What do you think of the new forums?

[Superfluous J]

Other than all the other things (no forum-code option, too white/bright, too much whitespace) I don't like:

1. When you click "Next page" on a thread it does this weird "I'm scrolling really fast" thing that is disjointing.
2. You can't hide images like the old forums allowed. At least, I can't find it.

Note: A lot of the "it's ugly" problems would be fixed by allowing users to set their own preferences. In particular, I'd set the default font to Verdana instead of Arial. I'm almost sure the old forums' default font was Verdana. I'm totally sure Verdana is the best font for forums, and all online communications. This paragraph, for example, is in Verdana and my eyes feel better reading it.

[rtxoff]

Jeez, i really don't know what you guys thought about changing into this forum. It's awful

[smart013]

I like change. And I like that. Thanks!

[NecroBones]

I like the new forum, with a few caveats, many of which are fixable:

• No HTML-edit mode (since we don't have BB-Code)
• No tables in the editor
• Too much wasted space. The formatting of the forum, margins, etc could probably be tightened up.
• Shortening URLs to remove the titles apparently works, but you still need to add '-X' (where X is any letter) after the message ID.
• Concerned that the '.php?/' syntax in the URLs might make the forum less searchable via Google's bots. But maybe not. We'll have to see.

That's all I'm thinking of at the moment. Now that redirection from the old forum URLs is working, my biggest complaint is dealt with already.

[WinkAllKerb'']

something like: it's new, everyone including myself need to get used to it ; ) what else ? a yup nothin' !i! ,'')

Edited November 30, 2015 by WinkAllKerb''

[Castille7]

It's much better, just going to take time getting use to it, like a new car.

[SaturnianBlue]

Personally, I really think it's a bit of a mixed bag. The general format is pretty clean and possibly "modern", but it's bad if you write stories in the fan works, as there are huge spaces between sentences. The dead space on the side and a generally skinny place for text is quite dis likable.  It's nice to have good imgur albums and a button for it. The tags are an interesting feature in my opinion, but it's to early to have an opinion on it. I'll miss BB code quite a bit, it was hard to use for me, but almost every post used it...  The alerts are nice, and being able to see who follows threads and such is a cool feature. I never used the mobile version of the old forums, and that was kind of bad, but as a forum the computer version vas very good. The friends system was nice, and since both needed to approve the thing, it felt meaningful, but now you can just go around following people with a simple tap on their page. Same goes for the like system. It used to take 3 clicks to add rep to a user, and you could leave a cute little message for them, now you just scroll to the bottom, tap the like, then move on to the next post.

 

Also, a question for long time lurkers and members: how was the forum when it operated on "SimpleMachines" (back in 2011 and 2012 or 13?) I've seen it, but I don't remember it well.

An edit: Is there a customization for profiles? It'd be very sad if there aren't...

Edited November 30, 2015 by SaturnianBlue

[adsii1970]

To add to everything else, I miss the old blogs. Although I only had four posted, I did have plans for more.

I also am not fond of the general appearance as it seems we've stepped backwards a bit. I really cannot add anything else that has not already been said.

 

[NecroBones]

2 hours ago, SaturnianBlue said:

Also, a question for long time lurkers and members: how was the forum when it operated on "SimpleMachines" (back in 2011 and 2012 or 13?) I've seen it, but I don't remember it well.

An edit: Is there a customization for profiles? It'd be very sad if there aren't...

 

No, I don't think we have any customization options available currently. Maybe they'll add that later?

 

I wasn't here prior to the forum being on vBulletin. Interesting to hear that it was SMF? I run a forum that uses SMF, and the 2.x version (available for several years now) is very modern and feature rich, and it's extensible with plugins. It's still BB-Code based, and a bit less AJAXey than this forum is now. We've been pretty happy with it. I have to admit, I was secretly hoping they'd use SMF here, since I'm already familiar with it.

 

[EdFred]

Seems like just another KSP release.  Not really ready, but Squad went with it anyway.

[Bill Phil]

I'm more indifferent. Both have pros and cons, but neither is exactly better. In my experience, at least.

4 hours ago, 5thHorseman said:

Other than all the other things (no forum-code option, too white/bright, too much whitespace) I don't like:

1. When you click "Next page" on a thread it does this weird "I'm scrolling really fast" thing that is disjointing.
2. You can't hide images like the old forums allowed. At least, I can't find it.

Note: A lot of the "it's ugly" problems would be fixed by allowing users to set their own preferences. In particular, I'd set the default font to Verdana instead of Arial. I'm almost sure the old forums' default font was Verdana. I'm totally sure Verdana is the best font for forums, and all online communications. This paragraph, for example, is in Verdana and my eyes feel better reading it.

That is nice to read. And there is quite a lot of white.

I do like Consolas a bit, too.

 

I don't know if it's "im scrolling really fast" or something else, but it does do some weird things. Like when you post on another page, it loads, then loads again.

[pxi]

Initial impressions?  Not overly impressed tbh.

For some reason I had to reset my password, even though it was saved in the browser.  I'm a little surprised by that one.

The colour scheme could do with a little work.  It's not as obvious where one post ends and the next begins, compared to the old forum.

EDIT:  Oh look, my signature got mangled in the transfer too.

Also, I strongly dislike the linespacing.

Edited December 1, 2015 by pxi

[Wanderfound]

I don't care about the aesthetics, but functionality on iOS is awful. Very buggy, very bad UI.

[Virtualgenius]

I guess we can call this the great forum derp of 2015  

[BlueCanary]

I love that imgur embeds work better now, also notifications when you're quoted are awesome. I don't like that old threads have got messed up and the color scheme is a bit bright (read: eyeball searing white hot beam BURNING WITH A FURIOUS BLAZE, HOTTER THAN THE VERY SURFACE OF THE SUN), but other than that most things, eg. the changes to rep and stuff, just seem like things which arwn't bad, but just need some time to get used to.

 

Edited December 1, 2015 by BlueCanary

[lukeoftheaura]

I am wondering why they had to change, and why they didn't go for, say, fluxBB?

 also, WYSIWYG is more like WYSIAYG (what you see is all you get) bring back BBcodes!

Edited December 1, 2015 by kerbingamer376

[stevehead]

As a former web developer, I do not understand everyone's obsession with flat design. The new forums look like a quickly put together website with Twitter Bootstrap, with some custom CSS; it looks terrible and does not do well with the busyness that is inherit of a forum website's UI. Not to mention the headache that it is giving us mod makers forcing us to fix the formatting for our mod threads. WYSIWYGs are for those that are computer illiterate, BBCodes are more flexible. I want the old forums back. I am a strong believer in "if it ain't broke, don't fix it".

Also, is there not a way to link new threads without the need for the thread's title in the URL? I want links like this: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/115990; not this: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/index.php?/topic/104465-105-soc-simple-orbit-calculator-v140-6232015/

I understand that the older thread links are probably using some sort of htaccess rewrite rule (or similar method) that redirects to the new URL.

Edited December 1, 2015 by stevehead

[Red Iron Crown]

8 minutes ago, stevehead said:

Also, is there not a way to link new threads without the need for the thread's title in the URL? I want links like this: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/115990; not this: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/index.php?/topic/104465-105-soc-simple-orbit-calculator-v140-6232015/

I understand that the older thread links are probably using some sort of htaccess rewrite rule (or similar method) that redirects to the new URL.

Some text is required after the dash, but it can be anything, even just a single character.

[stevehead]

Alright thanks, that works with the links.

 

I do have another complaint regarding the new forums. It hurts my eyes after about 5 minutes. There is not enough contrast between the posts, and it all just runs together. Again, an issue with the flat design. This is really bad on larger monitors such as the 27" I'm using.

[Red Iron Crown]

Custom themes aren't directly supported right now, but you can work around that with Stylish. A few users have already shared their Stylish configs, like here: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/index.php?/topic/126808-made-a-user-style-to-increase-forum-contrast-and-available-space/

Edited December 1, 2015 by Red Iron Crown

[steve_v]

27 minutes ago, stevehead said:

As a former web developer, I do not understand everyone's obsession with flat design. The new forums look like a quickly put together website with Twitter Bootstrap, with some custom CSS; it looks terrible and does not do well with the busyness that is inherit of a forum website's UI.

Very much this, particularly when jumping on the "flat" bandwagon impacts usability as it does here.

31 minutes ago, stevehead said:

WYSIWYGs are for those that are computer illiterate, BBCodes are more flexible. I want the old forums back. I am a strong believer in "if it ain't broke, don't fix it".

Having had to fight this idiotic editor to post this, I also agree.

From the troubleshooting flowchart on my wall:
"Does the damn thing work?" ---yes---> "Don't bugger about with it"

Please kill the double linefeeds already, fine as an option, stupid as a default.

[steve_v]

2 hours ago, Red Iron Crown said:

Custom themes aren't directly supported right now, but you can work around that with Stylish. A few users have already shared their Stylish configs, like here: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/index.php?/topic/126808-made-a-user-style-to-increase-forum-contrast-and-available-space/

Thanks for the link, that should help to preserve my eyes (27" monitor here too, wasted space and low contrast is awful)
However... this is something that we should not have to do client side, why does this SNS have almost no user settings?
 

Edited December 1, 2015 by steve_v

[Red Iron Crown]

18 minutes ago, steve_v said:

Thanks for the link, that should help to preserve my eyes (27" monitor here too, wasted space and low contrast is awful)
However... this is something that we should not have to do client side, why does this SNS have almost no user settings?
 

Custom/additional themes are done with additional plugins, the idea is to get basic functionality working well before introducing other code that could possibly obscure issues or cause new ones. Judging by the feedback so far theming is a highly desired feature, I would not be surprised if some server-side solution is introduced in the future.

[steve_v]

23 minutes ago, Red Iron Crown said:

Judging by the feedback so far theming is a highly desired feature, I would not be surprised if some server-side solution is introduced in the future.

Cool, can we have a non-roadkill style and a non-WYSIAYG editor with that?

[richfiles]

Yeah... I miss the BBcode, and it wastes SO MUCH SPACE! Double line enter is ridiculous... SERIOUSLY... if I want an extra line, I'll press enter twice. I tried sizing the page scale down to fit more on screen at once, and it's just too small and blurry to read. I don't even get it! It's like the site suddenly expects everyone to have a 4K display to view it in any reasonably efficient manner.

 

Also, It seems that all the threads I was following was NOT carried over... Thanks for that, BTW... Cause I wanna dig through the forums tracking every little mod and topic thread that interested me...

Oh look, that dumb auto return spacing junk... Not fixing it... You can stare at it! 

Finally, Us hardware guys have argued and whined that hardware belongs in the ADD-ONS forum, you know where software add-ons like mods are put. Instead of giving hardware it's own place or sub forum in add-ons we've been stuffed in Fan works. This was tolerable, until the forum move wiped out the Tags. If they are still there, I don't see an obvious way to search for them, or to view only a specific topic (there was hardware, art, screenshots, writing, etc)