Forum UI Changes

[steve_v]

2 hours ago, Deddly said:

assume you coloured the sides red

Of course.
 

2 hours ago, Deddly said:

so there are large white borders left and right?

Indeed. The actual content (i.e. posts) never expands beyond that width regardless of window size, and the rest is filled with white grey empty padding. The grey is an improvement, but the information-desert remains.

 

2 hours ago, Deddly said:

I can't see the "Newsletter" thing

I  assume the newsletter signup nag goes away if you have subscribed (or at least it had better), but the sidebar it occupies is present in several places on the forum. What's actually in it varies, but it consumes the same large vertical slice regardless.
Personally I nuke the entire sidebar element from orbit with uBlock, and the content (i.e. list of posts) expands to fill the now vacant space. It's still not full width, but it's an improvement.

 

1 hour ago, Deddly said:

the previous forum wasn't exactly exemplary

What I don't understand is why we can't have a forum that is just a forum, without all this extraneous not-forum crap scattered all over it. This is a dedicated discussion board, not a Farcebook clone.

That big-ass Kerbal 2 banner in Alamo's image can go to hell for a start (also nuked with uBlock here).
So can the "devblogs" sidebar (that belongs in a subforum or dedicated thread like everything else), and the "featured livestreamers" which can also have a subforum or thread.

What you're left with is a list of forum sections with an overview of the activity in each, some navigation functions and a search facility - i.e all the things a forum is actually about.
That list of subforums can then be full-width, as can post titles and/or previews... Which they are by default in all traditional non-hipster board software (phpBB, FluxBB etc. etc.). What exactly was wrong with using one of those ordinary (and BBCode compatible) FOSS forum packages anyway?

The old (pre-IPS) forum did indeed waste a bit of space, but it was nowhere near as bad as the current iteration.
On the other hand, it also didn't burn my eyes or  bog down my browser with ridiculous quantities of unnecessary javascript, and it lacked most of the pointless animations / infinite scroll / dynamic loading / reactive design / social media integration / huge UI / hamburger menu infested "modern" insanity that makes this thing a chore to use on a traditional desktop.

 

Ed, here's what the frontpage looks like for me, with uBlock applied to the most useless elements (banner, sidebar, link to modhost nobody uses, etc, etc.):

See how much cleaner that is with just a few clicks? See how only forum related things remain?

Now, if we can just remove the strip of desolation on either side, nuke some more of the padding around and above the content, make that "start new topic" button a sensible size, and find a theme that isn't miraculously both glaring and invisibly low-contrast at the same time, we'll be looking at a halfway usable thing.

Edited October 22, 2020 by steve_v

[VoidSquid]

Can't agree more, @steve_v

[Rocket Witch]

13 hours ago, Chemp said:

Eventually, everybody gets used to it and moves on.

I don't think so. We voice our complaints, once, as they shouldn't bear repeating because the KSP community is fairly mature and all that, but it remains an issue that we'd gladly opine about again and again whenever the topic becomes, well, topical. I had a complaint about this place only having a WYSIWYG editor in my signature for years before wanting to put other things there.

Edited October 22, 2020 by Rocket Witch

[Deddly]

@steve_v I can't argue against any of that, though the devblogs etc on the home page don't bother me, since I can't really see a benefit to having the forums list stretched out across the entire screen.

56 minutes ago, steve_v said:

What exactly was wrong with using one of those ordinary (and BBCode compatible) FOSS forum packages anyway?

If I remember correctly, the reason given was that the old one we had (pre-Invision) was so outdated and propped up with so many plugins just to maintain a semblance of security and reliability that it became necessary to migrate to a new system. At the time, Kasper (I think it was him) said it was more reliable and much less complicated to migrate to Invision than to a more up-to-date version of the old software. That's what I remember from the explanations given at the time.

[steve_v]

19 minutes ago, Deddly said:

That's what I remember from the explanations given at the time.

That's my recollection as well. I'm not advocating a return to vBulletin (though VB5 is still getting updates as of this month), I'm advocating one of the multitude of free, open-source, infinitely customisable PHP based solutions that do one thing and do it well - namely being a forum.
Somehow they even manage this without reams of proprietary animating / collapsing / auto-resizing / hamburger-grilling / mobile pandering / spinner-presenting / memory wasting / non-BBCode understanding / quote mangling / social-media integrating / faceborg try-harding / captcha presenting javascript maddness.

----
To return to my above butchery, it occurs that the entire line containing nothing but the word "Forums" (yes captian obvious) and the "Start new topic" button can also be binned, freeing up considerable vertical space. That particular fat-finger button is completely redundant as we already have a "create" beside the notification indicator in the top panel.

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And to back up further still:

19 minutes ago, Deddly said:

I can't really see a benefit to having the forums list stretched out across the entire screen.

The advantage is that they can then be one line rather than 3+ (and padding), so one doesn't have to scroll down so far. Not such a big deal on the landing page perhaps, but saving of much scrollwheel wear on the forum at large.

 

Edited October 22, 2020 by steve_v

[RealKerbal3x]

12 minutes ago, Deddly said:

though the devblogs etc on the home page don't bother me, since I can't really see a benefit to having the forums list stretched out across the entire screen.

I'm not seeing the devblogs list on the right side of the screen anymore, has that been removed? I still see a 'developer articles' tab at the top of the screen near the logo but that list at the side appears to have gone.

[Deddly]

9 minutes ago, steve_v said:

That's my recollection as well.

In case anyone wants a source for this, I found the old announcement here. The relevant text from @KasperVld:

Quote

vBulletin 4 is an aging platform, which only receives legacy support and it's showing its age in many ways: backend integration of the different systems is poor, security with the vBulletin platform is becoming an increasing concern and the forum lacks support for many modern techniques, requiring quite a few workarounds to get some things working. We have tried updating to vBulletin 5 previously, but that failed hopelessly and wouldn't take away the security concerns. We've compared many forum packages and IPS 4 came out on top both for us on a technical side and for (at least we think) the community as a whole.

So it looks like, for undisclosed reasons, IPS came out on top of all the options available at the time. I honestly don't think it's realistic to expect them to migrate to an entirely new system, but we can at least hope that the tweaking continues so the final result is not worse than the previous one.

7 minutes ago, RealKerbal3x said:

I'm not seeing the devblogs list on the right side of the screen anymore, has that been removed? I still see a 'developer articles' tab at the top of the screen near the logo but that list at the side appears to have gone.

Even on the front page?

[RealKerbal3x]

2 minutes ago, Deddly said:

Even on the front page?

I just turned the Stylish dark theme I was using off and they reappeared. Weird.

@HebaruSan could you take a look at that? Using the regular forum theme is blinding

[steve_v]

10 minutes ago, Deddly said:

for undisclosed reasons

My speculation: Shiny marketing, reactive design (because someone can't be bothered with a separate mobile layout), and a "Just leave everything to us" corporate support policy. AKA, the usual reasons to just buy a one size fits all shrinkwrap solution.

It sure sounds easy, and managers lap this stuff up. The downside is that it's one size fits all, you have to pay for themes or someone's time to hack around all the idiocy later, and if an update screws things up, you're well, screwed.

If this forum was built on an open source PHP solution, you would be seeing a bunch of patches (and maybe even a complete theme) by yours truly in this thread. Since it's not, all I can do is complain.

 

5 minutes ago, RealKerbal3x said:

I just turned the Stylish dark theme I was using off and they reappeared. Weird.

It might be wise to hold off on using or creating stylesheet overrides until they've finished buggering about with it, things are bound to break randomly until it settles down.

Edited October 22, 2020 by steve_v

[RealKerbal3x]

6 minutes ago, steve_v said:

It might be wise to hold off on using or creating stylesheet overrides until they've finished buggering about with it, things are bound to break randomly until it settles down.

Yeah, fair enough. I just wish there was a built-in dark theme so that I could avoid using the forums as a high-intensity light source without having to install a browser extension.

[steve_v]

8 minutes ago, RealKerbal3x said:

I just wish there was a built-in dark theme

phpBB has built-in support for per-user themes... Just sayin'.

Oh yeah, that's right, we're stuck with a proprietary monstrosity so we can't have nice things like that unless we get all Chuck Norris on the browser side. Oh well, good job on the software selection I guess.

Edited October 22, 2020 by steve_v

[RealKerbal3x]

2 minutes ago, steve_v said:

phpBB has built-in support for per-user themes... Just sayin'.

Oh yeah, that's right, we're stuck with a proprietary monstrosity so we can't have nice things like that. Oh well, good job on the software selection I guess.

I'm pretty sure even this forum software has support for themes - at least on the old version of the forum UI there was a dropdown for themes at the bottom, but the only themes available were the default (ie, blinding white) and a copy of the default for some reason. All it would take for the forum team to get a nice comfortable dark background would probably be shelling out $20 on some Invision online store, but they haven't done that.

[tater]

Thanks for the improvements so far, it doesn't make me want to instantly close the window now. At least I have a huge monitor, so the white space is not critical (it would be less good on my laptop).

[Deddly]

4 hours ago, steve_v said:

The advantage is that they can then be one line rather than 3+ (and padding), so one doesn't have to scroll down so far. Not such a big deal on the landing page perhaps, but saving of much scrollwheel wear on the forum at large.

 

I missed this part. On my screen, every section of the forums list is already on a single line, like @AlamoVampire's screenshot here:

If the white(grey) space on the sides, the featured livestreamers box and the devblogs box were gone, how would that show more information on each line?

[The_Arcitect]

I like the redesign. It makes the site look "cleaner".

[DStaal]

20 hours ago, Kerminator1000 said:

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.

I haven't seen any changes in the way the email is laid out - just the content.  Before it was the whole post, now it's the first line.

[Mikenike]

12 hours ago, Dman979 said:

Yes, it has updated and changed as the IT person is responding to everyone's requests.

Everyone, please keep in mind that this is their job, not a hobby, and they mostly work normal business hours. He is making changes, and updating things when he can, but it's not instantaneous.

Please continue to list your concerns, so we can address them (if possible). An official dark mode is probably not possible for now, but I can't make guarantees one way or the other: I simply don't do backend stuff.

When was the last time the forums had a major update like this?? Ive been around for like 2 yrs, and I never seen a change till now

Also, nice to see your back again man, you've been missed

[steve_v]

2 hours ago, Deddly said:

every section of the forums list is already on a single line

If by "single line" you mean "two lines so as to match the height of the icons and avatars", sure.
"Announcements" for example has the sub title with a description below it, on the sort-of left of the page. Then on the right you have a post count with the word "posts" below it, and the most recent thread title with the username below. Two lines because avatars and (identical) icons, a waste of both screen space and bandwidth... Though in this day and age of putting meaningless graphics on everything, probably forgivable.

Now note the ellipsis on the right because the thread title doesn't fit on the page, if the sidepane wasn't there you would be able to see the whole thing without relying on the hover tooltip. Hell, if it simply had a reasonable size allocated to it rather than being right-justified with a gaping void in the middle of the page you'd get most of it too.

Two lines, and at least another two lines of vertical padding between entries. Topic title truncated to make room for.... A bunch of white space.
 

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59 minutes ago, Mikenike said:

When was the last time the forums had a major update like this??

November 2015, with the switch from VB to IPS. Lots of people hated it then too, for much the same reasons as in this thread.
It took quite some time to get to a theme and layout that wasn't completely horrible, and apparently we're starting again from scratch on that for some unfathomable reason.

----
Good to see the post editor is as janky as ever too, I just had it lock up with an unremovable "paste as plain text instead" prompt (and nothing actually pasted) when trying to edit in that extra quote there.
Can we please have a non-javascript input method and BBCode support back already?

Also, please retrieve the edit and report buttons from that ridiculous hamburger menu and put them back where they belong. A menu for two entries when you have all that empty space available is insane.

Edited October 22, 2020 by steve_v

[Dman979]

56 minutes ago, Mikenike said:

When was the last time the forums had a major update like this?? Ive been around for like 2 yrs, and I never seen a change till now

I wouldn't classify this as a major change. Visually, it was (and is) quite jarring to a lot of users, but as far as I can tell, the bones of the forum are still the same. We're still using IPS, WYSIWYG editing, and no posts were lost. The forum is actually updated quite frequently (more frequently than some of us update our computers), and this seems to be a case of IPS folding a UI theme change into the newest bugfixing patch.

The last, REALLY big migration was in 2015, when we switched from vBulletin.

[HebaruSan]

6 hours ago, RealKerbal3x said:

I just turned the Stylish dark theme I was using off and they reappeared. Weird.

@HebaruSan could you take a look at that? Using the regular forum theme is blinding

Yes, my Stylish override removes the sidebar because I don't find anything in there useful (it's even worse on the All Activity screen, where it's just a Newsletter announcement that I'll never sign up for in exchange for making every post 40% narrower). If you want it back, this is the line to remove:

#ipsLayout_sidebar,

[steve_v]

1 minute ago, Dman979 said:

WYSIWYG

I think you mean WYSI(Usually)WYG... Unless you're trying to quote or edit a post on mobile of course, in which case it's WYSI(Rarely)WYG, with screwball autoscrolling that pushes the thing you're editing off the page every time you manually move the cursor for added entertainment value.

[Deddly]

16 minutes ago, steve_v said:

I think you mean WYSI(Usually)WYG... Unless you're trying to quote or edit a post on mobile of course, in which case it's WYSI(Rarely)WYG, with screwball autoscrolling that pushes the thing you're editing off the page every time you manually move the cursor for added entertainment value.

The best bit is trying to remove a quote box or a user tag on mobile. Having said that, it's still WYSIWYG for me, I get what I see, but not what I want

[kerbiloid]

The new UI makes me start worrying if there is already my shadow burnt on the wall behind.

 

[Deddly]

59 minutes ago, steve_v said:

Also, please retrieve the edit and report buttons from that ridiculous hamburger menu and put them back where they belong. A menu for two entries when you have all that empty space available is insane.

Oh believe me, as a moderator who needs to use tools like that often, I wish for this more than anything else. 

[RealKerbal3x]

4 minutes ago, Deddly said:

Oh believe me, as a moderator who needs to use tools like that often, I wish for this more than anything else. 

Is it possible to return those buttons to where they belong, or is that just part of the forum software update?