bit-tech 2017 refresh feedback: General site and forum feedback

Looks beautiful well done chaps!

 

Yay! We're back!

 

Where did all my thread subscriptions go?

Also: it's alive, IT'S ALIVE!

EDIT: Found it.

Double EDIT: Two-factor auth too, excellent...

 

At first glance the forums feel fresh, and appear quick. Glad to see them back.

Edit, no bit smilies

 

the sites nice but i dont know about these forums.

 

These will take some getting used to, but they allow us to do far more. They are also far more secure.

 

Glad to see the Forums back up and running.

Not glad that the amount of white with white on white with grey borders which is burning my retinas, I am having to squint at the forums pages to read them.

At some point (before I go blind ) could we have "a less white" theme.

Oh and as already stated no bit smilies....

 

OK, proper feedback time, based on my 10/15 minutes of use so far...

Niggles:

• I find it a little irritating that the "Home" links in the top left take you back to the main bit-tech.net URL, but that's probably just something I'll need to get used to.
• Thread prefixes (e.g., "For Sale", "Donation", etc) aren't coloured any more; this made it quite easy to filter threads at a glance, especially in the marketplace section. Although in some sections they were more or less meaningless.
• The crusty old smilies we know and love are gone! (as mentioned by @Gunsmith and @aramil already) Could we either go "full unicode emoji" or... possibly bring the old ones back?
• Yeah, the theme is a little... stark. The plain white is kinda bright!
• "Flash-based uploader" - Flash.... FLASH?!! - Kill it with fire!!!

Stuff I Do Like:

• @ Mentions - I think we have them now, I'll find out when I finish writing this post; this is handy.
• "New replies have been posted" while you're writing a post - this is present on a number of other forums I use and it'll be damn useful here, especially on some of the... "lively" threads in Serious.
• Two-factor auth: Doubleplus good.
• Haven't seen any bugs/errors yet (pat on the back, and some more coffee, for the devs)
• EDIT: I can highlight text and specifically quote only that text from the post, instead of having to quote the whole post and then trim it down - nice.

I'm sure there will be more for both lists but it's late, my nose is leaking constantly, and this cold is making me grumpy.

 

@Byron C Yes, you can @ people

 

Yep, that works .

 

Oh, before I forget, the main site - this has been bugging me since I saw the new design.

Each article thumbnail image has a little coloured bar next to it, and under the old design (see this post for an example) there was a single column layout. Now that there's a multi-column layout it feels a little... confused. When I look at the current front page it looks like the image on the right belongs to the text on the left - in this case it looks the image for the CM keyboard story belongs to the WipEout Omega review and the text on the right-hand side of the image is just kinda left hanging there. I think if those little coloured bars were moved to the left-hand side of the thumbnail image, rather than the right, it might make it that little bit clearer which image belongs to which story, and that there are two distinct content columns.

 

You could add an "Inverted night type theme" it would be better, but just add tones to the current white, like turning it into a light blue/purple/grey.

Anything that is not shiny shiny white on white. Playing around with stylish, even taking the backgrounds and applying a tweak of grey makes the whole forums more readable

Edit: there is no forums link on the main sites menu:

(nb I added the red before someone starts )

And the whole site is to narrow (does not scale with resolution/monitor width)

 

Windows Snipping Tool actually, never did get the hang of Photoshop .

 

He got out his graphics tablet to draw that arrow

 

I would have said it was done in Tilt Brush using the HTC Vive

 

To reiterate the things I complained about on twitter...

Most of the stuff is too small and/or a ballache to read, both on the main page of the site and the forums themselves.

Everything on the main page is crammed into a column <50% of the screen width... and then the problem compounded further as a third of that column is taken up by adverts...
Most of the default font sizes, especially on the forums are too small... On a 1080p screen I shouldn't be needing to zoom in just to be able to read things.
The contrast between the text and background of the forums is... off... It's hard to describe the offness, but basically I can't spend long periods of time on the forum any more as it give me a headache and nausea after a while [I wish I was kidding about the nausea...]


So, whilst i appreciate the work that's clearly gone into the refresh... the new site is doing my head in... quite literally in the case of the forums...