Sorry to see I can’t keep my current signature, or I can keep it but not update it…
I know moving to a new forum will always bring some startup problems. Previous (custom) functionality has to be reinstated, link locations have been moved, etc. Some will just require the users to get used to them, the rest I hope they get fixed soon :).
Can you ask them to stop wasting so much space on a typical widescreen monitor too, only about 40% of the width of the page is used for post text which is actually the important part of a forum, not the other stuff.
Given how little room the actual posts get, can you ask them about making quoting less bloated, there is generally no need on forums to include the quotes of quotes of quotes etc rather than just the specific post you are replying to.
Another issue for them to look into, if you click quote, there appears to be no way to remove that quote from your next post even if you decide not to comment on the post other than manually deleting the entire quote which then leaves a single line of empty quote box in the post instead. After further checking, deleting the quote doesn’t help matters because if you then quote somebody else their quote gets nested inside that first one and you are only able to type inside the first quote.
The font of quoted messages is too large. It’s like double the size of regular font.
Also, I really dislike the vertical space usage (desktop browser experience). The blue banner with stats above the post and white banner with ‘toolbar options’ below a post are all irrelevant when you’re browsing through a topic (same goes for signatures, but as that was already in place and already kept ‘low’ I don’t mind as much).
This makes the vspace go like:
Margin
Blue banner
Blue banner
(relevant text)
(relevant text)
(relevant text)
Sig
Sig
Toolbar
Toolbar
Margin
Blue banner
Blue banner
Quote
Quote
Quote
Quote
Quote
(relevant text)
Sig
Sig
Toolbar
Toolbar
Margin
See what I mean?
Furthermore, is there an ‘Active topics’ feature? I can’t seem to find one, but on the old forums this was my #1 way of navigating the forums… The ‘Activity’ list is useless, who cares about who updated their profile pic or earned a comment badge :p.
Quite indifferent on the change. It is something I’ll get used to eventually.
BUT!!
What I used the most in the old forum was the view unread/new posts button. That was really handy to check any topics I would be interested in instead of running around checking each sub forum
I´ll put it bluntly… HATE the new forum… at least the typography color, thay soft-grey over with… is just a PAIN in my eyes. Please, make the letter a bit darker, it will greatly thankful
The “Off topic” is just going to be used as a dislike, so why not reintroduce it.
And do we really need to see how many topics are available for topics on the main page in such large type? We’re going to a particular area already, the only people who need to see this are statisticians.
Will Featured Topics have any controversality, like OML recently, or will they just be anouncements? Name them correctly if theyre not
And also, if you are reading comments down a page and click on a post to view a link, you have to scroll up to the top to “ok leaving the site”. Surely this can be changed…
Cool URIs don’t break. This is the golden rule of the internet. All of the forum threads I have bookmarked? They look like this:
The forum is currently unavailable due to scheduled migration over to the new forum. Thank you for your patience.
I didn’t even realize the forum migration was done because I was looking at one of the subforums rather than the home page.
Tiny fonts stopped being in vogue 6 years ago. Low vision is the probably most common disability among internet users. I’m not just talking about the blind, but people who are as young as in their 40s that don’t see as well as they used to. Combine this with the poor contrast between the content text and the background and you’ve got a real losing combination.
Like everyone else, I come here to read the content, not look at oversized banners that take up half of my screen’s real estate.
Responsive Design, ever heard of it? It’s not just for collapsing 2-column layouts into a single layout for narrow viewports. Stacking all of the content vertically is incredibly lazy and does not take advantage of horizontal space that’s available in landscape oriented viewports (ie. desktop). Because long lines cause eye fatigue, making content sprawl across the entire width of the viewport decreases usability. If you have the extra space, you’re better off making the content multi-column when it makes sense to do so (eg. author, post metadata, etc.).
People universally hate change. If you’re going to do it, make sure you’re actually making things better. Some of the changes are pretty tone deaf.