ceberlin Posted June 18, 2016 Share Posted June 18, 2016 Was it really necessary to change the forum to this? This is a real down tuner for me. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Craig Posted June 18, 2016 Share Posted June 18, 2016 Hi ceberlin. According to the original post, the upgrade was rather important to do. It's different, yes. And it may take a while to get used to. But it's something that needed doing 5 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
diogo Posted June 18, 2016 Share Posted June 18, 2016 Is it really necessary to be so negative? Pete went through a lot of trouble to make this upgrade, and was very clear on his explanation. Ryan also explained it in the weekly blog post. We are all getting used to the new forum, and I hope you'll bare with us with some more positivity. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ceberlin Posted June 18, 2016 Author Share Posted June 18, 2016 Looking closer at it, the structure is maybe not the problem. It's the choice of colors and opacity. The most important thing are the headlines, they should not be dimmed. That's the main difference with the previous look. Other elements are attention-grabber but have no important function (huge black bars, like buttons that look like facebook buttons). And time will show if the simple question/answer methodology (yes it's trendy) helps. Usually the threads here are much more complex than simple question/answers. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
adrian Posted June 18, 2016 Share Posted June 18, 2016 5 minutes ago, ceberlin said: And time will show if the simple question/answer methodology (yes it's trendy) helps. Usually the thready are much more complex that simple question/answers. The Q&A style is probably going to go away for most boards - it certainly doesn't work for example in the Modules/Plugins board. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ceberlin Posted June 18, 2016 Author Share Posted June 18, 2016 Diego, I am normally a very positive guy. This forum has become a very important tool for me. I need to be able to find things quickly and easily. I was trying to look up a problem I have in the pro modules area and was stuck (which was not because of learning curves). Now the headlines are dimmed (40% or less grayscale??) and unimportant stuff (back TAGS, "who asked"-line, and the green check icons get much more attention.) I have not read the announcement yet (actually I was looking for it an did not find it) and understand that the update was necessary. I think that some setting tweaks with colors and sizes can help a lot already. And it is good to read that the Q&A style is not the final word for every forum (thanks for the info, adrian). 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kongondo Posted June 18, 2016 Share Posted June 18, 2016 If it's the colours and sizes, thankfully those can be tweaked...(just as Ryan will be tweaking the store). So, maybe we could create a dedicated topic where we could gather some constructive feedback for @Pete. It would have to be limited to (mainly) the CSS and not the software per se, since due to various reasons touched on above, we can't go back to the older forum. Mind, I am not saying that everyone's wishes would be enacted but at least it would be one central place to gather feedback :-). 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ceberlin Posted June 18, 2016 Author Share Posted June 18, 2016 kongondo - sounds great. Exactly what I was trying to say (English isn't my first language). Where would be a good place for it? (When I started the thread, I thought only a skin was changed, not the whole software.) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jan Romero Posted June 18, 2016 Share Posted June 18, 2016 Am I the only one who got turned into a spice girl by the upgrade? Somehow it didn’t migrate my latest pic but the one I had up until a couple of weeks ago? 6 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kongondo Posted June 19, 2016 Share Posted June 19, 2016 1 hour ago, ceberlin said: kongondo - sounds great. Exactly what I was trying to say (English isn't my first language). Where would be a good place for it? (When I started the thread, I thought only a skin was changed, not the whole software.) Maybe we could do it right here...but your thread's title would have to be changed Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pwired Posted June 19, 2016 Share Posted June 19, 2016 Quote Is it really necessary to be so negative? Where do you see somebody posting something negative and why do you call it negative where somebody just gives his opinion ? I could tell you why but if you follow the likes in this forum you can see for your self. Quote Pete went through a lot of trouble to make this upgrade, What kind of arguement is that ? Going through a lot of trouble and or spending a lot of hours into something does not guarantee a good result. My opinion is that the new forum look has become visually totally cluttered and over exposed. I can't see anymore where online people are looking in what channels in the forum or who is currently reading in a thread like before. If I now hover over an online name the bottom of the popup disappears under the taskbar. The old forum look was clear, without fancy stuff and functional where it needed to be. What now happened with the forum upgrade will eventually also happen with processwire: pumped up with fancy stuff and Apple look a like styles. Status Quo rules everywhere. Am I being negative here or trying again to give my unbiased objective opinion ? 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
horst Posted June 19, 2016 Share Posted June 19, 2016 sorry, but the most things are where they were before, at least it is how it looks to me. what taskbar are you talking about? can you please post a screenshot? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kongondo Posted June 19, 2016 Share Posted June 19, 2016 31 minutes ago, pwired said: Where do you see somebody posting something negative and why do you call it negative where somebody just gives his opinion ? I could tell you why but if you follow the likes in this forum you can see for your self. What kind of arguement is that ? Going through a lot of trouble and or spending a lot of hours into something does not guarantee a good result. My opinion is that the new forum look has become visually totally cluttered and over exposed. I can't see anymore where online people are looking in what channels in the forum or who is currently reading in a thread like before. If I now hover over an online name the bottom of the popup disappears under the taskbar. The old forum look was clear, without fancy stuff and functional where it needed to be. What now happened with the forum upgrade will eventually also happen with processwire: pumped up with fancy stuff and Apple look a like styles. Status Quo rules everywhere. Am I being negative here or trying again to give my unbiased objective opinion ? Please, let's get our facts straight. There are no plans to make ProcessWire bloated! In fact, the opposite is true... Pete did not design the new forum. It is a third-party software. All (I say all...it took him months to get to where we are) Pete did was to try and tweak the styles to closely resemble the main ProcessWire site. He has also tried his best to remove stuff not needed and make stuff we use often to be close at hand (+ of course made sure there was no data loss during the upgrade). Other things come with the territory...Pete did not create 'the visual clutter'. That's the way the new version of the forum software looks like. Are things perfect? No, some things will still need tweaking (like the Q/A style forums). Was the upgrade necessary? Definitely (read the posts linked to above)... Please let's be as specific as possible about 'missing stuff' and any other anomalies. 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tpr Posted June 19, 2016 Share Posted June 19, 2016 After the update the forum is much slower here on mobile, but maybe my phone is slow. I hope the conversion is still running so that's why its slower. What bugs me more is that headlines link to first post and not to the last. Is there a setting to change this? Clicking the last comment date links there but it's inconvenient. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
diogo Posted June 19, 2016 Share Posted June 19, 2016 4 hours ago, pwired said: Where do you see somebody posting something negative and why do you call it negative where somebody just gives his opinion ? I could tell you why but if you follow the likes in this forum you can see for your self. What kind of arguement is that ? Going through a lot of trouble and or spending a lot of hours into something does not guarantee a good result. My opinion is that the new forum look has become visually totally cluttered and over exposed. I can't see anymore where online people are looking in what channels in the forum or who is currently reading in a thread like before. If I now hover over an online name the bottom of the popup disappears under the taskbar. The old forum look was clear, without fancy stuff and functional where it needed to be. What now happened with the forum upgrade will eventually also happen with processwire: pumped up with fancy stuff and Apple look a like styles. Status Quo rules everywhere. Am I being negative here or trying again to give my unbiased objective opinion ? The title of the thread is pretty negative to me (and i don't want to insist on this because I'm not sure anymore, but I'm pretty sure the original post was edited to be lighter). Anyway, ceverlin already explained his reasons, and I think we are all in peace with it. As for your unbiased opinions, I've learned with time to not give them much credit. 6 minutes ago, tpr said: After the update the forum is much slower here on mobile, but maybe my phone is slow. I hope the conversion is still running so that's why its slower. What bugs me more I that headlines link to first post and not to the last. Is there a setting to change this? Clicking the last comment date links there but it's inconvenient. You can change that in your activity streams... I'm on mobile, so for now I can't be more specific. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pwired Posted June 19, 2016 Share Posted June 19, 2016 Quote what taskbar are you talking about? can you please post a screenshot? See the screenshot, bottom of popup stays under the windows taskbar, this never happened to me with the old forum setup. Also the popup doesn't show like before where in the forum a member is active reading or searching. The bottom of a thread didn't show anymore who is currently reading the thread but seems to work now. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mike Rockett Posted June 19, 2016 Share Posted June 19, 2016 (edited) @pwired - That isn't happening on my side; also using Firefox... Edited June 19, 2016 by Mike Rockett Switch to mention. That's better. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
adrian Posted June 19, 2016 Share Posted June 19, 2016 @pwired - do the tooltips always appear below the user for you? It only happens for me if I have my browser viewport set to a really small height such that they can't fit above. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mike Rockett Posted June 19, 2016 Share Posted June 19, 2016 @adrian - I must say, I like the fact that we finally have a mentions system. No need to quote all the time and bloat up threads. 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pwired Posted June 19, 2016 Share Posted June 19, 2016 24 minutes ago, adrian said: @pwired - do the tooltips always appear below the user for you? It only happens for me if I have my browser viewport set to a really small height such that they can't fit above. Yes the tooltip always appears below the name of a member and the bottom gets under the taskbar. See my screenshot above. Resizing my browser window to any other size does not change it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ceberlin Posted June 19, 2016 Author Share Posted June 19, 2016 (edited) Commercial forum makers are under a brutal competition right now. In the first place with Facebook. So they add features over features to make their stuff more facebookish. One of the use cases where a classic forum is far superior from Facebook is a software support board like this one. The old forum usability was my reference (it was that good!) when setting up my own (xenforo) Forums. The new skin should have all tools on board to get us there again, if we want. (I am not talking about needed learning curves for users, or taste things). I try to focus on usability questions for the speficic needs of a technical support forum. To sum up where we are: No one is denying the fact that it is crucial to keep a forum as up-to-date as possible, for security and support reasons alone. So this step is appreciated! If Pete was not praised enough for doing this step (99% of the really hard work is under the hood and cannot bee seen): A big thank you from us here! I see that it can be seen as "negative" if a first comment is about usability (I was really shocked) and not about the big improvements under the surface. Where some of us agree is that the "Q&A" setup is not suitable for some of the forums, as we use them up to now. Where some of us agree is that (a) the skin (css in the first place) could need a closer look and (b) this should be no big technical problem. There I would like the discussion to continue. - This is, where everyone agrees. I will use this afternoon to be more precise with my wishes. For example: Make navigational elements (headlines, breadcrumbs, search fields) very prominent. Make clutter (location of a member, tags, starter of a thread) less prominent. Small changes can have big effects to bring back the cleanness and usability of the old forum look. Edited June 19, 2016 by ceberlin 4 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pwired Posted June 19, 2016 Share Posted June 19, 2016 Now that's what I am talking about Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LostKobrakai Posted June 19, 2016 Share Posted June 19, 2016 I especially found the frontpage forum overview to be a visual mess. Giving a fast overview does work different. The "explore questions" thing in some subforums (Q&A style ones I think) is also taking up way to much space imho. This might work as a sidebar element, but not above the actual content. Also the modules forum does suffer a lot in readability because of duplicated tags. I think everything else might really work out over time. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mr-fan Posted June 19, 2016 Share Posted June 19, 2016 ...if i'm honest i was a little bit overwhelmed and lost, too. But for me is not really the platform itself important...ok performance and some things are but the really important thing is....the people who are running this are already here And with that community such optical things like the right balanced CSS and colours are only a question of time - to get changed in the right manner and style! Since this is more a opinion topic, this is mine. Regards mr-fan 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mike Rockett Posted June 19, 2016 Share Posted June 19, 2016 11 minutes ago, mr-fan said: And with that community such optical things like the right balanced CSS and colours are only a question of time - to get changed in the right manner and style! With the re-brand, this will be more important when the new site is launched. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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