Cool to hear it's not just moving from v3 to v4! I wish you guys all the luck and coffee in the world though, trying to move systems with your little monster of a website :P I've had to rewrite a few projects and it's not fun (ie skeleton+js+css to bootstrp+jquery+sass) and often rather frustrating. And yup, the old CSS guide was indeed mine. Making a new guide is on the todo-list, but probably won't be achieved until February or so. Thanks for the compliments though!

On topic: That might be true, while it's possible it is certainly not easy to combine user-friendly and not-corporate. Most people who're concerned with user-friendliness are already at the corporate stage and most people who do non-corporate do so in their free time. So probably not inclined to dig too deep into the theory behind everything, which is understandable.

Pure HTML and CSS bad coding practice isn't very varied, since client-side stuff is limited in its options. But the tag thing gets me too, I had already forgotten some people did that! Or if they do the tags in all caps, that kind of annoys me too because you don't need to do that anymore.

Er...

sweats

^ me right now

I'm minimalist trash, pls revoke my coding license.

one license, please.

Hahaha on a serious note though, I do like your little-rounded panels on your profile.

ahhh, thanks! I like to think I'm not— as bad about the tiny text thing as I could be, but, ehn. That's exactly what someone who is exactly that bad would say. I almost never do scrollable stuff, though. There's very few circumstances where I like it. So...

tears my license in half and gives you one piece

I like the blurry background and the rounded corners, though like said, the text is squint-worthy. (on a side-note, what is the pretty item that's in your description?)

I agree 100% on the small text issue. It pisses me off to see people using 10px fonts for their FORUM POSTS!! Like, what is the point? We're supposed to be able to see what you're saying. Granted, if I come across a post that's smaller than 12px I don't even bother reading it.

Personally I hide a lot of things on my profile because they just don't matter for me, but I do take care to make sure everything's readable. Now small text just bothers me a lot.

I guess the small text on my profile doesn't bother me because there isn't much to read on there? If you're curious about my pets, wishlist, stickers, shops, or trophies, then all the pictures are the standard size. 9px on a pet profile is different than on a user profile, or, like said, on forum posts, where there could be paragraphs of text.

And that's 'Ambrosial Blossoming Fawn Branches'! It's a custom item, I believe. : )

Personally I haven't encountered font-sizes below 12px in the forums yet, but I tend to skip profiles with tiny text too (because most aren't responsive, so zooming to read the content breaks the layout). Also, I don't mind it if people hide stuff, but I do find it annoying if I have to hover over something to show essential content (like the description on a pet profile).

It's true that there isn't a lot to read, but regardless of the amount I do find tiny text a hassle to read. Though it's true that paragraphs of tiny text would be even worse than just a few lines. Tbh, I zoomed in on your profile when I viewed it, because trying to read the text really does make me squint =P The content-text is doable, but the headers and button for leaving a comment aren't readable to me without zooming in. (sorry i'm very myopic T_T)

hmm, fair enough! Universality isn't something I've had to think about much. I've been doing web-design since I was twelve, but I took a pretty big break when I was getting my associate's in computer science— had to focus on binary instead, ha. I also got my start on pet sites, like a lot of people, so tiny text is sort of a bad habit that's stayed with me. Basically, I've got a good handle on CSS but haven't had to worry much about user-friendliness. It's part of the reason why I'm shelving a career in web design. (I'm still counting it a win that I rarely use scrolling divs, though. I grew out of that, at least).

I love your profile, by the way. It reminds me a lot of Wordpress blogs and portfolios. And it's definitely readable!

Same for me, I've also been doing it since I was twelve and then I also took a big break while I was getting my bachelor's in computer science (but applied computer science, so more programming and less theory). I also started on pet sites and also used to do tiny text, but I currently work as a graphic designer / front-end web developer so yeah... And thank you! It's still a work in progress, but once the base layout is done I'll try to make it responsive, or at least mobile-friendly.

I'd like to chat more with you on everything computer and css and code related and whatnot, though we should probably stay on topic... But feel free to join in on my chatter thread :D

Anyway, to recap (feel free to correct me if I'm wrong):

• there don't seem to be any new trends so far in pet/user profiles
• the two most used trends are tiny text and hover-effects
• accessibility, user-friendliness, responsive design, ... doesn't seem to be a concern for most users

I AM LATE TO THIS PARTY! (Also, shoutout to ! I remember you've been on hiatus for a long time, since probably like 2013??, which is when I posted my old premade into the forums for people to tweak for themselves. idk If you've been back since then since I've been pretty inactive the last 3 or so years as well...;;; Anyway. It's pretty rare in my experience for long hiatus-ers to come back, welcome back! )

I feel like the boxy/hiding basically everything feel of some of the overly boxy aesthetic pet profiles are like... vestiges of little graphic design fansites from post-geocities but pre-flash (wix), or even maybe early javascript/flash static webpages days. WELL regardless, it's definitely reminiscent of pre-html5 days. Now that we are in html5 era, we want to have #standards and #accessibility in how we present our web pages, but I feel that little static webpages like little custom pet pages on a virtual petsite is inevitably going to lag behind new "standards", which have kinda more egalitarian values than purely "cool" or "aesthetic" values. I'm not being critical of this at all, just my personal analysis. I haven't worked on my own pet profiles in years and I haven't quite given revamps much thought, but my last batch of working on my own pet profiles, I did prefer a layout that scrolled vertically like a regular webpage instead of boxing things together. However I do confess I was and kind of still am a small text abuser, although I'm trying to work on that. Also, I'm still intrigued about making an anchor-linked stagebox/storybook situation (a goal I had way back when) but that's not an agenda in my life anymore.

Regardless, of Trend You Follow, I feel like this in-theme with something I've been picking up on more recently (and why I haven't posted much/any art online for the last 2 years now?). Pet profiles are something between art and information. If you view it as art, there are some fundamental questions to ask oneself: is the art made for you? Do you enjoy the art that you've made/had somebody make for you? How important is it to you that your art is marketable or share-able? How much value do you put into others being able to also enjoy your art? also I've come to realize that a lot of my lofty pet ideas are better off as sequential art, and if I actually wanted to share it with a lot of people, zines or other publications are a better outlet than a static webpage on a virtual pet site. cough basically all my massively linked OCs stuff I might continue to work on my fanpets profiles though, now that I think about it... hmmmm hmmmh hmmmmm)

Also, I feel like trends are trends because it's what most people know. If more people break out of the mold and maybe see what's possible (and also accessible for them to MAKE or COMMISSION), then maybe we might see different trends.

omg, you just said what I was trying to say on this topic, but much more clearly and eloquently than I managed haha. I think everything you said here is spot on, especially -

(yes, I think it was probably around that time that I went into hiatus. I think it might say more about Subeta than it says about me, that I came back after such a long time. Subeta's just way too homey and comfortable and like coming-home-after-a-long-day-to-a-warm-fire-and-settling-down-with-a-good-book to leave it permanently imo)

Like said, I have to agree with what you said, especially the last part about trends and what most people know. The problem is that at a certain point a certain style becomes a trend and then people keep emulating it. In real-world trends, there are enough other people to break the mold and make a difference, but on Subeta the amount of users who can and do code or do graphic stuff is probably a lot smaller and they make a lot less impact percentage-wise.