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

Discussion in 'Feedback & Suggestions' started by Dogbert666, 27 Jun 2017.

  1. Corky42

    Corky42 Where's walle?

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    One thing i miss from the old forum is the ability to collapse certain forum sections.
     
  2. Gareth Halfacree

    Gareth Halfacree WIIGII! Lover of bit-tech Administrator Super Moderator Moderator

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    More like NASA launching a new Space Shuttle and you're acting surprised that it looks a lot like the old Space Shuttle, I'd have said, but there we go.

    No argument from me there.

    As a positive note, though, has anyone tried the new site and forums on a smartphone? They're acebest.
     
  3. MLyons

    MLyons 70% Dev, 30% Doge. DevDoge. Software Dev @ Corsair Lover of bit-tech Administrator Super Moderator Moderator

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    looking into this
     
  4. edzieba

    edzieba Virtual Realist

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    Off topic, but that would be pretty bloody surprising. The STS was a massive kludge of competing design goals from NASA (small lifting-body orbiter with minimal payload, top-of-rocket layout, easily refurbished in-orbit-only engines) and the Air Force (massive cross-track capability requiring the huge pointless wings [that were never used], internal cargo bay) that resulted in a godawful hybrid of a massive orbital vehicle, overcomplicated engines that needed to operate from surface to orbit, strap-on solid boosters because that STILL wasn't enough thrust to get it off the ground, side-mount because you could never get the thing on top of a stack even with the massive VAB available, and with most of the major dimensions dictated by whatever buildings NASA happened to have available (e.g. the External Tank dimensions are what they are because that's how high the ceiling in the Michoud Assembly Building is). To replace an awful kludge with an awful kludge would demonstrate learning nothing from past failures.
     
  5. Gareth Halfacree

    Gareth Halfacree WIIGII! Lover of bit-tech Administrator Super Moderator Moderator

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    There's a reason I said "a new Space Shuttle" and not "a new reusable orbital vehicle system," y'know. :p
     
  6. Zak33

    Zak33 Staff Lover of bit-tech Administrator

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    yup, they do resize well and are sharp

    the White background is ok too. Replying on my trumpet right now and it's effective.
     
  7. alpha112

    alpha112 Modder

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    It's not that it's a pain to read, it's mostly that the way things are misaligned, the colours are close but not identical, and that some parts are SVG/shapes/borders while others are low res images (not your fault entirely, I guess some of the images have been scaled up), that does actually make me feel uneasy looking at it.

    Edit: By the way, I do really like this site and the community around it. And as I said my job is Web development, so if there's any way I/we can help get it on track then please say. I can also be a bit more formal/in depth/constructive with my feedback, but I won't be less honest.

    Opening a public issue tracker somewhere would be really useful because I can see the feedback forum getting overrun.
     
    Last edited: 28 Jun 2017
  8. MLyons

    MLyons 70% Dev, 30% Doge. DevDoge. Software Dev @ Corsair Lover of bit-tech Administrator Super Moderator Moderator

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    Got any examples so I can look into what's happening behind the scenes?
     
  9. Yukionno

    Yukionno What's a Dremel?

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    Hey there, glad to see the forum is back up and running.

    I have noticed is the top 4 articles are repeated in the second news section on the front page (which just confuses things). Is there really any need for them to be repeated? I just pushes all the other news articles down the page and means more scrolling. Also (i believe someone has already mentioned this but) the colour bars on the images dislocate the image from the text making it look like the text is for the other image.

    Also something that always causes me issues is the amount of white background that is forced on my eyes. For me personally, if i have to stare at a webpage/program with large amount of white background for too long i loose colour perception and get headaches.
    Normally the first thing i do with any forum/program is change the settings to a darker theme to stop this. Will we will get the option to be able to do this?

    Regards
     
  10. asura

    asura jack of all trades

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    Another little thing *they'll probably keep coming* the main forum titles "Article Discussion" "Industry News" etcetera, I'm sure they used to go bold, or change colour or something when there was a new post - it made at a glance assessments of what was new where really simple. If that's still a thing, it could be as simple as making the grey bubble go blue when there's a new response - or - ya'know, something.

    The accompanying "latest" could also do with being a point or a point and a half larger.

    The RSS logo lights up if your anywhere on a forum title, even if you're not over the logo its self - intentional or accidental?

    You have to look all the way to the right to see that a post is a sticky - maybe orient the pin image on the left hand side to reduce eye travel?

    The mouse-over topic first paragraph thing - it's prettier than the old one, but it's slower too...

    I like the alert on being quoted, but calling them alerts is a bit alarming, just in terms of the feeling of the word - I haven't got a suggestion instead, and alerts may be the best choice... but maybe not?

    The twitter and facebook buttons at the bottom - if they could be of the same size (even just roughly) as each other that would help with the balance - equally facebook gets its button and the "sign up" as links where as poor little twitter just gets its button - maybe dump the "sign up to" and just leave it as a plain text "see what your friends recommend." ?

    The search looks pretty well defined but the yellow of the selected text entry box jars a bit with the purple. Likewise when I click on my name (top right) and choose to update my status, it's a yellow text box on a purple (pale) background with the "140" (characters remaining) in green...

    Don't get me wrong - I'm sure you guys have been working your socks off (moving coffee machines around is tough work Zak) and generally I'm really impressed with what you guys have done with the old place. It's just the odd jarring inconsistency.
     
  11. GaryP

    GaryP RIP Tel

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    Forum is fast and quick loading. Needs contrasting colours for each row (easy css fix) and it is a bit too white, but thats not a complaint just a suggestion. Maybe make another couple of themes as a dropdown.

    Main site... not good at all I am sorry to say.

    1 Cluttered and font far far too small (and I don't need glasses .... yet)
    2 Non responsive (surely a basic requirement in 2017)
    3 Colour "scheme" far to fussy. Less is more
    4 Layout of news and articles really poor. Look at any basic wordpress magazine theme and its better than this. Something along that style and the jobs a good'un.

    Someone posted earlier looks like 2002 FrontPage Express... A bit harsh but not far from the point !
    Someone also said an opportunity missed. I agree with that whole heartedly.

    I really do appreciate how much work has gone on. I have been invloved with projects like this in a freelance role within a team, but I must admit I can't think of a project that would have been signed off like the main site has been designed an implemented.
     
    Last edited: 28 Jun 2017
  12. MLyons

    MLyons 70% Dev, 30% Doge. DevDoge. Software Dev @ Corsair Lover of bit-tech Administrator Super Moderator Moderator

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    Being worked on at the moment.
    This is being looked into by the whole team to see how we want to approach it.
    The style is made and complete. For some reason the import isn't working so I'll be troubleshooting this when i go back to work tomorrow. It's my top priority for when i arrive.
    I'm pretty sure they do go bold when there is something unread. I can double check and if it is happening i can try to work out a way of making it more obvious.
    Noted
    Its the default I'll see how we want this to behave and implement something i would guess we would only have hover.
    I like this
    Not 100% sure what is being talked about here.
    Notification maybe? I'll see how we want to approach this.
    I think that may be a Facebook thing and not us. I'll see if there's a better way of showing these.
    Got no idea why we are doing this. I'll have a look into it.
    I like the alternating row idea. Themes are being worked on... I promise.
    These aren't my main area but i agree along with what i think is the majority in the office and the forums. These will most likely be tweaked soon.


    As always thank you everyone for the feedback. This will all be added to my list and looked into tomorrow. Feel free to post or send me a message about any other issues. Here's an image of a funny dog In the meantime.
    [​IMG]
     
  13. asura

    asura jack of all trades

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    The main forum titles, some have gone... un-bold for want of a better way of putting it but it's not relating to weather I've just been in that topic or not. For example, "Project Logs" is in bold - there's un-read stuff in there, up to page 4 is unread for me. Go out of project logs back to the main forum page, and it's still bold, go back into project logs and there's still four pages of un-read topics. Now I know I haven't read them, but for the most part I don't intend to (sorry guys) but I have seen that they're there, and that there aren't any new posts that I'm interested in, but on the main page it's still enticing me with bold text as if there's actually new stuff in there, not stuff dating back to the eighth of May...
     
  14. Byron C

    Byron C Multimodder

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    Yeah I'd definitely agree with this. Much of the feedback here is around design/style/layout, and that kinda stuff can be continually refined - there's no right or wrong answer there IMO. But I'd hate for someone to post a serious bug in here and have it lost amongst all the other feedback.
     
  15. deathtaker27

    deathtaker27 Modder

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    The login tab order seems weird, I would expect the third time i press tab to go to the "Login" option not the remember me option (left to right top to bottom after all)
     
  16. MLyons

    MLyons 70% Dev, 30% Doge. DevDoge. Software Dev @ Corsair Lover of bit-tech Administrator Super Moderator Moderator

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    DW i do the same. You can clear it by clicking the "Mark Forums Read" button at the top left. I'll see if there's a better way to implement this.
    I'll be honest. This seems like a real pain to fix but i will look into it and see if a couple of us can come up with some kind of "fix" if we have some free time.
     
  17. MadGinga

    MadGinga oooh whats this do?

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    Woooooo! We're back :)

    Liking it a lot!
    Two three points of feedback from me:
    One already mentioned is the definition/delineation of the article columns on the front page.
    The second is the font on the main site (articles and headings) looks fuzzy especially when bold (I'm using 1900x1200, win7, chrome)
    The Third is do staff members really need two banners for their user type? 'Staff' and 'Staff Member', seems excessive.
     
  18. Pookie

    Pookie Illegitimi non carborundum

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    Just popping in to say job well done on moving the forums over, your hard work has paid off and you deserve a few cold ones. I havn't had anytime to get really stuck in but so far its looking great ;)
     
    Byron C and MadGinga like this.
  19. suenstar

    suenstar Collector of Things

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    If you think two is excessive, have you seen that Gareth has five banners under his name?
     
    mi1ez likes this.
  20. wolfticket

    wolfticket Downwind from the bloodhounds

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    Generally I like the refresh and it's improved a lot of the stuff that was either broken or very dated on the old forum. Great job. Must've taken a hell of a lotta work.

    Just a few niggles that spring to mind:
    • Default fonts and scheme are good on mobile (as is the forum in general) but I find them a little stark and hard to look at on a larger monitor.
    • I've never found the user added tags all that useful, other than maybe to glance at to see if anyone has added anything funny. Now they're front and centre at the top of a thread. With the more tag-tastic threads viewed on mobile the first view you get when clicking on a thread is mostly taken up by tags.
    • I'd rather you the page numbers next to the thread title showed all the time rather than just on mouse over. I don't see the advantage of having them hidden.
    Nothing I couldn't get used to though.

    EDIT:
    • Would appreciate pinned threads having the pinned icon closer to the thread title (maybe to the left instead) or some other way of separating them, so it would be easier to see at a glance whether a thread is pinned.
     
    Last edited: 28 Jun 2017

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