Did You Notice Something a Little Different?

Is there a way to change the font size from the drop down menus (you know "want to read", "read" etc...)? It's awfully small, same goes for the search screen on the top of the site when I am looking for a certain book. It's so small - I only discovered this now.

Fiordiligii wrote: "Is there a way to change the font size from the drop down menus (you know "want to read", "read" etc...)? It's awfully small, same goes for the search screen on the top of the site when I am lookin..."

Unfortunately, no. Staff have said repeatedly they're going to ignore requests for variable font size because they want the same look for everybody, even though that look means headaches and eyestrain for a significant number of users. (Bitter? Who me?)

You can increase the zoom on your computer screen for the site. Ctrl-'plus sign' may help, though some people have had to zoom in a lot.

Debbie wrote: "Fiordiligii wrote: "Is there a way to change the font size from the drop down menus (you know "want to read", "read" etc...)? It's awfully small, same goes for the search screen on the top of the s..."
Thanks for your fast reply. I guess I will check out Book Likes once more, this is just ridiculous.

Fiordiligii wrote: "Debbie wrote: "Fiordiligii wrote: "Is there a way to change the font size from the drop down menus (you know "want to read", "read" etc...)? It's awfully small, same goes for the search screen on t..."

I'm thinking I'm going to have to reactivate my account there. I tried it but didn't like the interface very much, but at least it didn't give me headaches!

Erin wrote: "What was even the point of making the profile picture a circle?"

I don't think GR is ever going to answer this, given that people have been asking from the top of the thread.

It's like I'm looking out of the tiniest ever ship porthole. Maybe this is the newest trend in artisanal website design.

Flat design doesn't improve usability if you're going to make everything low contrast and gray! What a load of BS. Everything is way too small, just another case of eagle eyes designer thinking everyone has perfect vision and superb high quality screen like them. I can almost hear "but new font has pleasant texture!". Text is for reading, not for gaping at in Photoshop. Test with actual users ffs.

Thank goodness for browser plugins and custom stylesheets. Every other website these days needs custom tweaks to become readable.

Debbie wrote: "Fiordiligii wrote: "Debbie wrote: "Fiordiligii wrote: "Is there a way to change the font size from the drop down menus (you know "want to read", "read" etc...)? It's awfully small, same goes for th..."

Hey Debbi, I completely agree with you. But I am only a small fish in the GR pond - I won't be missed.

Fiordiligii wrote: "Hey Debbi, I completely agree with you. But I am only a small fish in the GR pond - I won't be missed. "

I'm a power user. I may be missed, but their loss. Importing my entire Goodreads history to Booklikes now.

Debbie wrote: "I may be missed, but their loss. Importing my entire Goodreads history to Booklikes now. "
I'm moving too (didn't know the other site existed), but how do you go about importing your entire Goodreads history to Booklikes? Or rather how do you export the Goodreads stuff to CVS format?

No worries (I think). Found it.

" How do I import or export my books?

To import your books from a csv, txt, or xls file, click on my books then on import/export beneath your shelf list on the left. On the top right of the following page, click "export to a csv file". The batch upload may take several minutes to process, depending on how large your file is. "

The new type face is really difficult to read. PLEASE go back.

We’re a family of readers. If we are having difficultly reading it…you shouldn’t even question the complaints. Just.put it.back.

I still heat it, try to look something up on goodreads on my phone and guess what IT STILL HURTS MY Eyes.fix the problem, I'm even using iPad to do this and it still hurts my eyes,and I'm wearing glasses.looks like I might be cutting down my time here on goodreads and start using my Booklikes account more:

Move to Booklikes - it's similar to Goodreads, you can import your stuff from Goodreads so you don't have to start from scratch, and the BEST thing is , you can read the page without having your brain explode and your eyeballs falling out.

To the developer of the Stylist Goodreads Fix add-on...

Is there a way to change the font colors? There's a lot of really faint grey text which would be good if it can be changed back to black.

Also, there are still a lot of different fonts that are quite small, like the top menu where Home, My Books, etc..

Thank you in advance!!

Sssooo, two days into the fontocalypse and the official respose is, I guess, "we'll pretend we've fixed this and ignore the users"?

Sebastian wrote: "Sssooo, two days into the fontocalypse and the official respose is, I guess, "we'll pretend we've fixed this and ignore the users"?"

Hmm...it went back to the old font on mine. Odd.

This is how it currently looks on my laptop. IE on the left, Chrome on the right:
http://zapisz.net/images/475_dif.jpg

@ Monika - How big did you magnify your screen? Because on my Chrome the words: Home, My Books, Groups etc, at the top bar are half the size and width of yours. They're very small.

@ Penumbra: it's 100% on both browsers. I did nothing. Also I haven't downloaded GRfix. If it helps it's IE 8 and Chrome ver 47.0.2526.106 m

I think it's a matter of getting used to it for me, because I like the new fonts.
I just think that the color contrasts aren't good nor the lack of visible limits in the boxes/different spaces throughout the pages.

Maybe the amount of time spent on changing this could be much better used to offer the users the possibility to choose a skin, for instance.

Monika wrote: "This is how it currently looks on my laptop. IE on the left, Chrome on the right: http://zapisz.net/images/475_dif.jpg"

Thanks for providing this screenshot, I'll be passing it on to our developers. Amongst some other elements, the stars in IE should not be looking like that.

Lobstergirl wrote: "The stars are two different shades of orange. Go to a page of a book you have rated and reviewed; right under the book jpeg the stars will be gold-orange. But the stars under "My Review" are bright..."

Thanks for pointing this out, as well as the Group bookshelves misalignment. I've let the design team know!

Hey Goodreads, I personally love the font but I can understand why a lot of people think the font is unreadable. I think it's because of the letters are too dense. I've tried to fix this by adding some CSS, like this:

body, p, ol, ul, td, th, textarea {
 letter-spacing: 0.0312em;
}

This small piece of code adds a half pixel of letter spacing between letters, which makes texts a lot more readable, but the added spaces are still small enough so it will not mess with the rest of the design.

I'm now using a Chrome extension, Stylish, to add this line of code to the web site, but it would be great if it could be implemented natively. I think a lot of people are grateful for this.

Debbie wrote: "Stylish helped a LOT. Went in and messed with the coding a bit, trying out different background colors and fonts to try and get my eyes to hurt less. Unfortunately, it seems a large portion of the ..."

Debbie, I've been using another Stylish script since yesterday which re-implements simple backgrounds for headers on the main page's sidebar, book and profile pages. It utilizes the hooks left in from when they removed the gradients.

It isn't as nice as the gradients we had, but it certainly helped me navigate the profile and book pages better due to having more solid sections.

If you want to give it a shot, here's the code:

(view spoiler)[

h2.brownBackground {background:#c69c6d; border: 2px solid #754c24;color:#fff; text-align: center}
h2.brownBackground a {color:#fff}
#aboutAuthor h2 a {color:#fff}
.userProfileName {background:#c69c6d; border: 2px solid #754c24;color:#fff; text-align: center;width:90%}
.userStatusForm {font-size:12px}

(hide spoiler)]

Feel free to adjust the hex color codes or play with the borders. It was just tones I felt comfortable with yesterday, so I kept them.

And for people who dislike the round avatar in the navbar:

.circleHeaderImage {border-radius: 0px;}

So, my question is (FOR THE SECOND TIME) WHY DID YOU DO THIS? ...

Again, most of books names and authors names in Arabic are not shown, you need to solve this issue fast.

stephanie wrote: "So, my question is (FOR THE SECOND TIME) WHY DID YOU DO THIS? ..."

I can understand that they would want to change the layout and try to modernize the site...

My question would be WHY would they decide to KEEP this after realizing it was a complete failure, since an overwhelming majority of comments from the users reports a clearly degreded user experience? The answer is beyond me!

stephanie wrote: "So, my question is (FOR THE SECOND TIME) WHY DID YOU DO THIS? ..."

Because they're Elsa's fans and decided to do GR Frozen themed >.<
http://www.frozengamesfree.com/wallpa...

just joking (I hope)

Hahaha...You got jokes today huh Monika??? I laughed, because for a minute I couldn't remember who Elsa was..My only daughter is 31, so i had to think about that one....(smile)

Lobstergirl wrote: "Erin wrote: "What was even the point of making the profile picture a circle?"

I don't think GR is ever going to answer this, given that people have been asking from the top of the thread.

It's li..."

Yep. I want to know why they want to be Google. I have a square avatar. Now they're making me fit it in a round hole. Thanks ever so much, Goodreads.

What's surprising to me is that Amazon is worth billions of dollars and this is the best they could do for a dynamic website?

A Voracious Reader (a.k.a. Carol) wrote:"Yep. I want to know why they want to be Google. I have a square avatar. Now they're making me fit it in a round hole. Thanks ever so much, Goodreads. "

The dumb thing about it is that images are necessarily rectangular anyway. If you want a round image, you'll have to use blank space or transparency, but the file will still be a rectangle.
Making it a circle is directly cutting away from the available space while adding absolutely nothing to the results.

Sonya wrote: "What's surprising to me is that Amazon is worth billions of dollars and this is the best they could do for a dynamic website?"

Well, apparently whoever they hired to do the job, just wasn't qualified.
Or they were more interested in how the new design would look on a power point presentation to the boss, than actual legibility and usability.

Lisa - THANK YOU. just installed the latest Stylish update and I can read my home page again!!

Thanks everyone who mentioned this - as a person who is not overly computer competent, you have made changing this (nearly)back to the site I love easy. <3

Okay I lied--I made a few more updates based on some comments I'm seeing here. :) Updated some of the faint faint gray text, increased navigation and header font sizes, updated the shelf font back to Arial (the dropdown for "want to read", etc.).

Any questions, please PM me here.

A Voracious Reader (a.k.a. Carol) wrote: "Lobstergirl wrote: "Erin wrote: "What was even the point of making the profile picture a circle?"
."
Don't know. But now I don't have a profile picture at all, just a black circle if we are talking about the thing in the top, right hand corner of the page?

On the other hand, I couldn't care less about the profile picture, so long as the rest of the site is legible.

J.D. wrote: "Have you tested this on Safari? I'm using Stylish on Safari and for some reason, this doesn't work for me. Pretty much everything seems exactly as before -- even after reloading the page. Also, there's strangely no listing in the dropdown menu of the icon in the toolbar, for this theme... "

Sorry, Safari works only minimally with Stylish, there's nothing I can do about that. :(

stephanie wrote: "Hahaha...You got jokes today huh Monika??? I laughed, because for a minute I couldn't remember who Elsa was..My only daughter is 31, so i had to think about that one....(smile)"
Ha, I also haven't seen Frozen but it's everywhere on the internet and besides what else can I do? Until they'll finish there is nothing else to do :/

And then I'll download Stylish and have fun:DD
THANK YOU LISA! :DD

Shaun wrote: "Hello everybody! Thanks for all your feedback on the changes-- it is much appreciated. The majority of blurred font issues have been addressed, but for those who are still seeing any badly blurred ..."
I don't know how to do that and the bright white background yesterday with the print gave me such a headache that it lasted most of the day and I could not even be on my laptop at all. I want the old way back so just tell me how I can get that back. Otherwise I am going to have to find a new website for all my reading info.

I can look at it for a very short time then have to turn my head and look out of the window for at least a minute or two then I can return again for a very short time....
That computer stuff is no doubt helpful to some people but it's all Greek to me.

If you look at a reviewer on Amazon's profile, you'll notice that they are not circle profile pics also. There were changes on the Amazon site (my reviewer profile) that are bugging me, but I'm there less. It effects me much more on here.

Today, the font is better for me, or at least it is on this computer (my work computer). However, the lack of boxes around reviews and text and lots of white space is what is the worst problem now.

DarkChaplain wrote: "...Debbie, I've been using another Stylish script since yesterday which re-implements simple backgrounds for headers on the main page's sidebar, book and profile pages. It utilizes the hooks left in from when they removed the gradients. It isn't as nice as the gradients we had, but it certainly helped me navigate the profile and book pages better due to having more solid sections...."

If you want the gradients back and use stylish or usercontent.css directly, try:

 .h2Container {
 background-image: url("data:image/png;base64,iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAAyAAAAAcCAMAAACu%2FisRAAAA9lBMVEXLzMnb29nj4%2BHl5uHn59jn6OPo6dbp6drp6tfp6%2BDq69jr69zr7Nnr7Ofr7eLs7N3s7ODs7drs7eXs7ejt7dzt7d7t7eHt7tvu7N%2Fu7t3u7t%2Fu7uTu79zu7%2BHu7%2Brv7d7v7eDv797v7%2BDv7%2BXv8N3v8Ojv8ebw7t%2Fw8N%2Fw8OHw8OTw8uTx7%2BDx8N7x8eLx8eXx8e%2Fx8urx8%2BXy8uPy8ujy8%2Bjz8eLz8uDz8%2BTz9O%2F08%2BH09Or09er09e319ev19e319uv19uz19u719vH29u729%2B32%2BPD39vH3%2BPP49%2FL4%2BfH4%2BfT4%2BvL6%2B%2FX7%2FPT7%2FPf%2B%2Fvz%2F%2F%2FoR56zZAAABCElEQVQYGe3BTUrDUBhA0fue32tqahFRFBHBmQPB%2FS%2FAkWM3IDhRFC0oxqY%2FbuAFMs89J7VoKvJuuf5ZnL5kNMbtydFBZDQVpS%2FrDGQ0xvP39SIKmopFz6yfdbmgMX5f00U6Q1NRgL7Qo1E2szJPl2gq%2BtKXOd3xCo0R%2FBGHaCoSKc1Xm3SIxihd20WDpqIp75SfbtmgMaJwlNFktO0cNtsPNMpy0bbpDkk1eyAaJNVsgYykQXGApJoMRIOkmj0QgaSaHRAJSTUJiEBSzR6IgqSaLZCRNCiQVJWBjKRBGUmDMpIGBZKqdkBG0qDISKr5PO4fY42kmvO3py4KkmoevrhKSKpK6f7mH3zwMCzWBtmaAAAAAElFTkSuQmCC") !important;
 	background-repeat: no-repeat !important;
 }
 .brownBackground {
 background-image: url("data:image/jpeg;base64,%2F9j%2F4AAQSkZJRgABAQEASABIAAD%2F2wBDAAYEBAQFBAYFBQYJBgUGCQsIBgYICwwKCgsKCgwQDAwMDAwMEAwODxAPDgwTExQUExMcGxsbHCAgICAgICAgICD%2F2wBDAQcHBw0MDRgQEBgaFREVGiAgICAgICAgICAgICAgICAgICAgICAgICAgICAgICAgICAgICAgICAgICAgICAgICD%2FwAARCAAcAAUDAREAAhEBAxEB%2F8QAFgABAQEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAwUI%2F8QAHxAAAQQCAgMAAAAAAAAAAAAAAQACAxEEIQUTEkFh%2F8QAFwEBAQEBAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAgEABP%2FEABYRAQEBAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARAf%2FaAAwDAQACEQMRAD8A0lJ5yOLnHa59I3WlENopMl8rnz4GR1Q05hFgP9fBVaTiP%2F%2FZ") !important;
 	background-repeat: no-repeat !important;
 border: 0 !important;
 padding-left: 4px !important;
 padding-right: 4px !important;
 }

The !important may be unnecessary...

Alright, these here are the changes I made via my own userstyle.

https://userstyles.org/style_screensh...

https://userstyles.org/styles/121968/...

I added commentary to the stylesheet to give you pointers for what element does what, so feel free to play around with it. It should be compatible with the Goodreads Fix sheet, too.

DarkChaplain wrote: "Alright, these here are the changes I made via my own userstyle.

Thanks for sharing this.

Michael wrote: "If you want the gradients back and use stylish or usercontent.css directly, try:"

Awesome, Michael! I'm working on implementing those again. That's gonna be fun.

It looks nice on my eyes. Nice aesthetics.

DarkChaplain wrote: "Debbie wrote: "Stylish helped a LOT. Went in and messed with the coding a bit, trying out different background colors and fonts to try and get my eyes to hurt less. Unfortunately, it seems a large ..."

Thanks! I'll play around with the code and see what works for me, though at this rate anything is better than what the Goodreads design team cooked up...

Today I'm noticing that when I first hit a page, the font looks more normal for a second while the page is still loading. But then once it fully loads, it reverts to the eye-straining font. I'm not sure if this is an indication of work being done behind the scenes or an indication that the new font just isn't playing nice with Chrome.

Also, I made sure to update my browser to the latest version of Chrome today, and that hasn't made a difference.

DarkChaplain wrote: "Thanks! I'll play around with the code and see what works for me, though at this rate anything is better than what the Goodreads design team cooked up... "

This is how "my" GR looks like at this moment:


and this is the complete usercontent.css (Firefox) which I use:

@-moz-document domain(goodreads.com){
 body {
 color: #000;
 }
 a {
 color: #7D6600 !important;
 }
 .mainContentContainer {
 background-color: #FAF8F5 !important;
 }
 .h2Container {
 background-image: url("data:image/png;base64,iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAAyAAAAAcCAMAAACu%2FisRAAAA9lBMVEXLzMnb29nj4%2BHl5uHn59jn6OPo6dbp6drp6tfp6%2BDq69jr69zr7Nnr7Ofr7eLs7N3s7ODs7drs7eXs7ejt7dzt7d7t7eHt7tvu7N%2Fu7t3u7t%2Fu7uTu79zu7%2BHu7%2Brv7d7v7eDv797v7%2BDv7%2BXv8N3v8Ojv8ebw7t%2Fw8N%2Fw8OHw8OTw8uTx7%2BDx8N7x8eLx8eXx8e%2Fx8urx8%2BXy8uPy8ujy8%2Bjz8eLz8uDz8%2BTz9O%2F08%2BH09Or09er09e319ev19e319uv19uz19u719vH29u729%2B32%2BPD39vH3%2BPP49%2FL4%2BfH4%2BfT4%2BvL6%2B%2FX7%2FPT7%2FPf%2B%2Fvz%2F%2F%2FoR56zZAAABCElEQVQYGe3BTUrDUBhA0fue32tqahFRFBHBmQPB%2FS%2FAkWM3IDhRFC0oxqY%2FbuAFMs89J7VoKvJuuf5ZnL5kNMbtydFBZDQVpS%2FrDGQ0xvP39SIKmopFz6yfdbmgMX5f00U6Q1NRgL7Qo1E2szJPl2gq%2BtKXOd3xCo0R%2FBGHaCoSKc1Xm3SIxihd20WDpqIp75SfbtmgMaJwlNFktO0cNtsPNMpy0bbpDkk1eyAaJNVsgYykQXGApJoMRIOkmj0QgaSaHRAJSTUJiEBSzR6IgqSaLZCRNCiQVJWBjKRBGUmDMpIGBZKqdkBG0qDISKr5PO4fY42kmvO3py4KkmoevrhKSKpK6f7mH3zwMCzWBtmaAAAAAElFTkSuQmCC") !important;
 background-repeat: no-repeat !important;
 }
 .brownBackground {
 background-image: url("data:image/jpeg;base64,%2F9j%2F4AAQSkZJRgABAQEASABIAAD%2F2wBDAAYEBAQFBAYFBQYJBgUGCQsIBgYICwwKCgsKCgwQDAwMDAwMEAwODxAPDgwTExQUExMcGxsbHCAgICAgICAgICD%2F2wBDAQcHBw0MDRgQEBgaFREVGiAgICAgICAgICAgICAgICAgICAgICAgICAgICAgICAgICAgICAgICAgICAgICAgICD%2FwAARCAAcAAUDAREAAhEBAxEB%2F8QAFgABAQEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAwUI%2F8QAHxAAAQQCAgMAAAAAAAAAAAAAAQACAxEEIQUTEkFh%2F8QAFwEBAQEBAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAgEABP%2FEABYRAQEBAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARAf%2FaAAwDAQACEQMRAD8A0lJ5yOLnHa59I3WlENopMl8rnz4GR1Q05hFgP9fBVaTiP%2F%2FZ") !important;
 background-repeat: no-repeat !important;
 border: 0 !important;
 padding-left: 4px !important;
 padding-right: 4px !important;
 }
 #book_description_defaulted {
 font-size: 105% !important;
 line-height: 1.3 !important;
 color: black !important;
 }
}

I do block downloadable fonts.

Alright, went in and put in the old backgrounds for headers and restored good ol' Georgia:
https://userstyles.org/styles/121968/...

Thanks again, Michael. You've been a great help there.