New look is awful

[Ankit Garg]

Even I believe the "forum listing" page should show more details. It shows something like this:

New Look wrote:Sybex OCP Java 8 Study Guide: Chapter 3 answers typo
12 hours ago 2 replies

Here the confusions are:
* Who started the topic, sometimes it's good to know who started the topic.
* "12 hours ago" what does it mean? Was the topic started 12 hours ago or the last post?
* Who replied last, was it me? The folder highlighting ( vs )works most of the time when there is a new post but sometimes it doesn't and you might miss a thread thinking you replied last.

Even the mobile view shows more info:

Mobile Website wrote:Sybex OCP Java 8 Study Guide: Chapter 3 answers typo
Number of replies: 2
Started by: Mike Constantin
Last post: Jan 12, 2016 by Jeanne Boyarsky

This was on my mind for very long but I can't post screenshots from office and at home my PC is all screwed up...

[nick woodward]

just to add a bit of balance......

the site is actually pretty good on a 24 inch monitor - i suspect it was designed on a larger screen. my complaints suggestions this morning largely came from using a smaller laptop.

[Ganish Patil]

Request: If possible please add tool tip text to all Emoticons icons.
Reason: Users who are not acquainted with these icons (like me ), will have to go to Saloon-Graemlins page by clicking on What do these icons mean? each time.
Solution: As we see a big space at left side and right side of the icons is left blank we can utilize that space and keep optimum gap between icons so we can read what that icon means by just hovering the cursor over those icons.

[Tony Docherty]

Stephan van Hulst wrote:I would also like to see the name of the last poster, and possibly the OP.

This was a request I made some time ago and someone (sorry can't remember who) kindly added an option to the "Site Personalization" settings called "Show usernames in forum view (beta/new view only)". If you tick this checkbox you get to see the OP and last poster.

[Giovanni Montano]

here is my feedback

+best of the month is amazing, best of the year is really cool

-Usability. The biggest issue is that I guess ( i do not have data) most of the users click the left buttons and then scroll the mouse to the other part of the screen to chose the sub forum, this is really inefficient. That column should be compulsory the second one after the buttons,with a dummy field/image as default. An idea would be also that on click of the left buttons are automatically opened. A more efficient idea would be to realize that although cool the buttons on the left bring always to a double unecessary click!

Point of Improvement in order of importance

* Maintaining on the left side in a vertical view all the subforums, just like was the old forum, while on the right we can maintain best of the month, best of the year. Recent post column should be split in three parts offering at the user the possibility to add the three whatever favorite forums that is watching more on a particular period, so I would say 5 post per forum should do the trick (totaling 15 post)

* Implementing the algorithm model you use to show the best of the month/ year that is ( I guess) based on the number of posts, views, cows earned with the search function. So when the user search for instance lambda functions on the search field has on top the best reply. As going trough all the forum can be less efficient that look up directly on an internet engine, I would DUPLICATE the +1 messages on top, so that who is looking for a fast research can easily find the most important replies, and then if want to know even more can read all the post to see all the messages in the original order

*Customizing the colors in the background, fonts etc..


I know would be a huge amount of work the second and third option, but would represent in my opinion the ultimate user experience

[Giovanni Montano]

Fred Kleinschmidt wrote:The new look is absolutely horrible. Unusable.

I would humbly ask to consider the eventual possibility to remove the skull to this person,
I understand that the way he wrote without any logical argumentation is quite weak, too sharp and not in line with the logical way the forum is built, but on the other side we have to acknowledge that although there is a recall on the site to give feedback on this new look change, he started a thread where have been given 47 cows( two of them to me thank you )and it is currently ranked as best post. Ok maybe this is due more to the committed behavior of the senior people that efficiently did not create cross threads responding and giving feedback below the post starter, but we have to recognize that we have to acknowledge to the poster this merit, so that maybe the skull could be removed, after all we are all friends ( although some are vegetarian and others not:) ) and could be he just expressed his opinion on the spur of the moment

[Peter Muster]

I'd like to add my disapproval of the new site design. I'm not a regular user here but I visit this site from time to time and I found a lot of interesting information here I'm grateful for.

The most important aspect of a site like this to me is to provide information as clearly as possible. Stackoverflow does it well and Reddit it does it well. They both have clear structures, no distracting graphical elements and I need less than five seconds to see what is the relevant content even without being used to visiting these sites often.

To me the dark background with the wooden panels is distracting. The left side menu has too big frames and too much graphical content. I want to be able to capture all menu headers within a second but I have to watch from the top of the screen all the way down to the bottom because the labels are too big spaced and the button layout and background design distracts.

When I click on a category I can see sub categories but they are all the way to the right which makes no sense to me and is confusing at first. They should be right next to the site menu on the left, I wouldn't even mind if a menu item expands into sub menus when you click on it (so the sub menu is between the selected category button and the one below) but the way it is placed now is confusing. Btw the design of the sub menu is much clearer than for the main menu, I appreciate it.

When I've clicked on a category I see several columns. I don't get what's the purpose of best this year and best this month. I personally don't need to see this information, but I would again prefer to see the past 20 or 30 topics in a forum on screen. Instead each thread occupies about 3-4 rows because it can't take the whole width of the screen. Seeing only the last 10 threads on screen doesn't give me a good representation of what is actively discussed in this forum.

Also when I saw this thread and wanted to reply I naturally scrolled all the way down to the last post and was confused that I couldn't just reply but only quote the post which is not what I wanted. Turned out the reply button is all the way to the top but within the scrollable part of the page, so I need to scroll to the top to be able to press it. Not very intuitive either.

I do like the design of the reply form and of the frame that displays a thread's content, I just don't like the graphical appearance and arrangement of the elements surrounding it.

[Henry Wong]

Giovanni Montano wrote:

Fred Kleinschmidt wrote:The new look is absolutely horrible. Unusable.

I would humbly ask to consider the eventual possibility to remove the skull to this person,
I understand that the way he wrote without any logical argumentation is quite weak, too sharp and not in line with the logical way the forum is built, but on the other side we have to acknowledge that although there is a recall on the site to give feedback on this new look change, he started a thread where have been given 47 cows( two of them to me thank you )and it is currently ranked as best post. Ok maybe this is due more to the committed behavior of the senior people that efficiently did not create cross threads responding and giving feedback below the post starter, but we have to recognize that we have to acknowledge to the poster this merit, so that maybe the skull could be removed, after all we are all friends ( although some are vegetarian and others not:) ) and could be he just expressed his opinion on the spur of the moment

First, I did not give the skull... Just giving some context, because I am paranoid... :) ... While I agree that this did lead to a mostly constructive (and productive) discussion, I will argue that this was done in spite of the OP, and not because of the OP. Additionally, the OP could have returned and followed up with a constructive contribution, and earned one of those 47 cows, but did not... so, I humbly disagree. Sorry.

Anyway, let's make an official suggestion thread... https://coderanch.com/t/661625/Ranch-Office/Suggestions-feel

Henry