I've put some thought into it... and I've decided I heavily dislike this new layout for many reasons.

There are a good many movies and games out there that are absolutely positively NOT meant to be witnessed in widescreen, for reasons like image quality, zooming, visual errors, etc.

Pretty much nobody's ever going to see the 46x46 icons people make for their submissions now.

It's fairly likely the double-sized screens would increase lag. I've tested this theory on a movie or two and haven't actually found that to be the case, but somehow it doesn't seem possible for it not to lag a little more when in widescreen.

Everything on every page is stretched out, and with the 0-5 voting system unaligned with everything else and the trophies and Flash information in a new place... it looks horrendous. Complete garbage.

Any movie without a play button or a preloader will start automatically without giving a chance for the rest of the page to load. With pop-ups and the old dimming-lights setup, this was never an issue. There should be a way to be able to start a Flash and THEN have it start loading. Say, like a "WATCH THIS MOVIE" button!

Where did the age rating go? Out of curiosity, I've checked a couple of Adult-rated movies and games, which I now almost regret seeing, but it helped me to know to avoid them later. Now you can't even tell what kind of movie you're going to watch.

...

And those are just a few of many more mistakes I could easily find.

Some of the suggestions mentioned earlier in this thread I thought would be very nice.
1. Glaiel-Gamer mentioned the possibility of a no-widescreen-option when submitting. This is a feature I personally would immediately use for all the Flashes I've already submitted to Newgrounds.

2. Others have mentioned the possibility of an account option where you could switch back to the old layout and not have to worry about any of the new flaws.

3. My favorite suggestion of all (and the most common one) is that the whole layout be completely changed back.

To quote livelavalive, "this actually makes we want to stop making flash."

Can't say I really care for the new layout, unfortunately. I think it needs a lot of work. I don't really care for how it pushes the comments, the rating buttons and everything down below, not to mention it seems to mess up the look of the site.

that scared the bejesus out of me untill i read this lol

Very cool!
A big thank you to PsychoGoldfish, Liljim and Bob!

This could take some serious getting used to.

And in all honesty, its kinda intrusive and ugly, sorta breaks the layout of the page.

I don't like this layout. it makes the movies/games laggy and i like the old layout.

It's awesome, games look amazing like this (beat that youtube!) now Newgrounds will distract me more now!

Looks and feels great on my end. As another user pointed out, the review system may want to be adjusted to match the layout a bit more.

The voting bar's spaciousness also seems to clash a bit.

It looks amazing! It's just so... wide! The new icons, the new extended banner, the new placements for the trophies... nice idea! It'll be a little hard getting used to it, but I will, eventually.

Also, I'd like to report a little bug: whenever you go to a page in the obituaries, the page looks weird. See it yourself.

Still, nice job with the new wide layout. It looks neat.

I agree with almost all the points that JonBro commented about. That's mostly why I'm on the BBS now. I dislike the idea of people be able resize my movie. Some movies that were designed to be a size will not look as nice as if they are in the default size they should. This affects me with a small TV/Scalines effect I add to my submissions. I consider autoplay is just a hateful idea since we don't always want to watch or play, just check stuff, the movie also downloads when you don't really want, also lags. Age rating... icons... JonBro is right.

tom i dont know if you knew or not but the wide layout is not nice at the bottom because you have that black space either side of the movies of the week/'games of the week and todays best

its err ok i guess .
not to be a dick but u know , i liked the old one and wheres the age rating on the page
but hey its still ok
thumbs up LOL
0neGhosT
vvvvvvvvvvvvvvvv LoLvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvvv

The new layout looks sexy. Back when you mentioned you wanted to embed flash in the page and not have the buffer link, i was afraid newgrounds would turn into youtubegrounds. I was wrong! The embeded look looks smooth as hell.

things that were messed up:

1) the stretch to max size feature made all of the flash except for chuck's new tux too fucking tall. i have a 14ish inch widescreen laptop with resolution of 1280x800 using firefox and a good chunk of the tops bottoms of the flash are cut off

2) after clicking all the buttons in various combinations (the moon, the max and the popup), the back button in firefox had to be clicked about 10 times to actually go back; the history had me going back through the same page over and over.

One last point; CAN WE EMBED FLASH FROM NEWGROUNDS TO OTHER SITES YET?? also i want chat and pico 2.

On the bottom where there is now an abundance of black space you should add audio portal submissions.

Change it back. Change it back. Change it back.

I don't always want my movie to load instantly. Sometimes I just want to get to the page and read the author's comments, read the reviews and then I decide I don't want to waste 20mb on watching the flash. Not to mention it will probably make the whole page slower to load. I want my movie to start loading when I tell it to.

Well, it's gonna take some getting used to, but at least things will actually fit now.

Nice job.

This is too different for me. Oh well, I guess I gotta live with it.

Now all we need is dynamic medals for the unlocked medals list right below the flash

I'm not really feeling it. Mainly because I feel Author & File Information section should be at the top so people can associate the movie with the Author. I think it was much better before.

its kind of annoying for some movies/games that have music on the loading bars

I think this layout may lower the ammount of people visiting author user pages, and would rather estimulate newcomers to explore the site.

Now its up to Tom to decide whats most important, his site or people that make this site the beautyful and almost non-facebookish-whoring site we al know.

My opinion as moron is that to move the flash animation/game to where the link to the popup used to be(to the left of the authors info)

It's pretty good. I have been getting some lag, but that's only with the part of the page that isn't the flash( the comment box, rate box, ect.) But I still think it's pretty cool. I will miss the "play this" button however ;(

Thanks for this, i feel like i can enjoy the flashes better now

Im disopointed,,, good thing i almost never visit the flash portal : D

This is better than before because I don't have to worry about switching windows to vote when I view flash. The widescreen option is good too because I often use my browser's zoom to get this effect.

There are three problems I've noticed:

The first is that the flash starts automatically on some submissions and not on others. After watching an under judgement movie I expected to see the play button on all flash and not have to worry about autoplaying and being bombarded with sounds when opening multiple flash in new tabs. I would like it if all flash had these play buttons or an option in the preferences to disable the autoplay on all flash.

The second is the "You might also enjoy..." section gets covered up by wide flashes and also enlarged using the button. I don't know if this is a "feature" in the case of clicking the enlarge button but I'm mentioning this because I doubt it is for the wider submissions that always cover it up.

Finally I feel the authors no longer get the credit they used to because of the placement.

At 5/26/09 09:22 PM, JonBro wrote: I've put some thought into it... and I've decided I heavily dislike this new layout for many reasons.

There are a good many movies and games out there that are absolutely positively NOT meant to be witnessed in widescreen, for reasons like image quality, zooming, visual errors, etc.

True enough, but many a game and movie do look better in the larger format. If the movie wasn't meant to be viewed in widescreen, I think it would be easy enough not to view it in widescreen or to allow the developer to choose whether larger screen is okay or not.

Pretty much nobody's ever going to see the 46x46 icons people make for their submissions now.

Not really a big problem. The 46x46 icons actually draw some people away from good submissions, and they're a VERY small part of the flash overall.

It's fairly likely the double-sized screens would increase lag. I've tested this theory on a movie or two and haven't actually found that to be the case, but somehow it doesn't seem possible for it not to lag a little more when in widescreen.

Even if it lags, it still looks better. Like I said, the widescreen button is choice.

Everything on every page is stretched out, and with the 0-5 voting system unaligned with everything else and the trophies and Flash information in a new place... it looks horrendous. Complete garbage.

The only thing that looks bad is the top bar, and that's only because it's not fleshed out with the rest of the website. Everything else, other then the voting bar, looks fine stretched out. It makes the comment text look a lot less intimidating. It gives newgrounds space to advertise their own products instead of super duper hot anime websites. It also gives them more space to advertise other games made by developers to people who might enjoy them.

It fits with the more modern feel other wesbites are adopting now-a-days with wider layouts, and most of all it gives developers more room to create more indepth games. It takes focus away from the website itself and puts that focus onto the movie. I think many of the people who say it looks horrendous are most likely mainly saying this because it's a change from what their used to, and their not taking the new layout in. And I know that's a matter of opinion, but I can't really find anything wrong with it.

Any movie without a play button or a preloader will start automatically without giving a chance for the rest of the page to load. With pop-ups and the old dimming-lights setup, this was never an issue. There should be a way to be able to start a Flash and THEN have it start loading. Say, like a "WATCH THIS MOVIE" button!

The starting automatically was actually the best choice. How many times have people clicked a link but never opened the movie. How many views do you think movies and games get from people who don't bother to open the movie up. Having it like this forces the person to actually view the content that people like you and me put so much hard work into making. It is a bit intrusive but to me, this seemed like the best solution.

Where did the age rating go? Out of curiosity, I've checked a couple of Adult-rated movies and games, which I now almost regret seeing, but it helped me to know to avoid them later. Now you can't even tell what kind of movie you're going to watch.

Adult movies aren't played right away, and the age rating is in the corner.

And those are just a few of many more mistakes I could easily find.

Some of the suggestions mentioned earlier in this thread I thought would be very nice.
1. Glaiel-Gamer mentioned the possibility of a no-widescreen-option when submitting. This is a feature I personally would immediately use for all the Flashes I've already submitted to Newgrounds.

In my BFF games I would disable it in too. The larger screen looks amazing, and it's not laggy, but it bugs out many of my games due to the graphical way they were programmed. Other then that I think it's a great idea, especially for vector based movies.

2. Others have mentioned the possibility of an account option where you could switch back to the old layout and not have to worry about any of the new flaws.

I think that would work.

3. My favorite suggestion of all (and the most common one) is that the whole layout be completely changed back.

Opinions.

To quote livelavalive, "this actually makes we want to stop making flash."

I think that's a really immature thing to say.

You know, there should be an option to switch to the original view...

...this just feels....too big...

will take some gettin used to, i admit that im accustomed to seeing the popup so when i see that big window instantly i keep thinking thats the popup and i am wanting to close it. after im done watchinnnn.

I just noticed another annoying bug; when i click "add movie to favorites" that link stays there allowing me to click again only to receive and error. in the old layout the link would disappear once you clicked it if i remember correctly.

Oh yeah, looking back I do agree with the play button thing. Many submissions begin with music, and I think auto play opens up the way for a lot of spammers to mess with viewers.

But I still stand by my other points :P