topic Re: Comparing Plusnet Lithium and BT Lithium in Community Site Feedback

Comparing Plusnet Lithium and BT Lithium

Oldjim — Mon, 11 Apr 2016 09:58:59 GMT

By way of a comparison I thought I would look at the BT Community Forum which also uses Lithium and in my opinion it is far more professional and user friendly

Re: Comparing Plusnet Lithium and BT Lithium

Anotherone — Mon, 11 Apr 2016 10:08:04 GMT

Much of that has to do with spacing which we've all moaned about and will continue to moan about. One thing that stands out though in the particular images you've shown is the balloons, we need some of those adding to show where there are Unread posts in particular to make easier for people with Visual disabilities. Whilst an enhancement has been added here for mobiles, I haven't thoroughly checked out the extent and to exactly what it's been added.

Having mentioned mobiles, I'm not sure the BT Forum has yet been "adjusted" for mobiles, but whatever, that does not excuse or need all the wasted space that's been added here.

Re: Comparing Plusnet Lithium and BT Lithium

dvorak — Mon, 11 Apr 2016 10:57:31 GMT

Do you want their light touch moderation too?

Re: Comparing Plusnet Lithium and BT Lithium

Oldjim — Mon, 11 Apr 2016 11:05:48 GMT

That is a totally irrelevant and unhelpful comment

Re: Comparing Plusnet Lithium and BT Lithium

kitz — Mon, 11 Apr 2016 12:30:14 GMT

I totally agree @Oldjim

I said something very similar to this a couple of days ago

I think one of the things that shocks me most though is that both PN and BT are running Lithium. One looks professional, the other with all the images... looks more like something someone knocked up using a WP template. Far too many images and whitespace

and

IMHO it looks unprofessional, more suited to a kids forum than a technical help forum due to the overuse of distracting images

I'm finding the site difficult to navigate on a desktop - it may well be ok on mobile, but it most certainly not user friendly when on a PC.

Without a doubt the BT site looks professional, this one just makes my eyes hurt and I struggle to read useful content.

Re: Comparing Plusnet Lithium and BT Lithium

Anotherone — Mon, 11 Apr 2016 12:50:17 GMT

Hi kitz, I agree with what you've said. I did make remarks about it not looking too professional and something along the lines of it being akin to a kiddies playground at some point during testing

I'm finding that navigating round whether it be desktop or mobile can be a pain because of all the scrolling. Cutting down the white space and etc. would help a lot. Having said that, navigating round on a desktop is better when one gets to know ones way around, it's so different from SMF it felt very alien to start with.

Apart from the bug fixes - the real irritating ones that have appeared the day after launch (which I know they are looking at) and others that limit usability in some things, there are a few enhancements that we are pursuing which we are hoping will return some of the functionality that is missing compared to SMF.

Re: Comparing Plusnet Lithium and BT Lithium

Anotherone — Mon, 11 Apr 2016 12:55:36 GMT

@dvorak wrote:
Do you want their light touch moderation too?

Sarcasm at it's best

Re: Comparing Plusnet Lithium and BT Lithium

Anonymous — Mon, 11 Apr 2016 13:04:47 GMT

@kitz - For me, this site does not look good or function very well on my iPad, I don't have a mobile phone so can't comment on that. I know it's not what we're used to but to me a good choice of phrase would be 'bloated'.

I also forgot to say 'noisy' as well.

Re: Comparing Plusnet Lithium and BT Lithium

dvorak — Mon, 11 Apr 2016 12:57:38 GMT

@Anotherone wrote:

@dvorak wrote:
Do you want their light touch moderation too?

Unhelpful Sarcasm at it's best

corrected it for you

Re: Comparing Plusnet Lithium and BT Lithium

RichardB — Mon, 11 Apr 2016 12:59:42 GMT

I fully agree with Oldjim & Kitz.
The new PN forums are not as good as the BT forums.
PN appear to have priotised the display of distracting graphical cruft over the actual CONTENT of the posts.
The BT forums look better on my mobile and load faster...

Re: Comparing Plusnet Lithium and BT Lithium

Anotherone — Mon, 11 Apr 2016 13:02:27 GMT

@Anonymous Bloated is a term I've used frequently @Townman can probably give you lots of tips and tell you about bugs he's found using an iPad - apart from his fat finger problems of course but then we all suffer from those on touch screens

Re: Comparing Plusnet Lithium and BT Lithium

MauriceC — Mon, 11 Apr 2016 13:25:44 GMT

I have to agree with @Anotherone @Oldjim, @Anonymous, @kitz

I like many of the new features, but the combination of bad layout and the plethora of 'bugs' and anomalies is making the Usability suffer greatly. When attempting to use a new feature it's hard to differentiate between my lack of understanding and identifying yet another possible 'bug'.

Hopefully PN will soon publish some timescales for getting the more critical issues resolved.

Re: Comparing Plusnet Lithium and BT Lithium

Townman — Mon, 11 Apr 2016 16:53:40 GMT

@Anonymous wrote:

@kitz - For me, this site does not look good or function very well on my iPad, I don't have a mobile phone so can't comment on that. I know it's not what we're used to but to me a good choice of phrase would be 'bloated'.

I also forgot to say 'noisy' as well.

Hi @Anonymous,

Care to mention any specific iPad issue - as opposed to there's a lot to be scrolled on any viewport?

I did an extensive amount of testing on both iPad mk2 and iPad mini. There were a small number of platform specific issues, but they were well masked by the generic issues, some of which were resolved during testing ... others remain on the to do list.

Fat fingers - someone always finds a dig!

Re: Comparing Plusnet Lithium and BT Lithium

Anotherone — Mon, 11 Apr 2016 17:04:55 GMT

Fat fingers - someone always finds a dig!

There was a there and I did say

but then we all suffer from those on touch screens

Re: Comparing Plusnet Lithium and BT Lithium

Anonymous — Mon, 11 Apr 2016 18:28:40 GMT

@Townman - I'll post an update about this tomorrow just in case it can be attributed to driver error! I normally don't use it (the iPad) until I'm in my bed, and it's to far to the bedroom to get it now.

Re: Comparing Plusnet Lithium and BT Lithium

Anonymous — Mon, 11 Apr 2016 21:17:07 GMT

I know I said I would do this tomorrow but needs must. When I select Latest Posts or Unanswered Topics from the Welcome back screen I get presented with 100 pages, pages that I know I've read or marked as read in either this or the previous forum.

https://community.plus.net/t5/Tech-Help-Software-Hardware-etc/Win7-theme-keeps-resetting/m-p/991729

This link is the last entry on page 100, is this my configuration or another issue?

Re: Comparing Plusnet Lithium and BT Lithium

Anotherone — Tue, 12 Apr 2016 02:40:01 GMT

The migration was done with the posts all marked as Unread. We did try to see if this could be done differently, but it wasn't possible
Interesting you say about 100 pages, that's all I have too, I'm wondering where the rest are
Edit: Well posts are obviously there, just did a quick search and got one from 2013, page 100 only goes to sometime in 2015 for me. Perhaps @bobpullen knows the answer to why there's only 100 pages in that list. The Search engine isn't that good, finding stuff back from 2007 could be fun

Re: Comparing Plusnet Lithium and BT Lithium

Anonymous — Tue, 12 Apr 2016 06:32:00 GMT

That is odd, I thought this was only appearing on my iPad, but I've just checked on my desktop PC and I still see the 100 pages. I think the 100 pages is simply a limitation of the board. I'm going to catch up on the 'latest' ones now and I'll come back to edit this having marked my 100 pages as read, if it is a limitation then I may see more after marking these ones.

OK, I see that I can't mark these items as read because in fact they are 'unanswered' and not unread; could I suggest that maybe this link should only reference unanswered posts from the new board only, or is that maybe a step too far?

Re: Comparing Plusnet Lithium and BT Lithium

Anotherone — Tue, 12 Apr 2016 08:25:31 GMT

In one of the options on the drop-downs, ie click on > on the Unread posts module, you can mark All posts New or Read

Re: Comparing Plusnet Lithium and BT Lithium

Anonymous — Tue, 12 Apr 2016 08:41:14 GMT

Yes, I know this. But if you re-read my post you'll see that in fact these are 'unanswered' posts therefore they cannot be marked as read.