On construction topics I tread lightly be/c others here have vastly more experience. On software design I don’t need to tread as lightly, be/c I have a coupla credentials. So herewith, my very serious suggestions for redesigning this forum:
1. The default for posting a message should be ALL, not the creator of the post from which you arbitrarily chose to click REPLY just because there was no other way to reply. In the alternative there should be a generic Reply button, but that’s not advisable because there are already too, too many thinks on the screen.
2. Way to much screen space is wasted. I define the actual words of an actual person as not wasted. Anything else has to earn its way onto the screen. On the screen I’m looking at now–just an arbitrary thread–actual content is barely 1/6 of the screen! That’s horrible. Would you feature a house in FHB where usable living space was 17% of the floorspace, the hallway was 33%, and utilities required 50%?
3. To give content priority, make the following changes:
– if someone chooses a smaller font, make it apply to the From/To header also. Big text there and small text msg looks dumb. If I pick small, I kinda mean it.
– every single reply wastes 1/2″ of space at the bottom. Move the reply button to the header of the reply and move the options button there, too (or get rid of it or hide it better) and you allow room for, on average, maybe 20% more content.
– Move “1374.6 in reply to 1374.4″ to the reply header, and save another 1/4”. Along with the prior comments, that’s an inch of space that’s wasted for each and every reply. Dude, I can only see 8″ of stuff on IE anyway, and you’re frittering away 1″ per reply.
– Make the extra info in the Reply header optional. It’s more than I need to see. Have a two stage header with a small triangle icon to open up a larger header if ya want more info. The default simple header should have To, X of Y, and Reply. From is usually redundant with signature, plus see #1. Date and time can be a drag over and display at the bottom of the screen. Look how much empty gray space is on the header! Sinful.
4. Lose the Previous Discussion/Next Discussion buttons in Advanced View. Who reads that way. They’ll use the list on the left, assuming you make it usable.
5. Lose the Rate My Interest line.
6. Make the Basic/Advanced view a preference, not a line constantly on the screen. Who goes back and forth and back and forth? No one, huh? Then it’s a preference. Same with text size.
7. “Navigate this discussion” should not be in the scrollable section. It should be up top and not scrollable. If you come to reread the last response to a thread you’ve read before, you have to scroll, click the right navigate range, then scroll again. That’s like making you stop your car and get out of the door every time you want to change gears, or sumpin’ like that. If Frames requires it in the scrollable section, then it needs to be at both the top, under the discussion title (which should also ideally be static) and at the bottom, be/c those are the two places you’d want to see other messages.
8. If you’re able to make the discussion title static, then put a Reply button there, too. That would be a generic reply to the thread rather than a reply to the individual message. A heckuva lot more important than “Subscribe”. If you can’t make the title static, then hook the Reply button to the Navigate this discussion line at both top and bottom. Wanna make a bet of 800,000 milkbones that people would use this button 5 times more than replying to an individual message?
9. The one thing I like about Post New is that it makes one think about in which folder to post the new discussion.
10. The Show Discussions interface is awful. Worst of all, it ain’t predictable. The options listed in the pull down menu don’t make sense for this group. I’m guessing that most everyone here knows exactly which folder(s) they frequent and with which priority. If I have, “with Unread Msgs” then I see the Tool folder or something else irrelevant to me jump to the top! What’s with that? I don’t care about the Tool folder or Help Wanted or fully half the folders. They should NEVER be up top or open for me. The other options are equally goofy? With attachments? With polls? C’mon. People here care about easily getting to the folder that’s meaningful to them and usually to the discussion they were contributing to.
– Folder sequence should be static and sequenced by the user, not by Prospero trying to read our minds.
– We need only three, maybe four, options: show just the folder title, show most recent X discussions, show all discussions, show discussions I’ve contributed to.
– Get rid of the silly star. Seems redundant with the number of new messages listed
– Replace the folder icon with a rotating triangle that lets you open the folder like an outline. See the discussion list for that folder or don’t see it–user choice.
– If you click on the folder title, it should be the only folder shown, along with all messages. Click again to revert back to the folder outline.
– One line per discussion title. Remove the date/time to allow more room, or replace with name of discussion creator. If there are X new messages listed, then we don’t really need the discussions latest update time. Just knowing there’s something new is the key info.
– Put the number of messages next to the folder title and lose Post New be/c it’s redundant with the other post new. Or put it on the Folder title, too. Real estate is expensive–these don’t deserve a line to themselves.
Replies
"there are already too, too many thinks on the screen. "
Can I still that line, Cloud? That explains a busy GUI well!
Sure. Ya realize it was a typo!!!!!!!!! I meant "things" but "thinks" kinda works also.
Add more suggestions here. Let's be constructive rather than rippin' Taunton new 'holes in 58 separate threads. The focus of my suggestions was things that should be doable within the current frames structure with minimal effort. No new features. Fewer, actually.
About the best thing that could happen to this thread would have been OS/2, then we could have had the topic selection list in a separate window instead of the frames construct that's used to prop up the still-primative windoze environment.
Now that we've covered that; you've hit most of the majors: too busy, too complex, no intuitive flow, slow due to excessive processing, too many branching or cascading decisions, and lack of design balance between verbose and brevity. You'd have to conclude that this is the result of a Q&A or "expert moderator" design point: while not mutually exclussive with a "conversation" construct, it certainly doesn't provide any richness of structure to support conversations.
I suspect that there's no real hope of switching to conversation mode; however, I do believe that providing a hierarchial, aka "threaded", entry map to each conversation would go a long way to bring everyone back to the screen. .
Phill Giles
The Unionville Woodwright
Unionville, Ontario
Phill, the frames you're seeing are an HTML construct. They have nothing to do with Windows or OS/2.
That said, I don't like frames in this context either. The problem with frames, as opposed to a single page metaphor, is that you lose the ability to bookmark URLs. It would be nice to see an invariant relation between the URL and the currently displayed discussion thread. A navigational sidebar is nice, but it does not require frames - just redraw the sidebar, big whoop. The teeny bandwidth saved is not worth the aggravation.
And as long as I'm picking nits, I'd also really like to be able to view a discussion thread as a threaded discussion. Not a long flat date ordered view in which all context is lost.
And my favorite color is red, no blue... Ahhh
I'm going to compain about frames some more. Frames suck. Here's why.
All of the problems I'll describe relate to the fact that with frames, you can't establish a correspondence between the URL and what you see on the screen.
Why is that bad? Because the whole idea of a web page becomes ambiguous.
You can't bookmark a page you want to return to.
You can't link to a page.
You make it difficult for search engines to index your site.
You can't email a link to a friend.
And so on.
They are simply unnecessary. The only reason to use them is because they can make things a bit simpler on the web authoring side of things. But on the user end of things, they only make things worse. Go to ibm.com, microsoft.com, sun.com, or any other high-profile uber-tech-savvy site. Do you see frames? No.
Quite frankly, as things currently stand, the interests of this community would be much better served by a usenet newsgroup. I really can't see any reason to use this forum, other than the fact that you know you'll find good people here to talk to. It's the people who use this site, not anything about the site itself, that make it worth coming to.
I'm a big fan of Taunton. Love the books and magazines. The primary web site is not too bad. But these discussion forums have been, and continue to be, well, bad. Busy, cluttered, difficult to navigate, etc. What's wrong with simply creating a web gateway to usenet? Maybe include an email gateway as well. Then people can use whatever medium they prefer. People come here to have a discussions. Internet tools for solving addressing this need exist. Why reinvent the wheel - badly. What's the value add supposed to be here? Sorry, just calling it like I see it.
Ron,
They say lightning dosen't strike twice. . .
Let's hope so. . .
I understand how to bookmark a message. What I'm talking about is bookmarking pages. Plus you can't easily print framesets. Etc. This topic is not news to anyone with as much HTML experience as was required to produce this site. I don't understand the rational for this decision.
I don't mean to come down too hard. And I mean no disrespect the people who I'm sure have worked very hard to make this site what it is. It takes a lot of talent to do this.
I just feel that if the same talent and effort were applied toward bending existing tools and metaphors to Taunton's needs, rather than reinventing yet another web forum, that we would have a truly professional site at our disposal.
It's kind of like amateur vs. professional video. How many milliseconds does it take to identify a locally produced television advertisement? Why is that? Because we're so used to viewing a constant barrage of higher quality content produced by big budget production houses.
Taunton books and magazines are top-notch professionally produced material. I think that's why the website gets held to such a high standard. If this were your cousin's family website, everyone would say "Wow! Great Job!". But this is Taunton. Hence the expectation that the site will measure up to the best of them.
Ron,
They say lightning dosen't strike twice. . .
Let's hope so. . .
I understand linking to messages, authentication requirements, etc. And while as things stand, linking to the message id might be sufficient to take you to a particular point of interest; that's only because there are no other views into the data. In particular, no threaded message view (expanded/collapsed/etc.). Knowing who said what to who is important (also an argument against non-unique nicknames). It is currently difficult, if not impossible (because of nickname abuse), to follow the course of a conversation in a long thread. (I know, you could also create pointers to other types of locations, should they be made available.)
I understand framesets to be an "advanced" feature of HTML. But as far as presentation and useability go, they are horrible. That is why you only find them in amateurish sites. Really.
* Lose the frames
* Provide more views into the discussions: threaded (expand all, expand message, collapsed, sorted by date, by author, etc.)
But enough ranting. I have to go replace a checkvalve on my damn well pump. And there are so many corroded pipes and fittings involved, that I'll probably be working on this all day. If the kids can't take a bath tonight, my wife will shoot me.
About your sig - did you get hit by lightning?
Be well.
As I told Andy in a private note on this the day I posted it, if you ask 10 different software designers, you're likely to get 10 different opinions. No different than asking opinions on the design of a house, car, whatever.
Today's gripe is working backwards through a thread. Let's say you have read most of a thread like this. You see two new replies. Read 'em. But you've forgotten what precipitated the replies. So you click the prior range. But it takes you to the top of the prior range, not the bottom. And then you have to scroll to the bottom to see the most recent, or to get the controls to click another range. A big waste of time, and a really disjointed way to see things. This is where WebX's Recent/Previous/Next buttons worked well. Of course, that assumes I remembered how they worked--I could just be fabricating fond memories, where WebX becomes our generation's Good Ol' Days.
That's what I thought too...until I discovered the in reply to thingy in the upper right had corner of each frame, right under the time. When you click on the message number, it takes you directly to the message the person was replying to. (This is easier to do than to explain)
I'll try that out again. For the first coupla days, clicking there would lock the browser. Kinda discouraged me from trying again. You know that one sign of insanity is trying the same thing over and over and expecting different results?!?! I still have a problem where every fifth or so click locks the browser, and I haveta Stop, and then reclick, and Stop and reclick till something finally works. Oh well.
An what's wid da 18 point font?!?! :)
OK, since you didn't like that gripe, here's another for ya. :) What's the best way to see the last reply in a long thread where you've already seen all the replies a day ago. After clicking on that thread, you have to scroll to the bottom, click on the last chunk of messages, and then scroll to the bottom again. Ain't that the dummest thing ya ever heard of? Things like this do not quite reflect all the design advances that have been made in interfaces since the advent of the PC. Think that was enough of an understatement? Ha ha ha.
As posted just above, what a pain to add a new one here--several ckicls and two full-length scrolls. Arrrgh.
New gripe--did you know that you can't search by someone's nickname? Or at least I couldn't figure it out on first, second, third try.
Had to find someone's post. Tried search. No hits. Tried w/ and w/o case-sensitiveness. No hits. Eventually determined that searching with the From or To criteria requires their User Name, not their Nickname!!!!!! But, you don't see User Names here, you see Nicknames. Talk about Catch-freakin'-22. Anyone see a better way around this? Am I missing something obvious?
Good gripes, Cloud. Be sure to post them in the sandbox. Mark said that's where they'll be looking. I haven't checked in there today.
Cloud, I think you're right on this one. It seems as though there should be an option somewhere to "go to last post", but I can't find it.
there should be an option somewhere to "go to last post",
Yep. W/all the bells and whistles we should be able to sort on many fields--last post, thread-starter, any poster (not their "hidden" name as Cloud pointed out), by date, etc.
this is driving me crazy!!!!!!!!!
I started to post some concerns and when I went back to the thread to check on something when I came back my message was gone!
This did not happen before!
AAAAAAIIIIIIIEEEEEEEEEAAAHHHHHHHUUUUUAGGGGGAAHHH!!!!!!!
T (TIRED of ALL this)Still looking for my Cheese!
Misery loves company; I tried to post a reply to Splintergroupie somewhere, who knows where, when my puter crashed.
Ron,
They say lightning dosen't strike twice. . .
Let's hope so. . .
I still agree that if we're able to view via the old threaded discussion platform, much of the angst that people are suffering with this new forum will rapidly disappear.
I do know of one problem that happened with the WebX platform regarding the ability to email the URL for a discussion or a specific post to another person. If I emailed someone a Breaktime URL and they used that URL to access the discussion without already being logged on to the forum, they'd enter the forum under MY name. Once on, they could then post and their posts would come up with my name on it. I had that happen to me several times before I recognized what was going on. That's one reason why Prospero doesn't allow you to bypass the log-in page with a second-hand URL.
All the nifty features? Well..they're pretty nifty. But when it comes down to reading, understanding, and replying to discussions...the threaded discussion beats our current chronological posting hands down.
I open all discussions using right click/new window. Big window, no frames, less scrolling.
I have another suggestion/question. Why can't there be a box for posting at the end of the thread?? This is not just nostalgia, it would save a lot of time since I sometimes have to wait quite awhile to get a page back after clicking the "reply" button.
Rich Beckman
Good for you Cloud Hidden. I looks like you have been around the block a few times and understand what builders are all about. I use the phrase KISS, (keep it simple stupid) around my job site quite often. I hope some at The Taunton Press listens to you. Best Regards, Dale Buchanan
My pet peeve: Get rid of, or move the "options" button...That is the place on the screen I park my mouse cursor, to scroll down, but near the left window if I want to go there.When I scroll I hit "options" every time...who needs this? If you want to ignore someone, ignore them...don't read their posts...
Thanks...This place is better on Day 2...
Newf ...Confused, wild, & lucid...
What Cloud said.
I don't hate this place as others do. I think I could get used to it pretty easily. But Cloud's constructive, specific suggestions are right on target.
On a big monitor it's possible to mess around with the frames and fonts enough that you can actually read the messages. But on a smaller monitor I imagine it would be very, very hard. SYSOP - did someone test this out on a 14" monitor? That's what I had last week - I shudder to think what this forum would have looked like.
Lisa,
Believe it or not I did all the development for this site on a 15" monitor. So I believe that there really shouldn't be any issues with monitor size. But please if there is let me know.
I have sent Clouds comments on to the Prospero folks, but they have already seen them I'm sure because unlike our previous hosts, the Prospero staff actually visit our forums to see what you all have to say and think.If you all have further questions please shoot over to TheSandbox That way I can answer everyones question in a timely fashion.
Thanks MarkSYSOP
Mark:
Thanks for listening.
I would have replied sooner, but I was locked out of the forums this afternoon. No matter what I did, I couldn't reset my frameset and kept getting the Taunton forums page.
Cloud did say everything well. If I had to condense his comments down I'd say the following:
1) Get rid of frames (or offer a version without them)
2) Remove 70% of the features on the screen.
I consider this Forum software the Microsoft Word of discussion boards. Micorosft word hides the 5 main functions of a word processor (typing, bold, italics, tabs, etc.) behind 476 unnecessary, rarely used features.
I question Prosperos user testing methedologies. I can't imagine a test with typical target audience members would have generated results where people actually wanted or used most of the features I see here.
And, cloud, that's funny that it was a typo. I do think the word 'thinks' was an excellent choice.
The complete irony to making these suggestions was that, like Darrell, I was locked out all day after that, too. Kept getting sent to the Taunton Forums page, from which there was no way here. Guess I requested one too many things. :) Or, thought Taunton got ticked off at all of us and closed shop.
Sysop Mark, I'm really sorry for what you're going through these last coupla days. At least let us buy you a beer for your efforts. Not easy to put a product out there and open it up to public comment. Been there--in my case, the first I'd see the critiques would be published in a magazine gone out to 400,000 subscribers. Talk about making or breaking your day (and your business)!!!!
The question I have is, were any Breaktime regulars included in the testing of the forum layout. I know it's like locking the barn door after the horse is out, but it seems to me that with proper non-disclosures, guys like Mike, or Luka, or Mongo, or anyone with the time they've spent here could have offered constructive insights. Don't know what your testing protocol was, which is why I ask the question. Anyway, good luck holding off the maurading hordes! Jim
OK, here's another one. If you click Reply, and then decide not to and click Back, ya shouldn't get thrown into an entirely different thread and folder. I have no idea where to find the thread I was gonna post to, be/c the title had scrolled away and by the time I read everything and hit that fateful reply button, I couldn't remember.
"Back is back, I want my forum back...it's gray, it's gray, since she's gone away. What will I do, 'cause I...I...I'm...I'm feeling blue."
Are those the words? Who sings that?
Edited 3/21/2002 11:18:50 PM ET by Cloud Hidden
OK, this is getting old. Whenever I click Messages or My Forums I get kicked to the Taunton Forums page, and can't get back in from there. Is that like being escorted out the back door by the bouncer?
There are tons of bugs. I can't believe they didn't take advantage of free labor that many of us current/former programmers/testers/users of the site would have volunteered to work these things out ahead of time.
Too many bells and whistles for the avg user's need (which is info in a configurable fashion).
I've posted a link to this thread and Joe's over at CT. We thank you all!
CH,
They say lightning dosen't strike twice. . .
Let's hope so. . .
Yeah, that's how I got in, too (amazing how they always leave the key under the back doormat, no matter how often the riff-raff find it!!!) Seems like a DNS issue. Access through Prospero works, while through forums.taunton.com does not. Mark thought it was an update issue with nationwide DNS tables, which makes sense. Still.......
The only _serious_ problem I have here (that I remember anyway) is that about 1 in 5 clicks gets me caught in Internet hell. The cursor will spin and the IE progress indicator will stop at about 20% and the page won't display no matter how long I wait. My only solution is to click Stop and re-click the link/button. Usually takes 3 tries to get where I'm going, but when it goes, it goes fast. But that's a painful way to participate in forum. And it's a new Mac with the latest IE, etc, etc, so no excuses there.
You have this one? I know many others do...
Thank you, Mark. Wow, you must have some pretty good eyesight. Or some pretty good contacts! After this bruhaha is all over, I think someone should get you a bigger monitor as a rewqrd for surviving.
I did a little user-perspective debug testing for a website developer a couple of years ago, so I sympathize with those working on this project. In my experience there was never enough time to finish the test and tweak process before product release, and lots of post-release tweaking was normal. I hope that is the case here as well.
I'll post further comments to the sandbox, now that I've found it. I bookmarked the message page the first day and so never quite saw the sandbox.
Mark
People would not be having such a hard time if someone would listen. Some of us , for some reason CAN NOT get to the sandbox to tell you and Ruth, no matter how many links you put to the sandbox, that WE CAN"T GET TO THE SANDBOX!!! WE click the links, it goes to the general forums page... we click Knots, Breaktime, Cookstalk, etc, the 'My Forums" button, all the Mag. buttons...We get the general forums page.......Newf ...Confused, wild, & lucid...
Here is the sandbox; http://forums.prospero.com/tp-thesandbox
1/2 the site is running on fourms.taunton.com and the other 1/2 is running on forums.prospero.com and they really have things screwed up.
Thanks Bill
That got me to the sandbox, finally!!! (who let their cat free???)
Then I could't get out!!! had to use history and back track...
They should post that the boards are not working for some...
Thanks again
Newf ...Confused, wild, & lucid...
Edited 3/21/2002 6:40:57 PM ET by Newf
"If I have, "with Unread Msgs" then I see the Tool folder or something else irrelevant to me jump to the top! What's with that? "
I think it does that if you have the list set to "Unread". Every time someone posts something to a folder, that folder hops to the top. I'm trying to figure out a benefit to this feature. Maybe it is for a person who just sits at their computer all day waiting for someone to post to a board that doesn't get much traffic?
The folders should open and close with a click on the icon, just as you suggested, and they should stay put or be moveable at the user's discretion.
And another thing....
Everytime my screen resets (like after I post or when I click on Back), the messages screen resets itself to the default. So if I had all the messages showing, it reverts to unread. If I had the frame on the left shrunk down it sizes it back out. That is frustrating - I feel like I can't ever go back to where I was. Kind of like being lost in a Fun House, but not as much fun.
Lisa
Hi!!!...No signature yet?Newf ...Confused, wild, & lucid...
Hi Newf! I'll get to it. I can't find the box I packed the pens in...
I think that those are all good ideas. Clean out the "crude" in the displays.
The only other thing is to have a actual Help screen that define the different options.
AND MAKE IT WORK WITH ALL BROWSERS
like to see some definitions
Is unread unread by whom it is addressed or by me?
Is new the same as unread? if not like to see that in the selections for viewing discussionsboblVolo Non Voleo <2 weeks
All excellent ideas, Cloud.
I'd add that it would be good to be able to navigate within folders rather than having to scroll all the way to the bottom to find the "next 50" thing to click on.
Also, I finally figured out that that strange orange icon was supposed to be a hand and thumb up or down from the "rate my interest" thing. Seeing it next to a thread title it did sorta look anatomical, but more like something of which the world has about a quarter as many as thumbs.... ;-) Kinda ironic given the Helen Wheels picture controversy.
-- J.S.
Cloud:
Incisive and perceptive. Let's hope somebody's listening.Alan Jones
I agree with most of the suggestions of Cloud, but i doubt that any amount of such tinkering will ever make this board as warm and friendly as the previous one. "Look and feel" is a nebulous thing, but the old board was warm and friendly - I would gravitate over there when I needed to relax or just to hang out. This board is much more corporate and significantly less friendly. The old board was kind of old Levi's, flannel shirt, and worn loffers where this feels much more like a starched shirt, suit, and tie sort of thing. The old one was a warm cottage while this is a new McMansion that feels more like it should be a corporate headquarters than a place to live...
While not neophyte friendly, this board is certainly usable and can be made more so if one pokes around enough to find the preferences. It just lacks that certain quality that made the old board so great. Like someone else said, I don't want this new board as my home page, I did the old one. The upside may be that this new board may have cured my addiction to Breaktime, so I probably won't hang out here nearly as much, and will have more time to do all those various projects on my "to do" list. I don't think another week or even another year will change my opinion.
CaseyR stated my sentiments exactly.
"The old one was a warm cottage while this is a new McMansion that feels more like it should be a corporate headquarters than a place to live..."
I was thinking in terms of tearing down a Victorian mansion and replacing it with a sterile McDonalds. There are some computer geeks who can manage to make sense of this mess but I think there are [or were] many users who just wanted and enjoyed a user friendly, non-enigmatic format. That is, we just wanted a list of the various topics and we could click on those we were interested in. Threads that were active got bumped to the head of the pile. That was good and no other site had this feature.
Another thing somebody else mentioned is the way recent posts were handled. The initial post was always included [even if it was a long one!] and then the last read post was included before the next batch of new replies. This was a good feature that seems to have been discarded in favor of nothing. JLC will list something like "15 messages, 2 new" and when you click on it , you get all 15 messages whether you want them or not. Taunton WAS BETTER than that.
If you wanted to review previous messages, there used to be a convenient button labeled "previous" which you could click and instantly see them. Now, I suppose, you could just as easily hunt around for Joe Fusco's site and click on that and somewhere, possibly, find which button to click and then find that particular button - if you remember it - and click on that and get what you could have gotten in the old Forum easily in the first place. Suggeststed improvement: go back to the old style.
Again, I suggest that the frames be eliminated. There are many "Aunt Minnies" out there [here] and not so many computer geeks. The Tauton forums should relect the quality of the magazine.
- Peter
I don't know if this was mentioned, but when you click on any folder header the folder is refreshed (updated), shows the max listing and all the others are closed.
Just pretend your at the golf channel website. They are the same. GW
Ya know maybe I like this new style forum system because I never really liked
the old one at all. The subscription thing there never worked for me at all
and I really appreciate all the features that this new site has to offer.
CaseyR & PM22, drawing the analogy that implies that the old site was akin
to a Victorian Mansion is very far off the mark in my estimation. To me the
old site was more like a dressed up chicken coop. I'd compare the old forum
to the Dodge Ram van I drive as a carpenter. No frills to it at all. No radio.
No AC and the windows are manual. It's certainly no pleasure to drive but it
does the job.
The plain utilitarian look of the old site I also feel didn't mate well at
all with the classy look of the magazines, the books or the new Taunton web
site, in fact the old forums didn't look "designed" at all. What save
them in my estimation was the bulk and quality of the content that users contributed.
If the old site was akin to my Dodge Ram van this new site is akin to Land Rover.
A land Rover is a real great machine that really does it's job well and is a
pleasure to drive as well. I am certainly not missing the old style format.
While I agree somewhat with some of the observation that Cloud's made to start
this discussion I can't sign
Looking at Clouds comments that started this discussion off while I'm really
a building and remodeling guy I have some credentials in software too and they
were in interface design. I'm also the only member of my extended family that
isn't in the Internet Business so the brother to brother to (two) sisters-in-law
talk is usually all about the Internet and in the case of one sister-in-law
it's web architecture in particular since that part of her job for a major tool
manufacturer we all use.
As far as
1. The default for posting a message should be ALL
100% agreement on that. I am sure that that is probably easily taken
care of too.
2. Way to much screen space is wasted.
If you shift click to open the discussion in a new window which I always
did on the old site too there is no wasted screen space and in fact there is
more text displayed characters per screen that on the old site. Think of the
framed views as just a navigation tool to get you to what you were looking for.
3. To give content priority, make the following changes...
Shift clicking to open the discussions make the changes mentioned minor
but they do help a little with the frames view but then again someone else will
complain that too much stuff is be cluttered in to the message headers.
4. Lose the Previous Discussion/Next Discussion buttons
in Advanced View. Who reads that way...
I do. At least I am starting to as I become more and more
acquainted with the systems features. All it would save is a 1/2 inch when I
am done reading anyway so what would be the point. When the discussions are
long that space is for navigating within the discussion so it not wasted space
at all
5. Lose the Rate My Interest line.
I disagree. I haven't use this feature at all but I think it could be
interesting. There are a few people here who start discussions just to hear
the sounds of there own online voices especially in the business section which
is where I like to hang out anyway and I think this might be a nice way for
me to express that I think they are wasting everybody's time and bandwidth.
6. Make the Basic/Advanced view a preference, not a line
constantly on the screen...
Absolutely I agree on that one entirely
7. "Navigate this discussion" should not be
in the scrollable section. It should be up top and not scrollable.
I'm ambivalent on that one although I think
it's fine where it is because I disagree with the analogy that Cloud uses and
when I read down to the bottom of the page I want the option to go on right
there and I don't want to have to look elsewhere on the screen for it.
8. If you're able to make the discussion title static,
then put a Reply button there, too. That would be a generic reply to the thread
rather than a reply to the individual message. A heckuva lot more important
than "Subscribe".
Here I totally disagree. The idea of another Reply button serves no
real purpose in my mind and the subscribe button I really like in that I can
subscribe to any discussion that I find interesting but haven't contributed
to yet. "Wanna make a bet of 800,000 milkbones that
people would use this button 5 times more than replying to an individual message?"
Yeah I'll make that bet for sure
9. The one thing I like about Post New is that it makes
one think about in which folder to post the new discussion.
Yup agree there, that's a big plus over the way posts originated on the
old site
10. The Show Discussions interface is awful. Worst of
all, it ain't predictable. The options listed in the pull down menu don't make
sense for this group. I'm guessing that most everyone here knows exactly which
folder(s) they frequent and with which priority.If I have, "with Unread
Msgs" then I see the Tool folder or something else irrelevant to me jump
to the top!
Nah I disagree again. It was confusing to me at first
in fact I thought I might have been the most confusing part of the new system
for me but now I like it and I've actually seen a couple of benefits to it
apply. With "Show discussions... with unread msgs" showing the most
recently added to section pops to the top of the list. Usually it's the Woodshed
that gets the most action so it usually at the top. Prior to this week I never
ever commented on anything in the woodshed tavern and maybe only went in there
maybe five time in during my tenure on FHB and FWW Now I see what going on in
there and I actually saw some interesting things happening there and I actually
posted there too. That never would have happened the old way.
I don't have time to go on with anymore tonight since
I'm falling asleep at the keyboard but what I do appreciate is that Cloud has
at least taken the time and effort to carefully explain his feelings here and
while I don't necessarily agree with most of them I think that kind of constructive
criticism for the people at Taunton to look at it a lot more helpful than the
one line posts who say just " I liked the old site better"
I think the changes here will soon be seen by all as
ones for the better. I really prefer the new system to the old one by a mile.
"None of
us is as smart as all of us."- Warren
Bennis
Great suggestions, Cloud (and all). Thanks!
You are right, I suspect, that they had no real users testing this place. Between that and Joe's User Manual, it could have been an easier transition.
I can open and close the discussion folders now. I don't know if I just discovered this or if they changed it. But if you click where it tells you the number of messages in a folder, all of the folders that you aren't reading close. Or something like that - I haven't quite figured it out yet. But it does something. Definitely. I think.
Edited 3/22/02 1:06:15 AM ET by Lisa L