Trakt gets a makeover!

I’ve been with Trakt for a while now. It has changed and improved a lot since I started using it, and some of these changes were easier to get used to than others. This last update though, I’m sure I’ll get used to the font change, but I can’t say I’m a fan of the purple, it makes it really hard (for me) to read and notice things at a glance. Maybe in the future, not too far away, implement a way for us to change the theme? Thank you!

8 Likes

Much has been said already, but as a very loyal user of your great service since a very long time (I actually helped out with the transition from v1 to v2 of the website back in the days…), I’ll add my 2 cents too. :wink:

First of all, let me say I really appreciate how you always take care of your product, constantly evolving it, adding new cool features and fixing bugs. :+1:
Nevertheless, this last “visual update” was unfortunately unnecessary, to say the least. From my point of view, none of the changes proposed was really needed nor adding value to the product. I’m not at all a fan of the new logo and font, previous ones were much better, but I think eventually I can live with them. On the other hand, I deeply hate the new purple color! :worried: Having it here and there on the “Add to history” buttons was OK, but now having it EVERYWHERE is absolutely too much! It’s painful to watch, it’s confusing and it gives a tacky feeling to the website. I find it especially annoying on the “Progress” page, with all the colored bars in the middle. Black and red was just so more elegant and perfect to me. My lord, why changing it? :disappointed_relieved:

Also, not to forget, people (like me) choosing dark theme usually prefer more subtle and less “on your face” colors schemes, in order to have a more “easy on the eyes” interface. Instead, the new purple color combined with dark theme is absolutely hurting retina so much! :unamused:

Going purple is for sure a bold choice, but as all bold choices could be very divisive (as this long thread proves). Working in the multimedia industry, I know how much designers could be stubborn about their “new brilliant ideas” (no offense here :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:), so I doubt there will ever be a total rollback to the previous design, no matter how much we’ll ask for it.
So, my suggestion to not upset a relevant part of your user base is to soon offer the option to chose between (at least) two color themes (“classic” in red and “modern” in purple). That would probably make everyone happy and show once again how much you care about your product and users. Thank you! :heart:

19 Likes

Looking at those images one directly beneath the other, it’s instantly clear how much more legible the “old” monospaced font is. Distinct letters, clear spacing, all caps. In comparison, the new font is a mess. There’s no clear spacing, the letters flow into one another and there is so much less contrast between the grey background and the white.
The enclosed T in the old logo is clear with two separate colours whereas in the new logo, the gradient doesn’t go anywhere and the letter T is only visible when you zoom in and even then it’s uneven, unbalanced.

9 Likes

Yes, when i opened it and saw the purple i thought to myself “im going to have to find another way to track my shows” trakt has been the best method ive found but i simply cant use it with the purple 1. Because i cant read it anymore and 2. Because i despise the color purple. I really hate to see a good app turn into one i cant use anymore :frowning:

6 Likes

13-years of using Trakt on a daily basis. The new font is absolutely fucking terrible.

I think the new logo is shitty, but who cares I can live with that.

Who encouraged these majorly flawed changes? ChatGPT? An overly supportive wife?

Is this a user-base engagement social experiment?

13 Likes

I really hope the team is taking time to rectify these changes. If it was just a select few people alongside myself that disagreed with them, I would understand the team’s insistence on sticking to the new look. But if this thread is any indication, there are a lot of people that have a problem with it, way more controversy than can just be waved away. Again, could anybody see Letterboxd doing this? Absolutely not, because they have maintained a strong brand for years. I have not been on Trakt since its beginnings, but in my four-ish years on it, its look has stayed consistent, which is important to maintain. To drop a bomb like this on users without warning, when so much of what makes Trakt special is its engagement with its community in these forums, is insulting.

13 Likes

Hey forum guys!

Just letting you know that I and a guy from Reddit have made two scripts to kinda return to the old experience.

(this one is mine) Change the header logo and the favicon (and soon colors and fonts): Old Trakt Brand
Remove purple in some areas: trakt.tv - depurple — UserStyles.world

During the next weeks, I hope to make a better version or as soon as the Trakt team confirms they don’t plan to revert the changes. The team has made almost 800 changes in the CSS, so it’s a hard work. Check it: https://www.diffchecker.com/mFsv4HnN/

If you know how to make my code better or have made a better one, please share or get in touch.

I know it’s hard to see so many people not liking your work to the point of somebody making a script to revert changes, but… That’s life.

23 Likes

Seems there are several of us who are working on styles/scripts to revert some of this crap xD I’m slowly working my way through all the changes currently myself as well in a private repo (will be public and available at different places once I’m done) changing things back to how they used to be.

btw I’m not sure why but when testing your script the favicon does not seem to change any in firefox, though the header logo does.

9 Likes

Good! Please share when yours is ready!

About the favicon, I haven’t tested my script on Firefox, but on Vivaldi (Chromium) it’s working for me!

1 Like

Just joining the majority here in saying, that I am also not a fan of the redesign.

I see how the old “T” in the logo is still used in the new logo but if you are not a longtime user you won’t notice, so for the most part it looks like any ToDo-App logo.

Like many I also feel like the purple is harder to read than the color scheme before. Maybe if the colors were adjusted for WCAG it would be a better experience for everyone. I am not against the purple in general, I just wish it was a shade of purple that was more legible.

10 Likes

Thanks for posting that. I was using the CSS snippet posted by someone else in this topic before to get rid of some of the purple but esp. the new font was still absolutely not ok imo. That “depurple” style changes most of the things back to what they were before and the site is finally useable again.

I’ll continue using that until either the developers realize that this change was a big miss or they AT LEAST give us options to choose a different style/color scheme in the settings.

They really did a Twitter/X here and threw the baby out with the bathwater. The first redesign years ago was already a near catastrophe but this now… why. :frowning:

9 Likes

Plan on it ^^ There are a couple areas here and there where I’m having to play the guessing game with the colors a tiny bit as the selectors didn’t exist in the old css but I’m working my way through everything as quickly as I can.

Honestly just wish that @justin and the others would just revert this stupid makeover already.

8 Likes

I found the code (html/css) that is causing the align issue in your screenshot. They have done the classic mistake a lot of non-css developers do…:

.posters>div .titles .under-progress-wrapper {
    position: absolute;
    top: -15px;
    right: 1px;
    left: 1px;
}

They need to change the “left:” and “right:” settings to “0” and not “1”. right now they have initiated a 1px space to each side of that progress bar.

3 Likes

One thing I’ve noticed going through the css… They have so many duplicated selectors in their css that it’s crazy… After I get everything initially done and the first version posted (I’m still a good long away from finishing) then I’m going to do a full sweep through and clean up the duplicates in my css at least.

3 Likes

No, there’s nothing wrong with the progress bar.

The issue is the poster and buttons have a 1px border in normal mode, and no border in dark knight. Your fix just breaks the normal mode.

Just copy the old CSS file from this: https://www.diffchecker.com/mFsv4HnN/

Then just paste it into your preferred way of doing custom CSS for individual websites. Then you can just find any errors and fix them individually. I prefer doing this in Chrome and using the Developer Tools → Sources → and then Enable Local Overrides.

I only use Dark Knight mode. Either way, they have a CSS issue that should be easily fixed if they paid enough attention to small details like this.

1 Like

Actually the correct way to do it and not break it in normal mode would be:

body.dark-knight #ondeck-shows .grid-item .quick-icons {
	border: solid 1px #1d1d1d;
	border-top: none;
}

body.dark-knight #ondeck-shows .poster {
	border: solid 1px #1d1d1d;
	border-bottom: none;
}

So, did Elon Musk buy this site too then proceed to destroy it? Change the logo, change the color scheme, might as well change the name to XTrakt.

7 Likes

I’m also not a fan of this redesign.

I don’t really mind the new logo but remplacing the red by a purple is meh (feels more generic in a way, wasn’t red supposed to making us think of theaters seats ?)

Also the font is absolutly horrible…

I’d love an option to go back to the old style.

11 Likes