Forum UI Changes

[RealKerbal3x]

50 minutes ago, The Aziz said:

I can't seem to find any posts regarding the following matter: Now, on mobile I cannot tap on the time of the last post on the right, below profile picture of the user, to get straight to that last post.

 

7 minutes ago, MechBFP said:

Works just fine for me. 

It's still possible but the box you have to hit to get to that link looks smaller than before.

[steve_v]

Ahhhhh! My eyes! It Burns!

This new theme is horrific, please put it back.

On that note, preferably back to pre-IPS - where we had an editor that worked, a UI that doesn't need a bunch of element blocking rules and script hacks to remove all the annoyances and pointless animations, and the thing didn't cripple mobile devices with the pointless "infinite scrolling memory consumption" type activity page.
 

[tater]

Yeah, awful, it's painful to be on the forum at all.

Doesn't matter who changed it, presumably someone who runs the forum has some control over the look, else every single forum using the same software would look identical. This is a train wreck, it's awful to even type as much as I have here.

If the forum software company doesn't allow the company running the forum to adjust the look at all, it's lousy software.

[steve_v]

34 minutes ago, tater said:

it's painful to be on the forum at all.

Indeed it is. Someone has actually managed to find a theme worse than the one they inflicted on us when first switching to IPS. While that is an accomplishment in it's own right, it's not one I'm going to stick around for, and certainly not for as long as it took to get it fixed the first time.

On that note I'm off to use a website that doesn't make my eyes bleed. Wake me up when you've finished breaking stuff, whoever decided to pull  the trigger on this ill-conceived "upgrade".

 

15 hours ago, ManeTI said:

Hey! this is the default theme of the Invision Community software that runs the forums, it comes with the patches to fix bugs they provide to their users, nobody on Squad or PD was involved in the design changes.

So what? Since when does "It's the default" excuse inflicting horrible design on your users?

It's horrific to the point it actually makes my vision blur if I look at it too long. Fix it.
If you can't fix it, find some better forum software that supports non-horrific themes.

Default, noun:
A preselected option adopted by a computer program or other mechanism when no alternative is specified by the user or programmer.

So specify an alternative already.

Edited October 21, 2020 by steve_v

[Clamp-o-Tron]

I believe the notification colors have changed back to red.

[The Aziz]

1 hour ago, RealKerbal3x said:

 

It's still possible but the box you have to hit to get to that link looks smaller than before.

I tried zooming all the way in and hitting everywhere, nothing.

[MechBFP]

The design is looking a lot better today. I am quite happy with it now compared to the horror that was early yesterday morning lol. 

[Kerminator K-100]

Why is everyone hating on the new style?

I really like some of the new features (the tag showing the thread author, the share button on the top corner, the note that tells you how long its been since a recent post, the little button that tells you if someone is new or a mod). I think the forums look very sleek and stylish and that the mods made a good choice changing the style.

I also think that most of the hate comes form the fact that the forums had a problem when they switched everything around, and that everyone needs to just calm down. 

EDIT: The one problem I have is the tag feature. It sometimes shows dark blue on gray and that's fine but it can also show light blue or white on gray, which is impossible to read.

(Got this from the moderators team thread)

[Stone Blue]

I really dont like how, when you clic on a thread to open it, it opens at the OP.... NOT at the very last page from where you looed at it before

 

likke it did BEFORE, this "upgrade"...

Also, my Edit post button seems to be missing vOv

oh... great... I see the edit button got moved to a hidden dropdown :roll_eyes: ... great.... even MOAR mouse clics now, that I didnt have to deal with before

Edited October 21, 2020 by Stone Blue

[Entropian]

Edit is in the ... tab to the upper right.  The thread opening preferences are in account settings.

[DeadJohn]

4 minutes ago, Kerminator1000 said:

Why is everyone hating on the new style?

I really like some of the new features (the tag showing the thread author, the share button on the top corner, the note that tells you how long its been since a recent post, the little button that tells you if someone is new or a mod). I think the forums look very sleek and stylish and that the mods made a good choice changing the style.

I also think that most of the hate comes form the fact that the forums had a problem when they switched everything around, and that everyone needs to just calm down. 

I think it's all of the white space that's getting the most hate. 2 problems with it:

1. It's too bright on a large monitor. Play KSP, then tab out to look something up here. The jump from the black KSP background to bright-white forum background is jarring.
2. Too much wasted vertical space; there's a lot of blank space or trivial information at the top of each page. I'm forced to do a lot more scrolling.

The new design looks okay on my phone. It's horrible on my PC. It's okay on my tablet in portrait mode, but horrible in landscape mode.

 

5 minutes ago, Stone Blue said:

I really dont like how, when you clic on a thread to open it, it opens at the OP.... NOT at the very last page from where you looed at it before

 

likke it did BEFORE, this "upgrade"...

Also, my Edit post button seems to be missing vOv

oh... great... I see the edit button got moved to a hidden dropdown :roll_eyes: ... great.... even MOAR mouse clics now, that I didnt have to deal with before

You can change that. Click your name on the top-right of the page, Account Settings, Content View Behavior.

[Kerminator K-100]

5 minutes ago, Stone Blue said:

I really dont like how, when you clic on a thread to open it, it opens at the OP.... NOT at the very last page from where you looed at it before

likke it did BEFORE, this "upgrade"...

Also, my Edit post button seems to be missing vOv

oh... great... I see the edit button got moved to a hidden dropdown :roll_eyes: ... great.... even MOAR mouse clics now, that I didnt have to deal with before

You can change this in user settings.

The edit button being in a dropdown makes it way easier. Everything is contained and orderly.

2 minutes ago, DeadJohn said:

I think it's all of the white space that's getting the most hate. 2 problems with it:

It is very white. And the dark mode plugin I tried decided to use blue for the edit box so thats a no go for me. @HebaruSan, please fix

5 minutes ago, DeadJohn said:

Too much wasted vertical space; there's a lot of blank space or trivial information at the top of each page. I'm forced to do a lot more scrolling.

The forums have always been like this. When I read the mission reports I have to scroll for ages to get down past stuff.

I also feel like all this hate is misdirected. People should be yelling at Invasion not the KSP team and Moderators.

[RealKerbal3x]

I noticed they changed the notifications from green back to red, thanks!

While you're at it, could you try and move the edit post button back to where it was before?

[Entropian]

Where's the edit edit button button? 

Edited October 21, 2020 by Entropian

[Kerminator K-100]

4 hours ago, DStaal said:

No real opinions one way or the other at the moment on the web UI.  Looks like it's following modern design practice - which has both upsides and downsides.

However, I primarily follow the forum via e-mail: I hit 'follow' on a thread, and read the posts as they come in.  Or at least I did - the update truncates any post down to about two sentences, so actually trying to follow the conversation like that is no longer possible.

(Which honestly means I'm likely not going to be following the forum at all...)

Reading the forum on email is 1000 times worse for me. The text never lines up with the email width and I have to scroll slightly, obscuring the poster and other info. I'm fairly sure this is a Gmail problem not a forums problem.

8 minutes ago, RealKerbal3x said:

I noticed they changed the notifications from green back to red, thanks!

While you're at it, could you try and move the edit post button back to where it was before?

7 minutes ago, Entropian said:

Where's the edit edit button button? 

I don't know if I want the edit button moved back. Its way more orderly this way and less buttons are cluttering up my screen.

 

1 hour ago, tater said:

If the forum software company doesn't allow the company running the forum to adjust the look at all, it's lousy software.

But if Squad moved the forums to new software you would be complaining about that too. So there is no way for them to please everyone.

[RealKerbal3x]

1 minute ago, Kerminator1000 said:

I don't know if I want the edit button moved back. Its way more orderly this way and less buttons are cluttering up my screen.

It was only one tiny button at the bottom of your posts that didn't get in the way much, but now you have to click twice to edit your posts and that's kind of annoying.

[Kerminator K-100]

Just now, RealKerbal3x said:

It was only one tiny button at the bottom of your posts that didn't get in the way much, but now you have to click twice to edit your posts and that's kind of annoying.

Is one more mouse click really that bad? We will all get used to the new position eventually.

[Guest]

4 minutes ago, Kerminator1000 said:

But if Squad moved the forums to new software you would be complaining about that too. So there is no way for them to please everyone.

Is this a troll post?

[Kerminator K-100]

3 minutes ago, Aperture Science said:

Is this a troll post?

No its not. I'm saying that complaining that Squad doesn't do something, when we all know that if Squad actually did it they would complain about it, isn't helpful.

Edited October 21, 2020 by Kerminator1000

[Guest]

3 minutes ago, Kerminator1000 said:

No its not. I'm saying that complaining that Squad doesn't do something, when we all know that if Squad actually did it they would complain about it, isn't helpful.

Would they? Pretty large assumption that these complaints are only for the sake of contrarianism, just like how this change was done only for the sake of changing. I'd be pretty happy with the forums moving over to a platform the devs could *actually* have control over instead of this

Edited October 21, 2020 by Guest

[Rocket Witch]

UI design continuing on its downward spiral since the year 2000.

• Increased padding on page sides means less space for the the post text, which is whole point of a forum. This also results in the index page having thread titles cut off more than before.
• Edit and report buttons are now hidden in a drop menu for... what reason? There's plenty of (wasted) screen space to keep all these things in — around 20% more than ever before, in fact.
• Quotes hidden with a 'click to show all' button. More clicks. More mouse wear. This as a feature is actually pretty nice for the imbeciles who quote massive image-laden posts verbatim, but the height threshold is set too low (like 8 lines?) and it cuts off normal posts, so one basically has to open every post they quote so they can review it while writing their response.
• The background is now off-white, and alpha channel support for avatars is still non-present, so now I look bad. This particular complaint is extremely minor, but it is weird and speaks to the statistical probability of other things being done carelessly.

Edited October 21, 2020 by Rocket Witch

[tater]

22 minutes ago, Kerminator1000 said:

But if Squad moved the forums to new software you would be complaining about that too. So there is no way for them to please everyone.

All I care about is legibility and readability, and a basic "forum" interface (I read reddit, but HATE the paradigm of how it threads, to me it's like reading a book where the pages have been removed, and placed in semi-random groupings).

Wait, no edit button?

In a drop down. Because why not hide useful UI information? It's like Apple removing scroll bars. Idiotic.

[RealKerbal3x]

33 minutes ago, Kerminator1000 said:

Is one more mouse click really that bad? We will all get used to the new position eventually.

It's mainly annoying because it's a change that makes something harder to do for absolutely no reason.

[Shpaget]

35 minutes ago, RealKerbal3x said:

for absolutely no reason.

MOAR white space!

On a more serious note, I'd expect people in charge of doing these things to test them on an offline installation before pushing it to live website with 200k users. That being said, until they get their color picker tools in order, I installed a Dark Mode extension for Opera. It's not perfect, but at least I'm only one click away from not burning my eyes out (pro tip, in settings change the mode to something that shows where individual posts begin and end, it's difficult to see that in the default one).

[Chemp]

19 hours ago, HebaruSan said:

Since I installed the "Stylish" extension today for other reasons, I made an attempt at a KSP forum dark theme config (also makes the user profile icons into rounded boxes instead of circles). It's not completely perfect yet, but I think it's good enough for me to keep using for a while:

• https://userstyles.org/styles/191139/dark-kerbal-space-program-forum

 

To be honest, my first reaction was to give the it a few days. It's not the first time the UI changes, and it has always led to complaints. Eventually, everybody gets used to it and moves on. 
That worked fine during the day but now it's too harsh on my eyes and I have a headache. What were they thinking?

Thank you for the dark theme!