How are you adjusting to the beta?

[discobiscuit]

I'm curious how other people are adjusting to the beta interface.  Pre-beta, I pretty much clicked through my dailies in a few minutes and went on with my life.   Now that I'm forced to use the new interface, I'm going to have to adjust how I do things.  Professionally speaking, I'm curious how people have adjusted their "Neopets workflow"

For example: inventory

in the old days: I got to my inventory by clicking on my neopoints score.  Admittedly, that was never intuitive, but it was quick and on every page. 
Today, you click on your pet's icon in the corner and then click "inventory"
No pro tips necessary.  Workflow is about the same.

Feeding my pets
in the old days: I'd click on an omelette, feed a pet, then back page, so I could feed the 2/3 omelette to the next pet, and do it again a third time. 
Today, doing this from the new inventory is a lot of clicks and reloads.   I discovered it's faster to look at "My Pets" first, click on a pet, then click feed, and select the jelly or whatever.  Here's my pro tip - do not click on "close and refresh" - just click outside the box about the food.  You're right back at my pets.  Still slower than before, but you skip several reloads.

Anybody else got any workflow pro tips?

 

Edited January 1, 2021 by discobiscuit
hit save before I put in any examples

[GillyTook]

I haaaaate the new site.  It is horrendous.  The bright yellow background makes me feel like someone is stabbing me in the eyes (I had a nice background for a reason.  One I had to work to earn!), it feels way slower, and I JUST spent cash to upgrade my pet's look, yet now I can't see her wherever I am.  I also can't seem to find anything unless I click a link HERE to find it.  I found like one page yesterday that I liked better, yet I can't find it at all today =(  Plus since I use a computer to navigate the site, it makes it even more difficult.

 

I've got no tips, but I'll have to try that inventory thing because the refreshing is driving me completely nuts.  I didn't even know there was an option to close and refresh, as I normally just X out of something and click something else before refreshing the page after a few times.  Thank you for that.

[LekkerLekker89]

I also despise the new site, for a multitude of reasons. I agree with you about the site theme. I worked for mine as well.  I guess the biggest issue for me is the way the pets are now displayed, with no backgrounds, a lot of the items that used to have motion do not any more. It's really very sad. I won't even go into the artwork and total lack of creativity. Yeah, I'll adjust. But it's not going to be pleasant. 

[jellysundae]

Your customisation not being visible anywhere's pretty weird, isn't it! But I suppose it's all because things are geared towards being viewed from a smaller screen.

On the whole I'm managing ok with this. I'm using a laptop to access neo.

Site theme: I haven't experienced the horrible yellow, I am grateful for this! I have premium and my beta theme has the space faerie theme which is a nice dark blue, I didn't choose it so I guess that's default for premium members. I had a look at what other beta themes are currently available, understandably it's very few right now, but there are some so you can change from blinding yellow. Kinda naff though, I checked out the green and purple ones and the sidebars are pale and wishy-washy, I actually liked the tis The Season one though.

I've always really disliked the wide grey sidebars, and with this update those have gone, so that's a definite positive in my book!

I just spent a moment trying to capture a snowflake as it floated past Serg's cute l'il Quig, but I wasn't quick enough. xD I didn't realise the snow fell over the entire screen.

But yeah, these two themes nicely minimise the larger amount of white on the boards.

TNT have done a big no-no here: That red, why??? x'D

The lack of access to both quickstock and your SDB is INSANE, but I'm sure that'll be dealt with pretty quickly, and while plenty of unconverted pages remain it's not really much of an issue.

I used the new customisation yesterday. It's better. Once it's working fully/I fully understand it, it's gonna be great!

• No jumping through hoops to swap between pets
• Drag and drop to equip stuff
• closet loads a gazillion times faster
• mousing over the items shows their info

This I like nicely informative!

A whole lot of stuff is greyed out though, and it's not equiped on other pets. 

A lot of it doesn't show up when you try to equip it, though it's clearly there as the info for it shows up below the pet.

invisible fireplace! xD

Some does show up though, so it's an exciting game of customisation roulette! x'D But on the whole, this really is a vast improvement! It just all needs to work. xD Which it will do, given time.

[mairead123]

I'd like to know how to find SDB and quickstock.

There's little point in redesigning web pages that don't tell users how to find what they are looking for.  That's basic web design. Also text colours are not always easy to read.  These are beginners's mistakes.

[discobiscuit]

trudy's surprise

old days: there was a tiny message in the header with a link that said trudy's surprise had reset.  You had to hit the right part of the link to actually go to trudy.  Otherwise you went to your neomail and then you had to find the message with the link. 
today: you should get red circle & a number in the header over the yellow bell letting you know you have a message. Pro tip: once you click on the bell, you have to click on the "alerts" tab to see the message about trudy.  I said should because it's clearly bugged a little.  It only shows up after you've gone onto a non-beta page that shows you the alert the old days way.

[enitul]

So far it's going better than I thought for me. I tabbed the pages I had om my premium bar and the restock page so I could still visit those more easily. And so far I've been able to do the things I did before too. The old site was better, but I don't have too many problems with this so far. Then again, I'm not doing things other people are into. Like customization. So I'll wait and see. But one thing's for sure: I'm happy that I can still see my precious pets.

[midnight_spell360]

 Oh no! Oh no! Oh no, no, no, no! :(  Well, at least I already got the Avatar...

[jellysundae]

2 hours ago, midnight_spell360 said:

 Oh no! Oh no! Oh no, no, no, no! Well, at least I already got the Avatar...

I have just done Kiko Pop, like 10 minutes ago, and it worked fine for me, so I'm guessing this is your browser rather than neopets itself?

[berriganify]

im fairing pretty well. i already used jellyneo for my dailies. and i only did like, bank interest, trudy's, stock market, food club. i put my pets in the neolodge so feeding them's not really an issue.

shop wiz is the biggest problem for me. i tried to track down some pppb's the other day and looking through the search results took sooooo long.

[jellysundae]

I wonder what areas are going to change when TNT's back at work tomorrow. Well, I'm assuming they'll be working tomorrow.

Fingers crossed for quickstock/SDB access first and foremost!

OH! And the Battledome! No way to get to that either, is there?

Thank Fyora for Dailies pages on fan sites, that's all I can say!

[MysteryAF]

I feel like some people will inherently hate it because it's not what they've been used to for the past 20 odd years, but it honestly is better. People just need time to adjust to it. I'm sure they'll hear the critiques and improve it further, but so far I'm excited for how it's going to turn out. Flash was horribly outdated, and I see potential here.

[raelilphil]

This might be the oldest thing I've ever said, but I decided to be done with neo with this switch because I don't want to deal with the layout change.  It would be one thing if it was the mobile layout only, but having the mobile layout for the desktop browser version too is just too much.  I was already planning to significantly roll back my usage as I'm having a baby in six weeks, and my RL friends who used to play only come for the AC now.  I was already realizing that the flash player and the games thing was changing things, but all the changes told me it was time.  I'll see where I am when the AC rolls around.  

If some of you are finding it to be a good change once you get the hang of it, that's great.  I hope it works, because I'd hate to see neo end.  I'm a tech teacher (in normal school years), and I was really starting to see some potential in using it as a safe game and chat site (keeping my students in the newbie board).  

[discobiscuit]

14 hours ago, berriganify said:

shop wiz is the biggest problem for me. i tried to track down some pppb's the other day and looking through the search results took sooooo long.

old days: get prices through shop wizard, hit reload to get a new list of prices, click back in browser to search for another item
today: get prices through shop wizard, hit reload AND submit the search again.  Hitting back in browser seems to work OK.

I think this wasn't working well last week because I remember having issues with hitting reload but it seems to be working now.  It's still more clicking than the old days but I'm not getting errors any more.

[SimplyTragic]

I'm starting to like it.  Some areas anyway. I hope they add more layouts in the Beta version cause I really miss my Habi layout. They only have a few games in the beta and that's fine, but they don't work for me. I tried playing Fashion Fever for a few quick nps and it gave me an error about sending my score.  The other ones seem fine.

I don't like that it keeps switching back from the old to new layout every time I click a link, but I understand they are still working on changing things. I just hope that they convert at least the layout side of things by the end of Feb.

[mamamommymom]

No pro tips, as I'm struggling through trying to remember how to get places. The only thing I'm frustrated with is customization. I hardly ever customize, but I do tend to do something just before and after major holidays. I've mostly just taken items off and put simple things on (hoping that they stay, usually).

But I wanted to shout out to jellysundae. I'm premium, but had the yellow defaulted down the sides. Because of your post I went into my settings and, voila, constellations is available. I like that so much better.  Thank you jellysundae.

 

 

[MariaWB]

I loathe the new site. I can't even find where to quickstock my inventory. I can't find my SDB or my shop, either.

[berriganify]

8 hours ago, discobiscuit said:

old days: get prices through shop wizard, hit reload to get a new list of prices, click back in browser to search for another item
today: get prices through shop wizard, hit reload AND submit the search again.  Hitting back in browser seems to work OK.

I think this wasn't working well last week because I remember having issues with hitting reload but it seems to be working now.  It's still more clicking than the old days but I'm not getting errors any more.

back in browser doesn't work for me, but im pretty sure that's a firefox problem not a neopets problem. refreshing and then hitting the search button again works find though.

according to gutterfoot tnt is aware of the problem though, so hopefully it'll get fixed when they get back.

5 hours ago, SimplyTragic said:

I don't like that it keeps switching back from the old to new layout every time I click a link, but I understand they are still working on changing things. I just hope that they convert at least the layout side of things by the end of Feb.

yeah, that's pretty jarring. i'm pretty sure that's going to be a thing until the pages in question are converted over to the new layout.

 

[Tedhaun]

2 hours ago, MariaWB said:

I loathe the new site. I can't even find where to quickstock my inventory. I can't find my SDB or my shop, either.

Just click on "Shops" on the above toolbar on the new layout, and click on "My Shop" (the second option under the NP section), and you'll be taken to your usershop (which has still yet to be converted at the time of this post). You'll find the Quick Stock and SDB links still intact on that very page.

[GillyTook]

It's funny. I  really liked the wide grey sidebars.  They really helped tone down the brightness of the page to me, and I love that.

[isabelle888253]

I've adjusted well, I think, but I had something like 150 bookmarks for neopets saved, so I think that helped me navigate around (to things like quick stock, my SDB). Definitely the functionality of classic is better for navigation, but it's a work-in-progress & I'm sure will be improved drastically by the end of 2021. 

[iloveeevee]

kadding or finding cheaper items with the shop wiz rn is a pain, and i dont want to buy premium for that when im unhappy with the new site overall
ive been trying to find good deals on gourmet club items but it's so annoying that i gave up

also no links to the sbd is annoying too
as everyone else i dont like that it looks like an app on desktop, never been a fan of that look, but if it worked properly i could adjust to it

also sad about not seeing their bg's on my pets :(( 

[jellysundae]

I now realise that neomail is another thing with no access to on the new pages, what were TNT thinking with this "upgrade"? x'D

But seeing as it's gonna be AGES before all pages are converted... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

NO!

This is 100% me not being used to where stuff's been tucked away yet. I see you, inbox! o/

And let's not forget! One of Gutterfoot/Van Doodle said about how a sent box was very much needed!

[Secre]

I took an almost complete break over Christmas, so this was a little bit of a culture shock. 

But all in all... it's not bad. It's clearly set up to be a mobile site on desktop, rather than a desktop site which isn't awesome. I spent 99% of my time on neo on a desktop, so I'd have liked something that plays to it's strengths.

But, they seem to be having enough issues converting the site as a whole let alone creating a whole desktop and mobile version, so I'll take what I've got. 

It's strange, I'm not normally good with change, but I'm really not too fussed... despite having used the old version all the way up to December as standard.

Things I dislike: 

- No easy SDB access. I still haven't found a way there that doesn't involve putting something from my inventory in my SDB and then following the link, or heading to a non-converted page with the links at the top of the page.

- No quickstock. It works if you use the old quickstock link though so it's not the end of the world - http://www.neopets.com/quickstock.phtml?r=

- SW doesn't repeat searches. That will be more annoying if it's not fixed, but I've only pinged on and off today so can use the SSW.

[discobiscuit]

16 hours ago, berriganify said:

back in browser doesn't work for me, but im pretty sure that's a firefox problem not a neopets problem. refreshing and then hitting the search button again works find though.

Today using back in the browser didn't work for me either.  Also, the refresh worked but I had to retype what I was searching for.  That wasn't happening yesterday.  I'm not sure what I'm doing differently that made it work the other day so I'm going to temporarily suspend my pro-tip until I work this out.