Testers needed over at test.lfgss.com

I get an error page when I try and change my username from user6247

I could change it to sssssumo but not sumo.

^ you probably reserved your username by forking over money at the start. It will be tied to the email address that you associated yourself with when handed the money over.

Papercut - when I hover over a microcosm, the underline goes across the 'NEW' tag, which looks ugly imo

Looking at the events page;
http://test.lfgss.com/events/2/#comment4499
I read the event location as a 'heading' for the list of people attending, I think it could do with more leading (ha!), or else be moved somewhere else?

And finally, is it a 'feature' that all the pages within LFGSS now show the page title 'LFGSS' or will they be updated to show thread title, which makes it a lot easier to navigate a load of tabs

Opera ver. 18 and Chrome @ Nexus 7 2013 tablet - fonts are childish big and the text has a different typografi that is big and difficult to read [compared to www.lfgss.com].

huh, appeared to have a double post. Deleted it and both have gone. doh.

The placement of the 'NEW' tags seems inconsistent, on the 'home' page they are clearly tied to the microcosms title on the left, but then one layer down the suddenly jump over to the right next to conversations.

Personally I think I prefer them on the right, because it gives you another consistent line to scan down, as opposed to the varying length of microcosm titles, but really I'd be happy with either, but consitently

If you end up here (by accidentally pressing the mysterious and far too close to the username unlabelled logout icon, for example) http://test.lfgss.com/logout/ then that is where you return after clicking on "sign in or register", thus logging you out immediately again.

iPad ios7 safari

Can you spell it out for a layman: will the "live" login link my e-mail account to LFGSS?

Yes and no.

No, because in no way does it publicly do so, it remains unlinked to the world, even to Mozilla Persona.

Yes, because internally LFGSS already knows an email address for you and your username, and so internally LFGSS could already log you on using the email and figure out your username.

I suspect you're asking the former thing... in which case no.

I get an error page when I try and change my username from user6247

^ you probably reserved your username by forking over money at the start. It will be tied to the email address that you associated yourself with when handed the money over.

Exactly that, if you used a different email address the bug is that the error page isn't telling you the username is taken.

the font's too big

The font is normal sized, but traditionally forums have had pathetically small sizes.

e.g. a forum like HackerNews https://news.ycombinator.com/ has a font size of 10pt

10pt is equivalent of 13px.

In the age of Retina and high DPI devices and screens such font sizes are miniscule and over time getting smaller. Some devices (mobile) handle this well and adjust them to a normal size automatically, some (laptops) handle it badly.

The font is the right size if you can sit comfortably back and read with ease rather than be hunched forward with your hand on your chin.

The font is the right size if for the space it's given there are somewhere between 60 and 120 characters per line. The ideal number is 75.

On Microcosm the characters per line is 114 (on average, for that font), which means it's as small as it should be for the space provided, and yes you can sit back and read comfortably.

It's different rather than the wrong size.

When using the 'updates' page

I get this for example: http://cl.ly/image/2H2d000r0v3n

Whereas I have already read the message there, even if i click to follow through to the message, then return to updates, the alert is still there

Definitely a bug. We happen to know about that one, but would still appreciate it being logged on the github issues page.

Looking at the events page;
http://test.lfgss.com/events/2/#comment4499
I read the event location as a 'heading' for the list of people attending, I think it could do with more leading (ha!), or else be moved somewhere else?

Definitely a papercut, it's not yet logged. Please do so, it would be really appreciated.

And finally, is it a 'feature' that all the pages within LFGSS now show the page title 'LFGSS' or will they be updated to show thread title, which makes it a lot easier to navigate a load of tabs

Also a papercut. We could and should fix that, could you log this bug too please.

Opera ver. 18 and Chrome @ Nexus 7 2013 tablet - fonts are childish big and the text has a different typografi that is big and difficult to read [compared to www.lfgss.com].

Tested Chrome and it looks fine. Will grab Opera and test there too.

If you end up here (by accidentally pressing the mysterious and far too close to the username unlabelled logout icon, for example) http://test.lfgss.com/logout/ then that is where you return after clicking on "sign in or register", thus logging you out immediately again.

iPad ios7 safari

A bug, we should really take you to the home screen. Could you log it please.

Why do I need to know that @bothwell started the topic "the purpose of this thread is to...." 10 hours ago - when that extra line of info could be used to display the next thread title. On lfgss.com I have 25 visible and easily read thread titles when I click Subscribed Threads - the test.lfgss only gives me 12, which forces me to scroll. With so many (and numbers are growing) high res phone/phab/tablet screens I feel like I am back on MS-DOS 3.2 [slightly exagerated, but damn the lfgss.com is a joy to navigate on 1920 vertical resolution, and the test.lfgss.com is not].
Some quote about the future of phablet/tablet is bigger than phones http://www.gsmarena.com/ces_2014_various_brands-review-1031.php

If you CTRL+- once or twice, does it become more joyful?

If you CTRL+- once or twice, does it become more joyful?

I don't know where that button is on my Nexus 7 :] - I can zoom by double tapping, but I can't zoom out on test.lfgss.com to make the fonts smaller.

Can we have spaces in usernames?

Oh, it's more centred now, cool. I think the bigger distance to the edge of the window
helps a lot.

Will github this when i figure out a specific reason, but on my ipad mini, it all feels a bit... Wrong?

Can we have spaces in usernames?

Afraid not.

There are a lot of features planned that make it unworkable as well as some already implemented that make it unworkable.

i.e. mentions, which is the whole @dancing james. See what would happen? Someone called @dancing would get your alerts.

And email, we want it to be possible for someone to PM you via email without knowing your email... dancingjames@lfgss.microcosm.app and it would create a PM on the site for you and if your settings allow it you'd get an email too, which you could reply to from your email box.

Things like that mean that usernames have to be ASCII text, and only have email safe characters.

When we import users, spaces will be replaced with an underscore.

@dancing_james

Will github this when i figure out a specific reason, but on my ipad mini, it all feels a bit... Wrong?

Yeah, there are a couple of things wrong with that. The three dots in the top right are not aligned, the last comment block is not aligned in a favourable way.

Yeah, github that.

Will there be a "currently online" function?

Also when I just wanted to post a question mark for a complete post, it got reformatted to "1. ?"

Will there be a "currently online" function?

Also when I just wanted to post a question mark for a complete post, it got reformatted to "1. ?"

Yes, but it will arrive sooner if you mark it as a missing thing on github.

And we use markdown for formatting, it seems like a bug that ? would be formatted to a list. If you log that on markdown I'll build tests and report it to the appropriate project.

The font is too small to read on http://test.lfgss.com/ ?

All fonts?
Just some of the fonts on some pages?

And if you press CTRL+0 and reset the browser font size, is it still too small?

What browser and OS are you using?

The fonts are pretty large.

I thought it small at first but I grew acustomed. The font in the threads , ie stuff like this could be a clearer one. Could be me but I think the colours / contrast needs to go up a notch....
Then again, I only log in via a laptop .

and one other thing

I d really like to get my club to move to a forum like this...

Any idea when it can be used outside LFGSS...

You'll probably notice that quite a few things feel inspired by Twitter, as that kind of layout is basically where a lot of user expectation is.

This is the first thing I noticed, particularly the way most elements are boxed up — most with a small border radius. (the main container, the main nav, the user information (when viewing on a larger screen)).

Were these elements put in boxes for UX clarity or because you intend to allow forums to add their own background images behind the main content/header?

There's also a lot of mid grey which to my eyes reduces contrast and clarity throughout — particularly in the drag to upload area when writing a post.

I did a quick mock of removing a lot of the boxes (attached), but it would obviously have implications on the main content background and header background choices.

I'd also be interested to hear your thinking on the start a conversation/event placement. On a smaller screen (<990px) they disappear into the sidebar and it becomes a little unclear on how to find the buttons again. Presumably mobile users don't create as many threads, but 990px is still quite large.

On the whole, it functions and looks great. Really good job!

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and one other thing

I d really like to get my club to move to a forum like this...

Any idea when it can be used outside LFGSS...

We hope to launch it in a couple of weeks time.

In that form, you'll be able to create a new forum immediately.

But... it will be a couple of months more before we've written an import/export script for LFGSS and then make the ability to import existing sites available.

This is the first thing I noticed, particularly the way most elements are boxed up — most with a small border radius. (the main container, the main nav, the user information (when viewing on a larger screen)).

Were these elements put in boxes for UX clarity or because you intend to allow forums to add their own background images behind the main content/header?

Yes, site admins can choose header background and positioning, body background and positioning, logo, etc.

The colours on there at the moment resemble LFGSS loosely, but won't be what we use.

Sites could put photos in the background, or solid colours... whatever.

The listings and comments will all remain on a white background so text contrast is high, but the side bar (we call it the meta bar) has an opacity to it. So if the background is hot pink, the meta bar becomes a shaded softer pink and the main body area is still white.

There's nothing stopping a site admin putting a white background and letting the text float in the space.

I'd also be interested to hear your thinking on the start a conversation/event placement. On a smaller screen (<990px) they disappear into the sidebar and it becomes a little unclear on how to find the buttons again. Presumably mobile users don't create as many threads, but 990px is still quite large.

On the whole, it functions and looks great. Really good job!

Thread creation is a fairly rare thing. 50 times a day on a forum as large as LFGSS, and only by 1% of the users at all.

Posting comments is a fairly common thing, 2,200 times a day on a forum as large as LFGSS, by around 10% of the users.

That's pretty much why those actions are in the meta bar - the power users will find them and I hope that other people will discover them fairly quickly, but if not we'll move them out and put them somewhere more noticeable.

That said... it's far better to have people search and contribute to an existing thread than encourage them to create new ones all the time.

My updates page has a load of code showing in it's snapshot of a post I'm mentioned in.
Like so;