The New Forums Are Just Awful

sdw2001 · December 12, 2015 1:07AM

I'm sorry to be so negative, but as a member here since January of 2000 (pre-blackout), I just have to give this honest feedback.

The appearance of the forums is the worst design I've ever seen. Everything is grey except the obnoxious default avatars. The lack of horizontal dividers makes reading topics impossible. The same applies to scrolling through posts. Everything runs together. I was about to post a screenshot, but surprise...the image failed to upload. I was trying to post on Chrome for windows today, and it was impossible to click on anything except the quoted portion of the post...meaning my post appeared inside the reply-quote box. Doing pretty much anything is not intuitive. Commenting on article seems like an absolute chore. You can't tell where anything is, where posts start and end, etc. Then, we had the obnoxious password reset dialog following us around for days.

Here is a screenshot from 2012: https://web.archive.org/web/20120106004401/http://forums.appleinsider.com/

It's readable, functional and relatively bug free.

Here's 2005: https://web.archive.org/web/20050205051654/http://forums.appleinsider.com/

Seriously, compare those to what we're seeing here. Please...PLEASE reconsider. The level of discussion has already plummeted over the past five years. This redesign certainly can't help.

sdw2001 · December 12, 2015 1:08AM

And how the hell do I edit my post?

tallest skil · December 12, 2015 3:07AM

sdw2001 said:

And how the hell do I edit my post?

It's the little gear at the top right.

sdw2001 · December 12, 2015 1:54PM

sdw2001 said:

And how the hell do I edit my post?

tallest skil said:

sdw2001 said:

And how the hell do I edit my post?

It's the little gear at the top right.

Don't see that anywhere

sdw2001 · December 12, 2015 1:55PM

Actually now I do, but not on the original post?

tallest skil · December 12, 2015 3:43PM

sdw2001 said:

Actually now I do, but not on the original post?

We only get a four hour window to edit posts now.

sdw2001 · December 14, 2015 2:45PM

Looks like they fixed a lot of the problem all of a sudden. Much better organization and readability.

spamsandwich · December 14, 2015 2:50PM

sdw2001 said:

Looks like they fixed a lot of the problem all of a sudden. Much better organization and readability.

Isn't this new look the mockup that Tallest Skil made?

melodyof1974 · December 17, 2015 3:27AM

From the homepage, I read a story and want to read the comments and I am sent to the forum. That is fine, but this is a new URL and I want to get back to the homepage. How do I do that without typing in the URL again or hit the back button over and over and over and over again......

michael scrip · December 17, 2015 7:22AM

Do notifications work? Or if they do... how do they work?

Can someone quote/reply to this comment to test if I get a notification somewhere?

I find that it's not very fun being a forum member anywhere if you cannot keep track of things.

Engadget also had a redesign recently... and I've noticed that the amount comments there have plummeted. People don't engage if the experience is bad.

edited December 2015

tallest skil · December 17, 2015 3:56PM

SpamSandwich said:
Isn't this new look the mockup that Tallest Skil made?

I made a mockup?

michael scrip said:

Can someone quote/reply to this comment to test if I get a notification somewhere?

Comment quoted.

@michael scrip Name referenced.

EDIT: Okay, it won’t let me actually reference your name since it has a space.

edited December 2015

jsnively · December 17, 2015 4:57PM

@michael scrip Name referenced.

EDIT: Okay, it won’t let me actually reference your name since it has a space.

@"michael scrip"

Like that.

edit: hrmm that displays wrong, but i think it should still ping.

@"michael scrip"
Make sure you have your notification settings set properly.

edited December 2015

tallest skil · December 17, 2015 7:50PM

jSnively said:
Make sure you have your notification settings set properly.

Image: http://forums.appleinsider.com/uploads/editor/sj/gg2bmgb9ayp0.jpg

“And we all move up in rank...”

spamsandwich · December 17, 2015 8:04PM

tallest skil said:

SpamSandwich said:
Isn't this new look the mockup that Tallest Skil made?

I made a mockup?
Comment quoted.

@michael scrip Name referenced.

EDIT: Okay, it won’t let me actually reference your name since it has a space.

Sorry, TS. It must've been Soli who made the mockup.

michael scrip · December 17, 2015 10:21PM

jSnively said:

@michael scrip Name referenced.

EDIT: Okay, it won’t let me actually reference your name since it has a space.

@"michael scrip"

Like that.

edit: hrmm that displays wrong, but i think it should still ping.

@"michael scrip"
Make sure you have your notification settings set properly.

Ok... I turned on all the notifications. Hopefully I get something.

Will the space in my name cause problems?

It didn't on the "old" system

tallest skil · December 17, 2015 10:26PM

SpamSandwich said:
Sorry, TS. It must've been Soli who made the mockup.

Oh, I’m not saying you’re wrong. I couldn’t remember it even if I had.

iqatedo · December 19, 2015 6:17AM

Has the ignore list gone? Please, no, the hundreds I had on my list I do not want back.

jsnively · December 30, 2015 5:06AM

iqatedo said:

Has the ignore list gone? Please, no, the hundreds I had on my list I do not want back.

Ignore lists were added back in tonight. We have not yet gotten around to importing old ignore lists, and I honestly am not sure if we will. I suspect most people only have a handful or so of ignored users, so it won't be that big of an issue for most.

You can edit your ignore list here, or you can ignore any individual user from their profile page by clicking the little person icon in the top-right next to the message icon and selecting ignore. NOTE: this will hide their POSTS completely. It will not stop you from seeing that they have the most recent post in a thread or they were quoted or anything like that.

tallest skil · December 30, 2015 7:36AM

Will the site truncate quotes made by ignored users? I recall that being a gripe from people who use their ignore lists.

jupiterone · March 5, 2016 3:40PM

Not sure where to post this but I have a question. After some (not all) comments I see this: "and 4 others" or "and 1 other". What's up with that? What does it mean? The numbers don't match up with Likes/Dislikes so it can't be that....

marvin · March 5, 2016 5:31PM

jupiterone said:

Not sure where to post this but I have a question. After some (not all) comments I see this: "and 4 others" or "and 1 other". What's up with that? What does it mean? The numbers don't match up with Likes/Dislikes so it can't be that....

There was an icon view before that showed the avatars of who voted a post up/down but it only showed 10 icons. If the combined up/down votes is more then 10, it shows 'and x others' where x is the remainder. 12 up 6 down = 18 would show 'and 8 others'. The icons were removed (possibly to make the mobile site cleaner) but not that extra message, which is probably controlled by a script somewhere.

The New Forums Are Just Awful

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