topic Re: What I dislike about the new forum. in Community Site Feedback

What I dislike about the new forum.

rogadodge — Tue, 31 May 2016 16:25:50 GMT

I have finally worked out what I really dislike about this new forum.

I find the graphics to very much resemble the 'cartoony' graphics and colour palette of the old Motorola mobile phones. Which I believe were aimed a younger, juvenile market. These colours were chosen for a reason.

The spacing

between lines, paragraphs etc is

irritating (see what I mean?) and means the screen is dominated by white glare. This is even worse on a mobile device.

3. With such large avatars, and large signatures , one has to do a lot of scrolling over irrelevant data to get to anything even remotely interesting. With these signatures appearing immediately before the avatars of the following post, you have a screen full of'gibberish' (sorry, but to be honest I'm not interested in who has what, when, where or how, their computer system configuration or broadband speed. And if I want to know who posted a topic, does it have to be 'shouted from the rooftops?').

Could we not have the option of a 'text only' display - but removing all the spacing left by the suppressed imaging?

(And how do I preview an edited post?)

Re: What I dislike about the new forum.

jaread83 — Tue, 31 May 2016 16:05:25 GMT

blank content posts are on my radar and we may have a way of stopping blank posts being posted altogether OR we provide a warning message for blanks posts.

If you submit a thread in the community feedback board can you please include a more descriptive title? This helps me keep track of things.

Re: What I dislike about the new forum.

rogadodge — Tue, 31 May 2016 16:30:09 GMT

Sorry, I posted by mistake. Then I went to edit so I could actually add body text. There was some delay between typing title and the cursor appearing in text box, so I 'entered' thinking this was the new way. (My first topic I believe on this new forum).

Re: What I dislike about the new forum.

Mav — Tue, 31 May 2016 16:38:48 GMT

@rogadodge why not turn signatures off in My Settings : Preferences > Preference Options > View signatures in posts

Re: What I dislike about the new forum.

rongtw — Tue, 31 May 2016 16:42:01 GMT

Is there a setting to turn off white spaces and pink blobs

Re: What I dislike about the new forum.

Anotherone — Tue, 31 May 2016 17:31:00 GMT

Yes @rongtw there is in one of the "themes" that a couple of people developed, but they aren't in the edited ones that Jack has pinned to this board. If I find them in the previous threads I'll let you know.

@rogadodge Basically this has all been covered in threads already raised on this board. Some things are slowly changing, but certain aspects of the "space" and etc. are down to Plusnet's Corporate Styling policy. As regards space between your lines etc., a <Shift><Return> will give you a new line whereas <Return> will give you a new paragraph.

Re: What I dislike about the new forum.

rogadodge — Tue, 31 May 2016 18:15:04 GMT

Ok thanks

@ Mav - I have turned off signatures now.
@ Anotherone- I've got to be honest, I haven't read all the posts in all the topics so I'm not aware that this has been covered. Did they also cover the excessively large, faecesbook style 'LIKE' button? I wonder if Mark Zuckerberg has intellectual copyright?
Also the spacing I put there was intentional - to prove a point. This is how I see the pages.

Re: What I dislike about the new forum.

Anotherone — Tue, 31 May 2016 18:06:42 GMT

Yep button sizes have been mentioned, as has the "Title" on replies being in larger bold text than the content of the reply

It might be worth mentioning that there has to be some slight compromises with things like button sizes to cope with fat fingers when using one's mobile, but that point hasn't been reached yet

Re: What I dislike about the new forum.

rongtw — Wed, 01 Jun 2016 08:11:03 GMT

Anotherone , Yes i have tried the Themes but why has PN not changed the main forum so there is no need to THEME !!!

Re: What I dislike about the new forum.

jaread83 — Wed, 01 Jun 2016 08:32:18 GMT

Thanks for the feedback @rogadodge. Let me have a closer look at what you said:

I find the graphics to very much resemble the 'cartoony' graphics and colour palette of the old Motorola mobile phones.

This is part of the Plusnet corporate branding and it matches the main website www.plus.net. I understand that the colour pallette is not to everyones liking and some find it hard to read. If you are a firefox or chrome user I have created a 'high contrast' theme that you can apply to make everything black, white and a touch of gray.

Is it the overall size of the buttons that you don't like or is just the colour?

2.

The spacing

between lines, paragraphs etc is

As I mentioned above, this is part of the corporate branding guidelines. Hitting return multiple times will create a new paragraph in the text editor and each paragraph has a small amount of margin applied to make it clear that a paragraph is there (you end up with a wall of text which is unreadable)

3. With such large avatars, and large signatures , one has to do a lot of scrolling over irrelevant data to get to anything even remotely interesting.

As @Anotherone mentioned, you can switch signature off and I beleive a few members have opted to turn these off as not everyone likes to see those. I have a sig but I beleive that sigs should be short 1 or 2 lines of text. Regular users are actually restricted to a few lines to stop users putting too many silly things in there.

Could we not have the option of a 'text only' display

I think this is a good idea but one that I can't implement into the core of the community (i can only do visual changes) but going by the same vein of providing a custom theme you can implement via a browser extension I can certainly look into creating a 'text only' version theme in the future.

@Anotherone, you mentioned other themes? I haven't seen any since the one I created. If you point me towards the thread I could check it out and ask if they would like their theme pinned to the theme thread...

Re: What I dislike about the new forum.

MauriceC — Wed, 01 Jun 2016 11:46:09 GMT

@jaread83 wrote:

This is part of the Plusnet corporate branding and it matches the main website www.plus.net. I understand that the colour pallette is not to everyones liking and some find it hard to read.

This is the core of the problem! Someone senior needs to hold a review of the external image projected by this new site. It has way too much 'White space' and many pages are far too 'busy'. Unless there are changes to this core design, there is limited value in tinkering at the edges. (Personal opinion)

I have a sig but I believe that sigs should be short 1 or 2 lines of text. Regular users are actually restricted to a few lines to stop users putting too many silly things in there.

@And the forum rules support this view - but even Plusnet staff choose to ignore this rule cf @Chris @HarryB with overlarge Icons in their sig.

Re: What I dislike about the new forum.

Oldjim — Wed, 01 Jun 2016 11:52:29 GMT

Actually the Forum Rule

Signatures should be no more than 5 standard lines of text, including blank lines. Image based signatures should be no larger than 100x560 pixels with a file size of 40kB.

Is the same a before in terms of image size and when I checked the standard staff image used is 100px high