I thought I was prepared for the worst but I was wrong. Hello Kitty was my first impression. What is Parallax's record now for rolling out new forum software? 1 for 4 or something? If all the old stuff migrated okay then it's a sort of success though. I guess.
Actually, it doesn't seem all that bad. The most unfortunate thing is that it looks nothing like a forum. Every effort should have been made to keep the appearance as close as possible to the old forums and then make any changes from there on down the road.
There is a ridiculous amount of white space wasted space. On my screen there is more margin than there is text. Fail.
The side bar thing on the left needs to be moved somewhere out of the way. The old forum/sub forum organization is much better than the weird tags and discussions this new forum seems to use.
Hopefully the failings can be fixed. If so, why not roll back to the old forums and fix them off line? Then test it first to be sure it's really ready next time.
On a positive note, the new forums look great on a cell phone.
People keep saying this. Of course it does. ANY site with a responsive design will. OTOH, it looks less inviting on a 2K display, the kind many people have on their desktop. There is only ONE breakpoint in the responsiveness, which switches over for phone screens. There should be several: phone, pad, small desktop display, large desktop display.
Fortunately, this is what a good theme can do. It's all done with JavaScript and/or CSS.
The new forums send you email when messages are posted to threads you have "bookmarked". Unfortunately, it seems that the migration software automatically bookmarked every thread in the old forum that you posted on. This can be thousands of threads and I don't see any way to unbookmark them except one at a time. It would be nice to have an "unbookmark all" option so you can start from scratch with bookmarks.
David,
I haven't had that issue of having everything bookmarked. I've only got one thread bookmarked, but know that I've posted on more. But if it happened with you, yeah, it would be nice to have an unbookmark all option. Or just change it so that you don't get email. Mine was automatically set to the same settings I had before.
Gordon,"ANY site with a responsive design will."
No, many have made you pray to have the regular big screen view on a phone. Slashdot is a famous example. This is clearly just an accident as it was obviously never tested anywhere.
David,
I haven't had that issue of having everything bookmarked. I've only got one thread bookmarked, but know that I've posted on more. But if it happened with you, yeah, it would be nice to have an unbookmark all option. Or just change it so that you don't get email. Mine was automatically set to the same settings I had before.
My problem may be that I selected some option in the old forum that subscribed me to every thread I posted in. However, I guess that didn't generate email in the old forums. It does now though. I would rather not turn off email on bookmarked threads because I think it could be quite useful. However, I don't want to receive email for all of the old threads. I'd like to start from scratch with the new forums and am not sure how to do that other than going through the entire list and unchecking each individually.
It may look great on a cell phone, and it may provide a more secure environment, and it may even be lower cost open source software.
BUT............
At this point, it seems very obvious to me that the database of the previous forums had to be adapted to the requirements of the new forums.
And it the process, I lot of stuff has been dug up that I thought was removed by me in my personal identity.
But it also seems that stuff is creeping in from other sources as well.
ALSO...........
It appears that the continuity of the old data and links to search engines are going to suffer a lot of breakage.
Plus, there are other unwise moves. But I really dislike piling on with more and more. I am just sad that this is happening.
...well, I'm late to the party so maybe I've missed all the post-new-Forum-upgrade woes. But from what I've tried so far (edit profile, upload avatar, general sniffin' about), it all works.
Looks? It's definitely "different" and I'm experiencing the usual stumble-bumble as I learn where to poke. But it works.
More tweaks on the way (as I discover them).
Oh - one question...how to "preview" messages before posting?
When I woke up today, I had hoped my memories of this new forum were just part of a terrible nightmare. Alas, it's real. Iceberg ahead! Stay the course!
I really hope this doesn't lead to The Great Member Purge of 2015.
I really hope this doesn't lead to The Great Member Purge of 2015.
I cannot fathom why the would be a "member purge". We still have an excellent collection of talent within the Forum community. We still have a means (albeit different at this point) of communication. And we're still working with great products from a great company.
I agree with a lot of the "look & feel" comments. But, I'm not going anywhere.
I agree a that on a 1440 monitor this is really bad at the moment. Most of my screen is grey space.
There is also something about the formatting that makes it difficult to read. The main way I see a differentiation between posts is the new florescent avatars.
Finally (for now) the search seems to function worse than your old search (which was bad enough that I'd google site:forums.parallax.com....)
I'm tempted to always read these forums in another window on my coding monitor I have turned 90 degrees. Hopefully it's easy to fix these format issues, but it's very apparent that you guys will have a very long to do list and I don't know how soon you can get to it.
As for those of you talking about leaving the forums over this - PLEASE DON'T. Even if the forum looked like a literal dog turd you guys could still help people learn. It does look terrible, and it's possible it isn't functional (it was really hard for me to find the thread I wanted to). Are you really going to let THAT change whether you talk to others and help others learn?
I never had an avatar on the old forum. I'm met with one of the worst avatars I've ever seen, and I just changed it and moved on.
I agree a that on a 1440 monitor this is really bad at the moment. Most of my screen is grey space.
Imagine what it looks like on my 1920 monitor (and I'm not talking about the year).
Fortunately, though, problems like this can be rectified by using a better theme with enhanced responsiveness. The person who wrote this theme appears to have been only interested in making it viewable on small mobile devices, and made no effort to maintain good proportions on larger screens.
Switching to a new theme, and even tweaking it by fixes in the underlying JavaScript and CSS, are usually fairly simple chores. I worry about the bigger issues, like lost links, really bad (as in spammy) use of URL redirects, loss of important categories like Robotics and Multirotor, and technical issues that are much harder to address now that the forum has been rolled out.
I'm not sure how to take that. Is that heinous thing so nice? Am I really that grinning idiot? No, don't answer that.
I could change it now, but it's so small that nothing but a blank image makes any sense.
Just now I'm still entranced by the gross, tasteless, crude, ugliness of it. I wonder what kind of sick mind could create such a thing and not immediately delete it.
I'm not sure how to take that. Is that heinous thing so nice? Am I really that grinning idiot? No, don't answer that.
I could change it now, but it's so small that nothing but a blank image makes any sense.
Just now I'm still entranced by the gross, tasteless, crude, ugliness of it. I wonder what kind of sick mind could create such a thing and not immediately delete it.
At least yours doesn't look like Mr. Yuck. In any case, to address your last sentence, we live in a world where teenage mutant ninja turtles have multiple movies and my little pony has adult fans. This is small beer by comparison, and probably more fixable.
I changed mine to a picture of a little girl, as it happens my grand daughter who likes Monster High and other cartoony things. I thought it was fitting given their choice of themes for a rollout!
I plan to go to my next new client meeting wearing an old t-shirt, baggy pants, and Birkenstocks with white socks. After all, first impressions don't count for anything, right?
Gordon, I like the picture that you use for your avatar. I thought of using a picture of my grand-daughter also. I decided to use a picture that I took of a V2 Rocket I built in my back yard instead.
BTW you can adjust the portion of the picture used for your avatar by clicking on "Edit Thumbnail" under the "Edit Profile" page. It looks like your thumbnail is the center portion of your picture.
BTW you can adjust the portion of the picture used for your avatar by clicking on "Edit Thumbnail" under the "Edit Profile" page. It looks like your thumbnail is the center portion of your picture.
Intentionally. I wanted to show the main points of action: Her mouth, her Dalek t-shirt, and the cake she was eating.
I recall the photo editor defaults to upper-right corner. Anyway I had to change it so show the portion I wanted. Saved me from editing it offline.
I decided to use a picture that I took of a V2 Rocket I built in my back yard instead.
Maybe a bit off topic, but go on...
I've actually come across some of your posts in some space/rocket related forums a while back. I don't recall which, though.
This forum upgrade violated all the rules of a roll-out.
Agree with all that.
However, I am not so sure the software is junk, as much as the feeble-minded choice of Pre-K theme.
Its the grating theme that slaps you in the face first, and then in every single thing you do. Oh yeah, may as well add some of the dumb 'features' left enabled like email notification.
A lot of the rest like link-correction, forum/subforum, would have been caught or verified by anyone working in IT or business. Not quite sure how this went so spectacularly wrong.
Hopefully the failings can be fixed. If so, why not roll back to the old forums and fix them off line? Then test it first to be sure it's really ready next time.
Because the servers/pc's running the forums were repurposed to run this software, and the backups were formatted as nice clean backup diskspace ready for this software?
I'm sure there is no going back now. The issues with the old forum have been expressed here often and a lot of work has gone into getting this far.
googling around all the themes there are for vanilla forums I'm sure the gross ugliness here can be fixed. Colours styles, layout, etc.
If someone could come up with some kind of style that says "Parallax" as soon as you see it rather than just being some random junk thrown together by a 1990's geocities user page that would be great: http://contemporary-home-computing.org/1tb/archives/3844
Usability and features is another story I guess.
I might suggest removing all the non-essential and perhaps annoying features. The voting thing, the post ordering (randomizing) thing, the notification thing.
I have some more gripes...:)
This rich text box is a joke (God I hate the over use of the word "rich" now a days") . Using HTML for formatting just results in a confusing mess that the unformat button itself cannot deal with. If I have to go in an manually edit away piles of crappy HTML what is the point of trying to make a WYSIWIG interface? Those old BB codes or Markdown or something, anything, would be better.
We should have syntax highlighting in code blocks. We see that all over the web now a days it must be possible.
That edit button on posts is stupid. It's only there when I mouse over the post. It has a tool tip that says "options", it's not options at all! When I click on it it shows another tool tip in a different style that says "edit" which I have to click. Can't we just have an edit button permanently displayed there instead. Of course the 1 hour limit on editing is terminally dumb.
Perhaps getting all the broken links fixed should be first priority.
I decided to use a picture that I took of a V2 Rocket I built in my back yard instead.
Maybe a bit off topic, but go on...
The V2 Rocket was an Estes model that's about 30 inches tall. The picture was taken with the camera about 3 feet from the rocket, and I stood about 100 feet behind the rocket in my back yard.
...
Because the servers/pc's running the forums were repurposed to run this software, and the backups were formatted as nice clean backup diskspace ready for this software?
Jeez, I hope I am wrong...
What? Surely that's not how it's done. Computers and disk drives are cheap. I would have just unhooked the old set up and plugged in the new one. Seriously though, I'd really like to know exactly how much and what kind of hardware is required for a setup similar to Parallax's forums discussions (lol).
Comments
Actually, it doesn't seem all that bad. The most unfortunate thing is that it looks nothing like a forum. Every effort should have been made to keep the appearance as close as possible to the old forums and then make any changes from there on down the road.
There is a ridiculous amount of white space wasted space. On my screen there is more margin than there is text. Fail.
The side bar thing on the left needs to be moved somewhere out of the way. The old forum/sub forum organization is much better than the weird tags and discussions this new forum seems to use.
Hopefully the failings can be fixed. If so, why not roll back to the old forums and fix them off line? Then test it first to be sure it's really ready next time.
People keep saying this. Of course it does. ANY site with a responsive design will. OTOH, it looks less inviting on a 2K display, the kind many people have on their desktop. There is only ONE breakpoint in the responsiveness, which switches over for phone screens. There should be several: phone, pad, small desktop display, large desktop display.
Fortunately, this is what a good theme can do. It's all done with JavaScript and/or CSS.
I haven't had that issue of having everything bookmarked. I've only got one thread bookmarked, but know that I've posted on more. But if it happened with you, yeah, it would be nice to have an unbookmark all option. Or just change it so that you don't get email. Mine was automatically set to the same settings I had before.
No, many have made you pray to have the regular big screen view on a phone. Slashdot is a famous example. This is clearly just an accident as it was obviously never tested anywhere.
I haven't had that issue of having everything bookmarked. I've only got one thread bookmarked, but know that I've posted on more. But if it happened with you, yeah, it would be nice to have an unbookmark all option. Or just change it so that you don't get email. Mine was automatically set to the same settings I had before.
My problem may be that I selected some option in the old forum that subscribed me to every thread I posted in. However, I guess that didn't generate email in the old forums. It does now though. I would rather not turn off email on bookmarked threads because I think it could be quite useful. However, I don't want to receive email for all of the old threads. I'd like to start from scratch with the new forums and am not sure how to do that other than going through the entire list and unchecking each individually.
BUT............
At this point, it seems very obvious to me that the database of the previous forums had to be adapted to the requirements of the new forums.
And it the process, I lot of stuff has been dug up that I thought was removed by me in my personal identity.
But it also seems that stuff is creeping in from other sources as well.
ALSO...........
It appears that the continuity of the old data and links to search engines are going to suffer a lot of breakage.
Plus, there are other unwise moves. But I really dislike piling on with more and more. I am just sad that this is happening.
Looks? It's definitely "different" and I'm experiencing the usual stumble-bumble as I learn where to poke. But it works.
More tweaks on the way (as I discover them).
Oh - one question...how to "preview" messages before posting?
*8(
Big frowny face.
The more you try the worse it gets.
*8(
Big frowny face.
If you click on your profile you're at 3835, or something like that. Not sure how Heater's posts show up, but maybe they will for you eventually.
I really hope this doesn't lead to The Great Member Purge of 2015.
I cannot fathom why the would be a "member purge". We still have an excellent collection of talent within the Forum community. We still have a means (albeit different at this point) of communication. And we're still working with great products from a great company.
I agree with a lot of the "look & feel" comments. But, I'm not going anywhere.
If you click on your profile you're at 3835, or something like that.
...ah, ok - upon closer examination of my profile, I noticed the teeny-tiny numbers related to posts/discussions/comments.
Thanks for pointing that out.
I can't even find anything via Google anymore, nor the Internet archive.
The references I have bookmarked over the years are gone.
I see no point in me visiting these forums again.
There is also something about the formatting that makes it difficult to read. The main way I see a differentiation between posts is the new florescent avatars.
Finally (for now) the search seems to function worse than your old search (which was bad enough that I'd google site:forums.parallax.com....)
I'm tempted to always read these forums in another window on my coding monitor I have turned 90 degrees. Hopefully it's easy to fix these format issues, but it's very apparent that you guys will have a very long to do list and I don't know how soon you can get to it.
As for those of you talking about leaving the forums over this - PLEASE DON'T. Even if the forum looked like a literal dog turd you guys could still help people learn. It does look terrible, and it's possible it isn't functional (it was really hard for me to find the thread I wanted to). Are you really going to let THAT change whether you talk to others and help others learn?
I never had an avatar on the old forum. I'm met with one of the worst avatars I've ever seen, and I just changed it and moved on.
PS - Heater, please don't change your avatar.
Imagine what it looks like on my 1920 monitor (and I'm not talking about the year).
Fortunately, though, problems like this can be rectified by using a better theme with enhanced responsiveness. The person who wrote this theme appears to have been only interested in making it viewable on small mobile devices, and made no effort to maintain good proportions on larger screens.
Switching to a new theme, and even tweaking it by fixes in the underlying JavaScript and CSS, are usually fairly simple chores. I worry about the bigger issues, like lost links, really bad (as in spammy) use of URL redirects, loss of important categories like Robotics and Multirotor, and technical issues that are much harder to address now that the forum has been rolled out.
"Heater, please don't change your avatar."
I'm not sure how to take that. Is that heinous thing so nice? Am I really that grinning idiot? No, don't answer that.
I could change it now, but it's so small that nothing but a blank image makes any sense.
Just now I'm still entranced by the gross, tasteless, crude, ugliness of it. I wonder what kind of sick mind could create such a thing and not immediately delete it.
"Heater, please don't change your avatar."
I'm not sure how to take that. Is that heinous thing so nice? Am I really that grinning idiot? No, don't answer that.
I could change it now, but it's so small that nothing but a blank image makes any sense.
Just now I'm still entranced by the gross, tasteless, crude, ugliness of it. I wonder what kind of sick mind could create such a thing and not immediately delete it.
At least yours doesn't look like Mr. Yuck. In any case, to address your last sentence, we live in a world where teenage mutant ninja turtles have multiple movies and my little pony has adult fans. This is small beer by comparison, and probably more fixable.
I plan to go to my next new client meeting wearing an old t-shirt, baggy pants, and Birkenstocks with white socks. After all, first impressions don't count for anything, right?
BTW you can adjust the portion of the picture used for your avatar by clicking on "Edit Thumbnail" under the "Edit Profile" page. It looks like your thumbnail is the center portion of your picture.
Intentionally. I wanted to show the main points of action: Her mouth, her Dalek t-shirt, and the cake she was eating.
I recall the photo editor defaults to upper-right corner. Anyway I had to change it so show the portion I wanted. Saved me from editing it offline.
Maybe a bit off topic, but go on...
I've actually come across some of your posts in some space/rocket related forums a while back. I don't recall which, though.
Agree with all that.
However, I am not so sure the software is junk, as much as the feeble-minded choice of Pre-K theme.
Its the grating theme that slaps you in the face first, and then in every single thing you do. Oh yeah, may as well add some of the dumb 'features' left enabled like email notification.
A lot of the rest like link-correction, forum/subforum, would have been caught or verified by anyone working in IT or business. Not quite sure how this went so spectacularly wrong.
Hopefully the failings can be fixed. If so, why not roll back to the old forums and fix them off line? Then test it first to be sure it's really ready next time.
Because the servers/pc's running the forums were repurposed to run this software, and the backups were formatted as nice clean backup diskspace ready for this software?
Jeez, I hope I am wrong...
googling around all the themes there are for vanilla forums I'm sure the gross ugliness here can be fixed. Colours styles, layout, etc.
If someone could come up with some kind of style that says "Parallax" as soon as you see it rather than just being some random junk thrown together by a 1990's geocities user page that would be great: http://contemporary-home-computing.org/1tb/archives/3844
Usability and features is another story I guess.
I might suggest removing all the non-essential and perhaps annoying features. The voting thing, the post ordering (randomizing) thing, the notification thing.
I have some more gripes...:)
This rich text box is a joke (God I hate the over use of the word "rich" now a days") . Using HTML for formatting just results in a confusing mess that the unformat button itself cannot deal with. If I have to go in an manually edit away piles of crappy HTML what is the point of trying to make a WYSIWIG interface? Those old BB codes or Markdown or something, anything, would be better.
We should have syntax highlighting in code blocks. We see that all over the web now a days it must be possible.
That edit button on posts is stupid. It's only there when I mouse over the post. It has a tool tip that says "options", it's not options at all! When I click on it it shows another tool tip in a different style that says "edit" which I have to click. Can't we just have an edit button permanently displayed there instead. Of course the 1 hour limit on editing is terminally dumb.
Perhaps getting all the broken links fixed should be first priority.
Maybe a bit off topic, but go on...
The V2 Rocket was an Estes model that's about 30 inches tall. The picture was taken with the camera about 3 feet from the rocket, and I stood about 100 feet behind the rocket in my back yard.
...
Because the servers/pc's running the forums were repurposed to run this software, and the backups were formatted as nice clean backup diskspace ready for this software?
Jeez, I hope I am wrong...
What? Surely that's not how it's done. Computers and disk drives are cheap. I would have just unhooked the old set up and plugged in the new one. Seriously though, I'd really like to know exactly how much and what kind of hardware is required for a setup similar to Parallax's forums discussions (lol).