I have asked the lead designer, Tango, to provide some "dev diary" style thoughts on the design, implementation, and future thoughts. You can read their message below.
Next, let’s go through a couple of the new features you'll see.Tango wrote: We wanted to bring VA into the age of modern responsive web design, but without losing all its charm that came with its age that we have all grown used to over the years. It would have been easy to do a complete 're-brand' since the whole foundation of the frontend development was gutted and rebuilt from the ground up using more modern technologies and design practices. But! Would it still have felt like VA?
Thusly! We aimed to update the more iconic elements and mingle them with brand new elements that pulled more color from the Starter Banner. Old VA was very monotone and flat, and was missing key things that made it accessible to all audiences. Some of these things are visual, and some are for the non-visual. The updated UI had a focus of making VA more A11Y & mobile friendly which was largely lacking previously. A color language was defined to help make elements more intuitive and visible at a glance, as well as make interacting with them require less of a precision click, and were made in a range that provides more visual depth than the old Latte theme while still remaining, on average, roughly equivalent in the tonal range. There are brighter spots and there are darker spots, but ultimately the decision to remain on the brighter side for the default theme just fit with classic VA.
This is not the end of updating the UI either. We have launched it as it is because the complete rework of the frontend makes for development of new features easier. There are still things on our list to include, such as pagination in boxes and theme options, but releasing this will allow us to make use of the cleaner environment instead of having to duplicate it on the old and then integrate with this new one ^^
This is a living project that will grow and change as VA needs and we hope the community will continue providing their feedback and suggestions as we continue to polish and enhance with new features.
When in the GTS, you will only see a maximum of 30 adopts in a single trade, with the message "There are more adoptables than shown. Offer on trade to view the full list."
Also, the gender of the adopts in the GTS is now being shown immediately again, making it easier to find what you look for.
"What about mobile-friendly clicking?" I hear you ask. Well, let me tell you that double-tapping your screen to zoom is no longer an issue on VA 3.0, so you should be able to click in the CE on mobile devices pretty comfortably now without zooming in and out accidentally!
For all you completionists out there, you can now see in the improved Pokédex how much you have completed already. A handy percentage count can now be seen at the top of the chosen dex.
Talking about the improved dex, there is now a slider for easily switching between regular or shiny form of a Pokémon. And speaking of forms, you can now easily see and click on different forms, if a Pokémon has more than one. *happy Shellos noises*
Have you forgotten how to evolve a certain Pokémon? The Pokédex page will now give you a hint, what kind of condition you need to fulfill.
Ever had the situation of going to sleep and when you woke up, the Daycare had an egg ready for you to pick up, and the bar was already halfway full again? But since you didn't pick up the egg while you were sleeping, it couldn't produce a new one. Those times are gone! Introducing the Daycare Incubator which can carry up to three eggs, so you won't have to worry about missing one or two overnight.
Another small QoL change is that you now see how many items of a certain kind you already own, when buying in the Mart. And there are so many more Quality of Life changes for you to discover...
