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How are we feeling about the new CGC Boards tweaks?
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Started by sagii,

89 posts in this topic

Get Marwood & I

Get Marwood & I

Posted
Posted
12 hours ago, Cat-Man_America said:

The notification side bar on right is apparently in every thread, but this one.  It’s an annoying waste of space that reduces image size on iPads.  IPads are the ideal in between size mobile data conveyance, so reducing iPad usefulness by turning site platform functionality into a cell phone app seems counterproductive.  If those overseeing the “tweaking” process consider this a site upgrade, it seems woefully misinformed.

In fairness, some of the modest changes ...such as hiding the emoji reaction icons and moving the edit button into a drop-down menu... are fairly easily adapted to once you know what you’re dealing with.  Those changes may not add anything to the convenience, but if folks like the tweaks, raising issues over the less significant ones is much ado about very little.  

OTOH, constricting space at the expense of iPad users to make the site a bit more cellphone friendly seems misguided.  The analogy that comes to mind is the old adage about robbing Peter to pay Paul.  To my way of thinking the notifications would be better placed at the start of the thread rather than running along the side.

No doubt some tech savvy folks will see any contrarian viewpoint as the typical “get off of my lawn, kid” argument. But I’m not coming at this from a lawnmower’s perspective.  Is it really that unreasonable to value consistent functionality and familiarity over technical changes that provide a small benefit to some while reducing usefulness to others?  :foryou:

My intent here isn’t to be critical, but rather to understand the reasons for these changes/tweaks.  Just curious about where others stand on this or if it even matters to anyone besides the overly caffeinated.  hm

:tink:

Hi Cat-Man - you'll find the answers to many of your points, the background and direction of travel regarding the side bar change in the reply I gave to Peter just a few posts up. Our CGC admins did not deliver the change - Invision (the software owners) did. The side bar may work for some of Invision's other client forums, but here it serves little purpose other than to compress that which we are reading. It also messes up much of the formatting that some take care to craft into their posts. Any value to us, in my view, is cosmetic and superfluous. Once you know who the 'top poster' is, the information is redundant until that position changes. So you have to see the same information over and over every time you visit.

Dena (our admin) has already stated that our admins are minded to remove the function, and my link to the Invision website shows that it is indeed a feature that they have the power to switch off. Hopefully they will decide to do that or, at least, consult the members to see if most would support that action.

All the other changes are cosmetic and we'll likely get used to them as we always have. I'm not a fan of change for changes sake myself. If a function works and can't be improved upon, changing how it looks or moving its location just feels like unnecessary tinkering to me. But that seems to be the way in technology, endless tinkering. Maybe an industry survey somewhere shows that layout change refreshes things, like a new coat of paint. But to me, for example, moving the edit button from it's known, titled, obvious visual location to a hidden location just annoys everyone until they get used to it. But it still annoyed them, so why do it if there is no material gain? Newcomers to the site will have to hunt for the edit button because it is no longer visible. How does that help anybody?

I've tried to keep the momentum going with Dena to head off the possibility that the side bar ends up staying put because everyone just gets used to it and - as has happened in the past - there is 'no significant clamour for it to be removed'. No one asked for a like button but it was brought in because it was available, and then left in place because there was 'no significant clamour for it to be removed'. You can decide whether, in retrospect, that was a good idea. Once something is in place for a period of time, it can be difficult to remove it.

Anyway, as I type this there is a nice picture of Elvis in his Christmas hat to my right, and you're the top poster here Cat-Man, so all is not lost :wink:

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Cat-Man_America

Cat-Man_America

Posted
Posted (edited)
6 hours ago, Get Marwood & I said:

Hi Cat-Man - you'll find the answers to many of your points, the background and direction of travel regarding the side bar change in the reply I gave to Peter just a few posts up. Our CGC admins did not deliver the change - Invision (the software owners) did. The side bar may work for some of Invision's other client forums, but here it serves little purpose other than to compress that which we are reading. It also messes up much of the formatting that some take care to craft into their posts. Any value to us, in my view, is cosmetic and superfluous. Once you know who the 'top poster' is, the information is redundant until that position changes. So you have to see the same information over and over every time you visit.

Dena (our admin) has already stated that our admins are minded to remove the function, and my link to the Invision website shows that it is indeed a feature that they have the power to switch off. Hopefully they will decide to do that or, at least, consult the members to see if most would support that action.

All the other changes are cosmetic and we'll likely get used to them as we always have. I'm not a fan of change for changes sake myself. If a function works and can't be improved upon, changing how it looks or moving its location just feels like unnecessary tinkering to me. But that seems to be the way in technology, endless tinkering. Maybe an industry survey somewhere shows that layout change refreshes things, like a new coat of paint. But to me, for example, moving the edit button from it's known, titled, obvious visual location to a hidden location just annoys everyone until they get used to it. But it still annoyed them, so why do it if there is no material gain? Newcomers to the site will have to hunt for the edit button because it is no longer visible. How does that help anybody?

I've tried to keep the momentum going with Dena to head off the possibility that the side bar ends up staying put because everyone just gets used to it and - as has happened in the past - there is 'no significant clamour for it to be removed'. No one asked for a like button but it was brought in because it was available, and then left in place because there was 'no significant clamour for it to be removed'. You can decide whether, in retrospect, that was a good idea. Once something is in place for a period of time, it can be difficult to remove it.

Anyway, as I type this there is a nice picture of Elvis in his Christmas hat to my right, and you're the top poster here Cat-Man, so all is not lost :wink:

This clarifies a lot.  Big thanks for explaining this in detail.  My dense monkey-brain was having difficulty wrapping around the minutiae of what's going on with these tweaks.  

The sidebar issue isn't a major problem on large devices like desktops.  In fact, it only takes up maybe a fifth of the space on the right side of my desktop monitor, basically space that wasn't being used on my screen before.  Conversely, the sidebar intrusion IS a major imposition for iPad use, taking up half the available screen space.  Hopefully the Invasion software folks (pun intended, sorry) are cognizant of the problems their tweaks create for other devices and will respond to Dena's request to shut it off.  Since an Apple iPad is my primary travel tool, anything that interferes with it's efficiency tends to get me riled up.

Other small cosmetic changes and functionality relocations are much easier to live with once you're aware of them. (thumbsu

Edited by Cat-Man_America
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Get Marwood & I

Get Marwood & I

Posted
Posted
23 minutes ago, Cat-Man_America said:

This clarifies a lot.  Big thanks for explaining this in detail.  My dense monkey-brain was having difficulty wrapping around the minutiae of what's going on with these tweaks.  

The sidebar issue isn't a major issue on large devices like desktops.  In fact, it only takes up maybe a fifth of the space on the right side of my desktop monitor, basically space that wasn't being used on my screen before.  Conversely, the sidebar intrusion IS a major imposition for iPad use, taking up half the available screen space.  Hopefully the Invasion software folks (pun intended, sorry) are cognizant of the problems their tweaks create for other devices and will respond to Dena's request to shut it off.  Since an Apple iPad is my primary travel tool, anything that interferes with it's efficiency tends to get me riled up.

Other small cosmetic changes and functionality relocations are much easier to live with once you're aware of them. (thumbsu

Not at all, lots of people share your view Cat-Man. I hate the side bar myself, even on my desk top. Many of my threads present information which takes account of the pre-change desk top screen width - comparative comic examples, stuff like that - and the compression mucks them up by pushing images onto subsequent lines. It's just annoying really to take the trouble to reduce image sizes so that they fit the screen side by side only for this dumb change to subsequently split them.

I'm not sure how long it takes to switch a disliked function off, but hopefully it will be gone soon. Have a great Christmas.

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Paul © ® ⚽️💙™

Paul © ® ⚽️💙™

Posted
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10 hours ago, Get Marwood & I said:

Hi Cat-Man - you'll find the answers to many of your points, the background and direction of travel regarding the side bar change in the reply I gave to Peter just a few posts up. Our CGC admins did not deliver the change - Invision (the software owners) did. The side bar may work for some of Invision's other client forums, but here it serves little purpose other than to compress that which we are reading. It also messes up much of the formatting that some take care to craft into their posts. Any value to us, in my view, is cosmetic and superfluous. Once you know who the 'top poster' is, the information is redundant until that position changes. So you have to see the same information over and over every time you visit.

Dena (our admin) has already stated that our admins are minded to remove the function, and my link to the Invision website shows that it is indeed a feature that they have the power to switch off. Hopefully they will decide to do that or, at least, consult the members to see if most would support that action.

All the other changes are cosmetic and we'll likely get used to them as we always have. I'm not a fan of change for changes sake myself. If a function works and can't be improved upon, changing how it looks or moving its location just feels like unnecessary tinkering to me. But that seems to be the way in technology, endless tinkering. Maybe an industry survey somewhere shows that layout change refreshes things, like a new coat of paint. But to me, for example, moving the edit button from it's known, titled, obvious visual location to a hidden location just annoys everyone until they get used to it. But it still annoyed them, so why do it if there is no material gain? Newcomers to the site will have to hunt for the edit button because it is no longer visible. How does that help anybody?

I've tried to keep the momentum going with Dena to head off the possibility that the side bar ends up staying put because everyone just gets used to it and - as has happened in the past - there is 'no significant clamour for it to be removed'. No one asked for a like button but it was brought in because it was available, and then left in place because there was 'no significant clamour for it to be removed'. You can decide whether, in retrospect, that was a good idea. Once something is in place for a period of time, it can be difficult to remove it.

Anyway, as I type this there is a nice picture of Elvis in his Christmas hat to my right, and you're the top poster here Cat-Man, so all is not lost :wink:

Get rid of the :censored:  thing I say.

It's serves about as much purpose as the pope's balls or a chocolate teapot,

i.e. no use. 

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Get Marwood & I

Get Marwood & I

Posted
Posted
2 minutes ago, G G ® said:

Get rid of the :censored:  thing I say.

It's serves about as much purpose as the pope's balls or a chocolate teapot,

i.e. no use. 

That reminds me of that joke where people keep calling the Pope Elvis. 

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Cat-Man_America

Cat-Man_America

Posted
Posted (edited)
18 hours ago, Robot Man said:

Couple of questions. What happened to post counts? I now see no edit or delete post tools. Why are there boardie mods symbols. Although most are people I like and rarely have had any problems here. I can’t help but feeling a little “uneasy” now...

As was pointed out to me earlier, the drop down menu is located at the three dots in the upper right.  That's where the edit function is located.  It's a neat little nip and tuck, ..but needed? My only annoyance is that it's now a two step process which seems counterproductive for an improvement tweak.  

However, that's less of a big deal for me than image and message constriction.  The post-tweak irony that hasn't been discussed ...the elephant-in-the-room, so to speak... is that even the competitor's board has more space available for iPad imaging!  :whatthe:  On an iPad, only the left 1/4 of a board user's screen is grayed out, which is where their board member information is concentrated.  

The biggest problem with their forum ...that was complained about based on the platform they chose... is that only the middle half of the desktop screen can be used for processing images and messages.  This probably makes the site more iPhone friendly, but that's just a guess.  Half of the space ...1/4 on each side...  is wasted on a desktop.  Folks complained about this "keyhole effect" along with their single page set-up for all comics and general message traffic, but that's what they chose to go with.  At least on an iPad images could be uploaded for viewing over 2/3 of the 3/4 screen.  

Now, let's move back over to the new "improved" CGC board tweaks.  On this site, with the tweaks fully functioning, around 1/3 of the iPad screen is grayed out on the right for notifications and around 1/5 of the screen on the left (dark gray) that's allocated for board member information.  That means over half of the iPad screen is now dominated by board controlled content, leaving less than half the screen available for commentary, user image downloads and detail scrutiny.  That's totally messed up, IMO.

Again, this is over an iPad and doesn't apply the same way to desktop computers (CGC still has an advantage on desktop).  Since I don't upload comic images via iPhone I have no idea how this site looks over a cell phone with the new tweaks.  For those folks the app may be apropos (pun intended).

I've read comments to the effect that some folks are getting used to these tweaks.  Well, my only response to this is that people can get used to a lot of things or choose to become less involved.  That doesn't mean that the vast majority are pleased with the fiddling or that "tweaks" to the platform are in fact improvements.  The wheel doesn't need to be reinvented every couple of years.  Changes should be based on actual real world functional improvement, not an ambitious platform designer's idea of modernization.  

Apologies for the length of this: Caffeine Rules! (thumbsu  Hey, maybe we could use a steaming coffee cup emoji!

Edited by Cat-Man_America
More words!
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sagii

sagii

Posted
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Posted

@Cat-Man_Americamakes a lot of good points to be considered on whether some of the tweaks can be abandoned and return to previous functions. 

One of the nicer tweaks I feel is that now 'post quotes' are edited(partially hidden), so if you do want to 'quote' a wall of images post, it requires less scrolling when you are perusing a Thread In their quoted form. 

 

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Cat-Man_America

Cat-Man_America

Posted
Posted
22 hours ago, FoggyNelson said:

I am used to the tweaks now ‼️👍don’t even notice what is off to the side👍

Foggy, sorry if I sound like a broken record here.

Obviously you’re NOT using an iPad. Trust me, if you were, you’d notice it.  You’d have to be Matt Murdock for this not to annoy you.

On iPad, which is my primary travel device, available space is under 50%.   That isn’t just off to the side, it’s a distracting reduction of space and IMO, unacceptable.

Of course, your mileage ...on other devices... may vary. :foryou:

 

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Cat-Man_America

Cat-Man_America

Posted
Posted (edited)

Using my iPad this morning, I decided to check the status of the Announcement sidebar.  Sadly, the notification bar on right is apparently still up in most threads.  It’s “OFF” in the GOALS thread so I know it can be removed, but it’s “ON” in the Big Boy pants thread and Timely thread.  It’s “ON” right now in this thread.  

Why? What purpose does the sidebar info on who's posting really serve? 

On desktop the sidebar isn't an issue, but how many folks work from a widescreen desktop computer all or most of the time? My point is that this seriously impedes the usefulness of personal iPads as a collecting tool for travel. There’s less than 50% of the screen space available for user content when that darned sidebar is turned ON.

I implore you, please shut the sidebars down.  :frustrated:

Edited by Cat-Man_America
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Get Marwood & I

Get Marwood & I

Posted
Posted
1 hour ago, Cat-Man_America said:

Using my iPad this morning, I decided to check the status of the Announcement sidebar.  Sadly, the notification bar on right is apparently still up in most threads.  It’s “OFF” in the GOALS thread so I know it can be removed, but it’s “ON” in the Big Boy pants thread and Timely thread.  It’s “ON” right now in this thread.  

It appears automatically but only once a thread reaches a certain number of posts I think

1 hour ago, Cat-Man_America said:

I implore you, please shut the sidebars down.  :frustrated:

+10,000,000,000,000,000

:wishluck:

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