New Look MSE Forum

MSE_Martin

Hi folks, as you can probably see we've launched a major cosmetic revamp of the MSE forum, the first in four years.

On the first day things were slow, as everyone needs download a new image set, but that'll soon disappear and it will be just as zippy.

Note we may need to temporarily turn off avatars at times over the next few days to keep it faster while people download the new images - they will come back

We hope you like it - its cleaner, easier to navigate and the forum text starts higher up the page so you can see more of the discussion and lots of small tweaks too.

Do let us know what you think of it (though the team and I have put 100s hours of hard work in, so if you don't like it be gentle).

Thanks for all the testing and so pleased most like it

Having said that we're pretty sure its a big improvement we put it out to extensive testing (see new MSE forum test) and got many great suggestions that we incorporated, so we're going to run with it.

And three times as many people like it as didnt't (see poll) which as forumites generally hate change is great.

A few people have asked about the facebook & twitter links and privacy for more on that read the new links note.

Can't find what you want to do?

We haven't got rid of any functions (as far as we're aware) but a few may have moved. If you're not sure how to do something, ask in the post and we (or another forumer hopefully) will try and help.

Want to switch back

For a very small percentage of people, we know some monitors display it too brightly - if that's you please read the too bright? post.

While this is the default view, if you preferred the old view you can switch back to it, provided you're a logged in (registered) user.

To do that go to your User CP using the link at the top of the page. Click on Edit Options. Scroll down, find the Forum Skin drop down menu, and select Old Look from the list. Finally press the Save Changes button.

However before you do why not try it for a few days, this is the design we will be primarily supporting going forward.

Many of those in testing who originally didn't like the "change" found it a major improvement once they'd got used to it.

Change is always difficult, please give it time to bed in, before making your mind up.

We want to constantly improve it

This isn't the final thing, we want to constantly work on improving it. So if you have any suggestions or spot any glitches let us know.

We can't promise to make changes, but I will read and look at them. We did go through extensive testing on this look and the vast majority of people saw it as an improvement.

Martin

jamesd

Lots of fine detail here, hopefully some of it's useful. I've switched to V1 because in priority order:

1. The new text swims before my eyes and is hard to read. Reading is a critical feature of a forum, so this forces the change. The brighter white background seems like the main factor in this so it's possible that a tweak to that might solve the problem. It's ironic that a larger font is actually harder to read. I don't know whether any testers are old enough to have both short sight, non-round eyeballs and age-related sight issues but that's possibly why some testers/users might not be affected.

2. Less efficient use of space. Easy test, start long discussion, go to start and hit page down five times. V1 has advanced further than V2 by several messages. It's well established in studies that keeping information on screen instead of having to scroll improves comprehensibility so having to scroll more doesn't seem like an improvement.

3. Moving the poster name into the bar with the time of post and message number/link is a good move but the size increase doesn't seem helpful. I'd like this change if it was smaller. This whole bar is largely incidental information for me, the words in the body of the post are what matters so that's where I prefer to see space used. The move of the poster is particularly good because long poster names used to greatly affect the available width for post bodies so this could be a truly excellent change. Except that the observed result is point 2, so any gains from this are used elsewhere, and more.

4. The thread stats aren't in any way related to what I'm looking at a thread to do. My actions are read and reply. I don't care much at that point in my action flow about view count, wow factor or inserting links to social networking sites. If I did care about those it would be at the end, after the last message, not with the first message.

5. The top of thread Spam and Post Reply buttings might usefully be integrated on the same line as the thread topic, so this one would be one line with Spam, Post Reply, New look MSE Forum combined.

6. I like the green and its use with the poster information. I'm not keen on the loss of the dark black lines between sections, which for me provide better visual separation between elements.

7. Good move to temporarily disable the avatars while everyone is downloading new icon sets. The images site was already often the limiting factor in page display times for me even before the change. I assume they will be back once the initial server stress is over.

As always, the rule is that you read more about what people have difficulties with. If I haven't mentioned it, it's fine, it's just the bits that might be improvable that feature here. OK, now back to telling customers how to solve problems and developers what to do at work instead of here.

tara747

Oh Martin :money:, sorry to say this after all the hard work... but if it ain't broke, don't fix it. I've always found the old version of MSE the most reader-friendly site around. I agree with jamesd's points and I am going back to V1 also.

jackieb

I wasn't quite sure at first but i've grown used to it already and forgotten what like it was before!

The speed is the only down thing and I know that's being worked on - so all's fine and dandy here.

scoobylicious

Oh where have everyone's lovely piccies gone?! Are we allowed them back?:j Think this new look might too hard work for my laptop-it's really struggling to load each page! PS I did love the old look too :cool:

LilacLillie

I've lost my pics as well????
LL

Edinburghlass_2

Avatars have been suspended temporarily, they will be back.

southernscouser

I really like it, looks less cluttered and a bit more, well better. :rotfl:

But the size of the online/offline buttons are huge to the point I think they look tacky. :undecided

scoobylicious

Oh thanks for that EG-not that I'm too interested in the look of the page or anything!!

rich_shot2003

Looks so much better

Well done to the team for all the hard work in making the forums look better.:j

anitarani

yes looks very nice :beer: