Zoom Tool Update Bug Report Thread

IMO this was very responsive to the user base and I for one appreciate the speed at which this was backed out after working hard to make this work but really listening to the consensus.  So really Thank you!!!   

Thanks for listening to what the people want, staff!!!

Thank you very much, I'm sorry I was such a dick about it. irritatingly bad release or no, its not an excuse to take out life frustrations specifically on your staff just because its easy. So for that I'm sorry. Thank you very much for the rollback, our group appreciates it immensely.

Might be off topic, but y'know. Thanks team. I don't hit the forums often, but I had to come back for this.

Thanks for the roll back.

Thank you SOOOOOOO much!  I can finally play games here again without the hassle.  This was, by far, the best news I've had all day.

Cavni said: Yesterday, we released an update to the Zoom tool on Roll20. Our intention was to address user requests by simplifying the existing tool and more closely aligning with modern standards. Unfortunately, the update missed the mark - and more critically, created usability issues for users. As a result, we've decided to roll back the update and revert to the previous version while we continue work on the new Zoom. The code released yesterday is still available on the Dev Server , including yesterday’s hot fixes, for your continued input.  We apologize for the inconvenience to our players and GMs and are grateful to our community for the quality and volume of constructive and passionate feedback we received.  The rollback is effective now. Wow. I believe that the zoom tool you will develop will be great when you get it ready. I think that part of the issue people experienced was because change was quite large, and came as a surprise. Also, I apologize for my hostility earlier. (And thank you. You handled this situation as PROs.)

Neithef myself or any of my players like this change, especially those who use laptops with Track Pads.  Useless and drove us all crazy.  All my existing Maps became distorted.   Annoying.

Great decision! Just make it opt-in without disturbing existing functionality and thoroughly test it before bringing it live again. I don't mind if a few people would prefer this new way of doing things, as long as it doesn't interfere with my games.

Thank you for reverting this.  

Damn. Pity it got rolled back, the new version was a marked improvement; hopefully it'll return swiftly.

Thank you for being willing to roll back while you take another look at it. Very grateful.

I liked the new version, sad to see so many people had issues it worked perfectly for me. :(

Erik R. said: Damn. Pity it got rolled back, the new version was a marked improvement; hopefully it'll return swiftly. t will probably be back when it's actually ready, let's hope as something opt in that will be invisible except for those who want it.

Cavni said: Yesterday, we released an update to the Zoom tool on Roll20. Our intention was to address user requests by simplifying the existing tool and more closely aligning with modern standards. Unfortunately, the update missed the mark - and more critically, created usability issues for users. As a result, we've decided to roll back the update and revert to the previous version while we continue work on the new Zoom. The code released yesterday is still available on the Dev Server , including yesterday’s hot fixes, for your continued input.  We apologize for the inconvenience to our players and GMs and are grateful to our community for the quality and volume of constructive and passionate feedback we received.  The rollback is effective now. THANK YOU!!! Just in time, too. Thanks for listening to us. Much needed. 

Think you for fixing this. Losing the scroll bars made GMing in roll20 actually impossible for me and I'm glad that they're back now.

Erik R. said: Damn. Pity it got rolled back, the new version was a marked improvement; hopefully it'll return swiftly. Agreed.  I was surprised to see so many people insistent on the laptop mouseless or one button mouse form factor and insisting on manipulating a 70px slider element when they also have significant manual joint pain.  Perhaps one has something to do with the other?  I hope those features come back in some form soon--zooming to the cursor alone, especially on the map sizes my group tends towards, was a tremendous relief!--they finally felt like using a proper graphical program like other ones I've actually paid money for to do work on at my job, and not just a free 2010 vintage Java hack.  

Willie T. said: Erik R. said: Damn. Pity it got rolled back, the new version was a marked improvement; hopefully it'll return swiftly. Agreed.  I was surprised to see so many people insistent on the laptop mouseless or one button mouse form factor and insisting on manipulating a 70px slider element when they also have significant manual joint pain.  Perhaps one has something to do with the other?  I hope those features come back in some form soon--zooming to the cursor alone, especially on the map sizes my group tends towards, was a tremendous relief!--they finally felt like using a proper graphical program like other ones I've actually paid money for to do work on at my job, and not just a free 2010 vintage Java hack.   .

I just wanted to post a 'Thank You!' for the rollback. As for if/when it returns maybe having a way to revert/switch/opt-in/out option Please, there is going to be a few disabled people that the 'new' zoom would cause problems for. So, again, my thanks!!

Rollback was a good call. This was not ready for prime time. Thank you, crew!

Thank you for reverting the changes, dev team. My thoughts on this have been that it doesn't feel like an update; one is not superior to the other. It feels like an alternate control scheme that some people might prefer, but it can't be considered an update to replace one functional control scheme with another. Implement both, I say. Let each decide how they wish to control the map.

Ellen K. said: Thank you for reverting the changes, dev team. My thoughts on this have been that it doesn't feel like an update; one is not superior to the other. It feels like an alternate control scheme that some people might prefer, but it can't be considered an update to replace one functional control scheme with another. Implement both, I say. Let each decide how they wish to control the map. Very well said. I completely agree.

The reversion of the zoom tool update made Roll20 nearly unplayable for myself and one of my players, only 2 showed today so I'm not sure how many others will be affected. The screen randomly zooms in and out and flies around the screen for extended periods of time, and my scroll stick (I use a gamepad instead of a mouse) no longer calmly pans the screen but instead causes the crazy glitching to act up even more severely (same for my player with their mouses scroll wheel). A ton of my game is moving the tokens through the detailed maps I've made, so this is a near game breaking issue as it makes that impossible while it is happening.  I never had any issues with the previous version and found it quite convenient so I'd prefer you put it back. The only thing I like from this one is the +/- buttons, but I'd prefer they be on each end of the little zoom bar that use to be in the upper right. I keep minimized sheets in the bottom right so I don't like it there. I really hope you at least fix the game breaking bugs in it by next week. 

Thank you!

Many thanks for rolling this back so soon. I tested it out yesterday and was having terrible issues on my laptop and was worried for my game this weekend. I do appreciate your updates in general and I believe in the philosophy of continual improvement. Your maturity in admitting your mistake and promptly correcting it is very admirable!  I hope all the bugs and choppy scrolling gets fixed and you end up releasing a great zoom rework that we all enjoy!

I'm super-disappointed that this got rolled back. My group has always hated the scrolling functionality of the mouse wheel on Roll20, so we were very excited when we played on Tuesday and the mouse wheel functionality was changed to zoom. It was also making dungeon building a great deal easier for me. I would really like an option to turn the functionality from Tuesday on in my tabletop.

I think the best would be to have an Opt In thing. I can see that it can be good but those that would like to keep the old version should be able to keep it IMO

There were enough problems with it for most players to warrant a rollback. Note that Roll20 has not said the feature is abandoned, in fact it is still on Dev. I think we will see it again once it is more universally useful.

I just want to add my voice to the list of folks that really look forward to this coming back - obviously opt-in and with the rough edges filed down. The scroll to zoom is much more natural to me for this type of application, and the zoom to cursor has been sorely needed for ages. Personally, I liked the scroll bars being removed, but I can see both sides of the argument for that. I'd never use the toolbar for zooming if I could use the scroll bar, so I have no opinion of the changes made there. Basically, the release was buggy and poorly rolled out, but I think that the hate was from one of two camps - a vocal group of people that genuinely hated it for varied reasons (possibly even a minority following the rule of unhappy people being much more likely to speak up than satisfied people), and those that probably liked the change on paper, but took (understandable) umbrage at the buggyness of the implementation. So, as others have suggested, make it opt-in when you do release it again, leaving the current functionality unmolested for those that don't opt-in, but please don't drop the idea based on the feedback provided in this thread. I'm glad their voices were heard, and their complaints were mostly valid, and the roll back was definitely the right choice here, but I just want it to be understood that there is certainly a significant part of your audience that liked the general direction of the change. Now, are there more important changes that should take precedence over these? Probably, but since the work is mostly done for this one, you may as well fix it up and do it correctly now before the code accumulates too much drift due to other features being implemented that it may have to account for.

Chris P Just curious but where do you see this "significant part of your audience that liked the direction of the change" here or anywhere else please? Have you honestly tried to prep games with large maps and detailed dynamic lighting with this change?  Yes if regular maps and minimal or no Dynamic lighting not as much of a problem , and most importantly MOST of the 4 million users DID NOT see this change when they come in for their weekend gaming or you would have seen a LOT more of WTF posts, and yes a few more I like its to. I see , what 6 or 7 posters saying they like it on here, and a few more in the pro thread over the 100's of no thanks.  Please lets keep this in context of what we have to go with from the posts here. It will be back and as long as there is a FULL opt in or out not a problem for me and all my players, but being forced for a 99.9% unasked for feature when other things could have been worked on and was "promised or Soon"......  Then being told the Legacy option checkbox gets it back to normal when it clearly did not........ Nice and thoughtfull post you have but it seems to be trying to slant things a bit to much in my opinion compared to what the reality is at this point in time. Was there some pile on and any change is a bad change, you bet but most were really upset and broke their game be it as a player or as a GM and as paying or free customers But its always easier to talk this through after the fact and less friction is here so thanks for the post and as most everyone knows Communication is KEY Tom

I don't really see why the zoom was prioritized over SOOO many other things the community is asking for. And it would seem as i would guess that NO ONE asked for anything with zoom lol. 

Tom said: Chris P Just curious but where do you see this "significant part of your audience that liked the direction of the change" here or anywhere else please? ... I see , what 6 or 7 posters saying they like it on here, and a few more in the pro thread over the 100's of no thanks.  Please lets keep this in context of what we have to go with from the posts here. Keeping in mind that it is a fundamental of human behavior that many more people will write to complain than to praise.

Indeed Keith but where is the outcry to bring it back then? And it just plain and simple broke to many games, this is not Google map RPG :), LOL Tom 

I agree with Tom. While its true that more people will stay silent than complain, we have a perfect situation here to look at number of complaints for both opinions - who liked the new zoom and wants it back, and who doesnt't like it (at least as it was presented). I think the people who like it and want it back have valid opinions, but their opinions are all based on convenience: it makes doing some things a bit easier for them. The people who didnt' like it have a substantial proportion of people who reacted for reasons of accessibility: it didnt just make using roll20 worse, it made it much, much worse, and in some cases, impossible or genuinely painful to use. So even if their numbers were smaller (which doesnt seem to be the case, but even if they were), they deserve more weight,

To be clear, I'm not defending the change. I didn't like it either, and am happy for the current reversion. Just pointing out that there were people who did like it, and that the ratio cannot be adequately judged by the number of responses in a public forum. In this case, I think the reasoning behind those responses won the day, not a simple headcount.

Yep, no prob Keith but it is what we have to work with as to numbers, IF it was not changed back and we saw the suggestion thread vote for changing it back go crazy (up or down) and I bet it would have (been up) after this weekend hit and more members here saw this change, then we would have those as well. Post headcount + reasoning as both pointed to a not so good update vs way less "yes I love it" post head count + reasoning, hopefully you can see this is quite telling compared to guestimating Oh most don't post and many who don't post love it but unheard of kind of thing. But for now all is well til they roll it out again in the future, with needless to say with a lot more members eye balling it. Tom

In case you need one more voice on this subject... :-) I'd like an opt-in to the new scroll/pan system. I didn't get a chance to try it before it was pulled. I'd like to give it a try, and see if I like it.  If I do, then I will continue to use it. Otherwise I'll stick with the old system.  The new system sounds good to me. I especially want to right-click pan in ANY tool, not just the SELECT tool.

RSQRD said: I especially want to right-click pan in ANY tool, not just the SELECT tool. +1 This is a great idea for any tool that does not have a right click function already. Switching back and forth to reveal different Fog of War areas would be much less tedious.

RSQRD said: I especially want to right-click pan in ANY tool, not just the SELECT tool. Oooh, yeah! This would be very handy!

error after zoom while playing The zoom while playing has broken down on my IPad, before, I could drag and center after zooming, now I am unable to center my map after zoom while seeing the map making it impossible for me to play; In the link &nbsp;a&nbsp; <a href="https://youtu.be/A5FA4efsy8s" rel="nofollow">https://youtu.be/A5FA4efsy8s</a>&nbsp; video showing the issue; please help I can’t play :(

Just want to join in the voices here saying I'd like it as an "opt in" thing, too. I actually liked the new scrolling. I understand if it's causing accessibility problems, so I get why it's reverted - but opt-in also solves that problem.

Not sure if this is still being worked on... It may just be me, but it looks like the Dev might be missing the localization keys for the zoom feature in the sidebar Settings?

Is this still being worked on in dev, then? It would be really nice to be able to opt in for this. People have been complaining about it for years - alt-scroll goes back a page in firefox, so it'd be really nice to have alternative options that don't use this as the scroll keybind. Kinda sucks to finally get this and then have it taken away immediately when some people kicked up a fuss about the old one. Is opt-in as a feature likely to show up?

You can change the Alt-Scroll behavior in Firefox itself. 1) Type about:config in the Firefox address bar. 2) Search for mousewheel. with_alt. action and change the value from the default 2 (go backward and forward pages) to 1 (scroll within page) or 0 (do nothing). 3) Click the checkmark on the right to save the setting.

Hey everyone! If you're still experiencing issues or have any questions about the recently revamped Zoom Tool update , please direct those to the more recent thread HERE .