Comments/Questions on New Layout

[tst]

And another point demonstrating the problem with the board layout - I have a board with 5 floated threads. The combination of the large header + the larger vertical size of each thread means I can't actually see the new conent without scrolling, because I can only see the first four threads when the page loads. In the old layout I could easily see multiple threads, even though the zoom level was higher.

[Wolfgang]

I also miss the floating boards!

Stupid that the 'Feedback on NI Discussion Forum' header alone takes 10% of the screen.

All in all clarity is worse, in my opinion

[tst]

Gotta give Lithium points for consistency, though - just like when the idea exchange was introduced, it now seems impossible to navigate to the second page of comments on ideas unless there's a new comment there (although I think back then it was just difficult).

I'm not even talking about the fact that the IE doesn't respect my replies-per-page setting, just the fact that there don't seem to be any links to those extra pages.

[GerdW]

It's way too big! and additionally there is too much white space between lines/paragraphs of text.

Font size 2:

The "top kudoed participients" always show the overall kudos count, regardless of the chosen time frame. Quite irritating…

Edit:

I need to edit my signature too to use smaller fonts. It's all so big now!

Edit 2:

On my FullHD screen set to 100% scaling in Windows this message takes up ~75% of screen height. I swear!

Measured using GIMP: 760 pixels in Y direction between the light gray border around the message! (Before adding this line of text…)

[LiliMcDonald]

Thanks everyone for the feedback. I can't comment on everything right now, as much of this we need to capture to take into consideration.

Rod wrote: On another point, there is still no easy way that I could find to display the time of messages in 24hr format. The Am/Pm format is non preferred in much of Europe. A previous version of the format controls permitted Unix style %H:%M descriptors,  but no way to remove the U.S. format time. When can the time be displayed in 24hr format?

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Unfortunately, that functionality does not exist within the platform. I have raised this request to Lithium in the past. The only configurable options are date display formats.

tst wrote: The lack of the main page with the floated boards. I used this to know where there's new content and without it I'm basically blind.

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This doesn't currently exist as there is no one place for all discussion forums. This will change after the next stage goes live.

tst wrote: Gotta give Lithium points for consistency, though - just like when the idea exchange was introduced, it now seems impossible to navigate to the second page of comments on ideas unless there's a new comment there (although I think back then it was just difficult).

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I see this too. We can investigate how to fix this.

[RobertoBozzolo]

If I may add, there is no separation between floated and normal threads: I seem to remember that previous layout added some separation between those groups so it was easy to get where new content existed on normal threads.

Additionally, I personally find that solved threads are less evident than before: with the constant light background of all threads, you must see the upper right corner of each block to know if a discussion has been marked as solved (the checkmark on the left is even less evident!).

Even with these and all the other notes raised here, I am not dissatisfied with the new look, which in my opinion gives better evidence of individual discussions and has a better look for threads with very long titles.

[RobertoBozzolo]

A page that has greatly benefited of the new look is in my opinion the notification feed one: more evident icons give good evidence of kudos, new posts and solutions to the discussions I am participating into.

[tst]

One more data point - this is the board on another computer (Win 7, also running a current version of FF) :

The top thread has unread comments, so it's bold, but it's very hard to tell the difference and be sure that it's bold. I didn't see this problem in the other PC, but I'm not sure what the difference is between them (maybe the DPI or something else along those lines).

[Jacobson-ni]

I'm not sure how I feel about the changes. It's a lot so I'll have to see how I feel about it after a few weeks. I changed my zoom to 75% and am pretty happy with that but I agree that the original size seems pretty large.

I really like having the boards on the side though, it makes it easier to quickly check the boards that don't get posted to very frequently. Also, are gifs supported or were they supported before?

(Edit: Nice)

[GregSands]

In the Idea Exchanges, I can't find how to view more than the first page of comments (if there are more than 10).  Also when clicking on the sidebar on a message that has new comments, only the first page is shown, which may not have any new comments.  The only way to see new comments is to click the "n Comments (m New)" under the title, in which case you can't then see previous comments.

Overall, the new layout could be ok if some customization is available, for example, choosing what forums to see on the Community home page, and how many articles, and which side-boxes.

What I don't like is the font-size and spacing.  It seems that the new site is designed for small screens to view one piece of information at a time, not for those with large screens to scan over lots of information quickly and easily.  Perhaps some users are in the first category, but I think many more developers would be in the second.