This new format is lousy! I thought ipc didn't have money to burn?

[Simondjuk]

Monkey patching? WTF is that? More to the point, if we need to know just to make the whole shebang moderately tolerable, some IT geek needs showing the door! (Possibly inappropriate smile used because they all look the same.... much like the text and background.)

 

[BrendanS]

No I did not actually want to quote Rossynant it just seemed to be the only way to post.???
I habitually check YBW first thing in the morning ie late evening UK.
I like to check what I posted the day before in case of any differences of opinion (boo boo on my part)
I found this morning a button along the lines of find posts. "good says I" however it stated with post no 1 many years ago. No way to select last page so gave up with waiting for reload of all of 20 pages one at a time.
Am I missing something on finding most recent posts.
No obviously with a signature like "olewill" I do not like change. Like another poster I may well pass away of old age before mastering new format. I never really mastered the old. boo hoo olewill

Just hit reply to post to a thread.

To get your newest first, you probably need to go to setting then general settings and put newest first, but I can't see what you are seeing, so difficult to advise accurately. I see newest posts, so it must all be in the settings

 

[prv]

Monkey patching? WTF is that?

It's when, instead of going through the proper steps to create and deploy a change to a system, you just dive under the covers and edit things directly, with no thought to future maintainability.

In this context it's not something you or I could do, but a way that the server admins could fix / replace the horrible thread icons even if the software doesn't officially offer a way to customise them. If they wanted to, of course.

Pete

 

[BERT T]

+100

especially the following:
1) colour scheme -- too pastel with lack of contrast and washed-out look: Not good, in fact very bad.
2) page numbers at bottom right of a thread that extends beyond one page are not sufficiently distinguished from the other clutter.
3) signatures not adequately demarcated/differentiated from the text of the post.
4) any given post occupies too much space vertically.
5) jump to last read post should not be grouped with the other selectors over on the right but rather left where it was before. It doesn't "group" well, functionally, with the other selectors over on the right.
6) posters name not sufficiently highlighted. It should stand out from the other framing and decorative sugar around it.
7) and i could go on, and on, and on.

But suffice it to say that, had one of my designers produced anything like that for any of the industrial installations my group delivered, he'd be lucky if he or she was not sacked instantly. There is no excuse for poor human interface design.

Just took a quick glance at my shelf here in the study: User interface design by thimbleby (a bit dated, but the principles are still very valid) would be a good place to start the re-education of the ipc designer responsible for this mess. And i mean restart today.

Plomong

No, I recon they should have started at least a month ago, what a shambles! I agree 100% with plomong's post.

 

[[2574]]

I really don't know what all the fuss is about. If you guys can't read the text on this forum I do hope that you've all surrendered your driving licenses.

 

[Fantasie 19]

The old format was perfectly fine. How much was some techno-bore paid, to make these changes?

Evidently the money went to some nerdy kid whose age only recently reached double figures, since EVERYTHING - from the typeface to the little expressive faces, are much harder to see, in this format.

Why wasn't that money put towards keeping the magazine cover prices where they are, for another few weeks?

The money could have gone into a boat-owners' interest group, like "Anchors, Not Seahorses", or even to the RNLI.

I say, put it back how it was yesterday; this was a mistake which clearly, we weren't asked about. Am I alone?

I may be a lone voice in the wilderness, but I love it....

 

[Robert Wilson]

Thank you, Slipperman, et al.

Why the HELL is the new format so FADED? My vision is virtually 20:20, but I already have a neck-ache, from peering forward to read words which formerly I could read while sitting back!

It's tempting to write ALL replies in bold, just for the convenience of other readers.

In fact, that's my plan. Why in hell has IPC decided to mess around, employing a set-up that is so conspicuously inferior to the one which has worked perfectly well for the previous decade?

I do SO hope that the boss of the office that runs the fora, is reading these replies...

...Sir, this was a needless change. I doubt the advertisers will be glad of the readers' disappointment. Do us a favour and change it back!

I totally agree. I DON'T LIKE IT AT ALL. Especially the all-the-same-faces.

 

[Zagato]

Nothing wrong with the previous format, it was one of the best on the web

I have lost all the reference to all the threads I started. That was over one years detailed information which i was going to use over the next 3 months to get my boat in the water. It's all lost now The old forum had 'threads started' and 'old posts' so you could easily refer back to the information.

 

[maej]

I very much doubt anyone at IPC designed this. They just upgraded the version of vBulletin on their server and this is its new default theme.

Pete

I agree, The pastel shades and pale low contrast views look like the default style of many out-of-the-box installations. Even the little icon in the browsers tab is still the vBullitin icon instead of the YBW icon.

Credit where credit is due, they have managed what was probably a significant upgrade process without excessive downtime or loss of data which is deserving of a big pat on the back. Everything seems to work, it just looks different and some functionality has evolved.

It is a neccessity in IT to upgrade. As has already been stated new versions of software are created, old versions cease to be supported and become incompatible with new hardware and operating systems, IPC may not have had a choice. Behind the scenes this new version is probably a huge improvement in terms of efficiency and reliability.

The only negative I can see is that the branded and familiar interface we all know and many appreciate for it's high contrast, clear text and familiarity has not been made available in this new version. I suspect the old style is simply not compatible with this new version, and the cost of developing a new style was probably too much, so we just get the default one.

Are there any volunteers to develop a vBullitin style like the old YBW interface? I'm sure if someone made one and donated it they would test it and include it as an option for us in the styles box on the bottom left.

 

[ffiill]

Real problem is that I will probably no longer be able to use forum on my old 700mhz thinkpad never mind my 300 mhz one-just like Scotrail;major car manufacturers and BandQ amongst others.Despite 2 mhz dual core and a 7 plus broadband Speed Scotrail takes several minutes to download!
Web page designers are given the latest fastest big screen Pcs on which to design forgetting that there are many older systems still in operation.
The biggest slow down features being the flash player ads which abound and freeze slower systems
Also what particularly suprises me is just how complex what appear to be simple web pages are.
One of my competitors simple one page design is backed by 15 pages of version 5 HTML/Java script wheras mine is one page of simple HTML plus some Rich Snippets/micro data I manually added.My graphic imagery is reduced to about 60kb per image wheras his are 3mb plus.Mine is instant download and rates in top ten searches within my search criteria.
As well as older operating systems out there there are also those without Broadband.My brother in laws community in northern Ontario have only just recently installed satellite based Broadband.
Similarly I can guarantee that you can read my site on 1 g mobile whereas this site was almost impossible before its upgrade.

 

[maxi77]

I find the new format a strain to read because of the colour scheme. The rest I can get used to but not the colours. Of course if there was a choice other than the default that might be better, and don't suggest the mobile version that is far to clunky and a pain to navigate around.

 

[sailorman]

I find the new format a strain to read because of the colour scheme. The rest I can get used to but not the colours. Of course if there was a choice other than the default that might be better, and don't suggest the mobile version that is far to clunky and a pain to navigate around.

Fully agree, on all counts.
i tried mobile too

 

[pvb]

Nothing wrong with the previous format, it was one of the best on the web

I have lost all the reference to all the threads I started. That was over one years detailed information which i was going to use over the next 3 months to get my boat in the water. It's all lost now The old forum had 'threads started' and 'old posts' so you could easily refer back to the information.

If you look at the top of the page, there's a dark blue bar with several items in it. One is "Quick Links". Click on "Quick Links" to open up its drop-down menu, then click on "Subscribed Threads". All the threads you've contributed to are then listed, in chronological order. Not too difficult.

For what it's worth, I like the new format. It's cleaner and crisper than the clunky old format, and it's the same version of vBulletin that a number of other forums use which I subscribe to. With any upgrade, there will inevitably be a few initial problems, but they should be sorted quickly.

 

[pvb]

I don't like the thread list though - it's not easy to tell which threads have new posts in. Instead of being obviously bold or not-bold, you have to distinguish between two very similar icons.

I'm seeing a thread list which very clearly has bold type for threads with new posts in, and normal type for unchanged threads.

 

[Seajet]

PRV,

no it doesn't !

I just posted on Old Harrys' MCZ thread and it's still faint as **** ...

 

[l'escargot]

I'm seeing a thread list which very clearly has bold type for threads with new posts in, and normal type for unchanged threads.

Same here on Desktop and iPad - I wonder if some people are looking at a different forum to me...

 

[Matelot Joe]

You can always go somewhere else & pay to use a forum, this one is supplied FOC !

Is this the best you can come up with ? I think the majority of comments on here prove my comments not yours !
Wonder how good the forum would be if they all take your puerile comments.

 

[duncan99210]

I don't see what all the fuss is about. Easy to read, just different and it seems to work faster and hang up less than the old version. And complaining about it won't change things. Although the smileys aren't as good......

 

[Ex-SolentBoy]

Nothing wrong with the previous format, it was one of the best on the web

I have lost all the reference to all the threads I started. That was over one years detailed information which i was going to use over the next 3 months to get my boat in the water. It's all lost now The old forum had 'threads started' and 'old posts' so you could easily refer back to the information.

I clicked on my profile at the top of the page. I could then access all my old posts and threads started from the selection on the left. This is you own stuff only, not subscribed stuff.

 

[chrishelen]

we never had all this snow when we had the old format. i blame ipc towers for this and for me having a day off work.
bring back the old format i say.