New Forum Version Discussion (Rage..) Thread!

[Chulirac 244]

On 21/11/2015, 16:11:04, Retrograde said:

Hi everyone,

 

Just to reiterate, the change of theme is not a permanent one, the issues with colour, text and the like will all be resolved once we have a new custom theme. As for functionality and placement I'm not sure, but as soon as we know we'll pass it on.

 

As for the ideas about it being unfinished, unfortunately some things don't always operate according to plan and reverting back is not always plausible. We're aware the white is a bit much for some and we are working on getting our custom theme up and running.

 

We'll have it up and looking positively Wurmian in no time.

 

Why wasnt this all tested and set up off line to start with? Its an easy thing to do.

 

Also, how do I turn off that damn notification pop-up I get on every page, there are no options for that as far as I can see.

[Kegan 3,926]

3 hours ago, Chulirac said:

Also, how do I turn off that damn notification pop-up I get on every page, there are no options for that as far as I can see.

Go to "account settings" in the pull down tab by your avatar in the top right then to "notification settings" on the right there and set them to what you like. 

[Brash_Endeavors 4,735]

I want to say that I REALLY like the forum look I am seeing "right now" which has a dark green forest as background and then browns and tans for the content sections, in case it changes again this is the look I meant:

 

 

I like this better than the old forums and 10X better than any of the revisions so far.

 

 

Edited November 25, 2015 by Brash_Endeavors

[Mith 318]

Brash.. isnt that how the old forum looked? I know I get confused easily, but.. the layout of the post parts look slightly different yes.

personaly id like some softer cornors on the forum part, the background has soft smooth curves, and then we slam alot of sharp squares on top of it, thats the only part im not really happy with, and I generaly dont like changes of any kind. oh and the server statuses would look good on the right side I think

[Chiqa 742]

Normally I find a way to be supportive of changes or at least passive . 

 

I have to say this just sucks. 

[Brash_Endeavors 4,735]

2 hours ago, Mith said:

Brash.. isnt that how the old forum looked?  

 

Hmm I guess you are right  I didn;t realize how close to the old style it looked. 

 

Here is Wayback Machine for Sept 2015 and here are side by side thumbnails:

 

Sept 22 2014 vs "most recent change" Nov 2015

 

  

 

 

well I suppose if you are going to go to all the bother of revamping forums, you might as well go for a more dramatic change than that.

Too bad, because it was probably just nostalgia but I was liking the current change (aka, not much change)

 

 

Edited November 25, 2015 by Brash_Endeavors

[Zekezor 3,188]

The older version was better in terms of visuals.

[Brash_Endeavors 4,735]

I forgot, but did they ever state a reason for the change (old one was no longer getting security updates, old one was too resource intensive, old one they were going to start charging for, yada yada yada...)

[Valdor 1,426]

Out of curiosity, I would also like to know the need for change. I understand that there must have been a reason, but I am curious as to what it was

[Dairuka 888]

3 hours ago, Zekezor said:

The older version was better in terms of visuals.

 

Design issues I've noticed so far:

• The thick black bolding of the main text for forums really stands out and contrasts in a negative manner to the lighter background.
• There is a distinct lack of layers in the newer version. The older version had four layers of seamless contrast from the light beige foreground, to the tan color of the foreground's border, to the dark tan of the surrounding background, and the deep brown of the header's background. The current version has only three layers. Light beige, dark tan for the foreground's border, and the even darker brown of the header. The beige is too bright. There is a distinct lack of a surrounding background layer that makes the forum seem cheap and unprofessional, and the header is far too dark. The contrast seems off and difficult to get used to.
• The "replies" statistics part inbetween the forum name, and the last poster is missing completely, which in itself isn't a bad thing - unfortunately, rather than keeping the same size/font, we get big numbers that look out of place and almost geocities like.
• There is absolutely no border for "recent topics" and "popular contributors" making them seem disjointed. Again, when compared to the multi-layer system of the old design, it's really ugly.
• When the resolution of the window, or browser is squished - the names of the last poster disappear entirely. I consider this information more important than the date and the icon combined. I'd really like to keep all three if possible.
• The most useful feature of the forums, the server status, is missing.
• The persistent "announcements" header is just plain annoying. It's a waste of valuable eye-level space.
• The font size of the topics in "recent topics" is far too large, making the box far larger than it used to be when you get only 12 characters per line, instead of 24. The addition of how many responses to the thread showing up there also adds more data to squish the text even more. The whole thing is a mess and needs to be redesigned.
• The padding/spacing between a lot of text in all aspects of this new forum is way too large. One of the reasons the old forum looked so professional, was because the spacing was almost completely null. It looked streamlined and sleek.
• Do we really need a "home" button and a "browse" button that both lead to the same place?
• Do we really need unread content/mark site read content, when Activity does the same thing? Do we really need home/unread content/mark site read content on the bottom too?
• Where did our twitter button go?
• Why is Member Statistics spacing so large? Why is Forum Statistics so large? Why are their fonts so large? Why aren't they all on the same bar anyways, like the old forum?
• Where did the border that differentiated the bulletpoint/arrow/lock symbols go? The lack of a distinguishable border makes it very disorienting.
• Where did the border for posts go? Again, we're missing out on that multi-layered border that made the old forum look so professional.
• The header for posts is far too dark, especially in contrast to the light beige background.
• There is no header for individual posts, which makes differentiating between each post difficult. Unless people have a signature, it can actually get confusing.

 

Going over what made the old forums look so great and integrating them into the current system would certainly help alleviate the growing pains experienced in this transition.

 

Edited November 25, 2015 by Dairuka

[sunsvortex 599]

Lol, everytime I check the forums its different....this is a comedy of errors. What do you people have against testing on a setup that isnt a public facing live server?

[silakka 2,360]

I've not been around that much, so at first when it changed to that white one I got tired within seconds, wasnt attractive and hurts in de eyez.

But today after scrolling around for about 15minutes and checking mail system/everything else, it seems quite well organized and easier to get around with.

 

I guess that it got updated to work better with some inside systems? I remember the staffs were somewhat limited by the old forum version, so maybe this is a change for that and for the better

Overall i think it still needs some carpenter tools to be used on it, otherwise well done!

[Zekezor 3,188]

4 hours ago, Dairuka said:

 

Design issues I've noticed so far:

add this to the list, the limegreen vote bars on a light background with white text. (i mean comeon...)

[Dairuka 888]

44 minutes ago, Zekezor said:

add this to the list, the limegreen vote bars on a light background with white text. (i mean comeon...)

 

 

That's just plain offensive. No self respecting designer would ever associate himself with such an atrocity to the soul. It's like the dunwich horrors sprang up from the bowels of the eldritch locations they spawned from, and excreted their foul radioactive waste on the vote bars themselves. Lovecraft himself would spit at the sheer unholy nature of this abomination, reviling the imagination that could come up with it. If my eyes could vomit, they would vomit rainbows to showcase that there are far better colors on the spectrum to choose from, even poop-brown with bile-orange would be a less offensive combination. May the universe have mercy upon the tormented and twisted soul that thought this was a good idea. Any mod who dares to edit, remove, or warn me for this post must first realize that there simply aren't words and phrases in the English Language that are even remotely offensive enough to describe this awful mind-horror construct of human suffering and hatred, but by golly gosh, I tried...

 

Edited November 26, 2015 by Dairuka
Did I ever try.

[Mistvengery 141]

It was nice having a color separation from all beige now its just a blur ....needs to be defined with more then beige....

[SweetSusie 300]

On 21 november 2015 02:02:39, Nomadikhan said:

I like the new theme... since the old theme was broke and stuff never stayed in it's frame properly... can we keep this new one?  Pretty Please!

 

I never had that problem on my imac

 

Anyway.. I love it so far.

Looks great!

 

I didnt read a lot of comments so idk if anybody named these things already 

- i would like to see a more clear separation between posts.

- and i send things like chat logs or pics and stuff to people in a spoiler in pm's but the spoiler is gone altho its an option here on the new version. I hope it gets fixed for the sake of the scrollingfingers.

- old profile was clearer

 

Edited November 26, 2015 by SweetSusie

[Xandra 353]

Oh noes!

 

The "fixed width nazis" have struck again! With a window width of 800 I don't see anymore if I'm logged in, and cannot access my account anymore.

How can we stop these tablet hating criminals? Anybody yet prospected Uranium, plutonium or at least sulfur and/or saltpeter?

Something has to be done, quickly, or we'll all suffer again. The "fixed width nazis" are alive and kicking - Beware!

 

And have fun ;-)

[BadLuckBurt 51]

16 minutes ago, Xandra said:

Oh noes!

 

The "fixed width nazis" have struck again! With a window width of 800 I don't see anymore if I'm logged in, and cannot access my account anymore.

How can we stop these tablet hating criminals? Anybody yet prospected Uranium, plutonium or at least sulfur and/or saltpeter?

Something has to be done, quickly, or we'll all suffer again. The "fixed width nazis" are alive and kicking - Beware!

 

And have fun ;-)

 

They can add a variation on the current theme for that, it's just a few style changes.

[Valdor 1,426]

The issue I notice, at least for me, is that there is no line separator between the posts. One posts just melts into another.

 

Perhaps it's the issue with my browser, not sure, but I don't see line separators and it makes the page much more confusing visually.

[Kianga 219]

My browsertabs are showing the whole path to a post - or rather the beginning of that whole path, the end-outcome can't be seen, much too long... I hope it's possible to show just the posttitle on tabs again?

 

Also would love to get rid of the suddenly emerged IE-habit of keeping all pages in the same tab - I'm used to (and appreciate) getting a new tab for the next page if I click left-mouse button.

 

So if these things could get changed back to how they were, I would be grateful.

[Guest Peacemaker]

On 11/25/2015, 10:35:31, Zekezor said:

add this to the list, the limegreen vote bars on a light background with white text. (i mean comeon...)

 

Not sure where all the odd colors came from or how I missed poll bar colors.  Either way it is now a more respectable green!  

 

On 11/25/2015, 11:08:30, Dairuka said:

 

 

That's just plain offensive. No self respecting designer would ever associate himself with such an atrocity to the soul. It's like the dunwich horrors sprang up from the bowels of the eldritch locations they spawned from, and excreted their foul radioactive waste on the vote bars themselves. Lovecraft himself would spit at the sheer unholy nature of this abomination, reviling the imagination that could come up with it. If my eyes could vomit, they would vomit rainbows to showcase that there are far better colors on the spectrum to choose from, even poop-brown with bile-orange would be a less offensive combination. May the universe have mercy upon the tormented and twisted soul that thought this was a good idea. Any mod who dares to edit, remove, or warn me for this post must first realize that there simply aren't words and phrases in the English Language that are even remotely offensive enough to describe this awful mind-horror construct of human suffering and hatred, but by golly gosh, I tried...

 

 

Suggestions noted

 

On 11/26/2015, 3:20:02, Xandra said:

Oh noes!

 

The "fixed width nazis" have struck again! With a window width of 800 I don't see anymore if I'm logged in, and cannot access my account anymore.

How can we stop these tablet hating criminals? Anybody yet prospected Uranium, plutonium or at least sulfur and/or saltpeter?

Something has to be done, quickly, or we'll all suffer again. The "fixed width nazis" are alive and kicking - Beware!

 

And have fun ;-)

 

All themes have been set as fluid width and no issues on my end with firefox or chrome

 

Other issues reserved for people smarter than me

[luvable 370]

Just logged in mobile for the first time with changes. Looks awesome on my kindle. Good job. 

[Amadee 1,543]

Sure would be nice to get an answer to this question so I could determine if it's my browser settings or still something about this forum.................

 

On the "unread content" page, when you click "edit stream," editing the stream does absolutely nothing.  I click all the options to filter out WU and it still shows anyway.  No matter which forums you click that you want to see, you still see all of them including WU.  I even tried clicking to show only one forum and still saw them all.  Also, clicking the almost missed little "condense" button does condense the posts, but doesn't stick next time I visit.

 

Why does it have to be like pulling teeth to get an answer on this forum?  And then you wonder why people get frustrated and increasingly negative.

[Kegan 3,926]

I made a new stream and just made that my default one and it works fine for me but i am not sure on editing the default streams. 

[Meldichoir 242]

The browser tabs can no longer be distinguished on the new forums as they show the full URL instead of only the title of the topic. Aside from other forum navigational problems, the feature of having labels on your tabs is clearly incomplete/broken.  This actually prevents you from resorting to your browser history and favorites as a means to easier daily browsing. I visit the forums almost exclusively from my mobile device and this causes me the most difficulty.

 

 

On 11/26/2015, 8:08:03, Kianga said:

My browsertabs are showing the whole path to a post - or rather the beginning of that whole path, the end-outcome can't be seen, much too long... I hope it's possible to show just the posttitle on tabs again?

 

Also would love to get rid of the suddenly emerged IE-habit of keeping all pages in the same tab - I'm used to (and appreciate) getting a new tab for the next page if I click left-mouse button.

 

So if these things could get changed back to how they were, I would be grateful.