I got a bit nervous after the forums went down fearing you would screw things up like 9to5 did. So far the new arrangement seems to be very much improved with no glaring negatives. Hopefully after a day or two it will feel fine again.
Thanks for the update.
Comments
Good, now we have both ends of the spectrum.
Are you talking about 9to5's most recent switch to Vanilla?
Love the new look, nice and modern.
the "screw things up like 9to5 did" might be a reference to the upgrade back in 2001 I think where we lost our post counts.
Dobby.
each post has too much wasted vertical space, meaning less posts visible on screen and more scrolling.
It seems there is about 3 extra blank lines inserted after post text before the quote/reply/etc buttons.
Fix that and it will get my thumbs up.
The advance search has issues as well if you search on user name it only find posting started by that person not all the posting that person contributed on. The advance search in this case is really a basic search.
Found yet another issue with the new forum, when you spell a word wrong firefox highlights the word with a red underline then you right click it an it would give you possible spellings, well if you right click in the new forum it show a pop up that say paste and if you click on it brings up a window that says to paste your text into this window to insert into the message. This is screwed up.
I'm still getting used to the new look and feel of the forums, but here are a few observations:
Either the load times seem to be a bit longer, or the forum application itself is just less responsive than the old one, making it a little more cumbersome to navigate around
I like how the posts are more clearly delineated, but there seems to be an awful lot of empty space at the end of each post
I know ads help to keep the site running, but I'm not fond of the additional 2 box ads before and after the "Currently Viewing" box on the right. They're very "in-your-face" to me. If they were smaller I probably wouldn't mind as much.
I agree about the loading. It seems like four flash ads plus the editor are adding to the load time. I've had very new and fast computers hitching up on scrolling due to the number of flash elements loading and they all seem to hitch up and stop right before the large reply field. Perhap the quick reply could have fewer features and thus less code and folks could go to the more full featured version if they feel the need.
It doesn't seem like we can really do readable quote by quote replies. Also, it doesn't seem like HTML tags work. This is really annoying for me, because I've been used to HTML tags here for 10+ years. I like the WYSIWYG toolbar in the posting box and other visual aspects.
Quote:
Originally Posted by SDW2001
It doesn't seem like we can really do readable quote by quote replies. Also, it doesn't seem like HTML tags work. This is really annoying for me, because I've been used to HTML tags here for 10+ years. I like the WYSIWYG toolbar in the posting box and other visual aspects.
I feel like the whole site is less usable, more cluttered and it feels "broken". I'm sure it'll take some time to clean everything up, but I'm not very happy about these changes as of now. Oh, and the "quote" function suddenly works now... In my last post it didn't work.
UPDATE: It didn't work again on another newer post.
Yeah I love the new look.
Yeah, 9to5 got worst if that is even possible! I don't like the new 9to5 all that much as is (site layout) but I find their new forums to be just terrible.
So far I'm seeing mostly improvements on AI. That is a sign of a well thought out update.
Not at all it is the result of what has happened to the current 9to5 site, especially their forums. The whole thing is a mess right now and performs terribly on my iPad. AI on the other hand actually seems to be snappier if that is possible.
After some of the comments I received after communicating with the staff at 9to5 I really have to wonder if they even have a clue. In one case they tried to defend their use of Flash on a web site supposedly targetted at Apple users. Pretty stupid if you ask me. But this update takes the cake, it performs terribly on my New IPad and is in general pretty messy.
Now don't think I'm not seeing an issue or two here, but honestly they are extremely minor. I believe in being fair so I will note those issues in a separate response in this thread.
Some have complained about the blank space at the end of each posting. Personally I like a little bit of space to delineate individual posts, but this does seem to be just slightly excessive. I wonder if the code is leaving room for a tag line even if one isn't being used. As far as performance goes though this version does seem faster on my iPad. That is probably due to no flash.
One thing that really does bother me is quoting of postings. The entire entry now gets quoted and that leaves us with often more text in the response than we would like. On top of that the layout in the editor box is just plain ugly and difficult to pull out the relevant entry points from. This does need work. My suspicion is it won't be easy to fix either, but a high priority here would be welcomed from the posting users.
Second; taking into account my use of an iPad, forum buttons/links are screwed up. Every button currently requires two taps to do what should happen with one. In between a useless dialog pops up with a bit of text in it. This might be seen as useful if popped up with a different gesture but right now it is highly frustrating for the user. I'm not sure if this is a design error or a programming error but the behavior has no place on an iPad. I haven't breezed through the site on a desktop machine so that is an unknown right now.
I suspect the above two items are teething pains. I've yet to go through personal settings again. It looks like that is a requirement but these two issues I don't see being impacted by personal settings.
Overall though it looks very positive. The forums are nowhere near as screwed up as 9to5's. Oh I like the forums nav bar very much, thanks for that one, it keeps me moving forward.
What specifically is the issue? I know the need to double tap every link and button sucks but I take that as a fixable programming error.
The current behaviors where you are taken back to the forums root page when in a forum is just stupid. I see this on many sites lately and reall have to wonder if the software developers have gone nuts. Consider this use case; you pop up AI after a long day to find a number of interesting articles to read. You read one and want to continue with those thoughts into the forums. You do whatever there and then want to get back to the site root www.appleinsider.com. The convention is that taping a sites logo at the top of the page should do that for you. Instead we end up in no mans land (well the root forums page), that is assinine. I'm not sure what arguement is used to justify this behavior but it certainly docent support common use cases.
That use case is that you read one article, it's comments and then possibly add your own comments before going back to the next article.
Quote:
Originally Posted by wizard69
I got a bit nervous after the forums went down fearing you would screw things up like 9to5 did. So far the new arrangement seems to be very much improved with no glaring negatives. Hopefully after a day or two it will feel fine again.
Thanks for the update.
Wow, I have to totally disagree. This new forum program is totally unpolished and it's a functional step backwards from the one it replaced. Why doesn't it remember the HTML anchor tag like the old one did? If you hit the browser back button after posting you're taken to the top of the page making you scroll down through the posts you already read. It gets even worse if you try to come back with a bookmark later. Dumb for sure. It won't let me use my Mac's spell checker to correct spelling. The CSS leaves a lot to be desired. The quoting function within the posting editor makes it much more difficult to split up a long quote. This is just my opinion and has nothing to do with the program's functionality but it's doesn't even look better.
Quote:
Originally Posted by dobby
Love the new look, nice and modern.
the "screw things up like 9to5 did" might be a reference to the upgrade back in 2001 I think where we lost our post counts.
Dobby.
Hahaha at least it didn't lose my whole account like MacWorld did when they redid their site and MW wouldn't let me recreate a new account using my original user name. I had to go under a new name after a decade of using the original one. Then about six months later the lost account and password magically came back to life. Go Figure!
I don't like the new forums much at all. Spacing is terrible, it looks like it was made for blind people. Everything looks so big and oversized. It is not a showstopper, but it is a step back from the customizable forums you used to have. Also, most of the other complaints above are shared by myself except for the quoting and HTML questions. I have not posted enough in the new forums to know if they are really that bad.s