How to fix web interface layout

[emby20180524 0]

The current web interface is super-annoying, with irritating side-scrolling-sliders instead of a normal, sensible, natural, organized vertical scrolling layout. My computer is not a phone. The mousewheel or page-up / page-down keys scroll the content. Except in Emby ... where I have to mouse-hover for the mystery-meat sider controls to ALSO pan left and right. Super-duper-dumb design.

Where is the fix?

 

[GrimReaper 3289]

Just now, emby20180524 said:

The current web interface is super-annoying, with irritating side-scrolling-sliders instead of a normal, sensible, natural, organized vertical scrolling layout. My computer is not a phone. The mousewheel or page-up / page-down keys scroll the content. Except in Emby ... where I have to mouse-hover for the mystery-meat sider controls to ALSO pan left and right. Super-duper-dumb design.

Where is the fix?

 

Are you talking about Home Screen or Library views? 

Edit: All the controls that you mentioned are already supported and implemented, as noted in Dashboard>Keyboard and Remote:

Mousewheel - Check

PageUp/PageDown - Check

Home/End - Check

And plethora of others. 

So it's not quite clear where are you encountering those issues? 

Edited January 20, 2021 by GrimReaper76

[Luke 37054]

Quote

The mousewheel or page-up / page-down keys scroll the content. 

Hi, these functions do work, except they scroll the screen vertically.

[diogee 17]

While I generally agree with the way Emby has been moving forward in general, I have to say I also think that the desktop layout is exceptionally annoying. It makes sense on mobile devices but on the computer I do my best to completely avoid it by using Kodi. Unfortunately for the times I don't have Kodi available I have to deal with the Web app layout and I hate the experience every time.
My users aren't so lucky to have the knowledge of how to set up Kodi and have also noted the annoyances of horizontal scrolling on a computer.

I just silently dealt with it by tweaking the UI with CSS but now you are going down the path of even breaking that bit by bit without at the very least giving users the option to CHOOSE.
I think that is probably what irks me the most about the change, not having an option to swap between the 2 modes essentially.
The functions available don't really redeem the fact that horizontal vs vertical layouts aren't a choice.

[Thomas64 38]

Just curious..

What would you have them change on the Web Interface? It seems to follow the same layout/flow of most Streaming Services (at least that I am familiar with). NetFlix pops into mind first. Would you want a choice to turn off all horizontal scrolling and just create wrapped lists that can be vertically scrolled?

On the Home screen, folks are not required to use the horizontal scroll - if the "Latest" row heading is clicked off the Home Page - it will take them to a full page view, which horizontal vertical scrolling can be used on. Though I guess that defeats the "Latest" abbreviated list of items as they are just in the full library at that point.

Some of the deeper items like "Upcoming on TV" off of a TV Series or such, yep - we are locked into horizontal scrolling. But, I'd never thought twice about it - as NetFlix, Youtube and others also have Horizontal Scrolling for many screens/items.

Maybe I'm in the minority - but I actually really like the simplicity, organization and cleanliness of the Web Interface. (Which is why i get ruffled when stuff gets added to it - like the recent additional blue links, or the Settings bar across the bottom a while back.. LOL..)

Edited January 29, 2021 by Thomas64
corrected wording

[diogee 17]

Quote

Would you want a choice to turn off all horizontal scrolling and just create wrapped lists that can be vertically scrolled?

Essentially, yeah

Which is exactly what we were able to do if you were willing to modify with CSS but the (honestly really amazing) change to merge next up with continue watching has broken that

I don't use any streaming services outside YouTube so can't compare the layouts personally and I won't try to say otherwise but YouTube desktop vs YouTube mobile is actually a perfect example honestly. 
When on mobile or using a TV remote, horizontal scrolling feels intuitive, quick flick on a small screen? Makes sense
But when it comes to a keyboard/mouse experience (primarily mouse for me when it comes to web browsing), I find wrapped vertical layouts to be better to navigate

I like the ease of just scrolling down, seeing more than a handful of items at once in my "continue watching" to pick from without forgetting other shows are there, choose one I feel in the mood for, point and click to play without having to remember particular key presses or that I have to scroll to the side
As it stands now, I already had to tweak the left/right buttons to be more noticeable to some of my users and also not require to hover over a section first to show the nav arrows as they thought a bunch of stuff went missing
Just like any desktop website, scrolling down just feels more intuitive

Oh and removing "latest"/"continue watching" from the home screen definitely wouldn't work for the better for 2 reasons that come to mind:
The home page is where we expect the "latest" content to be and where our "continue watching" lives for easy access 
But also, my anime and tv series are split up in separate libraries (I'm positive i'm not the only one with it set up this way). So removing continue watching from the homepage would make trying to navigate... well.. "continue watching" a bit more painful for the users that have access to both 

I can't think of very many website experiences at all where you have to head horizontally to read more content or see more info
An obvious exception would be certain elements such as photo galleries/slideshows

I'm curious as to where you find horizontal scrolling on YouTube if you're sitting at a computer?
Are they rolling out a new desktop layout I've not been hit with yet? Can't say I'm looking forward to that either if that's the case  

Actually, coming back to the YouTube example, it's only YouTube music that is heavy on the horizontal scrolling, and the regular YouTube app has very minimal horizontal scrolling on all my devices
The only thing in Emby specifically I wouldn't think twice about would be horizontal scroll for is Actors but even then I'd prefer a single row (maybe 2 wrapped vertically) with a show more button that extends the extra artists down vertically

But primarily, the homepage is exactly where I don't want horizontal scrolling personally. Having an option to toggle between horizontal/vertical would be amazing but I'd settle for just being able to continue tweaking with CSS.
It's great to have a unified experience (I'm guessing that's why these UI changes are being made in the way they are, to ensure things unified between all apps and whatnot) but it's only great where it makes sense and I don't believe the desktop web app experience is one that makes sense. 

Obviously I don't speak for everyone and you might not be the minority at all as I'm not seeing much noise being made about it (still a fairly recent change though I guess)
I'd encourage anyone who wants an option to choose between the 2 layouts for themselves to speak up. Maybe not in this how to "fix" the web app thread though lol because admittedly it's not "broken". The layout actually is nice in general, there are some of us that simply just don't like it/would much prefer the vertical layout. It sucks being forced into a certain design after liking the original for so long
I literally only jumped onto this thread as it was the first one that popped up and was the sole reason I opened up these forums in the first place
These 2 posts would likely be the better threads to "+1/me too!" so to speak:
Remove Horizontal Scrolling (beta server)
Expand home page rows downward

Apparently I had more to say about this than I thought! haha
TL;DR, implementing an option to switch between vertical/horizontal, probably per user, would be perfect