I just wanted to say that it’s not incredibly obvious that there is a new forum, the announcement thread doesn’t particularly stand out. And then I found it quite difficult to find my way to the new forum. I hadn’t noticed the log in button right away and when you click on “Ask” all you can see is information about buying shirts from Zazzle. It would be helpful to at least have a mention of the forum there informing people that it’s only visible if you’ve logged in.
As someone who only glances at the newest posts, I do like the new layout. Though I do wish that the original post was always visible, rather than having to view previous comments to see it.
<As someone who only glances at the newest posts, I do like the new layout. Though I do wish that the original post was always visible, rather than having to view previous comments to see it.>
One of the disadvantages of the old system - we have control over how the new one behaves. It’s a really good move and is endlessly customisable, unfortunately for the developer, whose work will never end…! As long as he’s being paid
Is there a way to get the list of replies on any given thread to show with the most recent at the top? I realise that I’m probably might missing something that’s obvious & simple to others, but is one supposed to have to scroll through to the bottom to see the latest comments?
Not the same query as Annie’s but in the same territory, I think.
annie - that’s an excellent point, thanks. I’ll put it on the list.
kime - not right now, but I miss that too (I use the old forum with most recent on the top, too). Whatever the solution, there definitely has to be something done about the fact that the threads open at the very start every time.
I think the best solution is for Ask to take unloggedin users to a log-in page, with the second navbar still there - so the option to see stuff about Bootcamp etc without logging in will still be there, but the prompt/explanation will be there to trigger log in.
Changing order of the posts - that gets my ‘options’ antenna up, Ifan! - if we’re opening just the latest 8 replies, it’s never going to be much of a scroll to the last one, is it? I do rather like Annie’s idea about having the OP showing, though - and the blue options directly underneath it?
Do you still want it to show the latest 8 even if there are more than 8 unread? I still really, really want some way to either open at the first unread post, or else highlight the unread ones so that I can at least see where they are.
At the moment, every time I click on one of the green threads on the left, my course of action is to scroll right to the bottom, then move upwards skimming posts and trying to remember if I recognise one of them, then read down from there.
As for Ask and the forum, wouldn’t it be easier to just show the forum button all the time, so people can see it’s there, and clicking on it triggers a log-in page if you’re not logged in?
Kinetic said: At the moment, every time I click on one of the green threads on the left, my course of action is to scroll right to the bottom, then move upwards skimming posts and trying to remember if I recognise one of them, then read down from there.
Yes! Me too!
Kinetic also said: As for Ask and the forum, wouldn’t it be easier to just show the forum button all the time, so people can see it’s there, and clicking on it triggers a log-in page if you’re not logged in?
Yes! A permanent button on all pages, so you have easy access to the forum from anywhere on the site. Brilliant idea!
Cwestiwn arall i ti Ifan…
… The edit/delete options on the top-right corner - do they have a time limit on when they can be used?
Just on the post I made above, it’s there ready to use (as it was on this post as I’ve just used it to add this bit in!), but on another post I made a few hours ago it’s not there!
I only noticed this after finding a word missing on is particular post (my error!) and tried to correct it, but found I couldn’t!
Haven’t seen anyone comment on this, but every time I select a new thread on the left, the left column resizes by a few pixels briefly, then goes back to the previous size. It’s visually jarring, and makes you think that something has changed in the left-hand column, when most likely it has not. The ideal would be that only the right-hand column changes, and the left twitches not a muscle
Ah. just tried it again, and what happens is that the left column doesn’t resize, but shifts over a few pixels while the right is loading, then shifts back when the right-column content is refreshed.
On the old forum, the topics were separated by categories. I thought that made it easy to find applicable information and keep things from getting too muddled. Is this still a function on the new forum?
Re: the left-column issue mentioned two back… I was going to tell you it was Safari, but oddly, so far, it only happens to me on the one computer (a laptop). I tried it on another Mac, and it’s working great (no shiftiness). I’ll see if I can reproduce it anywhere else.
I was going to tell you it was Safari, but oddly, so far, it only happens to me on the one computer (a laptop). I tried it on another Mac, and it’s working great (no shiftiness).
It most likely has to do with the width of the browser window. On narrower windows behavior can be a bit wonky. Your laptop is probably lower resolution, so it happens there.
Kinetic: Try making your browser window narrower and see if you can produce it that way.
Wow. I was just looking for this thread to report a similar issue to Jeff. Every time I was clicking on a title in the left hand column, it was jumping up one box. So I would click on the 7th box down, for instance, and the whole column wopuld jumps so that while my cursor would still be on the 7th box down, the box I had cliskled on would be the 6th box down. Anwya, I quickly re-read jeff’s comments and thse following, and low and behold, the behavious has changed so that it now does the little jump to the left, and then a step to the right (I feel a fit of “time warp” coming on…).
I don;t know if this is a pointer, but the left right shimmy only seems to happen when there are a higher number of posts. There are a couple of threads with only two or three posts in them, and they don’t shimmy, but when you then go to a long (off the bottom of the screen) post, the column jumps left, as if to make a touch more room for such a long post.
Having reported all this, I think the IE9 issue is far more important than a dancing left cloumn, so I’ll be quiet now, and wait until you’re ready to look at it properly!
Tried making the window narrower myself (on the computer where there’s not shifts) and I still don’t see shifts… I’ll check my laptop to see how wide the window is… maybe there’s a sweet spot (rather, un-sweet spot).
Now i take notice, yep the same left/right shimmy, when i scroll down these posts the whole screen initially moves up, the header and blue buttons disappear upwards, maybe this is the reason for Iestyns jump up a thread. i’m using chrome on windows seven.
@Ifan: I’m happy for us to find a way to open thread at ‘first unread post’ - but NOT as default behaviour (just as it wasn’t default behaviour on phpBB), because I don’t want occasional users finding a thread trying to open several hundred posts. Leia made a perfectly valid point in another thread about the importance of regular users and the posts they generate, but I’d rather that our most confident users have one extra click (if we can’t find a way to do it without) than for infrequent users to feel that it’s hard to keep up (and become less likely to post more often). How about (until we can figure something more elegant) making ‘Show 8 more’ into ‘Show all new posts’ if there are more than 8?
Re: forum/Ask - I think we might have cross-wires happening! What you suggest sounds the same to me as what I said - the only difference being the content of the page that people see when they first click on Ask - which, to help draw attention to the forum, should be a log-in page (with all the second navbar still available) if they’re not logged in…
@Brooke Martin - I’m afraid lots of new users found the sheer size of the forum daunting and unhelpful, and truth be told navigating from category to category was never a particularly efficient way of keeping up to date with what was going on. We’re going to be working on a tagging system which will make it easier to filter by interest - in the meantime, the search is a good way to fine tune…
@Folks - thanks for all the stuff about jiggling - definitely a good one to shoot down as soon as Ifan can figure out what’s happening. I’m sure that Craig’s right about it being a width issue - and Craig, thank you very much indeed for all your practical and useful suggestions and comments…:seren:
OK, thought I was going crazy, because I had two computer running the same OS and browser version, and I made the windows the same, and one had the jiggles, and the other didn’t…
Finally noticed the difference… one the computer w/ the jiggles, there was a scroll bar present. When the right column reloads, the scroll bar was going away briefly… at exactly the same time that the left column was “jiggling”. On the computer without the jiggles the scrollbars were hidden. I forced them to be hidden on my laptop, and voila, the problem went away.
Don’t know if this is a Mac thing though, since someone above mentioned Win7.
- if we’re opening just the latest 8 replies, it’s never going to be much of a scroll to the last one, is it? I do rather like Annie’s idea about having the OP showing, though - and the blue options directly underneath it?