The NI Community renovations are almost here!

[LiliMcDonald]

We had previously announced that the community would be unavailable due to maintenance this weekend in order to complete the upcoming renovations. However, the timeline has now changed, and we will be approaching the renovations in stages.

• On Monday, July 25th, our new design will be unveiled on the NI Discussion Forums! There will be some intermittent outages over the weekend of July 22nd through July 24th due to the design updates and due to maintenance being done on ni.com.

• Starting on Friday, August 5th, user groups, blogs, and documents will be migrated from the NI User Group Community to the platform that currently hosts the NI Discussion Forums.
  The NI User Group Community will go offline and be unavailable starting on that Friday, August 5th.
  • Update: The migration of content from the NI User Group Community has been postponed to a date that is still to be determined.

• We had previously announced that inactive user groups and blogs would be archived. However, we've had an overwhelming amount of feedback regarding our plan to archive user groups. At this time, we have decided to migrate all user groups over accordingly and will perform a thorough audit at a later date. No further action is needed at this time.

• On Monday, August 8th, the NI Discussion Forums will be temporarily unavailable at some points throughout the day. At the end of that Monday, August 8th, the platform hosting the NI Discussion Forums will additionally host the user groups, blogs and documents previously held on the NI User Group Community, and the unified NI Community experience we have been striving for will be complete!
  • Update: This stage will not be completed until the migration begins.
    

Edited: August 1, 2016 - We have delayed the migration until a later date. We want the best experience possible for our users, and will use this time to work through any outstanding issues. Updates will be made to this post when more information becomes available.

When all of these stages are complete, we will have a single, unified NI Community!

Please feel free to reach out to us if you have any questions.

[Bob_Schor]

Well, the Forums certainly look very different at the present time -- everything that was on the right is now on the left, it appears that the "Unit Page" is much taller (so that much more vertical scrolling is needed), and after half-a-decade of being used to one "look and feel", I need to adjust to another.  But you can (I hope) Teach an Old Dog New Tricks (or, as my mother used to say, "It's the Content, Stupid").

Bob Schor

[MangeshD]

Rich look...!

After a weekend you browse NI Community and you see a rich page with different look...for instant it feels like you are on other website..

But then you realise ohhh....its the same NI community....!!

Loved new changes..!

[j_dodek]

Hi

I agree bob's comments.

Is there a way to make the font size smaller ?!?

Regards

Juergen

[RTSLVU]

I don't like the new layout. Too much waisted space, you can not see as many topics on the forums the old style.

[ijustlovemath]

I agree with the comment about wasted space. At least give the option to minimize that side bar and center the main content rather than having it be off center for the sake of Material Design. Also, the Add Image interface now hides the "upload from another site" tab, which is not good for users who make use of programs like ShareX, Gyaazo, or Hyperdesktop to share code snippets. Is there any way to make the old layout CSS available for those of us who may like to create Stylish addon to give back the old feel? Finally, the mobile interface has far too much wasted space now. It makes the mobile experience feel a lot less usable, and a lot more cluttered.

[LiliMcDonald]

Thanks everyone for the feedback so far. Many of the same comments have been made in the thread here: Comments/Questions on New Layout

Some people may miss the reply I made there, I want to reiterate it here:

Overall, I do want to mention that the reason some functions have gone "missing" is not because a decision was made to remove functions from our old layout style. As stated in the announcement here, with this particular update we now have a responsive design for the community. The new skin being used has a completely recoded base from what was used previously. There may be functonality that is not visible "out of the box" on this skin. Some of these items we may be able to add back in at the click of the button, others may require some significant time and work to add back to the layout. Unfortunately, we missed some of these items during the design phases and some items did not come up during our user testing. Rest assured, we will be reviewing and considering any feedback we receive, investigating potential solutions, and making quick fixes as soon as we can. Please continue to provide input as we work through these items in the coming days and weeks.

--------------

@ijustlovemath: the upload image > from another site option is still there under the options menu. I have noted this issue so we can have the option appear as a tab again.

Thanks,

Lili McDonald
Community Manager
National Instruments

[ijustlovemath]

Yep, I saw where it was. I just don't really see any justification for it being separate given the prevalence of the image sharing programs I mentioned. Thanks for the response!

[LiliMcDonald]

---

ijustlovemath wrote: I just don't really see any justification for it being separate given the prevalence of the image sharing programs I mentioned.

It is not meant to be separated in that manner. We are looking into the issue.

[Stephen1995]

I want to ask a question on the forum, how do i do this? 

[LiliMcDonald]

Please be aware of the updates made to our timeline above. We have delayed the migration until a later date. We want the best experience possible for our users, and will use this time to work through any outstanding issues. Updates will be made to the post above when more information becomes available.

[Ken-This-is-my-stinking-a]

So this is the new layout?!?!

I kept looking for a way to get to the forums, and didn't realize this is it. There is so much less content per page, it is hard to figure out where anything is, and difficult to look through stuff to find parts I want. Can you do anything about all the wasted space that makes finding information harder to get to? Too much scrolling and having to go the other pages?!

I couldn't find the old "Top" and therefore had problems find where I wanted to go.

Seems like this was all redesigned for snippets or sound bites, and not a practical discussion space.

Make a "retro" option for users to select, so we can put more valuable content into the same space like we used to have, rather than all this unusable white space!!!!

Over on the left you have a menu (or something like that) but I see no option to show all "boards". I want to be able to see everything, like we used to have, and is the place I always started. How do I get back to that?