New look is awful

[Fred Kleinschmidt]

The new look is absolutely horrible. Unusable.

[Bear Bibeault]

It would be more helpful if you would take the the time to describe what you don't like about it and how it can be improved.

And I'm not saying that in any sort of belligerent or challenging way. I myself have logged many things I think are less than optimum and think could be improved with the new look and feel.

So please describe what your issues are. They are much more likely to be considered for improvements if we actually know what they are.

[Henry Wong]

... And if the constructive criticism leads to some improvements, you can even earn a cow or two!!

Henry

[chris webster]

Well, "awful" is a little harsh, but I would agree that the new look is not entirely successful (yet?). Although there was a period of beta-testing (I'm afraid I didn't have time to participate in this as much as I should have), I think the real problems are becoming more apparent now we are all using the new UI for real. I'm no web UI expert, but here are some of the features I find less satisfactory when using the site on a laptop.

Static menu bar:

The main lefthand menu bar with the main forum groups takes up a lot of space and is simply a stack of buttons i.e. no pop-up or sliding sub-menus, indeed no sub-menus at all. Meanwhile the lists of forums and forum groups are all on the right-hand side anyway, in much the same format as they were on the old UI (but smaller).

So a chunk of the screen is taken up with a menu that only provides the top-level navigation, i.e. short-cuts to the main forum groups, but with no indication of what's inside those groups.

Right-hand menu:

The right-hand list of forums is context-sensitive i.e. if you're in the top-level screen you see all the forum groups, but if you've selected a forum group e.g. "JAVA" then you only see the forums within that group. Again, this is fixed so it takes up the same width of screen in both cases.

So now you have two chunks of screen taken up with fixed-width navigation, but you have to switch between these depending on where you want to navigate from/to.

One fix might be to put all the navigation in a single place e.g. the lefthand bar, with reveal/hide sub-menus as required. As I say, I'm no expert, so I don't know how easy this is to do, but it seems to be fairly common on other websites. JavaRanch may not want to look like yet another Twitter Bootstrap clone, and maybe "brown is the new black" , but there must be some useful ideas that could be taken from these modern web UIs.

Main panel:

We have two more fixed-width stacks of posts here, one for "Best this year", another for "Best this month". These are context-sensitive i.e. if you're in a particular forum/group you see the "Best..." for that forum/group. But these lists remain on the screen until you get into a single forum discussion thread, taking up screen space with things that are probably not the primary goal of most visitors e.g. if I'm interested in exploring the "Features new in Java 9" forum, it's frustrating that so much of my screen is filled with stuff that I don't need.

A simple fix here would be to put both the "Best ..." lists in a single screen column e.g. "Best this month" above "Best this year", display only 3 items plus a "More..." link for each list. Or consider whether we really need to have these on the screen all the time anyway.

This would release more screen width for the main content.

Single discussion thread view:

This is OK with me - a welcome relief after all the busy clutter of the other screens. Except for...

..."I agree" advert at foot of discussion thread:

This is a long-standing bone of contention, and I think it would help to make this more distinct from the posts on a discussion so users don't get confused/irritated by what can appear to be an irrelevant spam post.

Boilerplate:

The top banner area is too deep e.g. on my laptop screen the whole page is 17.5 cm high, but the top edge of the main content in the discussion view is 5.5 cm down the screen i.e. we lose a third of the screen area on this display. I know this will vary for different screens/devices, but it's a lot of real estate to give up when users first arrive on a page.

Overall usability:

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but I find the new look hard to navigate and hard to use. I'm sticking to the Classic UI whenever possible, as I find it easier to get things done this way, whether browsing, searching or responding to posts.

[Liutauras Vilda]

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

People are intended to resist to something new. Personally myself, I started using it from the very beginning of test phase.

First steps were not easy, something unusual, not as my habits were developed to find things in the right places, so I could find them 4 o'clock in a morning.
But after few weeks spent on the new look, I have tried for my own curiosity to come back to standard look - and I understood I like new look the way more, sort of countryside style, wood around, warm colors.

So, the moral is, don't judge right away, give a try, look around, and you'll likely find it nice. If not, as Bear mentioned earlier, give some suggestions, so staff could improve it. Bear in mind, staff are voluntary, and everything they do, they do for the community (for you, me and everyone else).
In this manner, to say that it is awful, at least it is not fair in front of people who spent their free time coding and designing it. So, please be less judging.

[Steffe Wilson]

chris webster wrote:
Static menu bar:

The main lefthand menu bar with the main forum groups takes up a lot of space and is simply a stack of buttons i.e. no pop-up or sliding sub-menus, indeed no sub-menus at all. Meanwhile the lists of forums and forum groups are all on the right-hand side anyway, in much the same format as they were on the old UI (but smaller).

So a chunk of the screen is taken up with a menu that only provides the top-level navigation, i.e. short-cuts to the main forum groups, but with no indication of what's inside those groups.

One of the three round buttons at the top of the left side menu toggles its display on and off (third button, eye icon).

[Tim Holloway]

Well, you'd think that since I've had access to it for months, I'd have said something. But truth be told, I just kept on using the old UI. It's only when it went live that I really thought about it.

My opinion is that the new view has 2 flaws:

1) It's "busy". It has tall (sometimes multiple) banners, a big artsy sidebar, multiple "best of" columns and only THEN do you get down to the actual meat of the site.

2) It's wasteful of real estate. The "noise" areas take over so much of the screen that the actual forums almost fade to invisibility. Back when monitors had more of a 4:3 aspect ratio, this would have made the display practically worthless, and it's still likely to on non-monitor devices.

If those both sound like the same complaint, I apologize. One is primarily on WHAT is on the screen, the other is on HOW MUCH of the screen is being used.

It's nice to have the popular topics more visible, but perhaps a bit less "more visible"? A ticker might be one possibility. Also, maybe a slide-out side menu instead of a fixed one (although that can be a nuisance itself if not done carefully and with attention to all likely target devices). I kind of like the idea of a slide-out multi-level menu that adds recently/often-visited forums on a per-user basis to the top level for convenience.

BTW, the 3 round buttons over the sidebar visually resemble Radio Buttons, although they don't appear to actually be such. Could be confusing for some.

Also, I originally posted this response in another forum entirely. While I occasionally lose track of what I'm doing, I've had enough practice on the ranch that it's not common, so it's possible that the new UI caused me to do so.

Actually, I posted first, but no one could see it and in the mean time, Chris has stated more or less the same points, and with more precision!

[fred rosenberger]

I am a creature of habit. I freely admit that I resist change. Having said that...

I do not like the "Best of..." columns at all. I don't care what <someone else> thinks is interesting. To me, they are nothing but junk that takes away real estate from what I want to see. I would like to be able to turn them off.

What I used to do on the "old look" was go to the forums. I'd scan the page looking for yellow folders on the forums I am interested in. If there was a yellow folder, I'd go into the forum, read the titles of the yellow topics there, and then open each I thought I wanted to read in a new tab.

The "Most Recent" column seems to jumble all the posts together from all forums...many of which I do not care about. I think. I can't tell what forum the post is in there, so I tend to ignore the whole thing. So now I have no way to quickly find which forums I care about have new posts.

Maybe I don't understand it. Maybe I just haven't played with it enough. But every time I try, I get frustrated after 5 minutes and switch back to the old view.

[chris webster]

Steffe Wilson wrote:One of the three round buttons at the top of the left side menu toggles its display on and off (third button, eye icon).

Thanks for the tip, Steffe - have a cow!

But that is only available after you've logged in, which means casual visitors are still going to be stuck with the big brown bar on the left.

[Piet Souris]

I gave Fred Kleinschmidt a thump up, to counterbalance
this dead cow. At least he gave a clear opinion, and a simple
question if he could expand on this would have been fine.

I'm quite indifferent to the old and the new look. As long as
the topics are clearly readable, I'm fine.

That brings me to my only problem, already present in
the old Ranch, but unfortunately still present and still
never discussed, to my utter surprise:

in a DTP course I followed many moons ago, the most important
thing I learned was: don't make your lines too long. Maximum
of 60 characters, otherwise it makes the reading unpleasant
and harder than it should be.

In the topics and replies, I often see lines well above 100
characters (in this topic too). I hope that someone will have
a look at that, which I consider to be much more important
than the looks.

[Liutauras Vilda]

Piet Souris wrote:At least he gave a clear opinion

I don't think opinion was clear. Exactly the same as someone would tell you my code works "horribly" please help to fix it.

I think chris webster and Tim Holloway expressed themselves more clear, which could be actually useful improving things on.

[Campbell Ritchie]

PS: please follow the link in the post saying the post was moved.

[Campbell Ritchie]

Campbell Ritchie,
Your post was moved to a new topic.
(This informational message will self destruct in two days)

[Steffe Wilson]

I quite like the new look personally. The standard forum look is getting a bit tiresome after so many years so its nice to see some innovation and creative thinking here. Maybe some individual site prefs could help with fine tuning for folk who don't want to see some of the displayed elements, maybe even settable per device.

(PS. Thanks Chris for my first cow!)

[Andrew Monkhouse]

As others have said, please try to provide constructive feedback. We can look at the specifics of what individuals in this topic have said, and see if it makes sense to change things or not. But simply saying it is awful does not help us at all - we are unlikely to change our entire site back to the old look-and-feel because you personally find the new one awful, and we cannot change any aspect of it because you have not told us what aspect(s) you don't like.

I have given cows to anyone who made constructive comments in this topic, irrespective of whether they are talking about what they like or what they don't like.

[Henry Wong]

In my opinion, as the ranch moves towards having more and more forums, the old view may get a bit unwieldy. This is why the new view list "top forums" on the right column, which can be somewhat controlled (rated), instead of listing all of the forums.

Anyway, I like Fred's critic the best. Why? because I can see two suggestions for improvement from it.

fred rosenberger wrote:
What I used to do on the "old look" was go to the forums. I'd scan the page looking for yellow folders on the forums I am interested in. If there was a yellow folder, I'd go into the forum, read the titles of the yellow topics there, and then open each I thought I wanted to read in a new tab.

The "Most Recent" column seems to jumble all the posts together from all forums...many of which I do not care about. I think. I can't tell what forum the post is in there, so I tend to ignore the whole thing. So now I have no way to quickly find which forums I care about have new posts.

First, the right column of the new look is somewhat like the old look, in that it does list forum folders. However, it doesn't have a color pattern (with the folders). Perhaps a color pattern can be added, similar to the old look. This way, those who like the old look can use the right column of the new look, in a similar fashion?

Second, I actually like the "most recent" column setup of the new look. Seeing forums that I am less interested in doesn't really bother me. In fact, sometimes, I see a gem that looks interesting (just by the title). However, knowing the forum for the topic would be a good idea. Why? an example would be clicking on a question on loops, only to realize the question is in the linux forum, and it is about loops with the bash shell. Having the forum listed with the topic would greatly help with this.

Henry

[Bear Bibeault]

Henry Wong wrote:
In my opinion, as the ranch moves towards having more and more forums, the old view may get a bit unwieldy. This is why the new view list "top forums" on the right column, which can be somewhat controlled (rated), instead of listing all of the forums.

My issue with that is that something else, likely just a statistical counter, is choosing what forums are being shown to me. I'd much rather have a way to show "forums that are important to me". What'd I'd find most useful is a way to, rather than show "most recent", allow me to choose favorite forums that always appear at the top of the list, and then perhaps show the rest in some statistical order.

fred rosenberger wrote:
What I used to do on the "old look" was go to the forums. I'd scan the page looking for yellow folders on the forums I am interested in. If there was a yellow folder, I'd go into the forum, read the titles of the yellow topics there, and then open each I thought I wanted to read in a new tab.

This is pretty much my workflow as well and why I continue to use the old look-and-feel.

In addition to the information architecture, I've also had lots of feedback on visual aspects of the new look. I'm hoping that feedback has been captured somewhere.

[Frits Walraven]

I must admit that I am using the Current View more and more often and I am starting to like it. Well done to the volunteers

There are a few suggestions though I would like to address

I am (and was) a user of the Recent Topics. I used to scan them and if they were in the Forums that I liked, then I would go to them. I have two problems with the current view: I don't see the forum (as mentioned earlier) and I can't jump to the last post in that thread (which I used to do).

I don't like the categoy listing on the left, so I have "eyed" them out. I use, and I like the category/forum listing on the right side of the page.

I wish to get rid of the Best this month and Best this year columns: never used them and never even looked at them. If there are people that use those columns then please make them part of a user preference option so that I can hide them.

[Winston Gutkowski]

Tim Holloway wrote:My opinion is that the new view has 2 flaws:

Totally agree. Have a cow.

On the plus side: I really like the fact that unreadable posts due to excessively long code lines seem to be a thing of the past - on the other, the sidebar takes up so much room that you often end up having to scroll code because the right hand side isn't visible. And that can be a real pain when the code snippet is long.
Would it be possible to change the sidebar to a single 'Back to forums' button at the top? The fact is that I almost never use those side buttons when I'm reading a post.
Alternatively (or maybe additionally), could code blocks have a scroll bar at the top as well as the bottom?

I should add that I'm 58 and short-sighted, so I often find myself having to zoom in in order to get print that I can read; and that just exacerbates the real-estate issues.

Also: As an author of a few FAQ pages, I hope the new "look" is only temporary. Right now they look like posts to a thread by a user called 'friki data migration'.

My 2¢.

Winston

[Edit] One other thing: How do you go to the last post of a thread now? Maybe I'm just missing it, but I can't seem to find any button/link for it any more.

[Henry Wong]

Winston Gutkowski wrote:
Also: As an author of a few FAQ pages, I hope the new "look" is only temporary. Right now they look like posts to a thread by a user called 'friki data migration'.

Yeah, it was unfortunate that the original creator information could not be preserved during the merger of the Wiki and the Forum. On the other hand, it can be argued that the Wiki never had that information in the first place, nor was it an indication of who contributed the most to the Wiki.

Personally, I like having it merged -- one view, set of controls, search, etc., for everything... although, I would agree it is a bit "awkward" as I am not used to it yet.

Winston Gutkowski wrote:
One other thing: How do you go to the last post of a thread now? Maybe I'm just missing it, but I can't seem to find any button/link for it any more.

Agreed. That seems to be missing with the new look.

Henry

[Stephan van Hulst]

Henry Wong wrote:Second, I actually like the "most recent" column setup of the new look. Seeing forums that I am less interested in doesn't really bother me. In fact, sometimes, I see a gem that looks interesting (just by the title). However, knowing the forum for the topic would be a good idea. Why? an example would be clicking on a question on loops, only to realize the question is in the linux forum, and it is about loops with the bash shell. Having the forum listed with the topic would greatly help with this.

I strongly agree with this. I would also like to see the name of the last poster, and possibly the OP.

Like Fred, I'm not a big fan of the "Best this...". I'd like it if there was an option to hide them. I'd also switch their position with the forums, so the forums are to the right of the categories.

Finally, I'd like it if when I browse a category, it doesn't show *all* categories, but just the categories I'm interested in, similarly when I go to the forums home page.

Other than that, I love how it all looks. It took some getting used to, but I can see it work.

[Winston Gutkowski]

Henry Wong wrote:Yeah, it was unfortunate that the original creator information could not be preserved during the merger of the Wiki and the Forum. On the other hand, it can be argued that the Wiki never had that information in the first place, nor was it an indication of who contributed the most to the Wiki.

I'm not so worried about people knowing that I wrote it; I just don't like it looking like a "post".

With the old style, it looked like a proper web page. Now it just looks like something someone banged out on a Saturday afternoon.

Also: I don't like the way "lists" are rendered now - with bullets indented to the left. Although it could just be Firefox that does that.

Winston

[Joe Bishara]

I can see that a lot of work has gone into the new design, however, sometimes, a tiny tweak can mean the difference between great and extraordinary. My biggest issue with the new design is the colour scheme; especially the dark background. A website’s colour scheme is a crucial part of its user friendliness. Many of today's leading websites adopt a light background because the eyes take some time to adjust when you have a dark background.

[Jesper de Jong]

Steffe Wilson wrote:One of the three round buttons at the top of the left side menu toggles its display on and off (third button, eye icon).

Here is an idea for an improvement:

Have buttons to toggle the "best this year" and "best this month" columns off or on, just like the button to toggle the main navigation column off or on.

[Winston Gutkowski]

Winston Gutkowski wrote:...on the other, the sidebar takes up so much room that you often end up having to scroll code because the right hand side isn't visible...

Aha! Just worked out that you can turn that off with the 'Show Categories' button, so maybe not such a problem after all. I'll suck it and see.

Thanks Jesper. Your last post pointed me down the "golden path".

Also (probably another topic): What's all this bleedin' pie stuff? I like it, and some kind bod gave me a slice; but I've got no idea what I'm supposed to do with it.

Winston

[fred rosenberger]

Winston Gutkowski wrote:
Also (probably another topic): What's all this bleedin' pie stuff? I like it, and some kind bod gave me a slice; but I've got no idea what I'm supposed to do with it.

At the VERY top, next to "Search" and FAQs, is a link to PIE. That page then has a link describing the "benefits" of pie.

[Henry Wong]

First, I went back and gave cows to all recent posts with constructive criticism or ideas (with the exception of myself, of course). This topic does seem to be attracting a large herd of cows, so decided to continue the trend...

Some notes...

One, it looks like the recommendation to show the forum of each topic in "recent topics" have been implemented. Yaah!!

Two, it looks like the recommendation to have color folders of "top forums" in "recent topic" page should work, but currently, does not. Hopefully, it will be fixed soon.


Hopefully, this proves that constructive criticism is better than just the "new look is awful". Keep those suggestions coming... and earn some cows...

Henry

[Winston Gutkowski]

Henry Wong wrote:First, I went back and gave cows to all recent posts with constructive criticism or ideas (with the exception of myself, of course). This topic does seem to be attracting a large herd of cows, so decided to continue the trend...

And here's one for you to say 'thanks'.

I'm guessing that there isn't much that can be done about my moan about FAQ pages. Another gripe is that all my carefully-written code examples have been translated into code blocks, which means all that the original "highlighting" now appears as tags.

Please let me know if this is just an interim stage, and I'll wait for it to be "rendered" to its final resting place; otherwise, I suspect I have a "refactoring" exercise head of me...

Winston

[Ganish Patil]

It would be splendid, if OP gets SMS notification if somebody replies to his / her question ( For this facility you can charge OP but this service should rely on user demand). Generally what happens, when we are studying a particular topic and in between you stuck with a problem or thing you won't understand, though googled a lot on internet that time you have to wait for someone to reply to your post until you just have to keep checking whether somebody answered your question or not. If somebody answers and after sometime you checks that and again another doubt arises in your mind but by that time that user who answered you might be logged out so post another question again wait for his reply so takes much time to get satisfactory answers on time so if you get text message on mobile as soon as somebody answers, you can log in and perhaps ask further if problem still persist. That's what I have experienced.

[Rob Spoor]

Ganish Patil wrote:It would be splendid, if OP gets SMS notification if somebody replies to his / her question

When you post something, at the bottom there's a check box for "Notify when a reply is posted". That sends an email if a reply is posted. Isn't that good enough?

[Henry Wong]

Winston Gutkowski wrote:
I'm guessing that there isn't much that can be done about my moan about FAQ pages. Another gripe is that all my carefully-written code examples have been translated into code blocks, which means all that the original "highlighting" now appears as tags.

Please let me know if this is just an interim stage, and I'll wait for it to be "rendered" to its final resting place; otherwise, I suspect I have a "refactoring" exercise head of me...

A few thoughts...

One. Since the forum and the wiki are merged, I don't think that the two can deviate too far from each other. After all, it is one system managing the view -- so, the two environments should looks close.

On the other hand, it doesn't have to look exactly the same. It is possible for the Wiki forum threads to look more wiki-like. Perhaps, there are some simple suggestions, to get it to be more of a "proper" looking thread than a "banged out on a Saturday afternoon" thread?

And two. I think it is safe to conclude that the migration has been completed -- and no more re-migrations. So, anything lost in the migration is likely lost forever.

On the other hand, any suggestions based on the rendering may also help here. What do you think?

Henry

[Winston Gutkowski]

Henry Wong wrote:A few thoughts...
One. Since the forum and the wiki are merged, I don't think that the two can deviate too far from each other. After all, it is one system managing the view -- so, the two environments should looks close.

Hmmm. As an author, I'd debate that.

On the other hand, it doesn't have to look exactly the same. It is possible for the Wiki forum threads to look more wiki-like. Perhaps, there are some simple suggestions, to get it to be more of a "proper" looking thread than a "banged out on a Saturday afternoon" thread?

Not being a Wiki expert, I await any future comments with hope. But one I'd suggest (and that I've always wished was available) would be to have code blocks "understand" certain bibi codes - like [b][/b] - but I suspect that's not under your control.

And two. I think it is safe to conclude that the migration has been completed -- and no more re-migrations. So, anything lost in the migration is likely lost forever.

Good to know. Thanks Henry.

Winston

[Winston Gutkowski]

Henry Wong wrote:On the other hand, any suggestions based on the rendering may also help here. What do you think?

Not a rendering one, but would it be possible to change the name of the "poster" of FAQ pages? I don't care if it's changed to "JavarRanch", but that 'friki' name just seems "unfinished" to me.

Winston

[Joe Bishara]

Ganish Patil wrote:It would be splendid, if OP gets SMS notification if somebody replies to his / her question...

You may find a tool like Gmail notifications useful. You can configure your phone to make a sound or vibrate when you receive an email.

[Ganish Patil]

Rob Spoor wrote:
When you post something, at the bottom there's a check box for "Notify when a reply is posted". That sends an email if a reply is posted. Isn't that good enough?

Oh didn't notice that, yes it sorts the problem.

Joe Bishara wrote:
You may find a tool like Gmail notifications useful. You can configure your phone to make a sound or vibrate when you receive an email.

Thank you

[paul wheaton]

All of the coderanch staff have access to the codebase and the ability to make changes will nilly. Of course, at this time, I think it is best to start each change off as a feature that each individual can turn on and off, with the default being the way things are now. And then we can talk about changing things so that it might be the default for logged in users, or for everybody.

The old view will be disabled some day. I would guess in about four to six months. So I think it is wise to take a good look at the new look and feel and make lots of suggestions now about what all to get in there so you can tune it to just the way you want.

I think that if a person is not a developer (and thus able to add their own desires) then I would like to suggest a new thread in this forum (ranch office) for each request.

There are also a lot of new features coming soon.

I'm the one that gave out the skull on the top post. I felt that that post was not helpful, nor in the spirit of how I would like to see discussions happen on this site.

[nick woodward]

Awful is a bit much, but it's definitely not very user friendly in many instances.

I definitely agree with the earlier comment about the 'best of' sections, which take a significant portion of the screen, while the useful menu on the right and the thread list get an unreasonably small amount of space. It tends to feel a bit cluttered!

edit: maybe being able to see who the author and last poster were from the thread list too?

[Tim Holloway]

I just noticed that the new forum topic listing doesn't show the "last reply" name. This was one of my primary ways of telling whether I needed to look at a message. Especially since I've had a higher-than-average failure rate on email notifications. The notification mailer tended to give up if it couldn't contact my mailserverin time and for a while, spammers were hitting me so hard that it would take multiple attempts before legitimate emails got through.