-
The issue with all of these design decisions was that vBulletin wasn't opinionated and would offer 3 or 4 ways to do anything which results in a confusing interface where a lot of people do get lost and find it too complex.
- New Posts
- Today's Posts
- Subscribed Threads
- UserCP
All show a collection of threads indicating read/unread, ordered by recently updated... with slightly different filters to them.
But essentially they are the same thing.
Each was flawed in it's own way too, but there were two different main audiences:
- Regular users who were catching up and discovering content.
- Power users who had long-sinced given up trying to read everything and now were focused on staying in touch with the conversations they cared about.
Some overlap exists... but essentially 2 usage patterns.
It should be noted, new users go to the home page and browse by section/forum/category. They go into "Bikes & Bits" and that's it.
"Following" delivers for scenario #2, and delivers big style... because we now tell you far more... who replied to you, who mentioned you, do you have an update to a private message?, etc.
We are definitely lacking a good story for #1, which I was aware of but wondered whether the search functions would cover it well enough.
The answer is no, so a "Today's Posts" page will be built in a few days.
It's also likely that we'll offer a filter to the "Following" page depending on the type of update. i.e. "Only show me the updates where someone mentioned me" or "Only show a list of conversations I'm following that have had updates" (being analogous to the UserCP page).
The filters will take a bit longer to do, that query is fairly complex and every time we touch it another quirk emerges.
- New Posts
-
Nav bar squeezed on Samsung S3 mini androod 412 Chrome. Screenshot:
1 Attachment
-
-
Much worse on native samsung browser.
-
The Trending page (and to a lesser extent, Following) would be enhanced if they provided a better snapshot of the conversation.
A note of the forum in which it's posted would provide context: if a practical fixie is a current project then I'm more interested, than if it's another what to buy query.
If I remember correctly, hovering over a title used to open a tooltip quoting the first few lines: this was also useful in providing a quick overview.
-
Things which have changed compared with last week which are ruining my experience of LFGSS.
Whatever machinery translates the link https://www.lfgss.com/conversations/131364/newest/ to the URL https://www.lfgss.com/conversations/131364/?offset=3650#comment11753000 is dropping the anchor on both Opera/9.80 (Windows NT 6.2; Win64; x64) Presto/2.12.388 Version/12.17 and IE9/WindowPhone 7.8. It's not that my two default browsers are failing to jump to the anchor, it actually isn't there in the address bar.
When I go to a page called https://www.lfgss.com/updates/, I expect to see stuff which has been updated, not a long list of everything I've already read, i.e. give me back my usercp
Lack of quoting has made most of my subscribed threads into an unintelligible mess of non sequitur gibberish
I'm not about to learn a new language at my age, and presumably neither are millions of other people who have worked out how to use about 3 different BBCode tags.
I paid good money for this 1920px wide screen, it seems a waste to have half of it occupied by grey bars. I'm currently looking at about 2 million pixels and seeing under 30 words of actual content.
Sometimes I forget the exact thread and page on which something was mentioned, so I search for it. Well, I used to. Now there is no proper search form, I suppose I'll have to have perfect recall or never revisit the past.
I used to click on the log-in button on my browser and get straight into LFGSS. Now I have to navigate to some third party site and type in a load of shit. One click has been replaced by three clicks, a bunch of typing, and the probably vain hope that the huge target presented by persona's attempt to capture 7 billion people's passwords won't be the biggest prize for cyber criminals in the world.
Link rewriting is evil. I know why it's done (and the reasons people give for doing it, which are not the same), but even the proposed good points are worse than the problem they claim to solve in terms of security and privacy.
-
It's also likely that we'll offer a filter to the "Following" page depending on the type of update. i.e. "Only show me the updates where someone mentioned me" or "Only show a list of conversations I'm following that have had updates" (being analogous to the UserCP page).
I expected something like this when I clicked the "change your notification settings" button: a second column alongside "by email", which would control what what shown on the page.
I'm case #2 and can see the benefit of the added content, but until everything I'm following has been updated (and is therefore displayed on the page), I'll be half-blind to threads that I've flagged as being of specific interest to me, as is everyone else who was migrated.
How difficult would it be for you to do a one-off, to show all followed threads on the following page? This would effectively put everyone on a par with a new subscriber and make the page function in the way you intended.
-
Oh, and the Unfollow button doesn't work, shit that I've just unfollowed is still populating my "Following" page, and some clever bugger has obviously written a script to parse lists, but it has rather uncleverly changed my 1-8 above into 1,1-7
-
That's a good summary of the ToDo list we have from many people, and we are working to address most of it.
A couple of corrections though;
#3 you can use BBCode. Try it. The reasons we're pushing Markdown are that you really don't need to learn something, in fact... just unlearn. Markdown is basically back to WordPro style syntax, or email syntax. And email is why it was selected. Do you know how many people will get a PM notification email and hit reply in their email client? And why shouldn't they? Email is a communication tool and they should be able to. We want the email they receive to look good (Markdown ensures does this, BBCode does not), and we want their plain text reply (which will convert into a PM and append to your messages) to look good (again, Markdown does this easily even on mobile keyboards, BBCode much less so.
But... you can mix and match BBCode, Markdown, HTML. Only a few things are blocked, security risks like EMBED, OBJECT, IFRAME, and things that could break the site like FORMS, and the STYLE attribute.
On #7, it is staying. LFGSS did link rewriting to about 70% of links... a LOT of links were re-written. No-one was up in arms then, but yet they were re-written. This time it's all links, and more indication about the destination, better embedding (Garmin Activity for the modern style added just this morning), and a better chance for the platform to be viable long-term.
This one is interesting:
Whatever machinery translates the link lfgss.com/conversations/131364/newest/ to the URL lfgss.com/conversations/131364/?offset=3650#comment11753000 is dropping the anchor on both Opera/9.80 (Windows NT 6.2; Win64; x64) Presto/2.12.388 Version/12.17 and IE9/WindowPhone 7.8. It's not that my two default browsers are failing to jump to the anchor, it actually isn't there in the address bar.
We don't ever exclude the anchor.
Our code isn't sitting here having a laugh by choosing to do something different for Opera and IE9 on Windows. We send the anchor every time.
The anchor is in the right place too, the RFC states that it must follow the query.
But I wonder... if you exclude the query, does it allow the anchor through? https://www.lfgss.com/conversations/131364/#6012578
-
some clever bugger has obviously written a script to parse lists
Jesus, you're full of hate and bile this morning.
It's called Markdown.
http://daringfireball.net/projects/markdown/syntax#list
You get a list by doing "number" + "dot" + "space" followed by the list text.
Change your colon to a dot and it would've worked... implicitly... like every other one did.
-
^Is that picture a little outline if a rectangle for anyone else?
-
After posting a reply, is there anyway for the back button to return you to the previous page rather than the same page but with the reply unsent in the text box? Or is this just me, our manc polo forum mhbp.co.uk has always done the same which annoys me.
-
After posting a reply, is there anyway for the back button to return you to the previous page rather than the same page but with the reply unsent in the text box? Or is this just me, our manc polo forum mhbp.co.uk has always done the same which annoys me.
This is default browser behaviour which is why it affects all sites.
We're fixing and improving Microcosm, not fixing and improving how people expect browsers to work.
-
if you exclude the query, does it allow the anchor through? lfgss.com/conversations/131364/#6012578
That works in Opera*. On WindowsPhone, the anchor is there in the address bar but the browser is failing to jump to it.
*Now that I've gone through the tiresome and lengthy log-in for about the fifteenth time this morning, as I keep getting kicked out on both Opera and Firefox.
-
I thought as much, did I imaging vbullitin doing something else? Jumping back to the page before the comment? Although the comment you made was not visible if you pressed forward, you'd need to refresh to see it.
-
Pretty sure the kidz are already saying "convo".
charlie_lcc
Scilly.Suffolk
bothwell
mashton
gbj_tester
skydancer
snottyotter-
Post a reply
About
Subtle changes, bugs and feedback
Posted by
@Velocio
I used the usercp page for catching up and subscriptions for finding a specific thread.