Menu bar missing

mike65

It looks like a housing estate in an English post war New Town. Hideously "functional" and plain ugly. And the "new posts" link is hidden in a menu.

GLaDOS

I don't mind the new skin that much, but the original beta did the same job in a much more space efficient manner and with a better menu layout.

Dav

Almost no one (in terms of percentages of the traffic we have) uses that New Posts link though Mike, we had a massively confusing interface with way too many ways of doing the same tasks and have attempted to clean and simplify it. People don't use "forums" like they used to, so they don't understand how they tick - we still get emails every week asking how to start a thread despite the Contact Us page having a big picture explaining how it works.

Adyx

I don't think the new beta is the answer you're looking for. It doesn't simplify anything more than the old beta, nor does it really add any extra functionality. It does wrap it all up in a clunky, garish interface though. It's like the Duplo Lego compared to normal Lego or as someone said in the announcement thread, it's like Fisher Price.

Anyway I've already given my Feedback on that before so I'll leave it there, but I will say: By all means use the new beta as the default for new users or those who like it, but why can't ye leave the old beta/skins for those who have know how to navigate the site and have no interest in the new features of the Talk To forums etc?

Kur4mA

It's like the Windows 8 of themes. To be honest, I think it's ugly. There are massive spacing and sizing issues all over the place.

Also, the buttons are too large and everything about the interface is now overpowering the post itself. The posts are the most important thing on the page. I think the comparison to Fisher Price is a good one. Or another one for me would be comparing the Boards Old Beta theme to Lego and this one to Duplo. I'm all for improving boards, but this is just a step in the wrong direction in my opinion.

I have attached a pic of your own post Dav as an example of what I mean.

Solitaire

Dav wrote: »

I still don't understand the hatred towards the new skin, but that's besides the point.

It might have something to do with the titanic voids on each side of the screen. Except I have a sneaking suspicion that said voids are more likely gigantic advertisements that my AdBlock is removing from the page. Which coincidentally might be why certain people want to ram that goddamn SUPER AIDS-infested joke of a skin down our throats :rolleyes:

If there aren't giant ads running down each side of the page then for the love of God please fix the new Beta and make it scale correctly with screen resolution. Except we've been shouting that since the start of the old Beta and we were roundly ignored then too... oh wait, wasn't it around the time you released the old Beta that this "bug" occurred the first time (and on all skins except the old Beta)?

TBH its the voids that manage to bump up both Beta skins from "downright fugly" to "completely intolerable/unusable" for an awful lot of people. Yes the old skins are probably so outdated they limit the upgradeability of the site and will eventually have to be discontinued, but do their replacements have to be that different (read: worse) from the old ones?

Ares

Dav wrote: »

Almost no one (in terms of percentages of the traffic we have) uses that New Posts link though Mike, we had a massively confusing interface with way too many ways of doing the same tasks and have attempted to clean and simplify it. People don't use "forums" like they used to, so they don't understand how they tick - we still get emails every week asking how to start a thread despite the Contact Us page having a big picture explaining how it works.

I understand about wanting to make it easy to attract new members for site growth but the new skin is hideous compared to the beta skin.

Its all well and good attracting new members but the guys in the office would de very well to remember the existing and long serving members.

Boards.ie: Neil

Solitaire wrote: »

It might have something to do with the titanic voids on each side of the screen. Except I have a sneaking suspicion that said voids are more likely gigantic advertisements that my AdBlock is removing from the page. Which coincidentally might be why certain people want to ram that goddamn SUPER AIDS-infested joke of a skin down our throats :rolleyes:

go here http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/profile.php?do=appearancesettings

tick "use full width".

smellslikeshoes

This new beta is absolute muck, feels like Ive gone back in time to the 90s.

Washington Irving

I didn't get the problem until after the notice went up.

I'd rather use the Forum Index to get around the site than use the drop down menu with the new skin, don't like it at all.

Kintarō Hattori

Dav wrote: »

I still don't understand the hatred towards the new skin, but that's besides the point. The old skins will eventually have to disappear when we get to a stage where nothing works for them. We're planning on significant changes for how the site looks and performs in the new year - the new Talk To stuff that we're currently showing off (see this thread for details) is an example of what I mean - that won't work in any of the old skins and we're not going to be spending any time on doing so.

The old skin is elegant and effective, with a quick glance you can immediately see what's going on. I found with the new default skin there wasn't enough colour variation to easily distinguish what was happening on the main page.

The old default skin was mostly text based with minimal padding and it is just so easy to see what's happening throughout Boards.

cherryghost

The old skin rocks. The new skin looks clunky and messy. Put it on for 5 minutes then took it off. The old look is much much cleaner.

Nuri Sahin

Much prefer the layout and overall look of the old beta skin I must say.

RoundyMooney

I dunno lads, the new black skin isn't that bad, is it?

(ex old "Cloud" skin user).

P.S. @Dav-bugger off and enjoy your Christmas!

oscarBravo

kyub wrote: »

It's like the Windows 8 of themes. To be honest, I think it's ugly. There are massive spacing and sizing issues all over the place.

[...]

I have attached a pic of your own post Dav as an example of what I mean.

I'm at a loss as to what the attachments are supposed to prove. The first highlights gaps between short values in a tabular format, when those gaps exist of necessity because of longer values further down in the same table. It's sort of the nature of tables. Granted, the <hr>s have some vertical padding that I can see why you'd take issue with if you're a fan of cramming things in tightly on top of each other, but I don't understand what the issue is in the rest of the picture.

The second puzzles me even more. Again, it's pretty much a box-oriented layout, where the size of any given box dictates the size of its neighbours. You seem to be highlighting the blank space below Dav's sig, but how do you get rid of that without truncating the information in the box to the left? You also highlight the blank space above the buttons, but the only alternative is to move them up to immediately below the sig, which (a) would be a less consistent vertical layout between posts, and (b) would presumably lead to you highlighting all the wasted vertical space below the buttons.

Don't get me wrong: I'm not here to vehemently defend the new skin, although I have no issues with it. I've just seen a lot of criticism of it, and most of it seems to me to boil down to "it's not what I'm used to", which is just resistance to change as opposed to constructive feedback.

What might have made your attached pictures potentially useful is either a mockup showing how you would have designed it differently, avoiding the pitfalls you're criticising, or at least a comparison with the old skin, showing how none of the criticisms you're leveling at the new skin exist in it.

Again, I'm not arguing with you for the sake of arguing; I genuinely don't see the problems (bar one) that you're highlighting in your screenshots, and if I don't see them, it's entirely possible that the people responsible for designing the site's appearance don't see them either.

Boards.ie: Neil

yup everything should be back to normal now, now if you excuse me I'm going back to bed to hug my yellow spot present

P. Breathnach

Boards.ie: Neil wrote: »

yup everything should be back to normal now, now if you excuse me I'm going back to bed to hug my yellow spot present

You interrupted your Christmas break to look after us?

A big thank you, and I hope the rest of your Christmas is as you would like it to be.

Rabies

Thank you.

Now where is the option to change back to the old skin?
Can't find it on the new one

Insect Overlord

Rabies wrote: »

Thank you.

Now where is the option to change back to the old skin?
Can't find it on the new one

Scroll to the bottom here: http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/profile.php?do=editoptions and choose your favourite from the drop-down list.

Rabies

Insect Overlord wrote: »

Scroll to the bottom here: http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/profile.php?do=editoptions and choose your favourite from the drop-down list.

Thank you.

Changed skin, still don't have tool bar

Gone back to new black skin.

Maybe I picked the wrong one, but tried a few :-/

Beasty

Rabies wrote: »

Thank you.

Changed skin, still don't have tool bar

Gone back to new black skin.

Maybe I picked the wrong one, but tried a few :-/

I changed back about half an hour ago and it was fine, but the menu bar has now gone again ...

I'm still using the old skin, primarily because the new one is extremely slow on my iPhone 4. I don't like using the touch site so prefer to use the full one.

Liam McPoyle

Menu bar was back earlier but has gone again.

Im using classic beta.

No menu bar sucks,absolute pain in the scrote navigating.

:mad:

GLaDOS

Still gone for me in the old beta

Wibbs

Message for Boards.ie: Neil. Menubar or not, feck off and enjoy your bloody holidays, we can all do without a menu bar for a few days. We'll live.

phasers

What Wibbs said. Log off and stay logged off!

P. Breathnach

phasers wrote: »

What Wibbs said. Log off and stay logged off!

He may have done that already, and be missing your good advice.

I believe that time off work is sacrosanct except for genuine emergencies. A small diminution in functionality on Boards is not, in my book, a genuine emergency. Hell, if Boards went down for a few days, the world would not stop rotating. We saddos might actually get out and do real things like ... umm ... (what's a personal encounter like?).

phasers

P. Breathnach wrote: »

He may have done that already, and be missing your good advice.

I believe that time off work is sacrosanct except for genuine emergencies. A small diminution in functionality on Boards is not, in my book, a genuine emergency. Hell, if Boards went down for a few days, the world would not stop rotating. We saddos might actually get out and do real things like ... umm ... (what's a personal encounter like?).

Apparently it involves no typing and, in some instances, standing up :eek:

Canis Lupus

I'm on the old skin. Menu bar has only fleetingly shown up since the problem first arose. Sometimes it's there when I log in but once I skip to a particular forum it dissappears.

Blazer

Wibbs wrote: »

Message for Boards.ie: Neil. Menubar or not, feck off and enjoy your bloody holidays, we can all do without a menu bar for a few days. We'll live.

no man we can't
that new beta skin is horrific...there's a special place in hell for whoever designed that, right alongside the guy who made the decision to put the metro UI into windows 8 on the pc