Revamped Title Information Page

[mpowell]

Hey there Criticker Community! We’re excited to announce the start of a brand new era at Criticker, with the launch of the newly revamped Title Information Page. 

This is the result of a long phase of research, design, development, and testing, and we hope you’re all happy with the results! Our goal was to modernize the page and make Criticker more appealing to a broader user base, without losing any of the functionality you love.

And we think we've done that! Not only have we kept everything, we’ve also introduced some new features, such as Similar Titles. There are now subpages for things like Collections and Ratings, allowing us more space to display and organize information. And we’ve entirely re-imagined the mobile experience for Criticker, finally making the site fun to use from a phone.

We want to send a huge thanks to our crew of testers (including all our sponsors) who have done an incredible job providing insightful, constructive, and brutally honest feedback for the new page. You’ve all helped shape the future of Criticker, and we massively appreciate your thoughts!

While we’ve knocked out the biggest bugs that our testing team found, there are still a lot of minor ones left to squash. It’s also likely that there are more lurking we’ve not yet encountered. Please continue to report any problems you encounter to support@criticker.com or in the Bugs forum. Until we've taken care of all existing issues, and for at least three months, we're leaving the legacy version of the page in place (for existing users). You can switch back and forth with a link on the left sidebar.

I’d also like to stress that this is just the first step in what is going to be an exciting period of change and growth for Criticker. We have expanded our team, and have big plans for the site, including a full site redesign and rebranding. We promise to never lose sight of what makes Criticker special, and hope you all plan on coming along for the ride! Thanks again for being part of this amazing community!

[BadCosmonaut]

Does the new title page show the date I rated a title? On the old title page, right under where it shows my rating for a title, it'll say something like: "Rated on July 11th, 2016". I don't see that sentence on the new title page. I would expect to see it right by the rating box.

[BadCosmonaut]

Instead of having the buttons at the top (for Overview, Ratings & Reviews, Collections, Cast & Info, Similar, and Stats) that load a new page, could each relevant section on the Overview page have a "More info" button (and a "Less info" button once opened) that could be pressed to show the info from each of those 6 tabs? Like replace those 6 distinct pages with just the Overview page, and on that Overview page just have all that info be openable/collapsible. Those buttons at the top could even remain as hotlinks that scroll the user to the relevant section on the Overview page. Or is my idea worse somehow?

[mpowell]

Does the new title page show the date I rated a title? On the old title page, right under where it shows my rating for a title, it'll say something like: "Rated on July 11th, 2016". I don't see that sentence on the new title page. I would expect to see it right by the rating box.

This is a great catch! We do show the date rated when you've provided a review, but not when there is no review. We'll take a look into the best way to display this data, as we know it's a really important piece of information. Thanks so much for pointing it out!

[mpowell]

Instead of having the buttons at the top (for Overview, Ratings & Reviews, Collections, Cast & Info, Similar, and Stats) that load a new page, could each relevant section on the Overview page have a "More info" button (and a "Less info" button once opened) that could be pressed to show the info from each of those 6 tabs? Like replace those 6 distinct pages with just the Overview page, and on that Overview page just have all that info be openable/collapsible. Those buttons at the top could even remain as hotlinks that scroll the user to the relevant section on the Overview page. Or is my idea worse somehow?

Thanks for those thoughts! However, moving away from the "tabbed" version of the page was one of the main goals of the revamp, because we wanted to make the site easier to navigate and share. When everything is loaded dynamically, search engines have a more difficult time finding all the great data we have. To be overly transparent, the "tabbed" functionality of the old page was actually crippling Criticker's SEO. By structuring everything into a set of linkable and shareable pages, we multiply the information available to Google.

And we've worked hard on performance, if that's the main concern. In testing, we've seen no major difference in speed, between loading a subpage, and loading a tab.

[boomdiddly]

Is there any way to opt back to the old format? I'm guessing there isn't, but I personally found the old format to be more aesthetically pleasing and focused on what features I use this platform for. I'm sure there are many who will love the new features, but for me this change was a bit saddening.

[mpowell]

Is there any way to opt back to the old format? I'm guessing there isn't, but I personally found the old format to be more aesthetically pleasing and focused on what features I use this platform for. I'm sure there are many who will love the new features, but for me this change was a bit saddening.

Yes, you should be able to switch back to the legacy version -- you should see a link that says "Switch to Old Version" on the lefthand side of the page.

[zweird]

Will these plans include an API?

[mpowell]

Will these plans include an API?

Possibly! An API is something which is definitely on our radar, though we don't have any concrete plans around that for now.

[howabe]

Hi,

Quick bug I've noticed on the Games side - trying to navigate to a Collection that a title is in via the title's information page will direct you to the Film side, where the collection obviously doesn't exist.
(For example, Cyberpunk 2077 is in the collection "Polish video games", games.criticker.com/games/?collection=82830. Clicking the Collection on its page instead tries to go to games.criticker.com/films/?collection=82830, resulting in a 404.)

On a related note, I think the Collections section is a vast improvement with the posters and Collection stats displayed. What dictates which posters appear here for a Collection? I'd be in favour of eventually seeing similar for the list of all Collections.

One personal gripe with the redesign, again solely from the Games side of things, is the placement of some of a title's info on the Overview page. I think at the very least the platform(s) should be displayed as close to the top of the page as possible for ease of reference, as this is likely one of the first/most important things one would look at when deciding if a title is even relevant to your means of accessing it.

Edit: It seems for Expansions, nowhere is it stated which title the title being viewed is an Expansion for. I think this is definitely required information.