We're excited to announce a huge new batch of bug fixes and enhancements to Criticker! Check out the list of improvements we've made, in this post. 

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Pitch finished, so let's move on to the updates! Huge thanks as always to the people submitting issues... and if we haven't gotten to one of yours yet, don't worry! Eventually, we will.

Enhancements

Mark Mini-Reviews as containing spoilers

One of the most-requested features since the dawn of Criticker has been the ability to mark one’s own reviews (or report those of others) as containing spoilers. Long-time users will definitely be acquainted with the myriad ways we’ve pushed this functionality off … "Coming soon!", "We’ll get to it once we have a chance!", "It’s on the roadmap!" Over the years, we've fully exploited every method of can-kicking that exists.

But the time has come. As of today, you can mark your own mini-reviews as containing spoilers… and report reviews from others.

We haven’t gone through every mini-review in the system to retroactively apply the tag (there are more than a million!) so if you see one you think deserves to be hidden with the spoiler tag, let us know by reporting the review in question.

A filter for Full Reviews

We’ve just added Full Reviews to the filter dropdown on the Title Information Page. So, if there are full reviews for the movie or game in question, you’ll be able to see just those. Just bringing a bit more visibility to the longer-form reviews you all are taking the time to write!

Bug Fixes

Option to delete Collections is missing - We have restored the ability to delete collections. You’ll find the option to do so from the Collection Moderation page. Please remember that you cannot delete Collaborative Collections, if others have contributed to them, though you can disown them.

Right align username on Reviews - We’ve cleaned up the presentation of this page, making it more uniform and easier to parse the information.

Trending Titles not in Mobile Dropdown - A while ago, we turned the Recommendations menu item into a dropdown list, with children like “New Releases” and “Trending Titles”. That was great, but we didn’t implement the same thing on mobile devices! That’s now been corrected.

Broken link on "preview mode" titles - When a title has not yet been approved, there’s a link suggesting you add it to your wishlist, so that you don’t forget it. However, that link wasn’t working. Now it is!

Left panel on title pages scrolls weird - This is a difficult issue to fix definitively, since scrolling to the end of the page and reaching the site footer, requires the sidebar to scroll to the end as well. But when you scroll quickly, you can be faster than the lazy-loading of additional reviews, which might result in a jumpy layout shift.

To help alleviate this (but not solve completely), we initiate the lazy-loading earlier in the scrolling process. For most normal scrolling speeds, this seems to help a lot.

Game Full Reviews should go to Games site - Full reviews for games were loading under the “Film” version of Criticker instead of the proper “games” version. Now, they redirect properly.

Squished layout on compact rating list - We’ve fixed the styling of the compact view here, so that the elements no longer run together. We also just made it look a bit tidier, overall.

Adding platforms to games not working - This was an issue where using the “Update Information” modal to add new platforms to games was not working. It’s been fixed, so you can now update the platforms easily.

Filmmaker list pagination bug - The pagination was working, but it looked like you were always on Page #1. This now works properly, and shows you the actual page you’re currently on.

TV seasons are individually listed - This was a problem where, if you went on Bob Odenkirk's page, for example, it'd list Better Caul Saul, and then all the seasons of Better Call Saul individually. This should now be fixed! Individual seasons are no longer shown on this page, if the filmmaker was also listed in the overall series.

Problem searching on AKAs - There was an issue searching for AKAs. Even when there was an exact match it wasn’t always resulting in a hit. This has been fixed, so searches on “Max and the Junkmen”, for example, will work.

Indicate Ignored Title on Cards - When you’ve ignored a title, that’s not always apparent in the poster-sized Title Cards – the type which appear in the list of Similar Films, for example. Now, instead of seeing an icon which allows you to add the title to a watchlist, you’ll see an icon indicating that you’ve ignored it.

Keep Filtering When Sharing - We’ve made a change so that when you filter or sort a collection, those settings are preserved when you click the link to Share the Collection. So, for example, if you filtered the collection “Female Directors” to just titles from 2000, ordered by number of ratings, you can share that specific view!

Rich Tooltips are wordy and redundant - Someone had pointed out that our rich tool tips when you hover over a filmmaker are a little redundant. So, we’ve changed things so that it just says “Credits include:“ instead of “Frank Grillo has 66 credits at Criticker, including:“

Overall Star Rankings sorting bug - The way we order the Overall Star Ratings needed a bit of explanation. We don’t place on top the users who’ve received the most stars, but the users who have received stars from the most other users. This prevents situations where a user might get hundreds of stars from another user… not that this would be invalid, but we feel like a better measure is the number of distinct users who’ve found their reviews worth starring.

Log in vs Sign in - In the past, Criticker had used the terms “sign in” and “log in” interchangeably. But we’ve now brought more consistency to the site by deciding upon “sign in” as the phrase, and have replaced all references to “logging in” or “logging out”.

Move Player Picture Submission to Modal - We’ve moved the utility that allows you to submit a filmmaker profile picture into a modal, instead of shifting the layout and requiring a page reload.

Not sure if approvals are function as intended - This has been fixed! From now on, only the person who submitted the title can view it, until it’s been approved.

Backslashes added in exports - This was an issue with the formatting of apostrophes in the exports. There was also an issue with pagination, and with ampersands in title names. We also found and fixed a problem with overly-large images in the HTML export.