Are we not trusted ...

[Thistle]

This forum is provided by IPC FOC. Changing must have cost them money and I am sure they had a reason.

Some peoples attitude is similar to being given a free new car and complaining about the colour!

I agree but the reason isn't clear. Do you know or can you see what the reason is? I certainly can't.

IPC, many thanks for the free forums but if it's not going to cost you any more, please can you let me choose how they appear on my screen? I'm more likely to use them, recommend them (and see the adverts) if I like the way they look.

 

[JumbleDuck]

I agree but the reason isn't clear. Do you know or can you see what the reason is? I certainly can't.

Great big fonts and Tonka toy buttons work much better on tablets. I suspect that most of those who like the new look are reading on mobile devices. I find that zooming to 80% or 90% makes it much less painful to look at on my desktop monitor.

 

[martinriches]

I view mainly on a tablet and find it a great improvement

Martin

 

[chrisclin]

Viewing by tablet or phone it is definitely clearer. However I've had far more failures than before and the worst thing is that we seem to have lost the incredibly useful 'view first unread' option.

 

[Strolls]

… the worst thing is that we seem to have lost the incredibly useful 'view first unread' option.

That's still present on the desktop version of the site:

 

[charles_reed]

Font size is too small.

Why not increase it? Control ++

 

[chrisclin]

That's still present on the desktop version of the site:

It also now seems to be there on the mobile version. I'm positive that wasn't there yesterday. Anyway, I now quite like this version.

 

[Yngmar]

The forum is a free service that costs money to operate. You might think it exists to help boat owners, or so readers of YBW magazines can connect and discuss. It may do these things (I think it does), but that's not why it exists. It exists to sell magazine subscriptions and perhaps a little bit to gather feedback and ideas for future articles.

Now what's probably happened is that those that pay for the YBW.com website have asked their webmonkey where this money is going (he wants a salary, and servers and bandwidth are not free, plus there might even be paid moderators on here). He's glanced at the internet traffic statistics and told them that the forum attracts a lot of traffic, but very little of that traffic goes on to read the rest of the website, where they have articles that are supposed to make you want to buy a magazine.

So someone decreed that this could be done better and that there needs to be a "Latest YBW News" box on here, and a "Find boats for sale" box too, to direct eyeballs to the sections of the website that make money. That's why those are here eating our screen width (you can get rid of them with a thing called Greasemonkey and some CSS, but you need to speak computer). I assume there may also be more/bigger ads, but can't bring myself to turn off the adblocker long enough to see them.

Please don't get me wrong, I don't hate the magazines (in fact, I buy at least one of them pretty regularly) or the need for making money, I'm just explaining what I think happened here (and I may be wrong). When something is free, it's always good to ask why. Just look at Facebook.