SPECIAL EDITION OFFICE HOURS: Live Q&A with DC Universe Product Manager, Aric! Thursday, March 25th at 12pm PT/3pm ET!

[Vroom]

I may be eating a tasty chicken and cheese taquito while you do that.

[Row.Harper]

Hi Aric! Thanks for coming! And thank you for everything that you do!

To give you a break from all the technical questions… Would you rather fight one horse sized duck or a hundred duck sized horses?

[Vroom]

@Row.Harper

a hundred duck sized horses

Could one still feed them pieces of bread down by the river, ala duck-sized duckies?

eyes a loaf of Wonder Bread that he doesn’t actually have

[Applejack]

Hi everyone, thank you so much for all your questions! We’ll be getting started here in just a minute

We have Aric for only an hour, but he’ll be getting to as many questions as he can in that time!

[Row.Harper]

Well, I don’t think horses eat bread? So maybe tiny hay bales would work.

[ejdias.95910]

How about baby carrots?

[AYRIC]

Hello! Excited to be back. I’ll do my best to answer your questions

[Vroom]

Tiny hay bales would be adorbs.

looks up Wayne Szalinski in his rolodex

I think he’s still into the miniaturization thing, yeah?

[Applejack]

@Aric

Hello! Excited to be back. I’ll do my best to answer your questions

[Razzzcat]

Hello Aric! Thank you for joining us today! I’ve been curious about this for a while: Would there be a way to possibly expand Kelex tutorials/functionality? And (what I really wanna know) are there any plans to get encyclopedia access (or the community) back into the app? I use it a lot less now.
Hope you are well, and thanks again for being here! Take care.

[AYRIC]

@autumnal_stranger

• What was the motivation behind the switch to the light theme from the dark theme? I know the dark theme is still available on the forums (and use it), but it’s not on the main site area that I can find, and it’s the default when not logged in.
• I use LastPass and am constantly re-logging in, and right now, the community login seems to be the bane of my existence. I’ve been trying to get a good URL to put in the LastPass URL area to open when I click “launch,” but when I leave the SSO parameter in, it’s only good for one time (I assume it must be a single sign-on key, possibly for coordinating logins between community.dcuniverseinfinite.com and dcuniverseinfinite.com) and when I omit it, I still get weird behaviors a lot of the time. Is it possible that we’ll be seeing a more unified experience between dcuniverseinfinite.com and community.dcuniverseinfinite.com in the near future?
• Is there any possibility of custom zoom levels for the desktop reader in the cards? I know that I can zoom in on individual pages, but that only lasts for one page. I have a small Surface Go running Ubuntu that I love to use, but it seems like it gets the worst of both mobile and desktop experiences when using it for DCUI. (It’s actually so small that I can’t even see the controls at the bottom when I click on the page because they get cut off.)
• I gotta come out and ask… why is the search feature so janky? I’ve had so many times when I’ve put in an issue exactly as it’s listed and had it only come up halfway down the page of results, or worse, not at all. It’s particularly annoying when I’m trying to find a specific issue of a longer series, such as Detective Comics, where I can’t just easily go to the series page and scroll to the issue I want.
• Is there any chance we could update the controls so that paging back from the first page of an issue goes to the previous issue? Going to the next page from the last page in an issue offers that option.
• An odd request, but is there any possibility of ever being able to do scheduled posts/comments? While there’s not a huge need for it, there’s a lot of events which start at precise times where it would be nice to be able to schedule a new thread or comment in advance to make sure it goes up at the right time.

Lets start it off here!

1. The motivation in the redesign was to present a brand new experience off of one that was already familiar. This included all new fonts, colors, as well as larger more impactful thumbnails. Dark mode is a feature that is currently available on mobile platforms - iOS and Android.

2. Yes, we are aware of some issues with regard to visiting the community from DC Universe Infinite and are actively identifying with an aim to fix.

3. Great idea! I’ll bring this back to the team.

4. Search, like many aspects of Infinite is a work in progress. We are eager to make the experience better allowing for more “findability” of the content nestled into the service.

5. Another great idea! I’ll bring this one back to the teaM.

6. While we do maintain aspects of the community, specific feature sets are not something that our team handles.

[Razzzcat]

@THE_OneAndOnly_Official_Batman

Biscuits vs Sausage

lol Wait. I thought it was biscuits vs. funnel cake?

[AYRIC]

@KookieSuperApe

Applejack let it slip in Office Hours a couple weeks back that she’s seen some interesting upgrades to the user reading lists feature that are in the pipeline. When might we see these new and improved reading lists roll out?

We are eager to improve the functionality of user lists and have some ideas in the pipeline. Unfortunately, there’s nothing to communicate around timing.

[DickGrayson_TheBoyFriendWonder]

It’s both

[AYRIC]

@HubCityQuestion

But I’d like to know, what’s the weirdest bug you’ve encountered, and how did you resolve it?

Oh man, in software development you encounter all sorts of bugs. A lot of times the challenge is reproducing the issue and then figuring out a potential solve. I don’t recall anything particularly out of the ordinary or “weird” though.

[AYRIC]

@NYJt3

How was it transition form DCU to DCUI?

Thanks for having me! The transition was an exciting opportunity. From a product perspective, DCUniverse had lots of different aspects and avenues for a user to go down. The fun part of DC Universe Infinite was pivoting to a very comic book reading focus. This allowed to cut down on menus and navigational options, while putting great comics in front of y’all!

[Vroom]

puts on his Question Hat

Is there any chance that the community will be re-integrated into the mobile app? Taking it away towards the end of the DCU era was, in many folks’ opinions, not the best decision and has resulted in various inconveniences that have been noted around the community.

Having the community be reintegrated into the mobile app would be highly convenient and highly appreciated.

Thank you.

[AYRIC]

@D4RK5TARZ

Would it be possible to have this menu locked at the top and bottom?

Interesting idea. I’ll bring this back to the product design team to get their thoughts.

[AYRIC]

@DeSade-acolyte

1:
When might we see more complex search queries? For example: I want to search in all titles, except Batman where Riddler appears but Penguin doesn’t. Something like

Title=-Batman +character Riddler -character Penguin

So it’s basically search all titles except Batman and find all issues where Riddler appears but throw out any issues in which Penguin also appears.

2: Any chance we might see the community integrated back into the app?
Since the DCUI launch, the community and the comics feel more disassociated then before, when the community was part of the app. IMO, it takes away some of the sense of fan engagement with the two separated.

Thanks for your questions.

1. Currently DC Universe Infinite allows you to find the books your looking for through Comics Browse which is a filter/tag based solution as well as via Search which is an open text field. We do have some exciting ideas that do aim to improve this experience.

2. Anything is possible! I think one of the biggest advantages of having community exist in a browser vs the app is the ability to toggle back and forth between in-app comic content and a particular thread on the forum without losing your place.

[AYRIC]

@DCrookie

I was wondering if it would be possible to implement a “remove issue/series from dive back in” feature? This would be great for those of us who check an issue of a series they don’t wish to read fully.

Hi There! Nothing currently in progress but thank you for the idea. I’ll share it with the team and see what they think.