Forum Upgrade Complete

[totalcommand]

Originally posted by: MrPickins

Originally posted by: Dedpuhl
I miss my black/gray background w/ white text

Me too. AT just doesn't look the same now.

I agree. Please for the love of God bring back the old colors.

Btw, is the search function any better now?

 

[SoulAssassin]

left column with the forum categories is too big, category names are still abbreviated and there's a crap load of unused space after it. Also the user name/title/posts/join date section seems unnecessarily wide. All of this cuts down on the availailable real estate for the actual message.

At least it's not as bad as the recent fark "upgrade"...

 

[13Gigatons]

It won't load in Firefox 2.0.0.3

 

[trmiv]

Yea the fact that the category names are abbreviated and there is still a ton of white space left after the names is a bit odd.

 

[terminalmind]

One thing I hate and I do mean hate is the light background color.
In the old forum you could change to a dark background but I see no such option here.
Just different colors of light backgrounds. :|

 

[Muse]

Originally posted by: terminalmind
One thing I hate and I do mean hate is the light background color.
In the old forum you could change to a dark background but I see no such option here.
Just different colors of light backgrounds. :|

It's the first change I noticed and still by far my own biggest complaint. This is currently the only forum I go to with a light background color. Maybe they want to chase us away.

Originally posted by: totalcommand

Originally posted by: MrPickins

Originally posted by: Dedpuhl
I miss my black/gray background w/ white text

Me too. AT just doesn't look the same now.

I agree. Please for the love of God bring back the old colors.

Btw, is the search function any better now?

No, they say the search function is still broken. They fixed stuff that worked (ruined, actually) but didn't fix stuff that was broken. :roll:

 

[LouPoir]

nice

 

[Random Variable]

I am who I say I am.

 

[archcommus]

My updated list:

Left nav and user info sections too wide
Forum categories and topic titles cut off when they don't need to be
Upper right options too close together and not separated
my forums more difficult to navigate, no longer all on one page
white background is annoying

 

[TreyRandom]

Originally posted by: chuckywang
"My Forums" was a one-stop shop to see everything that I've posted recently and all the hot topics. Now, I have to click around in there to see it.

Agreed. Not only is "My Forums" difficult to use now, but I see only ONE hot topic. Before, I got the top 20 or so threads. Looks like I won't be able to find the popular threads anymore. :thumbsdown:

The new look is pretty horrid, but I could have lived with that. The loss of functionality is what is truly going to suck.

 

[iamaelephant]

Without trying to beat a dead horse, I'll chuck my hat in and say the icons are too big and there is way too much wasted space. Also My Forums was much nicer before, this new categorization is horrible.

Edit: Also these links at the top left are just f'n stupid.
Text

Can we get a separator between the links and use capital letters? It looks like one continuous sentence.

 

[SunnyD]

Did you guys not test this in Firefox? The spacing and layout issues, while minor issues uglify what looked great in Firefox before the upgrade.

 

[iamaelephant]

When I first load up big threads it looks like this for ages, even after the page loads. Mostly happens when I quickly scroll a large thread (I have 500 posts per page).
Text

It stays like that for about 20 seconds, very annoying.

 

[QueBert]

Originally posted by: apoppin
*search* is much worse

doing a search on your username only brings up the topic's first page ... nevermind it is 30 pages long

what happened to 'last'
:thumbsdown:

Last actually worked for you? If I clicked on last I always got a blank page.

 

[TheChort]

Originally posted by: QueBert

Originally posted by: apoppin
*search* is much worse

doing a search on your username only brings up the topic's first page ... nevermind it is 30 pages long

what happened to 'last'
:thumbsdown:

Last actually worked for you? If I clicked on last I always got a blank page.

It would only give a blank page if there was some multiple of posts of your post/page limit.
If you set your posts to 50/page and there were exactly 100 posts, then hitting 'last' would give you a blank page. Granted, it was a bug, but not super annoying.

Look at me... talking about the "LAST" button in past tense, like we'll never see it again

 

[cKGunslinger]

Originally posted by: blurredvision

God help me for saying this, and I swear I'm not being an ass from the whole copyright infringement versus theft thing, but...........issues != negative comments.

I guess you are generally hateful to everybody on these board, eh?

Issues == things you are having problems with == complaints.

Since you aren't posting any issues about the update, you're the one not helping here.

 

[bendixG15]

________________________________________________

Private messages do not display

Unable to view PMs I sent or received, screen shows up blank.

I got a FS thing going and I can't communicate with the guy


Using IE6 SP1 and Win2kPro

 

[Jason Clark]

Ok, full text search is up, archives will probably take 4-5 days to index (23 million messages). Messages and PM's are searchable.

 

[Muse]

Like any sensible forum, Topic Tools should include:

Subscribe (when you are NOT subsribed)
Unsubscribe (when you ARE subscribed)

Right now, it's always Subscribe. AFAIK, you have to go through 3 hoops and a field of fire to unsubscribe to a thread at Anandtech Forums.

 

[AgaBoogaBoo]

Originally posted by: Platypus
Count me in on half the text going off to the right side when not using the default theme.

Count me in on the avater/title text being way too big in comparison to the rest of the forum text despite whatever size you make it

Did you even beta test this?? I mean honestly these are elementary mistakes. Every single time this forum software is 'upgraded' it gets 10x worse than it was before.. sorry but it's the truth :\

AT'ers are technical people, we prefer content over rounded corners and fancier icons. Everytime we upgrade, I want the old version back, and don't know why we bother upgrading. Couldn't the search somehow just be fixed in the old version? Or maybe at least offer the old themes in this new version? I hate seeing the look change, I'm honestly an addict - I will instinctively open up AT as soon as I get on a browser, but this kind of change makes me care less and less. I have 23k+ posts because I like being here, I like the people, and I love the discussions, I don't mean to come off as an ass with my post, so please take it in the kindest way possible - my intent was to just get the point across that Platypus made.

 

[Shawn]

Originally posted by: Jason Clark
Ok, full text search is up, archives will probably take 4-5 days to index (23 million messages). Messages and PM's are searchable.

Thanks Jason. Search seems to work now! :thumbsup:

Any idea if/when our other issues will be addressed? Thanks.

 

[ProviaFan]

Originally posted by: Muse
Like any sensible forum, Topic Tools should include:

Subscribe (when you are NOT subsribed)
Unsubscribe (when you ARE subscribed)

Right now, it's always Subscribe. AFAIK, you have to go through 3 hoops and a field of fire to unsubscribe to a thread at Anandtech Forums.

I agree. The way it works now is terrible (you have to search through a potentially huge list of threads to select the one you just came from, then go down to the very bottom to hit Unsubscribe).

I'm also going to complain another time about the fact that one now gets a new PM for every post in a subscribed thread, where the previous version of Fusetalk would notify you only once until the next time you viewed a thread (it should be intuitively obvious why the previous version's behavior was far superior).

 

[Jason Clark]

You may see a bit of a slow down tonight and probably well into the next 2-3 days. The database server is taking a beating with all the re-indexing. The array is almost saturated and cpu is peaking at 80% on a quad cpu opteron with 8gb mem

The rest of the issues the AT stuff will submit on to FuseTalk and hopefully they address them, I can no longer take care of this stuff or I would Alot of the issues here are totally valid.

Hang in there, people are listening and watching.

 

[blurredvision]

Originally posted by: cKGunslinger

Originally posted by: blurredvision

God help me for saying this, and I swear I'm not being an ass from the whole copyright infringement versus theft thing, but...........issues != negative comments.

I guess you are generally hateful to everybody on these board, eh?

Issues == things you are having problems with == complaints.

Since you aren't posting any issues about the update, you're the one not helping here.

I never said the word complaints. Get your sh|t straight. Issues are problems with the software, negative comments are the "this sucks" and "if it ain't broke don't fix it" comments.

 

[NFS4]

Originally posted by: Shawn
Hi Jason, generally a good upgrade but here are a few issues which I would really like to see addressed:

1. The Side Bar: Categories are now below Buddies which means I have to scroll down every time I want to change categories. Also the new side bar seems to take up a lot more space for no apparent reason. This means that there is less room for the main content and means more scrolling. Also, even though there is more space the category names are still truncated. What would be really cool would be the ability to choose what exactly you want on the side bar and the order that you would like it in. Something that could be changed in the profile settings.
   
2. Forum Navigation: Unlike the previous version, hyperlinks do not change color when visited. This makes it much harder to find threads that I have visited previously. Also there is no Last button to take you to the last page in a thread. Another thing still wasn't fixed from the previous versions is the nested quoting. Other forum software I have seen removes all the nested quotes and only quotes the last person in the chain. This would be great to have.
   
3. General Forum Appearance: The new look is pretty neat but it would be nice if there were more color schemes to choose from, specifically one that resembled the previous theme. None of the new ones match Anandtech main theme as well as the old one. Also the new default theme is too "bright" with all the blue. The old theme's blue was much less noticeable.
   Also another thing worth pointing out is there is a lot more wasted space than the previous version. For some reason all of the tables seem to take more space leaving less room for the main content. I'm sure you could cut down on their size without really hurting anything. Perhaps you could have a "lite" option with skinner menu bars, etc.

Here are some screenshots showing some of the issues with the new version and comparing it to the old version.

Agreed on all counts.