously dumped back to the new look.

Do you remember New Coke? That's how I feel about the new-look Literotica. You need to accept that what's best for a large-screen computer isn't best for a much smaller-screen mobile phone, and vice versa; you have the two views readily accessible, with all features available for both to the greatest extent possible. Surely cookies can keep track of who wants which view!

Modernizing the look of the site is a good idea. But please don't make things harder for readers in the process.

Making the site better for mobile users is also a good thing. But please don't make things worse for desktop users in the process.

An example... Separating the categories out on the right edge makes readers (especially on a larger desktop screen) work harder. Instead of just scanning down, readers now have to stop on each entry, scan to the right to see the category, and scan back to the left before continuing to scan down.

Another example... Making the titles remain the same black color makes readers work harder when they want to know which stories they've already seen. It takes away useful information that was available at a glance when visited and uninvited titles were different colors.

Thanks for all of the feedback. The HOT "H" icon should be on the New Story Page Story Cards now!

Working on other issues as well.

The comments about the Story Card being too wide are interesting since this exact same Story Card (with stats) has been used on the Tags Portal for several years and I can't remember hearing that feedback before.

The comment about too much vertical space is one we've definitely heard before, and the new design has a goal of using the minimum amount of vertical space while still adhering to modern accessibility and usage standards. In the old days, we would run text together or have links right next to each other, but that is frowned upon now because it causes problems for some users.

We keep the Classic Lit design available so that you can continue to use it while we work on improving the new version. Even if you're using Lit Classic, please check in on the new version regularly and send us your feedback and suggestions.

Thanks again!

We're thinking about testing a version of the desktop Story Card that moves the Category and Date closer to the Author. We would need to do a lot of testing with something like that since, again, the new Story Card has been the default Story Card in the Tags Portal (and some other pages) for years. If you have further suggestions on what you would like to see from a more compact desktop Story Card, please let us know.

@edewsgib Thank you. The "H" icon should be back!

The new format is so much easier to read. Would like to see it applied to all category listings as well.

I guess, (hope!), you have user stats that show some significant majority of users are coming in on a mobile phone where screens are small? I haven’t kept up with all the comments here, but I don’t think I’ve seen any praising this new layout or singing the wonders of how it solved their navigation challenges.

I visit Literotica on a 12” IPad and while I’m happy to see the Hot tag return, overall the new design makes things worse for me. Looks like you’ve made it possible to return to “classic” without leaving feedback - if so, thank you. I will continue to use that interface as long as you allow.

1) I’ve always thought that there should be sub-categories. Loving Wives for example…sub-categories of RAAC, BTB, Cuck, etc.

2) Have the ability to list stories in multiple categories. Example: siblings enjoying anal sex for the first time——categories Incest, Anal, First time. Only need one copy of the story, but tagged in the different catigories.

3) When looking through an authors index of stories, have the ability to sort the stories by title, pub. date, rating etc.

4) Would love a page count on the listings. Sometimes I just want to skips stories greater than say 3 pages.

Having the category be out of eye scan line down the page really sucks, can yall move it to be inline with the titles on the left side again please?

@AnonymousiPadUser Thank you for the feedback when using an iPad. Can you elaborate on why the new interface bothers you on a tablet? For the initial rollout of the Story Page in the new design (years ago), we worked with iPad, Android tablet, and Kindle readers to modify the way that the responsiveness works to match the experience they were asking for.

For example, the new interface allows tablet users (and everyone) to change font faces and font sizes on the Story Page and turn on or off dark mode sitewide. For tablets, we also changed the way that the sidebar works on the Story Page so that it gives them the best possible reading experience. All of this was done after the initial public launch and with extensive input and testing by tablet-using Lit members. The higher resolution or bigger screen tablets function more like a desktop screen, so your experience may be more similar to a desktop.

As far as the feedback when changing to the Classic Lit design, that's just to help us understand what people would like to see improved in the new design. You're welcome to just enter "Hello World" in that box, as I do. 😀

@psycoxz Thank you for the comment on the Category placement on the new Story Cards. One of the major features of the new Story Cards over the Lit Classic Story Cards (which never really had a standard design as we rolled out different pages over the first couple decades of Lit's existence) is the bookmark icon. The bookmark icon needs to be in a standard place so that readers will always know where to click it.

Earlier today, when I tried a few mockups with the Category and Date on the left side (on the same line as the Author, as that's the only place it fits without adding extra vertical space), the bookmark icon looked lonely on the right side of the screen. In addition, it creates a sort of messy text line that looks like this:

by LiteroticaAuthor in LiteroticaCategory 12/14/2023

Mobile readers told us that scanning Categories was easier on the right side of the Story Card since it's always in the same place (because the date is the only item on this line with a predictable length). When we were initially working on the mobile Story Cards, phone readers told us they needed something easy to scan quickly, and the right side fixed-location placement was something that testers at that time wanted. Is your experience that it would be easier to scan the Category in that line of text with an unpredictable placement, rather than in a predictable location on every Story Card?

It might be good for mobile, but not on a browser. The biggest problem is having the categories on the right and the rest of the information on the left. To get a readable line length would require narrowing the window too much for the rest of the information.

.

Your comments are still messed. Before the "upgrades", the comments accepted basic HTML codes, such as <P> for paragraphs. Now, the require something along the lines of .

,

in a blank line.

Unusable on an iPad. Can’t find how to make text large enough to read. I love Literotica and will be so disappointed once the change is permanent.

Steve

I am on a tablet. Hate it!

Too spread out.

Ratings not near the title for faster scanning.

Opting out...

I’m the 12” iPad user …

When I’m scrolling through new stories, I just go page-by-page. I’m not filtering by genre, so the Hot tag is probably the first and biggest attention-getter for me. But there are genres I don’t read so that’s probably the 2nd hurdle a story has to clear to get a click from me. I’ll also read the title and short description. If there are grammatical issues that’s another reason to skip. The new design separates all the key info I need, especially as I typically hold the iPad in landscape mode and drag the story list to make the text larger. Rotating to portrait orientation helps, but there’s still a lot of useless white space to traverse.