Logbook entry

New Inara version preview

• The preview is running over live data! Don't do things that you normally wouldn't do, so you won't mess up your CMDR profile data and so on.
• If you are still, for some reason, using your nickname for signing in to Inara (or your password manager does so), please start to use your e-mail address instead, as is supposed to. This legacy feature will be discontinued shortly.
• Your commander biography short version will be removed in the future Inara versions. The edit field is still present before the full site transition, so you can use it as a part of your full biography for example. Where possible (no full biography version present), the short version was copied to the full biography version already. Also, you may need to set your squadron logo background and stripe (it's independent of the current Inara version), more backgrounds/stripes will be added later.
• If you will want to opt out of the preview and return to the current Inara version, you can do so under "My profile" menu. I fully understand that such large overhauls may not be everybody's cup of tea, but it was necessary.
• Any feedback is very appreciated. Your thoughts, opinions, and reports are very useful for further improving the new Inara. Although I am aware of a couple of things that still deserve attention and I also deliberately left some slightly confusing things there (to get the feedback on these), I may not be aware of everything so such feedback will be invaluable! Is there some bug? Is something hard to use, hard to find, or confusing? Please tell me!

• Make the site less overwhelming and easier to navigate.
  The frequent feedback I've seen on multiple places, especially from new commanders, was that Inara is simply overwhelming and it discouraged many visitors to join us here or use the site to the full of its extent. So the goal was to streamline the experience, make it more welcoming and easier to navigate, remove all unnecessary things, reduce "clutter" as much as possible, and so on. All the main site navigation is now in the new mega menu on the top of the site, which will immediately offer an overview of what can be found here. The sub-section navigation, where necessary, is also present on the top of the respective pages. These steps should help you to reach the desired sections faster, typically with fewer clicks. Also, some site pages were merged into one or were removed as basically nobody used them anyway (like a couple of reports), to clear the site structure more.
• Improve the site experience on mobile devices and lower screen resolutions.
  There still needs to be some work done, but the site should now hopefully behave a little bit more user-friendly on mobile devices. It should be easier to read on smaller screens, new navigation is there, automatic table collapsing was added, and so on. It still can have some quirks and minor problems though, but I would like to solve the problems and polish the experience in the following days and weeks.
• Allow making future site enhancements and features easier to implement.
  This one is more an internal backend thing not immediately visible in the frontend. I rewrote many parts of Inara which were left mostly untouched for years and there is still quite work that needs to be done once Inara will fully transitions to the new version. I am also considering merging the existing side project MMORPG.space and adding support for the upcoming game Starfield next year, which I guess some of you will be interested in and the backend changes were/are essential for it. Of course, those are not the only things and I would like also to focus on other areas like the current squadron system improvements, implementing a more user-friendly WYSIWYG editor for your logbooks, considering the transformation of discussions into a more classic threaded model, and a ton of other stuff...

• Some searches utilizing station names like Trade routes search may not work for the first time when going from the current Inara version to the new one and you need to re-set the station. It's caused by the format change from "StarSystem [Station]" to "Station [StarSystem]" there.
• The user profile is still barebone. It will be further improved after a full transition to the new Inara version.
• The number of total messages displayed in the discussion may not be correct. I will recalculate it after the full transition.
• The engineers table on the current Inara version is not showing their relations anymore. I needed to make some changes to the Engineers data and their relations are now visible in the Unlock requirements list on the new Inara.
• Some page sides may feel empty for active Inara supporters - although I have a few ideas on how to utilize this space, I am open to suggestions.