Updated look for the site.

YouThere

Lurked for years without registration - so perhaps not the ideal person to provide feedback - but hey!

First off - credit to Tony - was a risk that old interface might feel stale/dated - and great strategy to put something out there for opinion/feedback - but hope he is wearing his flak jacket!

Don't like the large left and right margins - seems a waste of real-estate. And no idea what's the story with the monster margin at bottom of each page! (I see it is a trending comment)

I like to channel-hop on the TV - I like to channel-hop on boards. While having a coffee, I'll hit the "home" button frequently and end up in random forums that I would never normally follow! However in the new skin, the home page has very low density. I used to be able to scan all posts in just 1.5 screenfuls - now it is closer to 3 screens for same quantity of posts on home page (assuming same once inside a forum - didn't check). There seems scope to increase the density (however perhaps it is chunky for the mobile folks?)

Can the chunky-ness be made platform-specific - smart/dynamic web pages that display differently depending on platform, eg. if mobile then chunky, else if desktop then something neater? (another trending comment)

The top persistent menu - nice feature - however it's chunky! And if I hover over an option like "adverts.ie" - why does the popup menu repeat the title "adverts.ie" again - seems overkill! While hovering over the "adverts.ie" menu option, the word "adverts.ie" it looks "clickable" - but nothing happens when clicked! If I right click and "open in new tab" - it opens fine. Something strange afoot.

Tone down the white stuff please! Hard on the eyes when viewed on desktop. Bring back the grey/blue! And I wonder to myself if the bright white might be harder on batteries for the mobile folks? (another trending comment!)

(win7 and firefox 13)

C14N

First impression is that it looks pretty kewl.

TouchingVirus

YouThere wrote: »

And I wonder to myself if the bright white might be harder on batteries for the mobile folks? (another trending comment!)

Wonder no more, the answer is the reverse.

An LCD screen involved a backlight being put through liquid crystals. To make colours, certain wavelengths of light are blocked out. To make white, no light is blocked out. To make black or dark colours, more power is needed to enable the filters to expand their range. This is why black on an LCD isn't anywhere near as good as the black when the screen is turned off or the black of a CRT monitor.

So viewing a black background vs a white background on two exactly equal displays will result in the black one drawing more power than the white one.

If I'm completely honest, the power difference is pretty much negligible in the grand scheme of power consumption, the real consumer is your backlight and it's affected by the brightness setting on your monitor/device.

pixbyjohn

Nervous Wreck wrote: »

No drop-down tab for subbed forums?

I think that is a pity cos new users won't find sub forums so easy

Blowfish

TouchingVirus wrote: »

Wonder no more, the answer is the reverse.

An LCD screen involved a backlight being put through liquid crystals. To make colours, certain wavelengths of light are blocked out. To make white, no light is blocked out. To make black or dark colours, more power is needed to enable the filters to expand their range. This is why black on an LCD isn't anywhere near as good as the black when the screen is turned off or the black of a CRT monitor.

So viewing a black background vs a white background on two exactly equal displays will result in the black one drawing more power than the white one.

If I'm completely honest, the power difference is pretty much negligible in the grand scheme of power consumption, the real consumer is your backlight and it's affected by the brightness setting on your monitor/device.

That only applies to LCD's though. Most recent (non Apple at least) phones/tablets have switched to OLED which doesn't have a backlight as each pixel is illuminated individually, hence having a black background actually would improve battery life.

Valmont

It seems to have the same functionality, more or less, but now the screen is all squished together. I prefer the old look to be honest.

b318isp

I'm not sure if these have been mentioned, apologies if so (Windows 7, IE9, 1680x1050):

- Adverts.ie home link doesn't work, although the links to the categories do
- Can there be an option to default to the last page in a thread, instead of going into a thread on the first post
- A lot of space wasted, e.g. on thread listings. I go into Latest Threads and My threads a lot, and it is harder to scan down

Sean Quagmire

It hurts my eyes, I don't like it.

Boards.ie: Danny

Blowfish wrote: »

That only applies to LCD's though. Most recent (non Apple at least) phones/tablets have switched to OLED which doesn't have a backlight as each pixel is illuminated individually, hence having a black background actually would improve battery life.

Desktop/laptop traffic far outweighs phone/tablet traffic for Boards. Black on white, or more specifically darker text on a lighter background is most of the internet. There are reasons for this, the research is out there for people interested in design and user experience/interfacing. For the record, I'm not a designer

Danny

Masked Man

b318isp wrote: »

- Can there be an option to default to the last page in a thread, instead of going into a thread on the first post

Maybe I'm not understanding the question but:



Or click "Last Page" (or whatever page number is last).

Boards.ie: Danny

Rubecula wrote: »

However, might I ask why change it?

I have seen a few places that have changed their layout and appearance and they seem to do it because they can. Nobody stops to think "Should we?"

Being able to do something is all very well of course, but why?

I have never had a problem with the old (current layout) and I have grown to like it quite a lot. (Even been telling other folks to come along and see how it should be done.)

This is new and will take getting used to. I can't recommend it to anyone, at least not for some time, until I am happy with it.

Can this new format do things that the old one can not do? Or is it just something done "Because you can"?

Whatever, I wish you all the best luck with it if you persist.

PS. If you are changing things a little bit more colour in this Beta version may look nicer?

The software we use for this forum is vBulletin. It is woeful, legacy code released in 2004 built to suit a wide range of community types. It is inefficient and fails miserably under high load. Adding new features is almost never going to happen, the code is designed in such a way that something you do way over at A might ripple on through a whole alphabet worth of places having unintended side effects.

The new style leverages some features of our new platform - the vBulletin replacement, a bespoke solution built by Boards.ie for Boards.ie). One of the first things you can see is the menu obeys your permissions. Find yourself banned from a forum? It won't show up in the menu. Get access to a private forum? It will show up. These are the tip of the iceberg, the API is capable of a lot more - the touch site is run entirely off the API, never going near vBulletin. Piece by piece and over time we'll be moving away from vBullein. The next step is replacing the horrible looking, old authentication and registration system for a fresh design and much more newbie friendly signup. This will have the added effect of hopefully reducing the number of signups we get from automated spambots - common problem with generic software solutions. Load on our servers will decrease and speed of responses for users will increase which will result in a snappier, faster Boards.ie. I won't even start on the possibilities this opens up for new and improved features

The previous styles have very litle brand recognition. By scrolling off the top you could be on one of many thousands of vBulletin sites - this is especially true for users who aren't logged in and are using the White style. The only difference from the vBulletin 3 default style is the header that says Boards.ie. When you're on Google, you know you're on it. When you're on other sites you know you're there. It has as much to do with the content as the layout, look and feel. Boards has none - the touch site is entirely different to the main site. Each skin is entirely different to the last. There's no icon consistency, placement consistency, nothing. In User Experience/Design it's common practice that item placements should be the same, and what they do should be the same across all "views" or styles. It leads to a more harmonised, user friendly experience. Brand recognition is important going forward and comes from more than just the domain name

I suspect another reason for the change is that despite what current users believe (and especially those that have been around a long time) Boards.ie isn't all that user friendly and doesn't look great. Just ask anybody who isn't a Boardsie to give their honest opinion on the design. Or somebody who isn't remotely technical or experienced with forums to dive in and get started with discussions. They'll struggle, I've watched countless people do it and I'm sure I can't be the only one. The footfall over in Newbies & FAQ asking the same question about how to make new threads because they can't find the button, the people who struggle to discover forums and post in the wrong place. Sure, you'll get that with the new skin as some people just don't get it in the beginning. The thing is for the people who do sign up and post there could be countless others who just think it isn't worh the hassle and don't post, don' sign up - lost users. We want to drive up engagement, participation, open the floor to more people than before. If this style helps even a little bit in doing that do you think it's worth the change?

To sum up, this isn't change for the sake of it; anything but.

Mammanabammana

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1TtGQnyPZ6g

Kingdom Girl

How Do I post a thread?I cant see an option anywhere!
Thanks guys!

wnolan1992

eezarthegreat wrote: »

3. Button (reply, quote) need colours - the grey is simply too hard on the eyes (those with visual impediments are FOOOKED)

If I may, I'd like to weigh in on this particular point.

I use inverted colours and magnification for browsing and now that you mention it, the buttons are harder to see than the older ones. They kinda fade into the post and although the actual symbols on them (the "+ for multi quote, etc) are far nice on this skin, there's no real defined border to the buttons.

Even slightly darker fill-colour would make it better, or a small black border around the edge.

smash

The little arrows to expand/reduce the message input field don't work any more for me on the quick reply box, but they work on on the advanced reply page.

Mr_Roger_Bongos

Type: Design / Other
Issue: For discretion at work, i open a smaller window. But when the size is minimised and i select say 'After Hours', the drop down menu is obscured to the left hand side. Would there be any way to centre these to fit the window size, so that you could scroll left/right without having to expand the window horizontally to see the menu?
Browser & OS: IE8
Screen Resolution: 1280*1024

rom

Boards.ie: Danny
The example of the change you mention is tiny re banned forums as it may only effect well less than 1% of users. I don't think the current skin is great but its much much better from a user experience perspective. The poor use of screen space on the new skin is amateur at best.

But most importantly research does prove that serif fonts (like Times or Georgia) are easier to read because of the curves they have and sans serif font put a little bit more strain on your eyes, because their characters don't 'flow' so the move from Times to Verdana. Its just a step above comic sans (which is not a font )

http://www.bigbrandsystem.com/why-i-hate-verdana/

b318isp

Masked Man wrote: »

Maybe I'm not understanding the question but:



Or click "Last Page" (or whatever page number is last).

It's to avoid doing doing this. It would reduce bandwidth by not loading unecessary pages and be less of a PITA when going through the many threads daily.

TheDoc

Left myself logged into a mates laptop.

Had some laughs subscribing me to certain forums.

Is there a way to mass unsubcribe to forums through the new layout, or must I manually remove each and every one ?

Boards.ie: Danny

rom wrote: »

Boards.ie: Danny
The example of the change you mention is tiny re banned forums as it may only effect well less than 1% of users. I don't think the current skin is great but its much much better from a user experience perspective. The poor use of screen space on the new skin is amateur at best.

Forget the banned users, think about the core members who have been here years and have access to many non-public forums. You'll see more when the new auth system rolls out. And more again when whatever the next stage of development is, is rolled out. We didn't change the whole design for an improved menu. As I said, it was an example of what our new API/UI is capable of

rom wrote: »

But most importantly research does prove that serif fonts (like Times or Georgia) are easier to read because of the curves they have and sans serif font put a little bit more strain on your eyes, because their characters don't 'flow' so the move from Times to Verdana. Its just a step above comic sans (which is not a font )

http://www.bigbrandsystem.com/why-i-hate-verdana/

We moved away from Verdana (which all skins currently use) to Arial but in our rollout to the moderators it didn't work and far outweighed other issues. We've not switched to Verdana, it's been here all along.

Danny

Boards.ie: Danny

TheDoc wrote: »

Left myself logged into a mates laptop.

Had some laughs subscribing me to certain forums.

Is there a way to mass unsubcribe to forums through the new layout, or must I manually remove each and every one ?

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/usercp.php <-- You can unfollow forums from here. Alternatively you can go into each forum and unfollow from there

Sleepy

Boards.ie: Danny wrote: »

We moved away from Verdana (which all skins currently use) to Arial but in our rollout to the moderators it didn't work and far outweighed other issues. We've not switched to Verdana, it's been here all along.

Danny

Out of interest, were any serif fonts tested? They do usually improve readability of blocks of text...

Boards.ie: Danny

Sleepy wrote: »

Out of interest, were any serif fonts tested? They do usually improve readability of blocks of text...

No serif fonts were tested. After the Verdana to Arial feedback, the font was left alone.

Danny

Quazzie

Quazzie wrote: »

Are there any plans to make it so that it confirms to browser window size rather tna having a set width. Most of my browsing is done in a minimized window as stated previously and since the change over its very annoying constantly scrolling left and right to read posts. The old way was much better in this regards.

Danny, can you comment on this please, and also on the possibility of getting a button that points to here.

tfitzgerald

If it's not broken then leave it alone. I think the new layout is terrible I look a boards a lot with my phone and this new layout is going to kill the site .

kowloon

I'm terribly afeared of change.

GalwayGaillimh

Is the text harder to read or is it just me?

Boards.ie: Paddy

Quazzie wrote: »

Danny, can you comment on this please, and also on the possibility of getting a button that points to here.

We will be offering an option to set the page width to 100% rather than the 1400px cap. We will also be offering an option for a "Compact" layout which will reduce padding on posts and thread lists.

We will also be adding the ability to select themes which will initially be a grey variant and black variant.

We will also be offering the ability to control what items are counted in your notification counter, so people can disable the notification for followed threads.

These options, in addition to the "Disable sticky header" will all be available on a single page accessible from the user menu.

A link to "New Posts" will be added to the Boards.ie menu.

And finally, I'll say it again, we are not turning off the old skins.

Quazzie

Boards.ie: Paddy wrote: »

We will be offering an option to set the page width to 100% rather than the 1400px cap. We will also be offering an option for a "Compact" layout which will reduce padding on posts and thread lists.

We will also be adding the ability to select themes which will initially be a grey variant and black variant.

We will also be offering the ability to control what items are counted in your notification counter, so people can disable the notification for followed threads.

These options, in addition to the "Disable sticky header" will all be available on a single page accessible from the user menu.

A link to "New Posts" will be added to the Boards.ie menu.

And finally, I'll say it again, we are not turning off the old skins.

That has everything I'm looking for and will make this much better (even that the old skins imo).

Looking forward to it. Thanks Paddy

Naid23

I really like the new set up. Much more user friendly.

Had a few issues with viewing it on an ipad, when looking at some threads they go offscreen as if they are misaligned and not designed for ipad but good apart from that