The "Fresh Free Game Deals" issues [Split]

[Gez]

Cool, a game I'm actually interested in. It would be great if GOG's storefront wasn't a complete steaming pile of utter shit. It just doesn't seem to be interested in replacing the ellipsis throbber by a claim button.

[wildweasel]

Cool, a game I'm actually interested in. It would be great if GOG's storefront wasn't a complete steaming pile of utter shit. It just doesn't seem to be interested in replacing the ellipsis throbber by a claim button.

It's being hammered quite hard at the moment so it may take a while for the button to load, or you might have to refresh the page as the request may have been lost in transmission due to the load on their server.

This happens every Christmas season.

[Gez]

I never had such problems before their latest redesign.

[NeuralStunner]

It would be great if GOG's storefront wasn't a complete steaming pile of utter shit. It just doesn't seem to be interested in replacing the ellipsis throbber by a claim button.

Same.

I never had such problems before their latest redesign.

Aaaaaaand same.


"We've altered our storefront. Pray we do not alter it further."

[Rachael]

Please put commentary in a new topic. People bookmark and subscribe the one this was split from, and these posts make them think there are new games when there really aren't.

[leileilol]

Not too surprised yet another site redesign is doing the soft UX regressive nudge of "please switch to Google Chrome, or second closest thing to Chrome that's still technically Chrome". So much for modern web standards....

(I don't have a GoG account and never will (many reasons), and I never use Chrome and don't advocate for it (many reasons), but the 'Get it FREE' button shows up for chromium-browser, while it's the throbber-to-nowhere in non-quantum firefox and seamonkey, etc.)


"Good old Games"... more like Google-only Games!1!1111

[Caligari87]

Hanlon's Razor: Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.

In this case I'd be willing to bet the majority of in-house people testing the site are running Chrome/Chromium for unrelated reasons and they just neglected to test something with Firefox. It'd be a ridiculously bizarre for GoG to intentionally exclude anyone from their storefront, and I find it extremely hard to believe some other conspiracy (like Google is paying them under-the-table to break the site for non-Chrome users or something). That all said, I've personally never had a problem on the GoG storefront with Firefox.

On a broader note, standards and needs change over time because of market pressures, user preferences, developer feature wants, and just plain old survival of the fittest evolution. So what if Webkit becomes the top dog in the market? Chromium (which makes up 99% of Chrome) is open-source, and there's nothing stopping anyone from building a non-Google browser on top of that (in fact there's a *multitude* of open-source Webkit browsers). If it wins out over firefox's rendering engine, then it's pretty clear which was better at servicing user's needs. Times change.

[Rachael]

None of that is helped by the fact that Firefox constantly seems to be following in Webkit's (and sometimes even Chrome's) footsteps. Minimalizing the user interface, for example, "simplifying" the menu/tabs interface, etc. Whether the ideas are actually good or not, Firefox seems to adapt them for the "cool factor" value of it to simply show off "hey look what we can do!"

[PlayerLin]

Also, after Firefox v57, the new "Quantum project" engine caused a lot of addons just went dead or move to Google Chrome because of addon authors lost interest on porting their addons to new "Quantum" engine, or even worse, cannot porting due to lack of needed APIs to do so, make users just went "Screw this shit, I'll go for Google Chrome since I lost my favorite addons.", I still use Firefox but I'm not sure if it's good idea...


And Google Chrome now looks very like the M$ IE in the past...

[Gez]

So yeah I had to install Chrome as another backup browser for when websites don't want to work with the one that has all my obscure plugins I can't live without.

[gramps]

Do you guys remember when Firefox first came out? Early 2000's, back when it was called Firebird?

It had an extremely minimal interface compared to Netscape, it was basically the same interface as IE6. That was sort of the whole point of it. Then it started to add stuff to UI over time, and then Chrome came out with a minimal UI. The difference is Chrome kept the UI minimal the whole time, while Firefox kinda fluctuated.

What I'm saying is, don't blame Firefox for moving (back) towards a more minimal UI because of Chrome, it was designed to be minimal from its inception.

Meanwhile apparently SeaMonkey (basically old NN) still exists for those who still want the old kitchen-sink style UI. But UX design in general seems to be moving towards streamlined UI, and there are thoughtful reasons behind it. I wouldn't expect the old way of doing things to stick around forever.

[Rachael]

I wouldn't expect the old way of doing things to stick around forever.

It will stick around as long as there are developers who want it around. Period.

That's the crux of it - you can innovate in UI however and whichever way you want to, but ultimately the decision lies with people who are willing to spend the time implementing it. Or the people who pay them.

The reason why browsers like Midori exist is because there is a demand for an extremely minimalistic browser that doesn't eat up 2 gigs of ram the moment you open it. And there was a developer willing to make it. A really off-the-path example, but it makes the point.

[gramps]

It will stick around as long as there are developers who want it around. Period.

Sure, and presumably that won't be forever. Design sensibilities evolve. People learn from mistakes. Things improve.

[Rachael]

You are trying to state an opinion as fact which makes your statement inherently false by design. You can't just say that it will go away forever - it won't. At worst, it'll become more rare - and that is what's happening.

Windows 95's interface, for example, is alive and well in its open source clone, ReactOS. And to this day, Vista and 7's glossy window frames are still mimicked to this day using third-party utilities. None of these are going the way of the dinosaur - no matter how much the original developers who invented their associated concepts may want them to. That doesn't make them bad ideas or mistakes. It just makes them into different branches of ideas that people prefer.

[gramps]

At this point I think we're talking past each other. I wasn't trying to state an opinion at all, just an observation of general trend in design. I'm not saying old design styles will be completely eradicated from every corner of the planet. But I am saying they will become more rare (which it sounds like you agree with), basically up to the vanishing point.

Simple example, do you think we'll ever see those Win95 style grey heavily-beveled square buttons ever again? Or the Win3.1 style desktop? Yes, I get what you're saying, some obscure software may still do this. I'm saying that's no reason to expect heavily-used, extremely popular software to regress to a design sensibility from a decade or two ago.