Forum Update

heathcote123

elsiepac wrote: »

Oookay...

Panic over. I am on a widescreen laptop and hated the fixed width version, I nearly died when I saw it - like many others it was using about 45-50% of my available screen space.

Being a regular of DFW I was mostly concerned about the display of the fixed-size font SoAs, however...

I have changed my options to "new masthead, stretchy, less bright" and I'm actually fine with it now. It does look more professional - I do actually like the new masthead (not so much the picture but hey ho, can't win 'em all!); the only concern I would have would be that it looks a bit too corporate now.

Overall, thanks to the team at MSE Towers giving us regulars the option to go stretchy and not as bright, I'm absolutely fine with the change now.

No tech issues, but will report if I get any

LC

Yup, looks much better now stretchy.

However Martin seems to be suggesting the stretchiness will be deprecated/unsupported at some point - at least thats how I read it....

meher

actually when you return to stretch screen, it looks odd - may be it's just a matter of getting used to this new format

Owain_Moneysaver

Okay, fixed width - how do you know my screen resolution and zoom settings?

Has this been tested for accessibility with screen readers, magnifiers and other assistive technology?

custardy

MSE_Martin wrote: »

Hi folks

We are reading all your feedback.

I get the point some like stretchy, and will take on board the fact you want more 'readable width' within the fixed. We are going to have a look at some tweaks over the next month to do that on the fixed version (the stretchy will still be available mean time).

I hope you appreciate the choice we've given. Now we see that a decent chunk of people want stretchy I've tweaked the note at the top of every page so people realise they can get it.

Im very interested to see the 'bounce' impact - that's the forum's biggest issue far too many people come here - say they can't understand it and leave. So we're interest to see the impact on new users of the what we believe is easier to comprehend look now (less info is good in that case)

If it doesn't work it'll be changed, but we have to cater both to longstanding regulars (hence why there's options) and what we believe works for new users.

Right Im on at before 7am tomorrow so need to leave this now.

I think your biggest issue is folks simply not knowing where to post
its a big forum with many sections. even as a long termer I struggle to sometimes find section I know exist.
could it be you need some sort of one size fits all noob forum, with mods/BGs having admin rights over that section to move as required?

heathcote123

MSE_Martin wrote: »

Im very interested to see the 'bounce' impact - that's the forum's biggest issue far too many people come here - say they can't understand it and leave.

Like many forums, it does have a pre-requisite of being 'able to read'.

I'm not sure we're missing out on much if these people are bouncing

custardy

Owain_Moneysaver wrote: »

Okay, fixed width - how do you know my screen resolution and zoom settings?

Has this been tested for accessibility with screen readers, magnifiers and other assistive technology?

surely fixed width would work better with magnification etc?

ljaybrad

Not a fan of the new forum, width is tiny, and the grey round the edges clashes, would be better cream or green so it matched the forum.

I don't like having the right hand side bar on the forum, It's in the way, clashes, gives me a headache with all the colours and just looks messy. I'll stick with it for a few days, but I will probably stick to stretchy.

wnoktnwbr

Tigsteroonie wrote: »

Sorry, how do we use this? I clicked on the link where you said "click here to install" but it just opened me another Firefox window with the script in.

Ah, if you use Firefox you'll need to install the "greasemonkey" add on.

1. go to https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/greasemonkey/
2. click the green "add to firefox" button
3. Add on will start downloading, wait for it to finish
4. Restart firefox
5. go to http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/124005
6. click "install" in the top right
7. A window will show up, wait 3 seconds and click "install"
8. Done!

I'll add to those to my post, forgot that Firefox required greasemonkey to be installed as it isn't by default!

The_One_Who

MSE_Martin wrote: »

Im very interested to see the 'bounce' impact - that's the forum's biggest issue far too many people come here - say they can't understand it and leave. So we're interest to see the impact on new users of the what we believe is easier to comprehend look now (less info is good in that case)

(Having to use my knowledge of the forum buttons to be able to quote this since no images are showing.)

I don't think that is a fault of the aesthetic design, more so the size and in some cases the difficulty of finding what you are looking for. Some boards are difficult to find if you don't know where you are looking for, and that can be overwhelming for someone new to the forum, or even new to forums generally. Also that boards have thousands of pages with threads dating back years.

thetoothfairy

re my comment on the font size, the text in the sub board section of the forum is so much easier to read than the threads underneath, where the titles are too big and the text itself is not as nice a font to read as in the sub-boards.