Issues with Boards appearance?

Headshot

Hi Folks

Is there any issue with the boards.ie appearance at the moment

I've always used the legacy one but at the moment i'm stuck with this

Harry Palmr

That's the boards.ie I'm using cos the legacy board is gone it's with O'Leary in the grave.

ArmaniJeanss

https://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?p=112184230#post112184230

Seems to be gone for good :mad::(

Boards.ie: Ronan

Not an issue, some older unsupported themes were retired this morning. See here for the full details.

https://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?p=112184230#post112184230

Headshot

ArmaniJeanss wrote: »

https://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?p=112184230#post112184230

Seems to be gone for good :mad::(

ffs

I hate this current layout, it's awful

I want my legacy theme back

5starpool

Boourns. Down with change.

ED E

5starpool wrote: »

Boourns. Down with change.

It's not anti change, the old design is/was far more functional.

Headshot

ED E wrote: »

It's not anti change, the old design is/was far more functional.

Yup it was so easier to navigate

jester77

I could live with overly bright default or weird halloween theme, but the navigation in now awful compared to the old beta. I can't find anything and I am clicking multiple menus hoping to see what I am looking for. Massive regression in usability Took me forever just to find feedback as it was not under all obvious places in Topics.

Headshot

Can we not get the legacy version back working again.....

28064212

jester77 wrote: »

I could live with overly bright default or weird halloween theme, but the navigation in now awful compared to the old beta. I can't find anything and I am clicking multiple menus hoping to see what I am looking for. Massive regression in usability Took me forever just to find feedback as it was not under all obvious places in Topics.

Why not just use the search box? Type "feed" into the box, first result in the dropdown is the feedback forum

Hotblack Desiato

Well, this totally sucks and will put me off using Boards.

The contrast between white and black is too high. The pale blue background on the old skin was just right.

The minimum width of the text is too wide. You used to be able to make the window quite narrow and the text would flow correctly into the space available. This makes the text easier and quicker to read.

I really hate this theme, there was a reason I avoided using it for all these years.

Why wasn't there a sitewide announcement about this? This is a lot more important than the photography competition - no offence guys...

Also there appears to be no ability to attach a symbol to a post. that's just on this forum.

Boards.ie: Niamh

Hotblack Desiato wrote: »

Well, this totally sucks and will put me off using Boards.

The contrast between white and black is too high. The pale blue background on the old skin was just right.

The minimum width of the text is too wide. You used to be able to make the window quite narrow and the text would flow correctly into the space available. This makes the text easier and quicker to read.

I really hate this theme, there was a reason I avoided using it for all these years.

Why wasn't there a sitewide announcement about this? This is a lot more important than the photography competition - no offence guys...

Also there appears to be no ability to attach a symbol to a post. I was going to give it a big thumbs down...

There was a site wide announcement last week which Rónán has linked to in his earlier post there.

I know people find change difficult when you are used to everything being in a specific spot and now it's different but for the reasons outlined in the announcement, we've had to unfortunately remove the skins. They haven't been supported for a long while but if they weren't going to be affected by the work being done in the background we'd have happily left them alone, however this wasn't the case.

jester77

28064212 wrote: »

Why not just use the search box? Type "feed" into the box, first result in the dropdown is the feedback forum

That's how I ended up finding it after giving up on clicking everywhere in Topics

Boards.ie: Niamh wrote: »

There was a site wide announcement last week which Rónán has linked to in his earlier post there.

I know people find change difficult when you are used to everything being in a specific spot and now it's different but for the reasons outlined in the announcement, we've had to unfortunately remove the skins. They haven't been supported for a long while but if they weren't going to be affected by the work being done in the background we'd have happily left them alone, however this wasn't the case.

Are there plans to improve the navigation menu? It's an awful experience right now compared to how the boards beta menu worked. Clicking everywhere just to find something is really frustrating.

Boards.ie: Niamh

I understand that jester77 and yes we plan to improve navigation on the menu, however it won't be in the immediate future while other things are being worked on in the background. We do plan to improve search which should help people with finding things.

Hotblack Desiato

Boards.ie: Niamh wrote: »

There was a site wide announcement last week which Rónán has linked to in his earlier post there.

As in, a notice which appears on the user control panel and all threads until you dismiss it, like the one today about downtime? I didn't get that.

Unless someone goes into the announcements forum, they're not going to see it otherwise.

I know people find change difficult when you are used to everything being in a specific spot and now it's different but for the reasons outlined in the announcement, we've had to unfortunately remove the skins.

Fair enough, but it's not objecting to change for the sake of it, the old skin was better from the usability point of view. I'd be happy if the minimum width of the text was lessened and there was an option to have a light blue instead of white background.

bucketybuck

I hate the suggestion that we wanted to use the legacy version through some fear of change, because thats just rubbish.

Nobody on the internet is frightened of a change on a website, we have seen and used any amount of them by this stage. The reason I used the legacy version is because the new one is just pretty rubbish all things considered.

Regardless, there is one question. This is a quote from the linked announcement:

and are used by a small percentage of the userbase

What is that based upon? What is that small percentage and is it a percentage of all registered members or of active members?

Boards.ie: Niamh

Hotblack Desiato wrote: »

As in, a notice which appears on the user control panel and all threads until you dismiss it, like the one today about downtime? I didn't get that.

Unless someone goes into the announcements forum, they're not going to see it otherwise.

It was a Homepage announcement and it's been there since 7th January and is still there now.

Hotblack Desiato wrote: »

Fair enough, but it's not objecting to change for the sake of it, the old skin was better from the usability point of view. I'd be happy if the minimum width of the text was lessened and there was an option to have a light blue instead of white background.

I understand that from a navigation point of view the old menu was better laid out, however the changes we are making to the site are all part of a plan to simplify making changes on the site. One of those changes will be the menu/navigation. It will be less work (and therefore hopefully take less time) when everything is upgraded and simplified than it would have been to do now.

"I'd be happy if the minimum width of the text was lessened" by this do you mean a narrower block of text in the middle of the page? We only have the facility at the moment to widen it by using Cosy Mode and Full Width in the Appearance Settings but it's a feature we could request.

Boards.ie: Niamh

bucketybuck wrote: »

I hate the suggestion that we wanted to use the legacy version through some fear of change, because thats just rubbish.

Nobody on the internet is frightened of a change on a website, we have seen and used any amount of them by this stage. The reason I used the legacy version is because the new one is just pretty rubbish all things considered.

Regardless, there is one question. This is a quote from the linked announcement:


What is that based upon? What is that small percentage and is it a percentage of all registered members or of active members?

I didn't use the word fear or anything like it, I said it was difficult. It can be a pain having to get used to something new when your mouse is nearly clicking things for you as you are so used to where things are or how they work.

This is not a 'new' version of the site by any means, it has been around for a good number of years and all other users are on it. The figure was less than 1% of all active users who were using one of the two skins that we removed today. Everyone else is or has been on the version you are on now.

Hotblack Desiato

Boards.ie: Niamh wrote: »

It was a Homepage announcement and it's been there since 7th January and is still there now.

I NEVER use the homepage. Just the User CP.

I understand that from a navigation point of view the old menu was better laid out

Never use the menus, either. Again the User CP and I have bookmarked my favourite forums as well

"I'd be happy if the minimum width of the text was lessened" by this do you mean a narrower block of text in the middle of the page? We only have the facility at the moment to widen it by using Cosy Mode and Full Width in the Appearance Settings but it's a feature we could request.

At the moment the window needs to be at least 1000 pixels wide, if you make it narrower than that then the text of posts won't fit. On the old skin, you could continue to narrow the window down to about 750 pixels and the text would still fit. This made a huge difference - it's much more readable, and it meant I could have two Boards windows open at the same time on my laptop screen, or a Boards window and another browser window.

ED E

Headshot has 45K posts. I've got 30 odd.

The "small percentage" of users is also the group of hardcore users here for a long time. You're driving your core users off to Reddit lads. Development for the sake of development isn't beneficial.

Apogee

Boards.ie: Niamh wrote: »

I understand that jester77 and yes we plan to improve navigation on the menu, however it won't be in the immediate future while other things are being worked on in the background.

Surely then it would make sense to leave the old skin in place until these improvements have been implemented?


The menu layout and need to do multiple clicks to drill down to subforums on this current skin is a pain. The old dropdown menu was far easier and quicker to navigate.

Headshot

Hi Guys.

There's also a feedback thread about this as well

https://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2058045065

Lets get our old skin back....

Boards.ie: Niamh

ED E wrote: »

Headshot has 45K posts. I've got 30 odd.

The "small percentage" of users is also the group of hardcore users here for a long time. You're driving your core users off to Reddit lads. Development for the sake of development isn't beneficial.

We can't halt all development because people accustomed to an older version of the site won't like it - that leaves us with an old-fashioned, not highly functional, difficult to develop site that fewer and fewer new users will want to use or will find unusable.
And as dedicated as the core users are, they won't be on the site as core users forever. We have to plan for that reality in making the site more user friendly for everyone. This is a step towards that goal.

Boards.ie: Niamh

Headshot wrote: »

Hi Guys.

There's also a feedback thread about this as well

https://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2058045065

Lets get our old skin back....

You are more than welcome to give feedback but we won't be returning the skins, as already stated they will be unusable with the planned upgrades and we're not leaving an unusable, broken skin out there.

Also, annoyingly, the page loads just ever so slightly wider than my screen so I always have a scrollbar at the bottom. Not having a link to the the forum at the bottom of a thread is such an oversight. Obviously the alternative is to keep the banner breadcrumb but that makes it like looking through a letterbox.

Harry Palmr

Boards.ie: Niamh wrote: »

We can't halt all development because people accustomed to an older version of the site won't like it - that leaves us with an old-fashioned, not highly functional, difficult to develop site that fewer and fewer new users will want to use or that they will find unusable.
And as dedicated as the core users are, they won't be on the site as core users forever. We have to plan for that reality in making the site more user friendly for everyone. This is a step towards that goal.

Hear that Headshot - boards is looking forward to you (and me) dying! :pac:

Headshot

Harry Palmr wrote: »

Hear that Headshot - boards is looking forward to you (and me) dying! :pac:

Nice to see Boards.ie care about it's long term posters alright

Least we'll know who will be celebrating at our grave stone

Boards.ie: Niamh

Not what I meant although it'll happen to us all eventually!

People's real lives and priorities and amount of free time change and often they'll take a break from the site for a few weeks, months or even years which is completely to be expected. Being a long time user doesn't mean you will be on the site at the same rate or same amount of time forever.

Hotblack Desiato

Boards.ie: Niamh wrote: »

We have to plan for that reality in making the site more user friendly for everyone.

As I've pointed out, there are serious usability issues with the default skin which the old one didn't suffer from, so no it's not more user friendly for everyone.

Carne

I find it difficult to get used to these new skins for all the reasons mentioned already. Would it not be possible to have a new skin that looks like the old one?