Changes That Get A Thumbs Up

Anyone else seeing positive aspects related to the changes? Thought I might post them when I see them with possible further improvements.

Identifying orphan models

There's never been a good way of finding orphan uploaded models in the model list. Now you can by clicking on the 3 vertical dots at the far right of a listed model. That pops up a menu and the bottom line will say "Edit Product" or "Create A Product." If you see "Create A Product" that means it's an orphan without any associated product page.

Possilble improvement

A hover over as opposed to a click being required would speed up the scanning process although not super compatible with mobile devices. So would adding a small icon on that line that would show if the model is on a product page or is orphaned. An icon would allow you to simply scroll down the lists to find them.

Alternately a filter (maybe added to the filter drop down?) to show orphaned models would also work. I don't see any button to show failed misfit models anymore but assume that's temporarily disabled.

it looks very patriotic..

I don't have a problem with "orphan" models, but that is because I never change the "name" on the file until I am ready to create its item. That makes it very easy to spot where I last stopped. I think for folks who do have that problem, being readily able to ID that situation would help.

While I loved having the black side menu always there, I have to admit that having more room on the screen to work on creating the item is nice. And the Shop Inventory page looks cleaner. One thing I noticed is that if I increase the width of the browser past a certain point, it doesn't expand; all you get is more white space.

The expanding the browser also reaches a limit on the shop side. For my customers, the factions on the side are very important. At a certain point, neither the titles of the items add letters nor do the category names. All that happens is the left adds white space.

I suspect this site might look better to a mobile device user.

My orphan models are generally junk I uploaded to check pricing, rule checking, etc. When you have years' worth of uploads and a non-optimal system for naming and keeping track of files things can get lost in the system. I confess my guilt on that issue.

Ah! I manage everything for ADB, so when we upload, we know it is a mini we want to print. We know it should print as well, at that point. The company and I have only been doing this for a little more than a year. What is irksome is I must now redo my "How to" document for Shapeways as I reference a menu that doesn't exist. (I maintain that so in case something happens and I end up out for a bit, someone has a chance of doing what I do.) It has been updated for material changes. What hurt was the loss of transparent acrylic which we had suggested for cloaked Romulan ships. Every description of any Romulan ship had to be changed.

As someone who's been trashing the new site since they updated it, I do have some things I like.

1) 3d display on product pages run much smoother. I'm not sure if this is the case for all uses but where previously, the 3d view would freeze up as the preview render applied texture/bump mapping to the live view moveable model, it now seems to cancel mid render (that's a good thing!) to allow the user to move the model around some more. The different material renders also load quicker.

Okay, so that's the only thing I found that I like thus far. I'll add more as I come across them but I can't stand to be on this site for more than a few minutes at a time - seeing that new logo, straining to read the fonts, clicking 2 or 3 times too many to get to pages that were once a single click away, etc. It's taken all the wind out of my sails for adding new products.

I'm just glad I officially opened my second shop before this all came about. Every model needed two versions to be uploaded and resized and that has been made a real chore with this new UI.