Not quite sure where to post this, please if you feel the need a moderator is welcome to drag this to the right spot if this is not it.
Patch releases are not obvious and kinda quirky to find, some of those patches are kind of important. I suggest moving the patch releases up to the top maybe as a sub menu kind of like
Features | Roadmap | Demos | Patch Releases
Now I know where to go, all the way to the footer to find my patch releases, but when that remote execution patch came around I was scrambling trying to find it, it took quite a while (around 20 minutes of clicking around), it is not very intuitive, and that was an extremely important patch.
Honestly after the last major changes they tried with their website I’ve lost any faith in them making a good improvement to the site and have just resorted to googling (not that I didn’t use it extensively already for most sites). If you search Google for “Unity patches” you’ll receive the correct link as the very first entry.
Adding links to them in more locations might assist others to find it, but then placing them in smart locations doesn’t guarantee people will find them then either. We’ve had a lot of threads in the past of people asking if Unity had official tutorials despite the big “Learn” at the top of the site.
After 5 minutes of goofing around on the website, I found how you’re supposed to get to the patch releases without googling. You go to “Get Unity”, scroll to the very bottom and look for “Patch Releases”.
I think this is a classic example of not enough beta testing. Whoever designed that page thought it was obvious, and once you know where it is it is obvious, but for the average user looking for it the 1st time it’s awful.
Overall, I’m concerned about the direction Unity is headed with their UI design online. They are transitioning to the “Large thin text with wasted space everywhere to show as little info without scrolling as possible” design, and for us as developers it sucks. I think they forgot that they aren’t here to copy Apple’s website, they are here to appeal to developers who actually know how to use computers and don’t need large floaty text on-screen. After all, that’s what got them into so much trouble when they tried to rework the Forums and had to revert to the old version on the same day. In fact, that went down so badly I can’t even find a single picture of the “new” Forum look. The only proof I’ve found that it existed was a screenshot of 1 post I took and saved in the depths of my hard drive:
Anyways, before this turns into a rant, I’ll throw my 2 cents in: The website is there to be useful for developers, not to look pretty for potential iPad buyers. It’s a shame they’re turning the website into what they tried to do with the forums.
