Now that we appear to have the performance issues taken care of (knock, knock) - we're moving on to other UI stuff.

We're getting lots of mail about the new site - praise, hate and shades in-between. We're reading all of it, and digesting it. One of the biggest beefs appears to be with the new thumbnail listings for videos. Here are the complaints as I see them.

1. Too small, I can't see what's going on
2. An extra click to launch?!? (my poor mouse finger)
3. unenticing- I don't feel like playing the video if it's not there.
4. You're a video site damn it!, not a thumbnail site!
5. Too squished over to the right, too crowded.

That seems to sum up the complaints. Here are our reasons for displaying thumbnails.

1. 10 embeds adds 400K to the front page
2. We can't control the slowness of the embed loading. If "kickarsevideos.com" is down, it can slow down the whole front page.
3. we can display more posts per page with thumbs (currently 15, was 10)
4. minimizing a playing video stops it loading
5. If no video is maximized, we can periodically refresh the front page, bring in any new videos.

So there are the pros and cons. Here's what we could about the situation.

1. bring back the full embeds.
2. employ auto-play on clicking a thumbnail, so it's only 1 click
3. leave as is, but make a profile setting to enable full embed display.
4. Do nothing.

Your input is appreciated, please discuss.