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Sneak peek at the new site...

Pesqueeb

bicycle in airplane hangar
Feb 2, 2007
40,379
16,861
Riding the baggage carousel.
So... subjective opinions?

The skin is kind of a departure. Most of the functions are more dynamic than the page-by-page clicking of vBulletin. Everything look good to you guys, for the most part?
I don't like the skin. It seems....sterile. Not really sure how else to describe it, but I get a very "hospital" vibe. Will the new site give me MERS?
 

binary visions

The voice of reason
Jun 13, 2002
22,102
1,153
NC
If you try to upload an image that's too big, a generic error message is displayed. It'd be nice if it informed you of the actual size limit.
Got it. Will look into it.

will rep be sticking around? hitting reset on post count?
Rep is there (as in, it's a function of the site) but I think we will be resetting rep counts.

I dig it. Seems to work fast. I love the jump to first new post. I dig the larger avatards. I'm so happy there's no floating AIDS bar on the side of the page, but maybe my adblocker is blocking that travesty there too.
Floating AIDS bar will probably be replaced with a static SARS bar. Reasonable tradeoff?
 

binary visions

The voice of reason
Jun 13, 2002
22,102
1,153
NC
I don't like the skin. It seems....sterile. Not really sure how else to describe it, but I get a very "hospital" vibe. Will the new site give me MERS?
If the biggest complaint is that the skin is a little sterile, I guess I'll take it.

In any event, the skin doesn't have to stay static forever. I agree that it's a little bland. If you have specific suggestions, let's hear 'em, otherwise it's just an item that will probably be a WIP.
 

Toshi

Harbinger of Doom
Oct 23, 2001
38,405
7,791
Any way to make the width adjustable for those of us who have moved into the 21st century and gone with this newfangled thing called "widescreen monitors"?
It's called "don't maximize your browser window and drag to resize yourself" eh? :D
 

Toshi

Harbinger of Doom
Oct 23, 2001
38,405
7,791
Layout feels visually untethered. I'd like more delineation between posts (a la dark time/date/post # bar on this layout).

I also want the top nav bar to go away once I scroll down, analogous to how iOS apps work.

Follow Us icons and panel at bottom are too big.

Why is there a separate Home/contact us/help bar below posts, when there's space for those things in the bottom nav bar?

Forum statistics belong on forum page, not on thread view page.

Where's the equivalent of User CP? Profile isn't it...
 

Sandwich

Pig my fish!
Staff member
May 23, 2002
21,094
6,031
borcester rhymes
Floating AIDS bar will probably be replaced with a static SARS bar. Reasonable tradeoff?
SARS is so 2010. How about hiney flu?

Fixed bar is fine. I actually like it because it shows the latest BIKE articles, which contain some good stuff....but it f.kkn sucks with firefox (the entire thing flashes as you scroll) and seems to jam up my iPad. I used chrome at work so it wasn't so AIDSy, but at home I can't stand it, and I prefer firefox because googLOL creeps me out.
 

dante

Unabomber
Feb 13, 2004
8,807
9
looking for classic NE singletrack
It's called "don't maximize your browser window and drag to resize yourself" eh? :D
Yeah, sorry, this reminds me of how awful some websites look after seeing other websites like G+ that utilize an entire widescreen monitor. Having everything squeezed into the middle 1/3 of my screen and then huge gray bars on either side is pretty bad (and yes, very similar to how Facebook is).

 

binary visions

The voice of reason
Jun 13, 2002
22,102
1,153
NC
Any way to make the width adjustable for those of us who have moved into the 21st century and gone with this newfangled thing called "widescreen monitors"?
Nope. Sorry. We're serving ad templates across multiple sites and they need guaranteed site widths.

Layout feels visually untethered. I'd like more delineation between posts (a la dark time/date/post # bar on this layout).

I also want the top nav bar to go away once I scroll down, analogous to how iOS apps work.

Follow Us icons and panel at bottom are too big.

Why is there a separate Home/contact us/help bar below posts, when there's space for those things in the bottom nav bar?

Forum statistics belong on forum page, not on thread view page.

Where's the equivalent of User CP? Profile isn't it...
Good feedback, thanks. Forum stats are only a placeholder to make the sidebar widget appear - they won't remain. If you click your username, there's a drop down of a bunch of stuff you can edit - hitting any one of them will bring you to a page with a list of items to edit on the left.
 

binary visions

The voice of reason
Jun 13, 2002
22,102
1,153
NC
I hear ya' on the post delineation... I don't care much about the posting date but it's as good a way as any to create delineation.

Not sure how much we'll fix now and how much we'll launch with and update later - most of the non-functional stuff may get dropped into a to-do bucket, but we'll see.

I will create a special skin with glitter.
 

binary visions

The voice of reason
Jun 13, 2002
22,102
1,153
NC
Well, the ad widths could be the same, but right now there's huge open real estate on either side of the site. There's no way to make your page width be dependent on what resolution you're running?
I'm not talking about banner sizes - those are easy. It's the actual templates (overlays, sidebar ads, site takeovers, etc.) that are a problem. And like I said, there are multiple sites from Grind Media that all use the same ad templates and we need consistency. So to make a change to one site, we'd have to change all of them, setting up multiple templates to span multiple sizes, on multiple sites. It's just not in the cards right now.
 

binary visions

The voice of reason
Jun 13, 2002
22,102
1,153
NC
Can you elaborate, woo?

I understand Toshi's point and we'll do something to address that, but your other comment doesn't seem to relate... are you talking about the fixed width of the site? Or something else?
 

binary visions

The voice of reason
Jun 13, 2002
22,102
1,153
NC
It's a statement - it happens, tried to reply to two topics within some relatively short interval, and got a popup.

It's a question - is this by design? Is the time constant appropriate?
Yes, it's by design. This site also has a limitation. It might not be set appropriately - I'll look at the settings. I've set up and torn down that beta site so much that I'm not sure 100% of the options are set right now.
 

I Are Baboon

The Full Dopey
Aug 6, 2001
32,437
9,520
MTB New England
Is the only way to post a picture via a URL link? I tried to "upload file" and got an error.

The following error occurred
There was a problem uploading your file.

Looks pretty slick otherwise. Also, the "warn" function is working. :monkey:

It looks like "Likes" have replaced rep?
 

binary visions

The voice of reason
Jun 13, 2002
22,102
1,153
NC
No, reputation will/is still part of the site, I was just doing some experimenting with the plugin so I have it turned off for the moment.

I'll look into the file uploading. Not sure what's going on with that.
 

kidwoo

Artisanal Tweet Curator
Can you elaborate, woo?

I understand Toshi's point and we'll do something to address that, but your other comment doesn't seem to relate... are you talking about the fixed width of the site? Or something else?
Partially that, but the current version does that too with me ad blockin.

What I mean by mobile versions is that things are just getting way over simplified with missing features.

Look at the difference in available navigation options at the top of the current site vs the beta.

newrmtop.PNGoldrmtop.PNG

It just seems like in an effort to 'clean up' everything so that it works on phones, functionality is being cut.
 

binary visions

The voice of reason
Jun 13, 2002
22,102
1,153
NC
Look at the difference in available navigation options at the top of the current site vs the beta.
<snip>
It just seems like in an effort to 'clean up' everything so that it works on phones, functionality is being cut.
Well, you're not logged in.

If you're logged in, it looks like this:


Which, from what I can tell, doesn't lack any functionality compared to the existing one. You have direct access to private messages, notifications and settings, only they have icons instead of more cluttered words. New Posts and Forum Actions are there - actually, forum actions now has more, direct controls instead of a drop down. The only other things that are missing are FAQ / Calendar / Community which nobody uses anyway and don't need top level links. Classifieds is missing but only because they're not implemented in the test environment yet.

I think you actually have more direct links / control on the new site. The icons look cleaner so it may somewhat appear the opposite...

I'm not arguing with you, just trying to discover what's missing so I can add it.