TALES UNION NEWS

Our New and Improved Video and Trailers Sections

We've just updated the Videos and Trailer section on Tales Union. If you have frequented the site over the last few days, you may have noticed the Videos and Trailers was taken off the navigation while we were working on revamping the code.

Originally, we planned to only add a searchable tags database (instead of linking to tags from YouTube, which many times would be completely unrelated to the tag itself). However, after taking a closer look, it was evident that the existing system was flawed in many respects, which was the reason the entire section was taken down.

Previously, to actually get to see all of the videos that were available for a particular section, you would have to click through multiple pages, which from a usability standpoint is obviously counterproductive.

Now, when you click on one of the categories from the drop down menu, you will see all of the games that have videos for that category, in the same "icon" view that was present before the update. But what about if you want a more detailed view, but don't want to have to open each and every video to find out more? We have a button just above the content which allows you to switch between viewing the videos in icon or detailed form.

We've used Ajax to only reload the content, not the entire page, so moving one from view to another is painlessly easy. We have also removed all of the platform and console information from the video URL, so the video links are much shorter than they previously were.

We are planning to apply similar Ajax-style to other sections of the site in the upcoming months (such as replacing the current view switching system in Achievements), so be sure to look out for that.

Note that all of the video downloads are currently down since we need to move all of the videos to another area on the server. We should have all of the videos moved by tomorrow night --- look on Twitter for the announcement (followed by an edit to this news post).

UPDATE (1/24): The download links should be working again now.

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