IDEA: Improve usability of the website

A place to talk about the official Factorio mod portal (https://mods.factorio.com)
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aubergine18
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IDEA: Improve usability of the website

Post by aubergine18 »

1. Increased contrast between text and background - black text on a grey background is difficult to read! Currently I have to select the text with the mouse to make it more readable = epic UI fail. (Same issue here on the forums btw!)

2. Click thumbnail images for larger preview

3. Include search form on detail view (in addition to the list view). Doing a search on detail view will just return to list view with the relevant results.

4. Mandate a description and/or preview image - some mods have no description (5dim mods a good example) meaning it's not possible to know what they do without downloading/installing. By mandating an image and/or description it will make it much easier to get an idea of whether the mod is worth trying or not.

5. Add ratings system - essential for discovery of good mods (download count is not sufficient, as often most downloads = oldest mods, which are not necessarily best mods)

6. Use Node.js (eg. with Sails or TotalJS framework) or some other tech to make the site more responsive - it's painfully slow at the moment. Also, consider using HTML 2.0 for faster page loads (putting it on Cloudfare will do this automagically).

7. If user is logged in to mods site, allow them to see which mods they've already installed in the game, and buttons to click to install/uninstall. See Steam workshop for examples of how that could work.

8. List dependencies on the wbsite (direct from the json file in the mod)
Better forum search for modders: Enclose your search term in quotes, eg. "font_color" or "custom-input" - it prevents the forum search from splitting on hypens and underscores, resulting in much more accurate results.

kinnom
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Re: IDEA: Improve usability of the website

Post by kinnom »

9. download any missing dependencies of new mods you're installing
no yes yes no yes no yes yes

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Adil
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Re: IDEA: Improve usability of the website

Post by Adil »

aubergine18 wrote: 5. Add ratings system - essential for discovery of good mods (download count is not sufficient, as often most downloads = oldest mods, which are not necessarily best mods)
There are no good mods, there are ones that match you. And most often items have 5/5 score, when undisciplined mob is allowed to put marks, anyway.
aubergine18 wrote: 7. If user is logged in to mods site, allow them to see which mods they've already installed in the game, and buttons to click to install/uninstall. See Steam workshop for examples of how that could work.
Steam is not an example how "anything" should work :P
And there is actually a number of ways of how you can have your game installed. One of them allows you to just have game unzipped somewhere on computer, even multiple times. There's no way browser would find those and no rational way of handling concurrent installs. If browse from the ingame menu, installed mods are listed.
I do mods. Modding wiki is friend, it teaches how to mod. Api docs is friend too...
I also update mods, some of them even work.
Recently I did a mod tutorial.

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