Unfortunately I don't think this is something they could do; I think the new wardrobe is part of the upcoming recode, they mentioned that the old wardrobe was causing a lot of issues server side/performance wise I think.

If they did do it - which I do think a toggle would be a good compromise! - I'd be worried about how some users having the old wardrobe toggled on may affect future server performance as more re-coded areas of the site are released.

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@Fraekinn

That's not really an excuse to massively cut functionality, there's an important balance between efficiency and alienating users. I'm a programmer and I have cut things for efficiency then realized I had to work to implement them differently. They may not have realized how people use the wardrobe and thought their solution was one that would work for people when in reality a lot of people strongly dislike it.

One thing you can't account for in internal testing is actual user feedback, it's important to give that.

ETA: Honestly, here's a thought, I wouldn't mind at all if the images got stored locally once I've loaded them once so the wardrobe wasn't constantly pulling from the server. That could be a possible solution that works for both sides. Again it would have to be a toggle because a lot of people don't want several gigs of images cached.

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I do fully understand, which is why I said a toggle would be nice - but ultimately the devs are probably focused on performance of the entire site over one aspect of it. I'm not disagreeing with you, I personally don't like the new wardrobe one bit - but I barely use it anyway, so I'm all for making it accessible for all; even if that means a toggle and loss of performance.

Edit: In regards to the local cache, that certainly would need to be opt-out for mobile users, but could definitely work!

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@Fraekinn

Yeah don't worry, I don't think it's an argument, it's just worth discussing from different angles, you know? And we're not likely to get dev feedback cause they're busy, so we may as well speculate.

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Plus one of the Dev's has had to evacuate ^^;
I do hope that some functionality is restored!

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Support - I really wish there was a toggle, or at least a separate page "Old Wardrobe" that users could use instead. New Wardrobe does not work for me at all (I have old device), and while Michael is trying to improve functionality to support older browsers, there is no guarantee its even possible to make new feature to work with old browser. A toggle for a same page could be very complex to code, but I wonder if its possible to just make a Separate Page?

So for example there's Wardrobe, and there's a separate, Legacy Wardrobe, that loads the old way Wardrobe used to be. And that IS POSSIBLE, because Create a Lioness still uses the old way of loading markings, and at the same time we've got the new Wardrobe, so its possible for both systems to exist at the same time (they're not mutually-exclusive). I dont see a reason why a separate, unrelated Wardrobe cant exist that would still use the old way of loading - because there's a new version, many people will be using it instead, so it wont affect the server load much, since all users who enjoy the new Wardrobe will be using it instead.

So what it would take, is not completely purge the old code from the site, but make it a separate feature, Legacy Wardrobe.

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@Mad Hyena (#29080)

That's also a good point, people who can use the new wardrobe will. I don't mind using it for checking adult appearances of cubs and changing marking opacity. If they put it slightly out of the way, like on a new page, most people will just use the new wardrobe for most tasks.

A toggle actually isn't complicated at all by the way. It's basically:

If toggle = on
serve old page
else
serve new page
end

Like that's an oversimplification (and not js) but it really is about that easy. The real problem here is balancing what the users want with what works for the servers.

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Yeah - if Old Wardrobe will be a link somewhere aside from new Wardrobe, and importing links leading to New Wardrobe, many people for whom it works well will be using New Wardrobe and never even try the Old Wardrobe. But for those who cannot use the New Wardrobe - like me, from whom it does not load at all... having Old Wardrobe option will be a lifesaver. Ill be fine with having to import lions manually via ID. Just so long as I CAN use a wardrobe without having to buy a new PC - or without Michael working days and days to try finding a solution how to make it work for every old device and browser.

I am not good at coding, but, finding new solutions of how to make new wardrobe work for everyone sounds like a more difficult task than taking an old code and making it into a separate feature?

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The selectors that are used in the wardrobe (and have previously found their way into other areas of the site) are custom written, custom built selectors. They're designed to alleviate the issues associated with standard HTML select elements. Even the old "Flexselect" selectors suffered from the same issue. As more and more items and markings get added, the further degraded the page would become. The custom selectors load things in batches, never exceeding a certain amount of elements in any one view.

Originally these selectors were designed with the multi-select elements in mind (like in the Trading Center). They are definitely still a work in progress. I have found myself missing the lack of keyboard navigation with the selectors as well, and plan on implementing that. It was one thing with the larger multi-select selectors, but with the newer single dropdown selectors, it will make it so much easier to navigate through.

The image loading certainly needs to be looked at, as it shouldn't be attempting to load any more than it has to at any one time. I'll see about adding lazy loading for any dropdowns that contain image thumbnails (e.g., backgrounds and decors). If that doesn't work, I can possibly add a toggle to disable thumbnails for those so it would be more in line with the previous selectors not having images.

With this update, a majority of the wardrobe was rewritten in order to make adding new features (poses, mutations, piebalds/patches, posed mutations, etc.) much easier and less of a patchwork. This is not compatible with the old wardrobe, meaning anything new added would be left behind. If an old version of the wardrobe were to be made available, it would eventually be incompatible with the new wardrobe as well, and then there would be two sets of wardrobe links floating around. It would just be a logistical nightmare. As more parts of the infrastructure change, the more broken the old wardrobe will become (technical limitations of the browser aside).

This same frontend will be rolled out to the Create Custom pages as well. The reason it is not as important to have on those pages right away is that they contain far fewer elements and don't have all of the additional selectors & interactions that the wardrobe has (age/pose/mutation/decors/etc.), meaning they haven't yet led to people's browsers freezing or taking forever to load. Whereas the updated wardrobe has already fixed several long-standing bugs from the old version, and made it much more usable for a large number of players that couldn't use it previously -- going so far as having warnings on wardrobe links so people's browsers wouldn't crash if they accidentally followed a wardrobe link.

We definitely want the wardrobe to be as accessible as possible for everyone, even those using older devices/browsers that may not have been updated for 5 or more years. What we don't want is splintered segments of the site that serve the same function and have to be updated manually/individually. We want to take advantage of modern browser capabilities as much as possible, though realize that isn't going to work 100% of the time for everyone.

TL;DR; We're looking into ways to make the wardrobe as accessible as possible on all devices. Having a separate version of the wardrobe is not feasible long-term and would only become more broken over time.

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Thank you for the detailed response, it's really appreciated. Good to know we're getting the keyboard navigation back eventually, that's really going to be missed for a while and if we've got to wait for it so be it.

I appreciate the transparency and all the work you guys do on the site! Sounds like stuff is a lot more complicated behind the scenes than it might seem, and I wanna stress that criticism is meant to be constructive.

If you happen to read this I also have a really minor bug to report, my cubs are importing without their mutations. Noticed it today on a felis I had born earlier. Not a huge issue at all though, kind of a back burner bug.

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