Comments on new interface from long time user - Fuelly Forums

Click here to see important news regarding the aCar App

Reply
 
Thread Tools Display Modes
 
Old 07-02-2014, 10:45 PM   #1
Registered Member
 
Join Date: Nov 2009
Posts: 3
Country: Canada
Location: Whitehorse, Yukon Territory
Comments on new interface from long time user

I am quite disappointed with the new interface,
-all the entries are spread out, no longer the nice compact format I used to like where one could very quickly scroll from one area to another
--City percentage pull-tab barely works, slow, and drags placemarkers along with it
--Notes no longer are readable in the general fill-up table... So we have notes and tags, and now neither is immediately readable
--date selector is more "pushy" than before... though we can certainly still change the date... it is no longer as kind to the eyes and fingers... and it's more easy than ever to leave today's date as the fuel up, rather than whatever date is on my receipt. Why ever is the date not at the top along with all the other small numbers ><
--I was really hoping to see an octane category show up in the new interface, so we can compare price and efficiency with different octanes, no such luck
-Overall the colour scheme is too washed out and the entire page is much harder to read... compounded by the general non-compact layout...grumble grumble

You have so much screen space available to you, yet the designer saw fit to leave all the lateral spaces empty... and place everything on an endless inflated vertical presentation.

I am using the latest version (always) of Firefox.
When I see such inefficient changes... I really wonder why bother at all???
__________________

TNT666 is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 07-03-2014, 12:39 AM   #2
Registered Member
 
Join Date: Jul 2013
Posts: 2
Country: United Kingdom
Location: Dorset
The only problem I have with the new Fuelly is that most of the motorcycles seem to have vanished off the lists. My 650 Honda Deauville may not be the latest and greatest, but there were over 60 vehicles registered on the old Fuelly and the bike still has an active forum here in the UK and yet it's vanished, so I can no longer compare with others mileages on Fuelly. It seems like many of the older but still popular bikes have disappeared. Rather disappointing..
__________________

bikerpete51 is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 07-05-2014, 02:27 PM   #3
Registered Member
 
Join Date: Mar 2011
Posts: 3
Country: United States
Location: Philadelphia
I'm with TNT on this. Not digging the new UI. Seems like there's a huge amount of wasted space on the entry page. The city percentage is definitely not as easy to adjust and the slide functionality is basically unusable. Hopefully additional changes are on the horizon.
iSpyder is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 07-06-2014, 04:59 AM   #4
Registered Member
 
Join Date: Jun 2009
Posts: 302
Country: United States
Location: Nebraska
I never used Fuelly on a mobile device. I use it on the computer when I get home. And I haven't liked the layout, either. There is so much wasted space, and you have to scroll to complete a fuelup entry.

When I first found the site, I was enthusiastic about it. Then I found the forum, and liked that. But I gradually found the site to be just about more trouble than it is worth, and have slowly "de-listed" all but one vehicle. I also discovered that some folks don't take kindly to my comments about horsepower and fuel mileage numbers that seem to come more from advertising than from real-world use. After being labelled a "troll" for the very first time on any forum I am seriously considering closing my account.

I can't say much about the "upgrade" except to compare it to Microsoft's continual "upgrades" of perfectly operational systems, just so they can sell more software. At least this "upgrade" didn't require buying a new computer.
Charon is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 08-05-2014, 08:45 PM   #5
Registered Member
 
Join Date: Nov 2009
Posts: 3
Country: Canada
Location: Whitehorse, Yukon Territory
Quote:
Originally Posted by iSpyder View Post
I'm with TNT on this. Not digging the new UI. Seems like there's a huge amount of wasted space on the entry page. The city percentage is definitely not as easy to adjust and the slide functionality is basically unusable. Hopefully additional changes are on the horizon.
I'm also disappointed that no Fuelly person has bothered to answer to our complaint. On website main page it says to come here if there's a problem... bit of a waste of time
TNT666 is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 08-05-2014, 09:21 PM   #6
Registered Member
 
RobertV's Avatar
 
Join Date: Feb 2013
Posts: 1,900
Country: United States
Location: San Antonio, TX
Quote:
Originally Posted by TNT666 View Post
I am quite disappointed with the new interface,
-all the entries are spread out, no longer the nice compact format I used to like where one could very quickly scroll from one area to another
--City percentage pull-tab barely works, slow, and drags placemarkers along with it
--Notes no longer are readable in the general fill-up table... So we have notes and tags, and now neither is immediately readable
--date selector is more "pushy" than before... though we can certainly still change the date... it is no longer as kind to the eyes and fingers... and it's more easy than ever to leave today's date as the fuel up, rather than whatever date is on my receipt. Why ever is the date not at the top along with all the other small numbers ><
--I was really hoping to see an octane category show up in the new interface, so we can compare price and efficiency with different octanes, no such luck
-Overall the colour scheme is too washed out and the entire page is much harder to read... compounded by the general non-compact layout...grumble grumble

You have so much screen space available to you, yet the designer saw fit to leave all the lateral spaces empty... and place everything on an endless inflated vertical presentation.

I am using the latest version (always) of Firefox.
When I see such inefficient changes... I really wonder why bother at all???
The layout is a temporary transition from Old Fuelly to what we have planned for a more modern design later down the road for New Fuelly.
I'm curious though, are you using Fuelly Mobile (m.fuelly.com), GasTracker, or the main site to add your fuel-ups?

Quote:
Originally Posted by bikerpete51 View Post
The only problem I have with the new Fuelly is that most of the motorcycles seem to have vanished off the lists. My 650 Honda Deauville may not be the latest and greatest, but there were over 60 vehicles registered on the old Fuelly and the bike still has an active forum here in the UK and yet it's vanished, so I can no longer compare with others mileages on Fuelly. It seems like many of the older but still popular bikes have disappeared. Rather disappointing..
They haven't vanished. The data is still there, and all the owners still have access to their vehicles. We're still actively working to restore the vehicles to the Browse All section of the site.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Charon View Post
I never used Fuelly on a mobile device. I use it on the computer when I get home. And I haven't liked the layout, either. There is so much wasted space, and you have to scroll to complete a fuelup entry.

When I first found the site, I was enthusiastic about it. Then I found the forum, and liked that. But I gradually found the site to be just about more trouble than it is worth, and have slowly "de-listed" all but one vehicle. I also discovered that some folks don't take kindly to my comments about horsepower and fuel mileage numbers that seem to come more from advertising than from real-world use. After being labelled a "troll" for the very first time on any forum I am seriously considering closing my account.

I can't say much about the "upgrade" except to compare it to Microsoft's continual "upgrades" of perfectly operational systems, just so they can sell more software. At least this "upgrade" didn't require buying a new computer.
I'm sorry you've decided to remove your vehicles from Fuelly.
I'm also sorry you took offense to comments on a public forum. To be fair however, baiting another user in an attempt to get a rise out of them is the definition of an internet/forum troll. You weren't being referred to bright, furry-haired doll.
RobertV is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 08-09-2014, 07:54 AM   #7
Registered Member
 
Join Date: Oct 2012
Posts: 2
Country: United States
Quote:
Originally Posted by RobertV View Post
The layout is a temporary transition from Old Fuelly to what we have planned for a more modern design later down the road for New Fuelly.
In that case why bother with the "temporary site"?? It just frustrates the hell out people having to readjust with each change.
BuzzInn is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 08-09-2014, 10:59 AM   #8
Registered Member
 
RobertV's Avatar
 
Join Date: Feb 2013
Posts: 1,900
Country: United States
Location: San Antonio, TX
Quote:
Originally Posted by BuzzInn View Post
In that case why bother with the "temporary site"?? It just frustrates the hell out people having to readjust with each change.
Stepping stones to bigger and better. We were extremely limited by Old Fuelly.
RobertV is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 08-09-2014, 01:47 PM   #9
Site Team
 
Join Date: Sep 2012
Posts: 322
Country: United States
Location: Dallas, Tx
Quote:
Originally Posted by BuzzInn View Post
In that case why bother with the "temporary site"?? It just frustrates the hell out people having to readjust with each change.
We've discuss some of the issues and are evaluating solutions. Here is an update on them:

The slider is a PITA on the mobile site so we are looking at using a drop down list with 5% increments. If you all have any other suggestions, please let me know.

We agree the light colors on the mobile site don't work well when you are standing at the pump in the sun. We have asked the front end designer to update the colors on the mobile site to have more contrast. FWIW, the mobile site was redone and has different colors where the desktop site is pretty much a replica of what was here before.

The desktop site is fixed width and on very wide monitors might looks narrow. The design is the same as before and we'll look into making a more full screen responsive design in the future.

We are planning on adding Octane along with other gas types in the near future. It's something we are actively working on. Right now we are in the process of defining how to handle RON vs Mon vs AKI ratings methods in our database so we can try and normalize the data for better cross comparison in the future. This will be similar to how we handle different currencies or different unit sizes (gallons, liters, etc).

Octane will be linked to vehicle and where you fueled-up. That being said, we are also planning to add location so you can easily mark which gas station you fuel-up at. This will help us map out which stations have which octanes which might be useful information in the future.

@BuzzInn - The reason we didn't change the front end at the June tech stack conversion was because we felt it was better to compare Apples-to-Apples. The site was converted from Microsoft SQL + ColdFusion to MySQL + PHP. It was a major overhaul that took us a year to complete. There were some issues on the old site we had to address including vehicle taxonomy which was being set at the Year, Make, Model level and did not allow for specific engine and transmission configurations. We are now trying to align our taxonomy with the automotive industry standards used in the aftermarket industry. This taxonomy conversion has been more than we expected but we are making progress.

Our focus for the rest of the year will be to get the apps (aCar and GasCubby integrated), refine the UX based on feedback, add new features such as Octane, Location, etc. Another cool thing once we have location is the fact we can query for temps between fuel-ups and thus start to see how weather affects fuel economy (on hybrids it's considerable). We also plan to allow users to capture altitude and tell us about any modifications they might have on their vehicles (like bike racks) that might affect fuel economy.

Lots of the stuff like adding Octane seems pretty easy, just allow for a number input. Unfortunately it's more complex then that and has to do with fuel types which then leads us to types of Diesel, Biodiesel, CNG, etc. So we are trying to do an exhaustive analysis to make sure we can get things just right before rolling out features like that.

Lastly, sorry for the late reply. It looks like the original post was made over 4th of July weekend when our team was on vacation. Sorry we didn't respond earlier.

Thanks again for your input, keep it coming!
andyrobo is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 12-09-2014, 02:03 AM   #10
Registered Member
 
Join Date: Nov 2009
Posts: 3
Country: Canada
Location: Whitehorse, Yukon Territory
appreciate your Octane reply... thank you. My Honda Pilot DOES get better mileage on premium fuel, so the challenge is determining whether it is financially worthwhile. There seems to be a 10% value difference, but hard to tell without a tool. I do realise most assume no improved efficiency with premium octane, but I've noticed it on the three vehicles I've run in Canada.

Now how about placing date and time at the top of the page, that should be real easy.
I use only the website (not mobile), generally 3-4 receipts at a time, therefore almost never on the day of purchase, so as for the website, having the system default to day of purchase instead of blank is problematic, because it forces us to use a slow dysfunctional calendar tool instead of seeing a blank and starting from a clean slate
Now I admit day of purchase defaulting to today is valid on the mobile site. But that's a different situation.

Also time... should be in 24 hour format, at least optional.

As for charting...
--notes or tags (I don't understand the difference) need to show up on chart
--need custom date range on chart
__________________

TNT666 is offline   Reply With Quote
Reply

Thread Tools
Display Modes

Posting Rules
You may not post new threads
You may not post replies
You may not post attachments
You may not edit your posts

BB code is On
Smilies are On
[IMG] code is On
HTML code is Off
Trackbacks are Off
Pingbacks are Off
Refbacks are Off


» Fuelly iOS Apps
Powered by vBadvanced CMPS v3.2.3


All times are GMT -8. The time now is 09:03 PM.


Powered by vBulletin® Version 3.8.8 Beta 1
Copyright ©2000 - 2024, vBulletin Solutions, Inc.