Get Marwood & I

This Change Requests proposes that we introduce what Arch calls 'keylines' around quotes in posts.

Currently, a post with quotes looks like this:

The proposal is for the quotes to be separated by keylines so they look more like this:

The reason is to make it easier to distinguish quotes / multiple quotes from the new post wording.

This in turn should make the reading process less visually taxing.

8 minutes ago, VintageComics said:

Why don't you pull back on the stick a little bit and let people  have a discussion?

I'll read what I feel like reading

We get it. You're God's gift to chat forum software.

Yes, I know that the thread title is in the URL. I still prefer having it in the discussion box.

How about you just let people discuss what they like and don't like.

 

Well said Roy (this must be the board passion 'The Brain' is missing in his "What Happened" thread!)

It looks like there is support for keylines around quotes so I'll raise a change request tomorrow along with the other points Arch suggested.  The new boards are here to stay, so we may as well focus all our efforts on changing the things we don't like. If enough people vote, hopefully it changes, if not, we live with it. 

I agree with Buzz, it's slowly getting better.

In respect of 'keylines', which of these do we think looks better:

The current v1.3 (without keylines around the quotes):

A mock up of what the same post would look like with keylines around the quotes:

I prefer the latter of course!

If there is a good response, I'll raise it as a change request.

3 hours ago, david99 said:

Mike Pence collected comics ?

I don't think I can trump that 

6 hours ago, VintageComics said:

You beat me to the punch.

I was going to make a post comparing the old to the new and explain what was appealing about the old chat forum.

 

It brought me out of retirement Roy! Now if we could only convince the other 34 thousand members.... 

Thank you all. I purchased it as a VG+, so it looks like the dealer knew his stuff. Have fun....

8 minutes ago, Architecht said:

Yep, you just have to find them in the CSS, check to make sure that style is only applied to the one thing you want to change and not a bunch of other stuff, and then make a good design choice, make sure it works well across a variety of screens/devices. It's not monumental. Just takes time, and adds up across all of the other tweaks.

Goodie.  We'll sit tight then. And while you're at it, maybe reverse the polarity of the neutron flow as well ?

4 minutes ago, Architecht said:

My busy comment was more about the level of keylines on the old site - so it was a general comment about that design direction, not an explicit rejection of all keylines. If you look around, you can see that this theme uses them in many places.

So I'm not sure what we'll do to address it, but as I said, it will be looked at.

I'm not trying to be awkward, but isn't it as simple as making the feint grey lines darker? Can the new software do that ?

11 minutes ago, Sqeggs said:

Apparently talking to a brick wall here, so I'll give it up.

I'm also fighting this fight about 10 posts back Sqeggs.  It seems faint grey lines which make differentiating difficult are in. Clearly defined lines, which in turn clearly define the separate quotes, are "too busy" so they're out. But Arch is still looking at it so don't give up yet. 

8 minutes ago, skypinkblu said:

@ArchitechtI know one new thing I love, I can see where people changed their names. Some even changed them 3 or 4 times.

Yes, it's great that you can see that now skypinkblu, I agree. It keeps everything above board and gives members the ability to change their name if they're bored with the old one, whilst retaining the information for all to see if they care. In my case I only changed mine once - the first few were the board migration processes fault. 

1 hour ago, Architecht said:

That's true. Not sure if I can fix it, or if people will just get used to it / don't need it. I missed that at first myself, but got over it pretty quickly. Your mileage may vary, but you can add that to the change request forum and see who agrees.

 

The swoopy arrow on the upper right of whatever was quoted serves that purpose. It's true that only works if you quote something, but I don't think that can change. There is no such thing as a reply to a specific post without a quote in this board.

 

If you hover over the date of the post, it gives you the full info.

 

Might be able to change that. I'm not sure it's vital, versus just different, You should add that to the change request forum.

 

We were able to control the color of the quoted box in the code. It was previously stuck as white. Here, I think the experience varies by the monitor you're using. Here at home, the grey is less distinguishable that it was at work. We may adjust this further.

 

The fact that the sig is after the quote line makes a pretty clear separation to me, but we might be able to control this. Throw it in the change request board, otherwise it's too hard to keep track of all the suggestions and prioritize them if they aren't easy to do and clearly needed.

I doubt we can change that one easily enough to be worth it. 

That is generally a personal aesthetic, I think. The first theme launch definitely needed changes. This one is close enough that we have people who like the same elements as other people who don't like them. That's getting towards as happy as we can make a large population. The layout of the old boards encountered much the same kind of complaints when initially launched. I'm not saying these OR the old boards were perfect, or that the feedback isn't valid. It's just that you reach a point where changes can make as many people unhappy as they make happy. That means you are past universal usability and into personal preference.

 

There may be further tweaks needed to create the right visual emphasis. SOME percentage of this will definitely come from the change in familiarity. Let's face it, we were all experts at using the old boards. Now we're less expert. That will come with some friction. But we'll keep looking for needed changes.

 

Putting lots of keylines around things makes for a busy layout. Because we were all coming from the old boards, we were used to the busy layout, so it doesn't seem busy, but it is. We need to make design decisions that are good for both the existing users and new users over time. I think if we had a board like this for a decade, and then moved to the OLD boards layout with lines around everything, we would hear many complaints about how horrible that layout is, too busy, too many lines around things, etc.. But we'll keep looking for a winning balance.

 

There is a flood control on searches, but it's not twice in the same minute. It's uh (looking) once every 3 seconds.

Regarding the search 'flood control', I can count slowly to 7 seconds and still get the error message so it's not 3 seconds on my computer Arch. 

I disagree with you that the old boards were fussy. Quite the opposite I think and I still don't get your aversion to putting clearly lined boxes in place to make it easy to differentiate, for example, quotes from new text. I'll look at adding the other points to a change request as you say. Thanks 

Hi All,

Isn't it great that we can post scans direct from our PC with no resizing now 

I purchased this some years back from a reputable UK dealer. I won't say his grade until I've had a few responses - don't want to influence anyone!

Cheers 

Arch,

You seem to have solved image posting – I managed to attach 9 scanned comic images to one post directly from my computer today with no need to shrink them and without needing a 3rd party hosting site. No more Photobucket at last. Well done – that is excellent.

Certain visual aspects of the new boards are also excellent – what you can do with your profile, if you choose to, is great. I really like that.

The one area that I feel still needs attention though is the basic posting process and what information  / functionality has been lost (unless you can point me to it). If we look at this screen dump of the same post as it exists on the new and old boards we can see:

1.      The old board has the thread title at the top of each post (which helps you to ‘place’ what you are reading in your mind, especially after lengthy scrolling). The new board doesn’t

2.      The old board has a hyperlink to the previous post at the top of each post, showing clearly who is being responded to. The new board doesn’t, forcing you to quote to ensure the narrative flows

3.      The old board has the specific date and time of posting at the top of each post. The new board doesn’t

4.      The old board has the board members location (helpful to identify non-US members who post to a different time zone). The new board doesn’t

5.      The old board clearly separates any previous quote in an easily identifiable box with slightly smaller text from the new post. The new board has the faintest grey box with no line and text the same size as the new post. This all merges into one blob of text

6.      The old board has a clear line separating the board members signature details, with text in black, easily readable. The new board has the faintest line which can barely be seen with faint grey wording

7.      The old board has the response functions out of the way from the post itself at the bottom. The new board has them above the signature line ‘interrupting’ the post

8.      The old board has a pleasing layout and colouring (has anyone moaned about it?). The new board (v1.3) has this huge block of black looming out at you – especially on long posts

Taken together, the above issues make for an infinitely less enjoyable visual experience – my eye simply does not know where to look first at new board posts. It is also a less structured experience. At any given moment I’ve forgotten what thread I’m reading, I’m not sure if the post is in response to the previous post or indeed one far preceding that and I have to concentrate when there are quotes as everything merges together.

This may explain why so many boardies are claiming the boards give them a headache?

I don’t know if these things can be fixed, but there does seem to be a resistance to putting things in boxes with lines. This separates things clearly, where they need to be clear. Faint grey blocks do not assist the eye. If you look at some of the posts above my one here there is information all over the place - nothing is clear.

Again, all the new board bells and whistles rock, and I would miss them if we reverted to the old boards. But I really am finding the basics off putting to the point where I don’t feel like posting anything new (get your DLS MEFE jokes in now  ).

Does anyone agree with me?

One other point – if I search twice in the space of a minute I get:

Should that happen?

I hope some of this helps. You're doing a great job trying to make things better, so if this v1.3 is as good as it gets, just let us know and maybe some of us will stop going on about it. Maybe...

12 minutes ago, vaillant said:

You can remove banners, ads and entire sections by installing Adblock in your browser and use the functionality to manually hide them.

Sooper, thanks ?

1 minute ago, Dog Like Sparky said:

I can't stop laughing 

How old do you have to be before farting stops being funny? 

3 minutes ago, Foley said:

Good god, that sounded like the offspring of a chainsaw and a helicopter 

I can't stop laughing 

4 minutes ago, Foley said:

They take up valuable real estate at the top of the page. When viewing a page while scrolled all the way up, there is exactly zero content actually displayed, only the giant black banner, a social media banner, the giant ad area, and the giant announcement area. It's too much wasted space. Moving the ads would alleviate some of this at least.

+1

31 minutes ago, Mercury Man said:

Shhhh.....you'll wake the Variant Hounds  

Arrf!

1 hour ago, bababooey said:

10 minutes ago, bababooey said:

Christ, ain't you a noisy eater?!

Just testing out photo uploading...