Site Issues, Updates, Changes, and Feedback Thread

[Jud]

15 minutes ago, Solstice380 said:

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

I see no problem with length of user names. 

[Jud]

9 hours ago, PeterSt said:

Chris, this is about the thumbs up (and down) thing.

My reputation is obviously low because I hardly have posted since the "like" feature was introduced in the old forum.

 

10 hours ago, gmgraves said:

You should probably delete it, especially if you don't know what it means. Without context, it's prejudicial (and it's really prejudicial ANYWAY! It makes other responders think that people with low numbers are somehow not worthy to respond to or to even take heed of.). It doesn't seem to have anything to do with the number of posts one has made. Is it the number of "likes" or "arrow-ups" at the bottom of each post? do they average out between up-arrows and down arrows? Is it an arbitrary number? Who knows?  I think it is inappropriate to this forum. 

It's just a measure of how much Chris likes you.

[Jud]

3 hours ago, semente said:

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

Don't submit the reply.

[wisnon]

Wow, I truly cant stand the new forum format.

[bogi]

6 hours ago, mjb said:

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.

Hi, in each web browser known to me you can press Ctrl and use mouse wheel to adjust font size. the setting is remembered for each site in your browser.

[Jud]

5 minutes ago, bogi said:

Hi, in each web browser known to me you can press Ctrl and use mouse wheel to adjust font size. the setting is remembered for each site in your browser.

If he's using pinch-zoom, we are likely not talking about a mouse...

[simone]

5 hours ago, craighartley said:

 

I would like the old CA app back. I feel a little lost.

 

[richard kimber]

Chris:  thanks for improving the width

[Dr Tone]

I know you have to advertise to keep the site running but the adverts on the right side really waste way too much screen real-estate.

[tapatrick]

9 hours ago, bunno77 said:

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

+1

Good luck with the changes Chris and thanks for a fabulous forum.

Tapatalk is not connecting and showing threads and live updates, can't seem to log in to CA through tapatalk even though I updated my passwords in case that was the problem

[semente]

1 hour ago, Jud said:

Don't submit the reply.

I have just added your quote to my reply, then moved to another topic, clicked "Reply to this topic" and the message box was clean.

Then I returned to this topic, clicked reply and your quote was still there.

Of course I can always delete but it's a bit annoying not to have a "Cancel" button...

[The Computer Audiophile]

OK guys, after some much needed sleep, I'm back at it this AM. Thanks to everyone who has commented thus far. I may have been a little testy yesterday, going on four hours sleep for the entire weekend. 

Keep the feedback coming. I can't promise any changes, but I can promise I'll take the feedback with sincerity and make a calculated decision on what to do about it. 

This AM I changed the time allowed to edit a post. It was set at 5 minutes by default. I tripled it to 15 minutes. We'll see how that goes. 

Thanks again to everyone for all your contributions to CA. 

[Samuel T Cogley]

Hi Chris

 

With due respect, your site is called "The Computer Audiophile".  Any chance you see the irony in severely diminishing the experience of your users that are accessing your site using desktop computers?

I ask again:  Isn't there a way to look at the User Agent string of the browser to determine if they're coming from a desktop and open the width?  The width of the avatar column seems to be OK for mobile browsers but not desktops?  Will you give users (like me) who didn't put spaces in their usernames an opportunity to do so now so it doesn't look so hideous?  It seems like the desktop experience is something that isn't as important to you as the mobile experience, which is odd because desktop computers are arguably the very center of interest of this forum.

Is your reluctance to open desktop browser width based somewhat on the ad layout?

 

[The Computer Audiophile]

11 hours ago, PeterSt said:

Chris, this is about the thumbs up (and down) thing.

My reputation is obviously low because I hardly have posted since the "like" feature was introduced in the old forum.

Peter - Your reputation is obviously low, as you pointed out, but I can't say it's because of you low number of posts. I think you may have contributed to your low reputation in other ways. 

Only joking Peter. I couldn't resist. 

Thanks for your contributions. 

[PeterSt]

Oh Chris, I saw that one coming. Initially it was the reason to edit the post, but which timed out (thank you for the 15 minutes as of now). Anyway, I thought it would be more fun to let it be anyway. 

And now people are asking me what I am laughing about out loud ... 

[The Computer Audiophile]

Hi Guys - I created a thread for us to help everyone create their own custom activity streams. If you need activity stream help please post there. If you can help, please help there. 

 

[shadowlight]

Chris,

Congratulation on the new site.

While reading the site on my tablet last night I noticed that if I viewed the site in vertical orientation the white space issue was non existent, so I tried the same thing with browser by reducing the horizontal width of the browser window and the white space issue went way for me.  The other thing that I noticed is that depending on how much I shrunk the horizontal window the font size seems to have gotten smaller.  I am not sure if that is by design or bug.

[The Computer Audiophile]

9 hours ago, rickca said:

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?

HI Rick - Even with this (see screenshot) option selected, are the posts still not in the order you want?

[richard kimber]

Are the notifications working correctly? I was up-to-date with this list, but then got a message saying there were 7 new items, but on refreshing the page there was only one.

 

And just after submitting the above it said 9 new messages, when mine was the latest one

[The Computer Audiophile]

8 hours ago, austinpop said:

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! 

All feedback is welcome, especially that which is prefaced with kind words :~)

I can't change the links near the Unread Content link without a major change. 

I'm thinking about user selectable themes that would enable everyone to select from a number of options.

Auto scaling is something I tested, but disabled. I can re-enablel it. It's on my list of items to test again today.

Can you elaborate on the signatures and your line spacing opinions?

[The Computer Audiophile]

7 hours ago, sdolezalek said:

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! 

Thanks for the feedback. Yes, countless hours were spent over the last several months testing and preparing the new site. Now the fine tuning begins. 

The width of each line / paragraph is now extremely close to what the old forums width was. Within a few characters. 

The site has a responsive design that moves the items on the right sidebar to the bottom for mobile and tablet screens. I just can't do that on the desktop for business reasons. 

I have the percentage of users on each device and screen size etc... 

[mansr]

24 minutes ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

This AM I changed the time allowed to edit a post. It was set at 5 minutes by default. I tripled it to 15 minutes. We'll see how that goes.

I'd prefer an even longer edit window. Why not make it a full hour?

[The Computer Audiophile]

7 hours ago, One and a half said:

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

Great feedback.

[The Computer Audiophile]

6 hours ago, PeterSt said:

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 ).

All of this great feedback coming from the guy who design this :~)

[Jud]

9 hours ago, rickca said:

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?

I was wondering the same, until I realized Alex "pinned" all the threads at the top that are newer than those below.  He's just pinned a relatively large number of threads, so that's why you're not seeing the most recent activity at first glance.