Suggestions to make the site better - minor complaints

[Ron Frazier]

Hello all, this is a note I sent to Andrew after he helped me with some login trouble I had. He suggested I post it here.

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Hi Andrew,

I did eventually get logged in and I appreciate your help.

In using your site for a while, I've thought of a few suggestions that I think would make it better.

On the login screen, I really recommend against using cookies in any way. That's old, and possibly insecure technology. It's very annoying to have to enable cookies just to log in. Having said that, javaranch.com and coderanch.com are now allowed to use cookies on my web browser. However, the default for me is never allow cookies unless I have to, and clear them out whenever the browser exits.

Also on the login page, I recommend allowing the user to put either their user name in the first field or their email address. I can never remember, from site to site, whether the login page expects the user name or email. It would be really cool if it would work either way.

I don't recommend that site administrative emails, like password resets, have a tag in square brackets in the subject, like [javaranch password reset]. I'm on hundreds of email lists, mostly for alternative energy. Anything with [ or ] in the subject line that I haven't specifically filtered goes directly to a giant folder with thousands of other mailing list messages. Therefore, when I recently changed my password, I never saw your system's message until I went digging through this mailing list folder. I recommend [ and ] tags only for mailing lists.

Finally, when I watch a forum, and a new message come's in, I get an email notification but it does not have the contents of the forum posting in it. I really hate having to go to a website to see forum posts, although I do like the OPTION of being able to do so. I prefer to deal with my message forums exclusively by email. Therefore, when I'm watching a forum, I need it to forward the entire message post to my email, not just a link to the actual post. Not being able to read the message within my email DRAMATICALLY reduces the forum usability for me. If there is any way you could turn on full message email forwarding for me, that would be great.

I do believe your site is a great resource and am looking forward to using it further.

Sincerely,

Ron

[Mohamed Sanaulla]

Ron Frazier wrote:
...
Finally, when I watch a forum, and a new message come's in, I get an email notification but it does not have the contents of the forum posting in it. I really hate having to go to a website to see forum posts, although I do like the OPTION of being able to do so. I prefer to deal with my message forums exclusively by email. Therefore, when I'm watching a forum, I need it to forward the entire message post to my email, not just a link to the actual post. Not being able to read the message within my email DRAMATICALLY reduces the forum usability for me. If there is any way you could turn on full message email forwarding for me, that would be great.
...

There was a discussion here regarding the contents for the email.

[Andrew Monkhouse]

Thanks for posting these here.

Ron Frazier wrote:Also on the login page, I recommend allowing the user to put either their user name in the first field or their email address. I can never remember, from site to site, whether the login page expects the user name or email. It would be really cool if it would work either way.

That does sound like a cool enhancement, and it should be relatively easy to do.

[Ron Frazier]

Mohamed Sanaulla wrote:

Ron Frazier wrote:
...
Finally, when I watch a forum, and a new message come's in, I get an email notification but it does not have the contents of the forum posting in it. I really hate having to go to a website to see forum posts, although I do like the OPTION of being able to do so. I prefer to deal with my message forums exclusively by email. Therefore, when I'm watching a forum, I need it to forward the entire message post to my email, not just a link to the actual post. Not being able to read the message within my email DRAMATICALLY reduces the forum usability for me. If there is any way you could turn on full message email forwarding for me, that would be great.
...

There was a discussion here regarding the contents for the email.

Thanks for the link. Unfortunately, as they say on the plains, that horse won't plow. (No offense.) (OK, I just made that up.) If I am going through the dozens or hundreds of messages from the other forums I'm on in my email client, and I see a message from Big Moose Saloon with only the subject stated, I'm about 50% more likely to ignore it if I have to click outside my email client to see it. Now, granted, if the subject is not at all enticing, I won't read it regardless. But sometimes, if I'm "sitting on the fence", reading the text of the message will entice me to read and follow the thread. Oracle's tech forums provide both links to the website and the text of the message posting in the email I get. That's much more useful to me.

Sincerely,

Ron

[Jeanne Boyarsky]

Andrew Monkhouse wrote:Thanks for posting these here.

Ron Frazier wrote:Also on the login page, I recommend allowing the user to put either their user name in the first field or their email address. I can never remember, from site to site, whether the login page expects the user name or email. It would be really cool if it would work either way.

That does sound like a cool enhancement, and it should be relatively easy to do.

Agreed. It will be in our next deployment. No date on the deployment though.

[paul wheaton]

I like the idea that each suggestion have it's own thread, otherwise stuff gets too confusing.

A few years ago, somebody suggested that we have a higher level of user account. Maybe somebody would pay $30 for a year of "enhanced stuff". This would be where a user could activate features that are either CPU intensive, or contrary to the we like to do things. I think that getting message contents in emails could be part of that.

[Andrew Monkhouse]

Jeanne Boyarsky wrote:

Andrew Monkhouse wrote:Thanks for posting these here.

Ron Frazier wrote:Also on the login page, I recommend allowing the user to put either their user name in the first field or their email address. I can never remember, from site to site, whether the login page expects the user name or email. It would be really cool if it would work either way.

That does sound like a cool enhancement, and it should be relatively easy to do.

Agreed. It will be in our next deployment. No date on the deployment though.

This has now been deployed. Thanks for the suggestion Ron, and thanks for doing the work Jeanne.