Official feedback thread for new forum design (beta version)!

[David Lundblad]

Re: Official feedback thread for new forum design!

I'm not sure why, but opening my notifications brings me to the notification page, but in the old forum format, not a new one.

So this is because we are doing one template at a time on the new skin It will take us another week or two to get them all looking right. There are SOOOOO many different pages in VB

 

[Blackcash]

Re: Official feedback thread for new forum design!

I made the mistake of clicking on the link to take a look at the new forums. Not liking the new design and it won't let me revert back to the old one.

 

[Azensun]

Re: Official feedback thread for new forum design!

Re the WC forum changes:
Using IE11, WC did load, but it was blank, except for placeholders. Big, boxed graphics showed up but nothing else.

The AC design took two tries to login and one extra click to show the new design

Using Edge, it only took one try to load, and one try to login. Hmm, I see a pattern! Both AC and WC loaded without a problem.

I love the dark theme.

 

[Bryant White]

Re: Official feedback thread for new forum design!

The "light" theme on Windows Central forum, i hate the blue background color, worst are the gray letter on it. On android central it looks much nicer the light theme. The "dark" theme on the other hand is great.

 

[Phil Nickinson]

Re: Official feedback thread for new forum design!

David: Sidebar blocks styling properly?
(Chrome 55 on OSX, no ad-blocker)

 

[David Lundblad]

Re: Official feedback thread for new forum design!

Sidebar blocks are super broken and in the process of being replaced. We may actually be seeing the mid-change effect right now!

 

[David Lundblad]

Re: Official feedback thread for new forum design!

The layout could make better use of screen real estate on desktop monitors. The fixed width layout combined with the increased font size in the new design causes more scrolling than necessary.

I'll look into this for sure - one solution for you now is to click away the right sidebar using the little arrow in top right.

 

[pkcable]

Re: Official feedback thread for new forum design!

Sorry, but if this "modern", dumbed-down design which displays two messages at a time on a 24" screen will become the new norm, I think I'll stop visiting these forums altogether. It's a disaster, as is "modern", "responsive" etc. design in general. I can't figure out how is displaying less information and requiring a user to scroll five times more beneficial in any way.

The unproductive way to give feedback!

There's a little too much space in between messages for my taste. and a little too much blank space on the left and right of each message. I do like the "chat" look to it.

The same feedback, BUT in a said in a productive way!






It's not hard folks! Be part of the solution NOT the problem. I didn't quote it, but Matty provided some excellent feedback a couple pages back also!

 

[anon(9072051)]

Re: Official feedback thread for new forum design!

Initial comments after first five minutes:

I actually prefer the blue text and font style of the "old" format. The new font seems a little too wide, and the black text seems kind of drab in comparison.

If possible, it would be nice to see all of the "sticky" items collected in their own box, like the sub-forums.

I realize the repeated envelope icon of the old format seems like a waste because the icon isn't actionable, but replacing it with a giant numeral re. replies without identifying what that number is seems distracting. (It also seems like a half-hearted design change: there's no reason a big sqaure has to be the first item on the left for each thread.) And anyone truly OCD is going to freak over those numerals bouncing all over the place instead running serially like normal whole numbers: 1, 2, 3, ....

Granted, it may be more "Nougat" to eliminate grid lines at the micro level, but I prefer them myself. The "clean" approach strikes me as a dopey cheat because we still go the extra inch to distinguish listed items in print, whether they're in tables or not. In fact, we're probably more likely to use tables or horizontal rules in print documents for that very reason. Obvious boundaries are useful visual information.

But a dark theme is always a good idea!

 

[manicottiK]

Proposals to improve the touch interface

I would like the new design to be more touch friendly in four areas:

1. The large button-like icon to the left of forum names should be clickable/tappable to enter the forum. (Double-clicking marks the forum read, but there's no function for a single click/tap.)
   
2. The "subscribe" and "rss" buttons to the right of forum names are very small and close together, making it difficult to tap the intended one. Given the available width, we'd be well served by putting the non-tappable statistics side-by-side to create vertical space, which would allow the tappable icons to be doubled in size and separated by some space. This takes no additional screen real estate, but makes the functions more accessible.
   Current mouse-oriented layout:
   
   Proposed touch-oriented layout:
   
   
3. As with #1 above, the large button-like message count block to the left of thread names should be clickable/tappable to enter the discussion.
   
4. The current “go to first unread” icon (at the far right next to the date/time) is just 10px by 12px and touches another tappable link that’s 50% taller and much wider. This makes it very difficult to tap the icon to continue in a thread that I’ve already been reading.
   
5. The replies count "button" on the left can be sliced into two medium-sized buttons that are tap targets that get the user to the first message or the first unread message. The mock-up below isn’t great (the divider isn't centered, the labels don't indicate what these numbers mean, etc.), but it shows a direction that addresses the two items above. If getting the unread count is challenging, the lower box could simply be the word "New", the word "Unread", or a larger version of the arrow that’s currently used to get to the first unread message.
   Current mouse-oriented layout:
   
   Proposed touch-oriented layout:
   

 

[SteelGator]

Re: Official feedback thread for new forum design!

Hmm, not really a fan of the new design for the following reasons:

1. Pale blue background with white comment boxes over it is not very visually appealing. Ditto for the pale beige quote boxes.
2. The quote, reply, and like buttons are now small icons without words. Also where did the multi-quote button go?
3. Now have to click the green circle next to the heart icon to see who liked a post


6. New "Your menu" bar combines what was two separate areas (user account info and trending now/unanswered threads/etc.) in the process losing Top forums, Member Shoutouts, and forum search/advanced search options. It also now requires an extra click (ex. on down arrow next to it) to get to Participated, Subscribed, My Threads, etc.

Hopefully there will be an option to stay/revert to the current design when the new one goes live as I think it has a cleaner more straightforward functional design.

This does a nice job of capturing a few points that I agree with. The Multi quote button is very useful, I hope that it makes it back in.

I like seeing how liked a post by default. After clicking the green circle to reveal this info, the white box with the user names for likes is distracting in the dark theme.

Speaking of the dark theme, the way to enable it is less than intuitive.

On the positive side
I do think the new design is visually more appealing. It does take up more space while giving slightly less info and requires more scrolling.

Page loading is much faster, which is great!

 

[SteelGator]

Re: Official feedback thread for new forum design!

Ehhh... whut? when I post something the time stamp translates out to UTC + 1? As opposed to using the time zone that I've previously specified in my profile/passport and translating that, or using a commonly accepted standard, such as UTC/GMT or Eastern Time?

This has been broken for me for a while. It is frustrating, but I have given up on it being fixed.

 

[pkcable]

Re: Official feedback thread for new forum design!

This does a nice job of capturing a few points that I agree with. The Multi quote button is very useful, I hope that it makes it back in.

I like seeing how liked a post by default. After clicking the green circle to reveal this info, the white box with the user names for likes is distracting in the dark theme.

Speaking of the dark theme, the way to enable it is less than intuitive.

On the positive side
I do think the new design is visually more appealing. It does take up more space while giving slightly less info and requires more scrolling.

Page loading is much faster, which is great!

There is a newer way to multi quote now, you can highlight the text in any post and a quote button will popup that you can click on and this will sent JUST that highlighted text to the quick reply box, and you can do this in multiple posts, OR in multiple parts of any post. It's much more robust and better than the old multiquote button was! (I didn't know about it either until another volunteer turned me on to it!)

 

[SteelGator]

Re: Official feedback thread for new forum design!

The post a message page theme is not consistent. Visually, pretty jarring actually.



The upload menu is also from the old design and sticks out.

 

[Mirko935]

Re: Official feedback thread for new forum design!

The unproductive way to give feedback!

True that, it was an instant and, I admit, probably a bit inappropriate reaction. But I think it's still quite clear what I meant. Large fonts, reduction of visible content quantity, huge pointless empty spaces, terrible use of available screen estate, all typical of modern web design are IMO steps in a terribly wrong direction and I don't understand where does the incentive for such design come from. Is the average web-user suddenly 90 years old and can't read unless a page displays text in an inch-high font?

Btw, this is what I'd say a forum should look like. Bug Online Forum
Small avatars, small fonts, large amount of information available just by glancing around with no need for suprluous scrolling just to read a couple of posts in a thread.

Unfortunately, days of such web-design seem to be numbered.

 

[Grey_girl]

Re: Official feedback thread for new forum design!

I'm liking the way the posts in the thread come up - very clean look. However, the ads along the right edge all have different sized white backgrounds against the light blue main field. The white is ok, but the different sizes looks a little sloppy. (I'm on Windows, using Chrome, with the regular theme).

 

[Indistinguishable]

Re: Official feedback thread for new forum design!

Dark theme is amazing! Only complaint is that the purple font for Ambassadors is pretty hard to read when in Dark Theme. This is true for a couple other colors as previous posts have mentioned.

 

[SteelGator]

Re: Official feedback thread for new forum design!

There is a newer way to multi quote now, you can highlight the text in any post and a quote button will popup that you can click on and this will sent JUST that highlighted text to the quick reply box, and you can do this in multiple posts, OR in multiple parts of any post. It's much more robust and better than the old multiquote button was! (I didn't know about it either until another volunteer turned me on to it!)

Nice, that works well, though not as intuitive as it could be.

Maybe y'all could pull together tips and tricks thread to capture some of these changes so folks can get up to speed on the new way to do things.

 

[David Lundblad]

Re: Official feedback thread for new forum design!

Initial comments after first five minutes

great suggestions, thank you!

 

[SteelGator]

Re: Official feedback thread for new forum design!

Read vs. Unread

I like the fact the the Thread Count Box is a different color on the light theme to help distinguish, though I'd probably increase the difference a bit to make it even more clear.

On the dark theme, I am unable to perceive a difference if one exists. I would like to see that added to the dark theme, the unread count in red to the side is not as quick and easy to see. Also, I think somebody mentioned it, but the particular red in use in a little garish.