View Topic

The long-mentioned redesign of the forum view skin (that lists all the topics in the forum) has finally begun! The goals here are to make the page look more streamlined and mobile-friendly as well as to add a sidebar that will have more information about each forum.

At the moment the changes are very preliminary and rough. It will take some time to finish the design and then polish it to be ready for the main skin. However, if you would like to check out what it looks like on the development skin so far:

1) In your menu (the one at the top right with your username), select Old User CP.

2) Under Modify Profile, select Look and Layout.

3) Beside Current Theme, hit the change link.

4) Scroll down to winter-dev and hit the [Use this theme] link!

What happened to pinned topics?

I get that this is a very rough development version right now, but some thoughts:

It's important to delineate sticky topics and also locked topics. Both of these look near-identical to normal topics in the current implementation, which makes navigation a lot trickier and annoying. This is especially the case for sticky topics, because usually it's easy to gloss over them to see the newest topics, whereas now you have to do a bit of brain work and/or strain your eyes at the icon to figure out where the sticky topics end and the newest topics begin (or, if you're Red Mones, they have disappeared entirely ).

Being able to jump to any page of a topic directly from the subforum view is a super convenient feature, standard to most forums, and one which I think would be a bit silly to throw away.

On the subforum view, where you're more likely to be looking at topics going back months or years, it seems much more intuitive to have absolute dates than time elapsed. Knowing that a post happened 1789 days ago is far less useful information than knowing that it happened on 7 January 2016.

I'm a bit concerned about usability on larger monitors; that said, for my own monitor, the addition of the sidebar seems to have resolved the initial concerns I had about this (but that's just my own case).

On the other hand, I'm somewhat doubtful that the sidebars would serve much functional use beyond squishing the topic view to make it more readable. It feels a bit awkward to have that tiny bit of sidebar followed by so much empty space. I'm personally glad to see the forum descriptions make their return via these sidebars, but considering that they were removed for being redundant, cluttering, and not that useful, I'm a bit confused as to why you'd then reverse that and add it back. (EDIT: went back to the forum redesign topic, I see your thoughts on that now. I guess my thought is if the descriptions were never that useful [though that is a premise that I don't really agree with], then adding more of it doesn't seem like it would help matters. I'm also not sure what a longer description would do that can't be done via stickied topic. Especially since that adds a new website component that needs to be maintained [possibly hardcoded] by you, in which case I would be concerned about it going out of date or being underutilized/unused, much as the old forum descriptions were.)

Finally, this one is a bit less important, but nonetheless, topic icons are still something that people use that adds character (and occasionally, information, eg Daws' use on recent UH topics) so I'm not sure how I feel about those being removed.

Also, weird idea, but maybe it might be cool to incorporate people's avatars into the post views, like is done on the front page. (I'm probably going to regret saying this because I very much am likely to not like how that looks... ) Same with the time icon (but for that one I do how like that looks ).

Unlike some other people who mostly use the Recent Topics page to browse the forums, my workflow involves going through each subforum and viewing the topics there. So this is a pretty drastic change, and I suppose these are my accompanying thoughts.

Pinned and closed topics are something that still needs a bit of work...it's not that they're not there, it's just that it's not obvious that they're pinned. On the current skin they're shaded light blue, and I just haven't had a chance to carry that over to the development skin yet. It took a lot longer just to get the basic layout working than I thought, so I haven't had a chance to do any polishing like that yet.

That leads me to a topic I'd like to have some input on: the topic status icons. I had hoped to keep them because they're one of the few graphics that were created specifically for us, but alone they don't seem to do a good job of showing if a topic is pinned or closed, and I'm wondering if it would be better to replace them with Font Awesome graphics. They may look more generic, but they would also more clearly show if a topic were pinned or closed.

Being able to jump to any page of a topic directly from the subforum view is a super convenient feature, standard to most forums, and one which I think would be a bit silly to throw away.

Is jumping to any page that useful? To be honest, I don't think I've ever used the page links as I've pretty much always just needed to go to either the first post, the last unread post, or the last post. I'd be interested to hear cases where the page links have been used.

On the subforum view, where you're more likely to be looking at topics going back months or years, it seems much more intuitive to have absolute dates than time elapsed. Knowing that a post happened 1789 days ago is far less useful information than knowing that it happened on 7 January 2016.

I will take that under advisement. I think for more recent topics the relative times is great...it's a lot easier seeing that a last post was so many minutes/hours/days ago rather than seeing the exact time and having to compare it to the current time to get that. Perhaps I could add a cutoff for dates after a year or so, where dates before that are absolute and dates after that are relative.

On the other hand, I'm somewhat doubtful that the sidebars would serve much functional use beyond squishing the topic view to make it more readable. It feels a bit awkward to have that tiny bit of sidebar followed by so much empty space. I'm personally glad to see the forum descriptions make their return via these sidebars, but considering that they were removed for being redundant, cluttering, and not that useful, I'm a bit confused as to why you'd then reverse that and add it back. (EDIT: went back to the forum redesign topic, I see your thoughts on that now. I guess my thought is if the descriptions were never that useful [though that is a premise that I don't really agree with], then adding more of it doesn't seem like it would help matters. I'm also not sure what a longer description would do that can't be done via stickied topic. Especially since that adds a new website component that needs to be maintained [possibly hardcoded] by you, in which case I would be concerned about it going out of date or being underutilized/unused, much as the old forum descriptions were.)

On a basic level, I think the sidebars will be great for integration. In fact, that's the reason I decided to undertake this project now, because recent events have shown me that we desperately need to address integration now, especially on the forums. The point isn't just to explain what each forum is for, but to provide forum-specific rules and advice, helpful links, information on how to get started on that forum...basically, much more elaborate than the old basic descriptions that used to be on the front page. I'd like to make it so that the moderators for each forum can modify the sidebar through a widget system, so that it's the moderators (mostly Cabinet members) focusing on their own portfolios and my role is usually just designing new widgets as needed. Suffice to say I think it will be a lot more helpful than the old basic descriptions, especially for forum games and roleplays. The basic descriptions that are there now are just placeholders so I can judge the overall layout of the page.

Finally, this one is a bit less important, but nonetheless, topic icons are still something that people use that adds character (and occasionally, information, eg Daws' use on recent UH topics) so I'm not sure how I feel about those being removed.

I personally think the icons are both rarely used and limited, and I believe you can use emojis in forum topic names now.

Also, weird idea, but maybe it might be cool to incorporate people's avatars into the post views, like is done on the front page. (I'm probably going to regret saying this because I very much am likely to not like how that looks... ) Same with the time icon (but for that one I do how like that looks ).

I'm definitely going to look into it at some point in the process.

Unlike some other people who mostly use the Recent Topics page to browse the forums, my workflow involves going through each subforum and viewing the topics there. So this is a pretty drastic change, and I suppose these are my accompanying thoughts.

I understand...it is a drastic change, especially because unlike the front page and the topic pages this one has never really been updated before. It's going to be a process...probably a long one, because there's so much to do, but hopefully it will be worth it in the end.

I've used a thread's page links in the subforum view mostly in Werewolf games or if I'm going back to old threads (constitutional convention stuff in particular). But it'd just be an extra click now to get there, so not a big deal. I seem to have lost the ability to go to the most recent post in a thread, though -- I now can only click the thread to go to the thread's OP or the "new" button to go to my first unread post.

I also agree with taulover about the absolute times being used in the subforum view. I could understand using "days ago" up to maybe a month, but anything past that becomes sort of difficult to place exactly when it was without having to do the math.

I can understand the use of the new sidebar, but subforums now look really unbalanced with all the empty space underneath it, especially with the thread icons gone on the left side (never really used these much because there didn't seem to be a good selection, but I do wonder what the Font Awesome selection might provide) and sticky/lock bird closer to thread titles. My margins for what I'd look at on a subforum view used to be 1.5" to the left of my screen and 1" to the right and are now .5" to the left and almost 4.5" to the right, which looks quite odd. Maybe the sidebar would fit better at the top or even to the left side rather than the right. Also, the subforum's page links are still at the top-right of the page, so they're now sorta hidden above the sidebar.

On not being able to tell apart stickied/locked/regular threads, besides the skin shading, it might help to go back to the bold/italicized/regular fonts as well since all the threads being bolded makes it harder to differentiate. Also maybe have the sticky/lock bird be a little bigger and move the "started by" bit to align with the thread name to more easily see the bird's thumb tack/lock.

And maybe it's just a personal thing, but I liked the number of posts in a thread (and even number of views, honestly) being more prominent as it showed which threads were more important/popular/used.

At the very least, I think it should be possible to jump to either the first or last page of a topic. In that case, the standard language for that on forums is to show the page numbers 1 2 ... [last page number]; I can't really think of a better or more concise way to do that.

I think maybe jumping to an arbitrary specific page number isn't really necessary since in that case you're likely to be clicking multiple times anyway, so it probably isn't necessary to reimplement that "..." being a button that expands to show more pages. (It's a cool feature, but it's also not necessary; as long as it stays on the topic view then I'm happy.) But having a few buttons for the first couple and last pages is still probably helpful, I think.

And maybe it's just a personal thing, but I liked the number of posts in a thread (and even number of views, honestly) being more prominent as it showed which threads were more important/popular/used.

Still dislike that the number of posts on a forum are now kinda impossible to view...

(Totally not just because it obscured my victory in the Summersend post contest and I was never awarded the prize )

I make frequent use of the ability to jump to a specific page when opening a topic so that is a pretty important feature for me.  (it saves a lot of clicking between the pages when you are already in the topic).  Aside from Werewolf, I use it if I am looking for an older post so I can reread it (such as from Say What's On Your Mind or Spam Game posts).

That might just be me though.  I also like having the option to do it in less clicks for when my internet connection is being a pain.

I've made some updates to the development skin.

1) The subforums on the page now use the same style as the main forums on the front page.

2) I've replaced the classic lock and pin icons with font-awesome icons. Ultimately, I think the FA icons are clearer and easier to take in when browsing the list, and that trumps icon nostalgia. I've also brought back the background colours for pinned and locked topics. For locked topics, I felt that the shade of red we've been using was a little too distracting to mark topics that you probably want to skip past, so it's now grey with a hint of red.

3) On the other hand, at least for now I've brought back the other post icon. I still think it's a waste of space for 98% of topics that just use the default, but we'll see.

4) This won't change much on the user side, but I decided to switch the topic list back to an HTML table (the first dev skin used div floats). I know there's much to do in web development about not using HTML tables, but at the end of the day they're just easier to manage.

5) The sidebar will no longer display on lower resolutions. I am conflicted on whether I want to continue with the sidebar or find another area on the screen for the things like more prominent mod listings, extended descriptions of each forum and how to get started in them, and custom modules like the one that tracks MC players on the front page.

More updates!

1) The buttons and page links on the forum view have been given the same design as the newer one on the topic pages, and the buttons/links are now back on the bottom of the list of topics, too!

2) The sidebar has been moved to above the list of topics (so I guess it's a topbar now). It will display only when there are either moderators for that forum or additional information has been included for the forum you're browsing. I've added something to the Werewolf Forum to give an idea of what I have in mind for the area. There's also a button on the top-right to collapse/expand the new topbar to show moderators only. In the future clicking this will save it so that all the topbars are either collapsed or expanded.

I really like that topbar. Gives all the useful info you'll need, looks good, and is collapsible.

Unrelated, but man does the Werewolf subforum need to be cleaned up with all of those pinned threads...

I really like that topbar. Gives all the useful info you'll need, looks good, and is collapsible.

Unrelated, but man does the Werewolf subforum need to be cleaned up with all of those pinned threads...

Yeah! I'm really glad it came together like it did. The sidebar wasn't working out and it just looked weird on some forums like those with subforums but no topics. I think with this change the most difficult part of the design is finished, and it's just putting some things back like multi-mod and implementing a few small ideas from here on out.

And yeah...going into the forum and seeing all those pinned topics is a bit intimidating, lol. Maybe this will cut down on the need for some of that too.

More updates!

1) Collapsing a topbar saves the setting, meaning that all topbars will be collapsed until it's expanded again. I decided to do one setting for all forums instead of one for each forum because I thought having to collapse each one might get annoying.

2) For moderators, multi-mod is back!

3) Page links are back, right beside the topic title.

4) At @taulover's suggestion, I've added last poster avatars to the link. On this page I'm trying them to the right of the last poster and time posted. It's easier to manage with different name lengths than it is putting it to the left like on the front page. The avatar will not appear on smaller screen resolutions to save space.

Ah, been gone for a few days and now everything has changed!

It might look less aesthetic now, but it's certainly much more functional, which is great.

My main thoughts:

The topbar could probably use wider margins. They're sticking a bit close to the box right now which doesn't look as great.

The other post icons look pixelated when made larger like they do in the current dev theme. It might be worth finding higher-res equivalent icons.

The removal of the sidebar makes the forum view stretched annoyingly wide on big screens again. Lots of empty space. Doesn't break anything, but does make it look a bit less nice.

The embassy flags need to made smaller or that column made wider.

Rip modern CSS lol.

@taulover: How big is your screen? I'm not running into that issue with the topbox or the stretched rows, but I'm using an older monitor.

@taulover: How big is your screen? I'm not running into that issue with the topbox or the stretched rows, but I'm using an older monitor.

2880 x 1800. It's not that bad, but the gap in the list of topics between title/pages and last author/date is noticeable and a bit weird.

As for the topbox, I think it could use more spacing regardless of screen size. It just doesn't look very good sticking right up against the box from a modern UI design standpoint.