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Lospec Website Navigation Menu Overhaul

posted by skeddles 20 hours ago in lospec-updates 3

The navigation menu on the top of the website has been completely redone. It now stretches across the full width of the page. Lospec was designed in an era when most monitors were the same size, and we had only a few pages. The pages that did exist were all made to conform to this small width, which was optimized for articles. As we’ve added more pages, more and more broke free from this standard page width, so the top navigation being that wide mattered less. We’ve also added more and more links which get hidden because only a few could be seen at the top. You will now see many more links across the top. Unless you’re on mobile, then you’ll see less, haha.

I’ve also added an entirely new sidebar menu. Once you click the menu button (the three lines icon that looks nothing like a hamburger), you’ll see that the extra links no longer open below the top menu, but instead on a vertical menu that pops in from the right. This gives a place for all the important links on Lospec, including everything that was in the menu before, plus everything on the resource page and footer. If you scroll down, even more links will be loaded. Some say it goes on forever. If you want, it can be pinned open so it’s always there when you need it (like a good drug).

This new navigation works much better on mobile. It also replaces our previous PWA sidebar, and the secret mod menu that you’ve never heard about before.

This is part of an ongoing project to improve Lospec’s experience on mobile devices. Maybe we’ll even get a real app one day.

The Lospec Low-Spec Software Page Is Now Live!

posted by skeddles September 12 in lospec-updates 5

The Pixel Art Software List was a popular Lospec page that's been around since the beginning. It was a simple list of pixel art editors, with a list of their features. It wasn't super special, but it seemed to get a lot of use over the years. Unfortunately it was hand coded which made it a pain to update, especially with images. When we launched there was only a small handful of pixel editors, but that number has grown significantly over the years, and shows no signs of slowing down. We also had a similar Voxel Art Software List along the same lines.

Today we launch the Lospec Software page. This allows anyone to submit a page for low-spec related software of any kind. This supports not just pixel art and voxel art, but also chiptune, textmode, and more. And there are lots of subcategories so it's not just the big editors, but any related tools. Artists can follow the software pages to get updates and also attatch a piece of software to each submission in the Gallery. Their art will then be featured on the software page.

Users can also submit their own screenshots to any software page.

Please help us fill out this list by submitting additional software, liking and commenting on your favorites, and submitting screenshots!

If know a developer of some low-spec software, tell them about our new page! When a software is claimed by the developer, it allows them to post updates which notify all the followers, as well as approve and change the order of screenshots.

This update also brings some quality of life updates to all Lospec search forms. First, they now have a global search field, where you can search not only for content by name, but also by filters which prefill in the fields for you. We also allow you to hide these fields for a cleaner expirience. Next sorting options have been moved to the top right of the results, rather than being grouped with the filters. There you'll also see an option to change the loading mechanism from infinite autoload to pagination, if you prefer. And lastly on some pages (just software for now) there will be multiple ways to display the content you're looking at, and there will be dropdown there to switch. Note that these changes do not affect the palette list, as it's still on the old system, but we're now one step closer to Palette List v2.

You Can Now Link Palettes to Gallery Pieces

posted by skeddles August 26 in lospec-updates 4

One of the most requested and longest awaited features is finally here:

You can now link to the palette you used on an art piece.

Yes you could manually do it with a text link in the description before, but this goes much deeper.

When you submit a gallery piece now, the submission form will automatically scan it's colors and match it against all palettes on Lospec. If any matches are found, it will show them to you, and you can link it with a single click. The palette will then show under the "specs" list on the gallery page, with a link back to the palette.

If your colors didn't match any palettes exactly, but found some with very similar colors, it will list those too, in case you just did an oopsie and skronkled them up slightly. It will then let you force the colors to conform the palette so they match the hex codes exactly. This ensures any piece that links to a palette uses it exactly. When you do this conversion there will be a popup showing you the before and after so you can ensure the result looks as it should.

This system does not apply to all categories, for example the "Enhanced Pixel Art" or "Voxel Render" categories, where you may have used a palette, but the resulting image contains more colors. For these you can simply search for the palette you used and select it. The specs section will then put a little dippalidoo saying the palette is unrestricted, meaning it's not exactly the same colors in the image, and it was chosen by the artist.

I attempted to auto-match existing gallery pieces to palettes so it wouldn't only be new pieces utilizing this feature. About 20% of the existing 17k gallery pieces were given a palette. Some of these may be wrong, and some pieces might have been missed, but this is a good start. Pieces that require conversion to match the palette were not touched, as that's a decision that should be made by the artist, not me.

If your old piece was missed or mismatched, you can easily link a palette by editing the submission. Palettes will be automatically shown under the palette section just like with new submissions, and you can link/convert them the same way.

Unsurprisingly, the most commonly used palettes were apollo, dawnbringer-32, pico-8, resurrect-64, aap-64, slso8, endesga-64, lost-century, endesga-32, and oil-6.

This feature utilizes another feature released in a recent update, the Palette Identifier to match palettes. This was a big update with a lot of moving parts so I broke it into a few pieces. And there are more to come.

Now that palettes can be directly linked to palettes, we'll be able to see a collection of art pieces that each palette was used for. This will be utilized by the long awaited Palette List v2 update. Aside from just searching for the most utilized palettes, this will also allow us to begin automatically creating palette example blocks from gallery images, and can eventually retire the submission of 464x120 palette example images, which has angered many and resulted in several extremist antilospecular cults.

So get out there and start submitting some beautiful palette-linked art!

Suggestions and Bug Reports Page Redesign

posted by skeddles August 21 in lospec-updates 1

You may have noticed the feedback page has been a bit dead for while. Even things that had been completed were still sitting as planned. There was a reason.

For a while we used the service Canny.io for a feedback page on the site. It worked very well and was a great tool, that let us embed it on our page, link users, trigger notifications, link to code, all for free. Then a few months ago they changed the free tier to no longer include many of the features. I was locked out of using it until I removed many of the features, or decided to upgrade to $80 a month (a huge chunk of Lospec's budget).

So instead I created our own simpler system, since most of what we needed already existed on our system. It doesn't have quite as many features as Canny, but at least it's free and fully integrated into Lospec, and now we can start using it again.

So go check it out, and help me decide what to work on or fix by submitting suggestions and voting on ideas.

You Can Now Follow People On Lospec!

posted by skeddles August 19 in lospec-updates 4

This has been a long requested feature, and it's finally here! This lets you follow any artist on Lospec, which means you'll be notified when they post a new piece to the gallery, or submit a new palette. This is a great way to ensure you never miss a piece from your favorite artists!

Go to an artists profile, and you'll see a new "+ Follow" button on the top right. When you click it, it will turn red and say "Following". You will then start recieving notifications of their new works!

Notifications are sent when the pieces are released from the moderation queue (not as soon as they are submitted or approved).

When someone starts following you, you'll recieve a notification. You can see someone's total number of followers in the row under their name on their profile, but it's intentionally subtle.

Go try it out!