New Neopets Site Format

[Blue]

Not a fan of the new "beta" flash-free, mobile friendly layout. My ancient browser really hates it.

I suppose there will be plenty of bugs to work through, so we'll see how it shakes out. Maybe it's just me, but I think the new Beta layout/theme looks like it was made for 5 year-olds.

[Pickles]

Yeah, the layout is taking some serious getting used to, but I'll adjust...eventually. I mean, we survived switching from Sidebars to this, right? (I'm trying reallllly hard to look at the positive here, because I hate change and this is certainly a big one).

However, the games are a different story. The new version of Hasee Bounce is atrocious...you cannot use arrow keys to move them, meaning you have to use your mouse and they automatically jump to the other side because that's where your mouse is. Ugh. It's just...unplayable on a desktop. Igloo Garage Sale has a bug that is doing something crazy with the all items collected bonus, and Kass Basher and Fashion Fever have a "minimum playtime" limit that if you're under it, your score will not send. Turmac Roll seems to be OK (but no Sniddberries at all?). I haven't tried the whopping other two games yet (ICM and Rink Runner). I'm kinda scared to.

Things seem to load different on different browsers. I'm not having any lag (and the redone wheels spin beautifully, but watch out - the Dark Faerie space on WOE actually does something again!), but a newer computer using a different browser is seeing a lot of lag. We'll see how it pans out.

Some links that I've stumbled across various places (or found on my own because there's no direct links to them in Beta, but if you go to a non-updated page you can find):
Quick Stock: http://www.neopets.com/quickstock.phtml (Super helpful to have)
Safety Deposit Box: http://www.neopets.com/safetydeposit.phtml
Closet: http://www.neopets.com/closet.phtml
Battledome: http://www.neopets.com/dome/
Ninja Training School: http://www.neopets.com/island/fight_training.phtml (Already had this one bookmarked, as it's the only training school I use)

If you go to "Shop->Your Shop" it takes you to your shop...which is a non-converted page. This has been my go-to way to get things that I don't normally use bookmarks for.

And then there's these, which I don't remember who I found from yesterday, but they are now bookmarks in my browser:
Old Customize: http://www.neopets.com/customise/classic.phtml
Old Games Room: http://www.neopets.com/games/classic.phtml

On a related note, if you have not already seen this, PLEASE:
Check out JN's End-of-Flash To-Do's list.
It's possible that all browsers will disable flash on Jan 1st, and Flash itself will supposedly be disabling itself on Jan 12.

[Siniri]

Thanks for that link, P. I guess I need to figure things out tomorrow.

I'm going to miss my near-daily Roodoku (or three). You can adjust your beta theme in your site preferences page, so at least it's not the ghastly yellow. I hope they eventually make one for each theme and give them to the users who earned them. I feel like the site is nowhere close to ready. This is scarier in many ways than Y2K!

[Pickles]

I was going to mention that the Constellations beta theme is MUCH nicer on the eyes, and forgot it. I believe they're planning on converting all themes at some point. Kinda like they're supposed to convert most of the games at some point. I just hope they make the games possible to still do on a desktop - even if it's the ability to pick to use a keyboard instead of a mouse for some of them, like Hasee Bounce.

I'm trying to be as calm as I can about this. It will probably be rough for a little while, but I'm trying to have faith that they'll get things back to better functioning as soon as they can.

[Blue]

I too am trying to remain calm about this. It is not a good transition and it is awful.

[Siniri]

It's hopefully not as broken as the transition to JS. Right? *Fingers crossed*

I really hope I have time for one last Roodoku. The things I enjoy on site go away one by one. There's been very little that's replaced them that's been anywhere near as good. LC, plots, KQ, etc.

[Blue]

Thu Dec 31, 2020 3:25 pm:
*sigh* yep. I used to love Bilge Dice. For years, it has said, "Error: Sorry, but this section of the site is undergoing a quick fix or revision. We'll get it back up as soon as possible!" Sure.


Update:
If you are daring, or have a good sandbox to play in, you can still play the flash games

I installed "WaterFox", which is a fork of FireFox that split off at version 56 in an effort to maintain some of the older extensions. In addition, install flashplayer32_0r0_371_win. This is the last Flash release that did not have the "time bomb" in it. For safety purposes, installing in a virtual machine or other sandbox is advised. I also installed ublock_origin adblocker extension into Waterfox. You do need to download the extension and install it manually (File->Open from Waterfox) instead of using the "add extension" button. Installed and works great. Then use the 'classic' links to the games. Ditto for customization. The HTML5 customization feature does not yet work well. Some of the backgrounds were not showing up for me, and it was simply a problem. This is what prompted me to find this workaround. This might just be my new Neopets-specific browser, considering that Opera 12 sometimes struggles. Then again, the old flash player might resolve that.

[Pickles]

So with Flash being gone again, I thought I'd update this with some things I've found out today.

First off, the link to the classic Games room I posted previously is no longer working. Instead, you can access all the games via this link: https://www.neopets.com/games/category.phtml

Here are some links that let you do some of the Flash mini-games that I previously had no clue existed. (I ignored the posts on the neoboards because I thought they were just people still playing with Flash, but I was seeing them still active today and investigated, and ran across these.)

Qasalan Expellibox (7 hours 7 minutes, free)
Test Your Strength (6 hours, 100nps per play)
Bagatelle (20x per day, 250nps per play) probably not worth it, as it wasn't really before, but...
Cork Gun Gallery (20x per day, 100nps per play) no ability to "aim", probably not worth it

Coconut Shy (20x per day, 100nps per play) no ability to "aim" but you can pick which coconut to try for:
Coconut 1
Coconut 2
Coconut 3
Coconut 4
Coconut 5

All of the above will bring you to a page with a bit of text at the top. If you read around the extra mess, you can see the results.


There IS a way to play SOME games still, apparently. Please note: I HAVE NOT TRIED THIS and I DON'T KNOW HOW SAFE IT IS. I also don't know how legit it is. Honestly, I'm not sure if I will try it (or post the instructions here yet), as TNT hasn't come out and said it's OK, whereas they had previously said that playing with an older browser/older flash version is at your own risk but not against site rules.

If you use the above method to try and play flash games, you'll still probably run into the issue where you have to refresh a different page on Neo before sending score - since the site seems to need to verify you're real every 3 minutes.

[Blue]

Pulling in the new quickstock discussion into this thread...

TNT just rolled out the new SDB. Looks a lot like the new quickstock. I had a shortcut saved that took me to only the codestones:

https://www.neopets.com/safetydeposit.p ... category=2 *borked*

I do not yet see a way to set a bookmark to only go to the codestones.

Moreso, we no longer have the enter a quantity and use the dropdown at the top/bottom to "move items". Nope. You need to now also check a box next to each item you want to move after updating the quantities and then go to the bottom and click the wrong button... click the correct button, followed by a confirmation pop-up. Grrrrr

[Siniri]

Yeah, it's so many more steps (same issue with the codestones tab), and I could see it could be useful for moving items to other places, except 99.9999999% of the time, I just want it in my inventory. And the only time that I don't, I want it for CC or some other event that's not in the drop down list, so I still need it in my inventory. Being able to discard/donate in bulk from the SDB is an accident waiting to happen.

Selecting a quantity should automatically check the box. Oh, and can you please standardize the placement of the confirmation "yes" button to the top choice (and make it bigger). Seriously. I don't want to have to read on your site, and that's just site design 101. They just want more clicks, but they're not even getting more ad revenue for it.

[Pickles]

I have loathed every single "mobile-friendly" (but not really) update they've done lately. They've all had major issues, especially at launch. It's been VERY clear that they didn't fully test any of these properly (or with anyone who actually plays the site) and the roll out is their actual testing. The new quickstock is still an abomination and takes up way more room on my screen than the old basic one ever did. The new TP has caused inflation on objects that used to be 2 mil. And then there's this....thing. My kiddos were complaining about it the morning it updated before I'd even made it downstairs.

TNT just rolled out the new SDB. Looks a lot like the new quickstock. I had a shortcut saved that took me to only the codestones:

https://www.neopets.com/safetydeposit.p ... category=2 *borked*

I do not yet see a way to set a bookmark to only go to the codestones.

I used this link as well, and the first thing I noticed was that it was borked.
This link *mostly* works, but it includes ANYTHING with codestone in the name, so I have like...2 pages of this.
https://www.neopets.com/safetydeposit.phtml?obj_name=Codestone

Apparently you can also "favorite" items so they show up at the top of your first page, but I don't know how that works when you run out of them in your SDB so I'm not even messing with that.

I agree with everything both of y'all said. So many failures here. Not being able to link directly to the previous categories is a big hit. The obscene number of clicks to get codestones out for training now is ridiculous. Upping quantity should automatically check that box, for sure.
Feeding/reading/discarding/donating, etc, all ought to be things we can opt out of so they don't show up.
AND it's borked as to saying how many items it actually removes in the pop up. Remove 6 codestones of 3 different types and it says you only removed 3 items.
Let's also add in that not only are NC items no longer color coded differently, but now they are MIXED IN with everything else, instead of all at the end of your SDB.
Also, searches aren't working quite right.

...should I go on? SMH, TNT. SMH. Why everything has to be ONLY the "mobile-friendly" version, I do not understand. There is simply not good reason to not use the ability of having a desktop version and a mobile version. That's been a standard for YEARS.

[Blue]

Yeah. What y'all said.

But.. Thanks for the codestone link. At least it works well enough, even though it has a few extras in the list. It's better than the extra clicks.