New site layout

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AttenuationHz
Posts: 2048
Joined: 20 Mar 2015
Location: Back of the Rack-1

16 Jun 2017

I'm not liking the new layout at all . There is a few adjustments that might make it more likable in my opinion.

For starters I don't mind if I see ads but they are taking up space at the side of the page making the text field for topics squashed. Recent news already read it why do I need to see it? I feel it would be much better at the end of the page or at the top.
The forums/listed threads font is way too big had to zoom out 25% to make it more readable. But if the banners at the side were not there it might be just about the right font size just looks squashed.
I think I'd prefer having the quick links and notifications under the reason talk. With it in the corners its to much movement and out of the way when it doesn't need to be.
Dark theme is the same as the reason theme and I think that looks pants!
I was using the older theme can't use that anymore?
Can barely make out smilies they look a little smaller.

:thumbs_down: Bring back old theme please or make adjustments.
Last edited by AttenuationHz on 17 Jun 2017, edited 1 time in total.
It is not too much of an ask for people or things to be the best version of itself!

User avatar
AttenuationHz
Posts: 2048
Joined: 20 Mar 2015
Location: Back of the Rack-1

16 Jun 2017

100%
Squashed.JPG
Squashed.JPG (112.4 KiB) Viewed 5605 times

75%
not squashed.JPG
not squashed.JPG (96.48 KiB) Viewed 5605 times

The font on 75% for threads is too small though 90% seems to be a good size for threads. 75% for forum.
It is not too much of an ask for people or things to be the best version of itself!

chk071
Posts: 522
Joined: 12 Jul 2015
Location: Germany

16 Jun 2017

I like it. Looks really, really nice.
:reason: :rebirth:

Abstrax
Posts: 173
Joined: 16 Jan 2015

16 Jun 2017

Yeah. The sidebar is trash. It's taking up way too much room. Who's idea was this?

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MarkTarlton
Posts: 795
Joined: 15 Jan 2015
Location: Santa Rosa, CA

17 Jun 2017

this will definitely take some getting used to...it was easier to read and go through much quicker before the changes.

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gak
Posts: 2840
Joined: 05 Feb 2015

17 Jun 2017

Confusing but interesting.

We'll see, hopefully I'll get used to it.

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decibel
Posts: 974
Joined: 07 Mar 2015

17 Jun 2017

this is horrible, i dont like it at all personally

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JiggeryPokery
RE Developer
Posts: 1174
Joined: 15 Jan 2015

17 Jun 2017

There's a LOT of empty space, with the thread titles in big boxes, forced onto a four line minimum height, so less is visible onscreen, regardless of the ads sidebar.

I'm on a 2560x1600 monitor, and even with a full screen Firefox, I can see still just 9 thread titles, rather than nearly all of them as in the previous version (with a full height, not full width, Firefox window), which now makes it impossible to get a quick "one-look" overview of what might be worth clicking on and what threads have recently been updated, which was pretty useful when not logged in and getting a notification.

On a mobile phone it's even worse, as only the title and upper menu bar are visible; you have to scroll down to view threads, which wasn't the case before, and then just four threads are visible at a time (on a G3 here). Open a thread and all you see is the top title bar again. It's all far, far too big, where it seems as if individual comments have very large minimum size box, where a one line comment takes up as much space as a comment with 6 or 7 lines. It's not good.

While other's mileage may differ, personally I'm already finding the site impossible to use on a mobile, it's just constant scrolling, while on desktop it just feels ... odd, like I should be able to see more. Near constant scrolling :roll: .

It's pretty, but impractical.

Also of note: the use of dark grey as the link colour for a used link, at least on the dark scheme, doesn't work.

This is 1300px wide, 1562px high, and it doesn't even show all the forums anymore. :puf_unhappy:
RT_1.png
RT_1.png (478.19 KiB) Viewed 5519 times
And the trouble with news type sidebars, and this goes for so many sites that do that, is that once a user has read all the links, they're redundant. So that space is just wasted. I get you want to drive traffic to the news part of the site, but at the expense of site usability seems like a very short-term trade-off.
Last edited by JiggeryPokery on 17 Jun 2017, edited 1 time in total.

User avatar
Aquila
Posts: 754
Joined: 21 Jan 2015

17 Jun 2017

Maybe make the sidebar collapsible somehow?

siln
Posts: 349
Joined: 11 May 2015
Location: france

17 Jun 2017

edit: nvm I found how to change to dark theme
otherwise im ok with new new site, forum space could be larger but that is not dramatic
it always take some time to adapt to a new design but I think it will be better

User avatar
Electric-Metal
Posts: 667
Joined: 10 Dec 2015
Location: Landstuhl, Germany

17 Jun 2017

User Control Panel>Board Preferences

Edit: Too slow
:?: The question is - Who cares :?:

chk071
Posts: 522
Joined: 12 Jul 2015
Location: Germany

17 Jun 2017

To the people complaining about the layout on a mobile phone, or Tablet: I wouldn't want to browse forums on my smartphone without this anymore: https://play.google.com/store/apps/deta ... o.activity Reasontalk is also available for it.
:reason: :rebirth:

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O1B
Posts: 2037
Joined: 26 Jan 2015

17 Jun 2017

- The old allowed "pre-reading" the responses by hovering over a username before heading into the thread. Is that gone?
- The font is HUGE. very little info fits on the screen.
- It seems much harder to "find" things that were obvious yesterday.

O1B

User avatar
AttenuationHz
Posts: 2048
Joined: 20 Mar 2015
Location: Back of the Rack-1

17 Jun 2017

O1B wrote:
17 Jun 2017
- The old allowed "pre-reading" the responses by hovering over a username before heading into the thread. Is that gone?
- The font is HUGE. very little info fits on the screen.
- It seems much harder to "find" things that were obvious yesterday.

O1B
Didn't even notice that oh no :(
It is not too much of an ask for people or things to be the best version of itself!

User avatar
jonheal
Posts: 1213
Joined: 29 Jan 2015
Location: Springfield, VA, USA
Contact:

17 Jun 2017

Four humble suggestions — don't know if they're possible without cutting into the CSS guts of your theme:

1. Make the font of signatures smaller so it creates a more distinct boundary between posts.
2. Darkening the borderlines a little would also greatly help — I didn't even detect the vertical border between the username and post body and the horizontal border between post body and signature until just now.
2. Less transparency in the floating header.
3. Darker font in the header menu (lighter gray traditionally equates to "disabled")
Jon Heal:reason: :re: :refill:Do not click this link!

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Ahornberg
Posts: 1904
Joined: 15 Jan 2016
Location: Vienna, Austria
Contact:

17 Jun 2017

The new layout looks fine but please remove the sidebar!

Ostermilk
Posts: 1535
Joined: 15 Jan 2015

17 Jun 2017

A great demonstration of a fix to something that wasn't broken.

Visually you had a great overview of the forum as a whole, now just a thread title can take up 4 rows, the forum descriptions also take a fair bit of height just to display. No amount of getting used to this design is going to reduce the amount of vertical scrolling now required.

To me, it looks for all the world like one of the plethora of 'vanity' web projects masquerading as forums that popped up and swiftly floundered when the PUF disappeared and everyone came here instead, simply because it worked as a communication channel between users rather than it being just a demonstration of a particular users 'web skillz'.

However, if the intended aim was to make this place look and behave like the erstwhile 'LearnReason' attempt at a users forum then I reckon it's a pretty good job.

Also the technical aspect getting a performance boost is completely washed away by how cumbersome it is to navigate around. Lastly I don't visit the Reason Talk main page largely for the reason it isn't that interesting to me other than perhaps a for ten minutes once a month, so to have a 25% width sidebar reminding me that it is there is nothing more than wasted space on a place where I come to for the interaction between fellow users.

Of course it's your forum and y'all can do what you like with it, just as Matt did with the 'ghost town' forum at LearnReason.

User avatar
JiggeryPokery
RE Developer
Posts: 1174
Joined: 15 Jan 2015

17 Jun 2017

chk071 wrote:
17 Jun 2017
To the people complaining about the layout on a mobile phone, or Tablet: I wouldn't want to browse forums on my smartphone without this anymore: https://play.google.com/store/apps/deta ... o.activity Reasontalk is also available for it.
Here's a typical view.
Screenshot_20170617-130819.png
Screenshot_20170617-130819.png (269.69 KiB) Viewed 5414 times
I wouldn't want to browse forums on a smartphone with always-on, advertising-driven third party program just to view one forum. But if you can post a screenshot of how it looks in Taptalk, feel free, and if it's works better, well, I still wouldn't consider it, because I still don't need to be tracked by more advertisers.

The fact, as I showed above, it's barely any better on a 16:10 desktop is indicative of poor design. Now, I don't know who's responsible for designing it, is it a host template? As Ostermilk correctly notes, it's been designed to look cool, not be functional.

(edit: sorry from me too... I wasn't expecting that mobile screenie to be quite so big :lol: :roll: )

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joeyluck
Moderator
Posts: 11029
Joined: 15 Jan 2015

17 Jun 2017

JiggeryPokery wrote:
17 Jun 2017
chk071 wrote:
17 Jun 2017
To the people complaining about the layout on a mobile phone, or Tablet: I wouldn't want to browse forums on my smartphone without this anymore: https://play.google.com/store/apps/deta ... o.activity Reasontalk is also available for it.
I wouldn't want to browse forums on a smartphone with always-on, advertising-driven third party program just to view one forum. But if you can post a screenshot of how it looks in Taptalk, feel free, and if it's works better, well, I still wouldn't consider it, because I still don't need to be tracked by more advertisers.

The fact, as I showed above, it's barely any better on a 16:10 desktop is indicative of poor design. Now, I don't know who's responsible for designing it, is it a host template? As Ostermilk correctly notes, it's been designed to look cool, not be functional.

(edit: sorry from me too... I wasn't expecting that mobile screenie to be quite so big :lol: :roll: )
The Tapatalk thing has always been there. But for me, it stays away after I close it once. Unless I reset my browser, it's gone after that.

Ostermilk
Posts: 1535
Joined: 15 Jan 2015

17 Jun 2017

Separated at birth:

http://www.reasonforums.com/

User avatar
AttenuationHz
Posts: 2048
Joined: 20 Mar 2015
Location: Back of the Rack-1

17 Jun 2017

It is not too much of an ask for people or things to be the best version of itself!

deepndark
Posts: 1270
Joined: 16 Jan 2015
Location: Finland
Contact:

17 Jun 2017

There seems to be two versions of this (another one is dark theme of this).
I must say it's kind of cool, but I have to focus a lot more to be able to read the threads titles.
But I will not mock it down yet, lets see how I get used to it.

I would try to make it less blury as all these colors are not allowing me to do quick reading.

User avatar
moneykube
Posts: 3447
Joined: 15 Jan 2015

17 Jun 2017

seems cleaner and brighter :thumbs_up:
https://soundcloud.com/moneykube-qube/s ... d-playlist
Proud Member Of The Awesome League Of Perpetuals

Abstrax
Posts: 173
Joined: 16 Jan 2015

17 Jun 2017

JiggeryPokery wrote:
17 Jun 2017
There's a LOT of empty space, with the thread titles in big boxes, forced onto a four line minimum height, so less is visible onscreen, regardless of the ads sidebar.

I'm on a 2560x1600 monitor, and even with a full screen Firefox, I can see still just 9 thread titles, rather than nearly all of them as in the previous version (with a full height, not full width, Firefox window), which now makes it impossible to get a quick "one-look" overview of what might be worth clicking on and what threads have recently been updated, which was pretty useful when not logged in and getting a notification.

On a mobile phone it's even worse, as only the title and upper menu bar are visible; you have to scroll down to view threads, which wasn't the case before, and then just four threads are visible at a time (on a G3 here). Open a thread and all you see is the top title bar again. It's all far, far too big, where it seems as if individual comments have very large minimum size box, where a one line comment takes up as much space as a comment with 6 or 7 lines. It's not good.

While other's mileage may differ, personally I'm already finding the site impossible to use on a mobile, it's just constant scrolling, while on desktop it just feels ... odd, like I should be able to see more. Near constant scrolling :roll: .

It's pretty, but impractical.

Also of note: the use of dark grey as the link colour for a used link, at least on the dark scheme, doesn't work.

This is 1300px wide, 1562px high, and it doesn't even show all the forums anymore. :puf_unhappy:

RT_1.png

And the trouble with news type sidebars, and this goes for so many sites that do that, is that once a user has read all the links, they're redundant. So that space is just wasted. I get you want to drive traffic to the news part of the site, but at the expense of site usability seems like a very short-term trade-off.
This is a much more articulate way of explaining this.

User avatar
bxbrkrz
Posts: 3810
Joined: 17 Jan 2015

17 Jun 2017

Is the design targeting touch screen users? That would explain why my mouse is lost in so much desert space. :shock:
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