Comments/Questions on New Layout

[Hooovahh]

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@cirrusio wrote:

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Navigation is not straight forward.  Coming from ni.com, to ask a question I have to:

1. Click "Commuity" on the main page
2. Scroll down the Community page and find the link Visit the Discussion Forums
3. Figure out which link to select on the left hand side to get to the forum of interest (maybe Most Active...?)
4. Select the boad of interest (likely LabVIEW?)
5. And finally click Start a Topic to actually ask your question (whew).

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While I agree it could be better, these steps are pretty much the same ones you would have had, back a few months ago before these changes took place.  Once you were on the discussion forums the subforum LabVIEW, was under the subheading of Most Active, and I believe you couldn't post a new topic until you were in a subforum like LabVIEW.  Maybe it would be one less click, since you didn't have a tree view that needed to be expanded.

[Ray.R]

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@cirrusio wrote:

Holy shlamolee this is awful!  What happened to being able to post a new topic from the main discussion page??  I hunted around for about 15 minutes before I realized that this has been moved to specific boards.  Navigation on the NI website has always been terrible, but this takes it to the next level.  This just seems like intentional obfuscation.

And - wow - the font is terrible!  Do they think that all engineers are legally blind?  

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Glad to read that I am not the only one who feels this way about the forum changes.  This is the worst forum layout I have ever seen.  Sorry to be blunt, but I'd rather speak the truth.  Fixing the casual bugs will not make this a pleasant forum to visit.

[RTSLVU]

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@Ray.R wrote:

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@cirrusio wrote:

Holy shlamolee this is awful!  What happened to being able to post a new topic from the main discussion page??  I hunted around for about 15 minutes before I realized that this has been moved to specific boards.  Navigation on the NI website has always been terrible, but this takes it to the next level.  This just seems like intentional obfuscation.

And - wow - the font is terrible!  Do they think that all engineers are legally blind?  

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Glad to read that I am not the only one who feels this way about the forum changes.  This is the worst forum layout I have ever seen.  Sorry to be blunt, but I'd rather speak the truth.  Fixing the casual bugs will not make this a pleasant forum to visit.

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Nope you are not the only one. The new forum layout sucks and I have been spending less time here because of it.

[cirrusio]

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@Hooovahh wrote:

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While I agree it could be better, these steps are pretty much the same ones you would have had, back a few months ago before these changes took place.  Once you were on the discussion forums the subforum LabVIEW, was under the subheading of Most Active, and I believe you couldn't post a new topic until you were in a subforum like LabVIEW.  Maybe it would be one less click, since you didn't have a tree view that needed to be expanded.

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At this point, I am not suggesting that it is different.  What I am suggesting is that it should be.  A lot of energy seems to have been put into this new layout, but the changes are for the most part cosmetic and don't address some real outstanding problems with the overall experience (IMO).  I was just documenting why I thought the process of navigating to the forums was cumbersome. and provided an example of one discussion forum that does do a better job. 

Another vexing issue: why does the browser spellcheck not work within these posts?  Is it really necessary that the user should have to click the "spellcheck" button?  Don't most of us want the spellcheck always on?? And before anyone says it - I know it has always been this way.  But it seems to me to be another just another layer of cruft that could have been addressed in a substantive change.

[Hooovahh]

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@cirrusio wrote:

Another vexing issue: why does the browser spellcheck not work within these posts? 

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Oh great suggestion!  I've been posting this whole time and just get used to the fact that I need to click the spell check button everytime.  And the fact that it some times takes just too long when most modern browsers have it built in.  When I post on LAVA my browser spell check just works.

[LiliMcDonald]

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@cirrusio wrote:

At this point, I am not suggesting that it is different.  What I am suggesting is that it should be.  A lot of energy seems to have been put into this new layout, but the changes are for the most part cosmetic and don't address some real outstanding problems with the overall experience (IMO).  I was just documenting why I thought the process of navigating to the forums was cumbersome. and provided an example of one discussion forum that does do a better job.

It's all a work in progress. When we first announced the community renovations, we tried to make it clear that there were many facets to be updated -- look/feel updates, platform changes, responsive design upgrade, etc. We ended up facing some timeline changes, and needed to release in phases. We're working through the design issues now, and will need to continue to iterate on what is here. Next, we will complete the content migration. Once in that state, we can be more responsive in building out better experiences.

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@cirrusio wrote:

Another vexing issue: why does the browser spellcheck not work within these posts?  Is it really necessary that the user should have to click the "spellcheck" button?  Don't most of us want the spellcheck always on?? And before anyone says it - I know it has always been this way.  But it seems to me to be another just another layer of cruft that could have been addressed in a substantive change.

Historically, there was no way to check the spelling within the Rich Text editor except for the built-in spellcheck. Now, the platform offers others options, and we are investigating which will provide the best experience here.

[RTSLVU]

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@LiliMcDonald wrote:

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Historically, there was no way to check the spelling within the Rich Text editor except for the built-in spellcheck. Now, the platform offers others options, and we are investigating which will provide the best experience here.

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Why do we need "rich text"? This is a board for professionals, not teenagers.

Do we really need fancy fonts, emotocons , crazy sizes, colors all that fluff?

I can't say I have see anyone use these for anything more than making an annoying sig line.

[crossrulz]

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@RTSLVU wrote:

I can't say I have see anyone use these for anything more than making an annoying sig line.

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And those are actually done in an HTML editor.

[RobertoBozzolo]

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RTSLVU ha scritto:

I can't say I have see anyone use these for anything more than making an annoying sig line.

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That's because you're not a text code developer 

While commenting some other post with code in the CVI board, I often quote published code highlighting some text with colors and / or font type or size. 

Probably the editor could be enhanced, but please don't get rid of such features! 

[cirrusio]

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That's because you're not a text code developer 

While commenting some other post with code in the CVI board, I often quote published code highlighting some text with colors and / or font type or size. 

Probably the editor could be enhanced, but please don't get rid of such features! 

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I don't know about RTSLVU, but I am a text programmer also and have never had need for a rich text editor on any other board or system (such as trac).  I hate to keep bringing this up, but both StackOverflow and Github have great systems for commenting and discussion; both use Markdown which doesn't require you to click on anything like a bold or italic button and allows for a straightforward injection of pre-formatted text (i.e. code).

tbh - in this day and age I can't figure out why any forum would use a rich text editor... give Markdown a go and you will wonder why we don't use it everywhere (tangential but similar topic - I have never understood why we haven't started using this in LV documentation itself).