Get Marwood & I

"I strongly advise it......"

"Are you still watching......?"

"Keep watching......"

John Morlar

cordially invites you to join him in a spectacular countdown of

Amazing Spider-Man Pence Price Variants 

set to the coolest tunes in town.

Be there, or be circular.

It's a lot less bother without hover. 

On 13/02/2017 at 2:44 PM, rob_react said:

My guess is that one of the big drivers is that they wanted a site that worked well on mobile phones and tablets. The old layout was created almost two decades ago and didn't play well with the multi-device environment we operate in these days. 

As someone who does this stuff for a living, it's insane to me that the layout here hadn't changed in all that time. This layout is new in both the new-to-us sense and in the "new" sense of being an actual modern design. It's not perfect (nothing is) but it works on a phone, which makes me happy.

What we're experiencing is something that happens whenever anyone with a loyal fanbase makes a design change.  It's called change aversion and it happens with everyone all the time with every redesign. If your users don't hate your redesign, you don't have any users. 

Two things will happen- we'll get used to it and the design and features are going to be tweaked. It'll be great. Different, but great. 

 

A horse walks into a bar with a guitar looking glum. The barman says "why the long face?"

The horse says "I wrote this song called 'Dem New Boards Suck'. The chorus is great, but I don't like the rest of it" and proceeds to sing it. 

The barman listens to the song, ponders for a moment and then says "change a verse?"

On 06/03/2017 at 4:03 PM, ickwinzs said:

Those are some nice books, grades look pretty consistant.

Why thank you 

13 hours ago, VintageComics said:

I forgot to mention the hovering and didn't want to be too critical but this is definitely something I don't like as well.

I hate it when I mistakenly hover over something and then I have to wait for it to disappear to continue reading.

All great points.

One I would like to add is invisibility. I like my privacy.

Going to vote now.

Cheers Roy 

7 hours ago, Architecht said:

Done

Splendid, thank you ?

7 minutes ago, porcupine48 said:

he fixed his! 

Yes, and gave himself a pretty avatar background while we're all stuck with the black monoliths. I dunno...

Anyway, do you want the car or not?

1 minute ago, Marwood & I said:

 

Stop complaining Spike. Don't you realise Arch is dealing with new calendar entry capabilities right now? Where's your sense of priorities man!

 

Oh, and by the way, do you want to buy a car? One sold but I've still got one left. Pictures earlier.

15 minutes ago, porcupine48 said:

i'm incomplete. 0.5

trimmed.

 

Stop complaining Spike. Don't you realise Arch is dealing with new calendar entry capabilities right now? Where's your sense of priorities man!

Does anyone want to buy a car?

1 hour ago, Architecht said:

I tested this with a user with your same permissions / groups and didn't have this problem. I see your screen shot, though, and it clearly states wait 5 seconds, which shouldn't even be a thing if the flood control is never more than 3 seconds.

Is anyone else having this issue? I think we need additional info to track this down.

I think it's 7 seconds Arch, not three. See below, I tried again just now and I'm on my desktop using v1.3 Default if that has any bearing.

I typed in Porcupine47, got the results, changed it to 48 and got this:

2 minutes ago, piper said:

I noticed on my profile that it says"Members".  Shouldn't it say Member?

Alternatively, I could hurry up and post more so that I don't keep seeing this annoying (but minor) grammar issue/typo.

 

The new boards are so sedate. I'm sure if this were posted on the old boards there would be at least 17 knob jokes here by now.

Maybe one of the reasons the 'I Hate The New Boards' thread is still going strong is that many people are still thoroughly unhappy with the visual layout.

Since we've gone live - what is it now, a month? - we have had 5 themes:

I'm currently posting to you from the 1.3 default theme.

Lets track through each theme and see if we can see why so many are still unhappy (I'm one of them by the way - please vote for my CRs)

The first theme was the 'Bright White v1.0'. If you look at this screen shot you can see why it was deservedly, universally panned. A rotten, horrible sea of white which left many wondering how on earth it could possibly have been put in place in the first place. There was talk of pre-testing and user acceptance. I humbly suggest that failed, spectacularly.

Next up, the Beta Tweaks v1.1. This version succeeded in making quotes more prevalent than the new text. It also remained fairly off-puttingly white, with very little distinction. People didn't like it.

3rd attempt, v1.2 'Less Wide, Less White'. This version retained the quotes in white, making the eye go to them and not the new post, but did helpfully add two huge blocks of comic images either side of what was in effect just v1.1 made smaller. People didn't like it.

Next up, BETA 1.3 which is now the default. Happily, this version switched the quotes to grey and the new text to white. Better. But what's that to the left? A huge inexplicable block of black. And, on my desktop at least, grey writing within it, very hard to read. Stark and lacking in any finesse / charm / warmth.

Next up v1.3 which appears to be the former 1.3 but with smaller post font. So harder to read, no?

So, 5 versions over as many weeks and none bear any resemblance to the warm familiarity of an old UBB Thread post with its clear layout, warm tones and abundance of information presented in an uncluttered appearance - example below:

I have raised change requests to try to get posts looking as close to the old boards as possible, not out of some sense of misguided nostalgia or unwillingness to adapt, but out of the simple belief that, as many long term members have stated over and again, the new boards suck visually.

It's not the Mods fault, it's not our fault. I've said a few times, the bells and whistles rock. 

But until we get the basic posting appearance to something which does not induce headaches, nausea and a feeling of cold isolation, we're buggered.

Over to you Arch, our only hope of getting things to change.

P.S. I may have got the order of the last two wrong, but I don't think that matters too much under the circumstances 

Any reason to post ASM covers is a good reason. Here are the pence brigade:

23 minutes ago, bababooey said:

It's redundant because it's no longer "revealed" by the hover, it's right under your avatar picture when you post.

Got ya, you're right. The reason I was puzzled is that it isn't there under your avatar when you're logged out, only when you're logged in. Which is odd?! I was logged out when I checked your reply.

26 minutes ago, lizards2 said:

I think like Roy mentioned, many of us are still here, but don't post much, because it involves a lot of work and time, and for me, potential nausea.  My  board time has probably been cut to 25% or less of what it used to be, so for that, CGC, thank you.

I should point out that I'm not really a primary customer of CGC either - I never submit - so why CGC should care about me, I don't know.  On the other hand, I am a secondary consumer of their product at times. 

I think it's a shame you've cut down Lizard as I always liked your posting style. The new boards are improving though and I have worked out my 'new way' of using them. I think the bells and whistles are a distraction sometimes - I know they're there but I use very few of them. If you 'ignore' them, and just stick with reading, posting and uploading pictures, it's not much different. As for nausea, it's getting a bit better and I truly think keylines will help with the visuals, if the CR gets accepted.

I actually find the boards easier to read and navigate when I'm logged out. The 'All Activity' button at the top right lets you see everything new posted and I find that the best substitute for the old boards 'Active Topics' function. The only drawback with that is some threads don't appear (e.g. The Water Cooler) and every post appears in sequence so when someone is having a sale their posts can fill the whole page.

Let us know what it is that is causing you problems and we'll see if we can get it changed via the Change Request process.

As for CGC, I'm not a primary customer either but they decided to put this board up for free so the least they can do is make it as user friendly as possible for it's membership who, paying or not, indirectly contribute to their reason for existing.

42 minutes ago, bababooey said:

I would suggest that the hover function be changed to reflect "location" rather than the now redundant start date. 

Notwithstanding my thoughts on the hover function, I could live with that albeit it would involve an extra click / action.

Why is the start date now redundant?

One more from me if I may - the book has a tight spine, the cover is firmly attached and the page quality is a surprisingly nice OW-W:

Cheers 

1 hour ago, Mio said:

4.5 seems fair.

 

 

!

It's yours for one meelion sesterces!  

A few pages back I listed some of the reasons why I find the new boards less user friendly and Arch responded against each point and advised that I raise change requests.

I have just raised four as follows:

1. Introduce 'Keylines' Around Quotes
2. Add the Thread Title to Each Post in a Thread
3. Add Members Location Under Their Avatar in Posts
4. Remove, or Introduce a Time Delay on 'Hovering'

The introduction of keylines is the most significant one for me, and it does seem to have support based on the responses to my earlier post. So if you believe these things will help, please go to the Change Requests and vote.

The one CR I could not raise was the re-introduction of the hyper link to the previous post. Arch advised this would not be possible. As things stand, I think that is a real shame as it means you can only preserve the narrative flow by quoting every time which specific post you are responding to. But that is something I can live with so I won't mention it again.

I take Lazyboys point earlier about people raising issues which have already been answered, and maybe some of my 4 CRs are duplicates, but information is sprawling on this site at the moment so I wouldn't be too harsh on those who duplicate commentary. Maybe try to help them, kindly if you can.

Many people have raised concerns that the boards are not the same in spirit at the moment - something intangible is missing, even if the physical traffic is broadly the same. If we try to iron out the things which are detracting from the posting experience as quickly as we can maybe everyone will find a level of comfort and normal service may resume.

If you think any of the 4 CRs I have raised will help, please vote for them.

Cheers, Steve