Site Issues, Updates, Changes, and Feedback Thread

[PeterSt]

A not so nice feature that I just ran into :

I clicked edit on my previous post, which was after 4 minutes. Then used maybe one minute to find my ways (like the Save button) and next *after* my changes, I received the message that Edit was not allowed any more because the post was made too long ago.  My edit was minor (changed a "is" into "seems to be") but of course it can be a much longer waste of time. So in my view once into Edit one should be allowed to continue and not be rejected in aftermath. Especially with such a short grace time.

[Rt66indierock]

Chris,

My username is now:

Rt66indier

ock

Any way to fix it?

The new site is working fine in the Valley of the Sun on all my computers and my iPhone. No performance issues.

Take care,

Steve

[bunno77]

Same format as stereonet but still not working through Tapatalk like before... 

[austinpop]

How do I get a view of my subscribed threads with unread content? In the old site, I'd click on my username on the top right.

Best I can tell, I have to look at the unread "Content I follow"? Even in the condensed view, it still shows me individual posts, newest first. Is there no way to only see topics/threads like in the past?

Same question about recent activity across the site. Is there any way to look at it as topics, rather than individual posts?

These two things were the primary mechanisms for me on the old site, and I have to say, I'm not feeling it for the new one. But - no snap judgements yet.

[rickca]

If I open a forum like the Uptone Audio forum, I want to see the most recently updated threads at the top, but they are not.  You have to scroll down to find threads whose latest post is from the current day.  Shouldn't they be at the top?  Am I just missing something?

[austinpop]

Chris, first of all - thank you for the immense effort you put in for the site change. Like many others, I don't embrace change easily, so please understand that my comments still come with an underlying appreciation for your hard work.

I think I understand how to get back subscribed info. The key is to filter activity by topics, unread, and content I follow.

I'm also liking the ability to create my own activity streams. Can these custom activities be added to the top right, alongside the two builtin actions: Unread content, and Mark site read?

My feedback on formatting:

1. Agree about too much whiteness. The site is just too high contrast, and very fatiguing to read. I don't know if you chose to go monochromatic, or whether it was forced on you by your choice of frameworks, but this is a recent trend in webUI that I find baffling. I would strongly, strongly recommend the ability to customize fonts, line spacing, and most of all - add some COLOR!!
2. I also echo the request for auto scaling column width to the screen. There is just too much wasted space. And again - oh, the whiteness!
3. Signatures - try as I might, they look ugly. And is there any way to control the line spacing?

Finally, not sure how I got such a high "reputation," but digging it! 

[gnobber]

For me, every page load in Forums is ~4X slower than before, some pages are worse than that.

[One and a half]

3 hours ago, Rt66indierock said:

Chris,

My username is now:

Rt66indier

ock

Any way to fix it?

The new site is working fine in the Valley of the Sun on all my computers and my iPhone. No performance issues.

Take care,

Steve

If you look on a cell (mobile) phone, the correct syntax of the username is displayed.

[mjb]

Chris, congratulations on a smooth site update, it must have been a busy weekend for you. My feedback is that IMO the forum looks and works much nicer on a mobile device than in a desktop browser (which unfortunately seems to be a common trend lately), but the font is too small for my eyes (with glasses). I'd like to be able to knock it up a point or two and not have to be always pinch-zooming in and out to read stuff. I also have to agree there's a lot of wasted white space. Some more color to make things (buttons) easier to see would be nice too, it all looks a little drab in just black and grey. I appreciate all the hard work, but will probably visit less now the app has been deprecated, and overall for my eyes, the readability is worse. Regards. 

[sdolezalek]

Chris: From having spent countless hours in building several of my own sites and then continuously fine tuning them, change of this magnitude requires a fair amount of getting used to.  It seems that the format you are using is optimized for use with phone sized screens and works reasonably well there, but is far less satisfactory on a hi-res computer screen and works poorly on a large monitor.  

With regard to the text width comments, I is much more of an issue on those bigger screens.  I'm somewhat surprised that the formatting doesn't allow for self adjustments based on screen size as a number of web site templates do. My suggestion would be to try to make the text the same width as the top and bottom black header/footer.  The site presently makes that adjustment for portrait and landscape mode on mobile screens, but doesn't seem to do that on larger screens.  I have also found that choosing a slightly creamy white background is much easier on the eyes than are the gray tones or the starker whites.  I also think that the user information on the left and below each post, now takes up too much space and for frequent visitors provides no new useful information.  

I wonder what percentage of CA readers are using each of a) phones, b) iPad or equivalent, c) laptop, or d) larger desktop monitors to read your content? Ultimately you can't please us all, but it would be interesting to know what percentage of the audience is being optimized for.

Best of luck with the fine tuning these next couple of weeks will require! 

[One and a half]

Like others I don't like change, but so long as the basic navigation is simple to find, then reading becomes second nature. Cable debates will never end though...

On the subject of navigation, the Search tool expands logically, either the whole site, or sometimes is handy for the topic at hand.

I gather 'follow' is to subscribe.

Also not keen on the overall white space left and right with a screen res of 3840 x 2160, however if the left side is occupied with advertisements, like Mono and Stereo website, the balance could be achieved. Ads tend to distract possibly avoided by a paid membership which would be welcome.

The colours or lack there of, perhaps a Gateway Computer nostalgia? Agree with other comments, it's too stark, colours are good but a minefield of readbility since aging eyes have different contrast capabilities. OMG, an opening for themes!!  

Readability on a mobile phone is better, before there could be 8-10 messages on the activity screen at once, it was good to scan, then swipe, now I can manage only three, so a lot of swiping. The fonts are bigger, so are the spaces between, so makes it easier to read at the expense of more swiping. On the laptop there's lots of space between paragraphs, like triple font spacing, most likely to cater for touch screens or iPad doo dads. I'd say the mobile experience is far better now than the dedicated app or the VBulletin squished down.

What's missing is the TOP button at the bottom of the page...! TOP brings you to search, mail and user settings, the menu frame is present, but it doesn't navigate to search. Would be nice if the FORUM on the menu bar would drop down to say Networking or Music.

Attaching files now is a lot less painful, drag and drop is good, still hope on day to copy/paste an image rather than save it to a file, then attach. Is that a HTML limitation or the editor ? Are the file types restricted to graphics, text and pdfs only or can we upload wav maximum ... say 20s worth of redbook in MB?

The reputation number is somewhat subjective? Not in favour of it, the classifications such as newbie, sophomore and so on is OK, it's just based on the number of posts, fine with me. It's up to the reader to judge the quality of the post.

All in all, I can live with the new presentation, please add the TOP button

[Superdad]

2 hours ago, austinpop said:

How do I get a view of my subscribed threads with unread content? In the old site, I'd click on my username on the top right.

Best I can tell, I have to look at the unread "Content I follow"? Even in the condensed view, it still shows me individual posts, newest first. Is there no way to only see topics/threads like in the past?

+100! 

I still have not been able to create a custom activity stream that will show just topics (aka threads) as opposed to multiple posts for the topics.

 

And tonight is the first time I'm at the site on my iPad in bed.  Dang the font is tiny!

I do appreciate the wider column change made earlier this evening.  I can live with that.

Thanks and goodnight all,

--Alex

[warp2600]

It is a pity that the CA mobile app has been abandoned.

I used to start the day loading that app and reading through the Activity stream. 

I don't care for the browser version.

 

[PeterSt]

I now notice something which is dangerous when not known ...

Yesterday, during daylight, I had no real problems with the contrast. Early this morning, however, only a small light on next to the PC and still dark outside, I seriously thought that the light gray was too much light and was really tiring to read. This now combined with the pure black buttons and stuff (much of those can be on-screen, depending on where you are and which surely is not only the forum posts itself) and the contrast was kind of painful. I just had to quit reading.

Surprisingly enough, right now - daylight again - I can't see what my problem has been tonight while I am sure that nothing has changed.

So Chris, when you're tuning for this contrast, maybe do that in the vastly darker room as just then the problems emerge (for someone like me ).

[PeterSt]

Here is another example of something which is quite in the same realm. Look below (my attachment) and concentrate on the "Report post" part. This is very dim when not hovered (could be problematic on mobiles ?). Now look at this from different angles and like in my situation from a tad too much from above (say that text is near the bottom and you are a bit too close to the monitor). What you see will will depend on the monitor ..

Can you see it ? it completely (!) disappears, while the normal text gets more black. So the contrast between the two increases depending on the angle you look at it.

[craighartley]

57 minutes ago, warp2600 said:

It is a pity that the CA mobile app has been abandoned.

I used to start the day loading that app and reading through the Activity stream. 

I don't care for the browser version.

 

+1

[semente]

7 hours ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

Thanks for the kind words and the thoughtful points. I increased it about 20%. What say you?

It's much better now.

 

If possible please try to reduce the height of the line breaks, reduce space between message/post boxes and try to get rid of the separator line between boxes (redundant since you're using boxes).

[semente]

If I start a post and then wish to cancel it, where do I click?

[Octagon]

Hi Chris,

a lot of work on your desk, it will take some time for us to get along with all changes, no worries.  

 Could it be that all subscriptions are lost with the transition? In case, will that be updated later on or is that content finally lost?

Thanks

Thomas

[Musicophile]

I must admit I haven't been through the full list of responses here. Just a quick question: how do you easily access the last entry of a given thread?

[Musicophile]

And side note: apparently my reputation is "Excellent", not sure what I did to deserve this.

[PeterSt]

3 minutes ago, Musicophile said:

I must admit I haven't been through the full list of responses here. Just a quick question: how do you easily access the last entry of a given thread?

Look below (in this case from the lists of topics in the General forum) :

[accwai]

Two quick questions:

• How does one insert a video?
• Is there a way to turn off WYSIWYG and edit the BBCode directly?

Thanks!

[Solstice380]

Would it be possible to get another "Go to Activity stream" button at the bottom of the page?   Have to scroll all the way to the top to get to the current one.  Or, could the top menu bar always stay at the top of the current view?

[Solstice380]

Also recommend using a smaller font for names so that more than 10 letters are on the same line!