New Style Forum Layout

[digitalchromakey]

Hate it, difficult to speed scan - everything now just a blur so it's really difficult to speed scan.

Hate the avatar on the right at the top level everywhere - totally un-necessary vanity feature.

Now it's nearly Impossible to quickly pick out the different types of threads/posts and thus to easy differentiate between them.

Lost my spellcheck .. grrrrrr.

Don't like the preview a post being hidden and extra clicks

I know from previous upgrades that once you guys change that's it - but this time really no like, no like, no like ...................

[wpcoe]

Forgot a third (& edited to add: fourth & fifth) issue:

(3) On the list of forum thread titles, in Opera & Chrome there is a very faint grey line separating the topics, in IE9, there is no such line. I would request (a) the separator line be a little darker and ( the line show up in IE9.

Hmmm. Even though I unchecked "Enable emoticons," it still converts b + ) to a smiley.

(Oh, just noticed that in the compose reply box that applying a font style no longer displays the style tags, but formats the text in the compose reply box. Not sure if I like that, or not....)

(4) On the list of forum thread titles, there is now an added line with information on who/when the thread was started. That info is still available by hovering over the thread title, so why add an additional line of clutter?

(5) On the forum list, the first column is rather narrow, making for very short text lines. Maybe, rather than fixed pixel length, use a % of available screen width? e.g. On my 1050px wide screen, see how everything is squished up in the first column:

Edited December 22, 2011 by wpcoe

[ignis]

What happened ? every upgrade [new look] gets worse and more difficult to use...... Why ?

I have 5 Topics open since 6:45 this is the 1st one to open...!!!!!!

Now takes 2 hours to open a topic on ThaiVisa.

Something is very wrong here...

I DO NOT have all the adverts thankfully what I do have is loads of empty boxes all over the place

[smokie36]

Too much white!

[wandrinstar]

Bloody Orrid. The Contrast is completely wrong.

[wpcoe]

Too much white!

Careful with that one -- we could end up with more ads!

[longball53098]

This new format is quite a shock. TV is the third thing I do after making coffee and checking emails and I thought my PC was having a problem this morning.

I don't like the missing drop down at the bottom of each topic page to allow me to quickly go to another topic area. The rest I can endure and get used to,,,,,,,ads are no problem for me as I have a way to ignore them.

[dantilley]

Overall the new look has potential I think, if a few of these kinks can be ironed out. There are some nice new features.

A few bugs though:

• Animated GIF avatars are no longer animated
  
• When you click on "View my content" under your username in the top right, the list of posts you see is cut off in March 2011.
  
• When you hover over a member's username you see an old status update which, for many people, I think they may have forgot the had set. E.g. I forgot I set mine many months ago.
  
• Also when you hover yourself you should have a quick way of editing this status.
  
• In fact, the status is difficult to edit or delete even from your main profile page.
  

It seems to auto-save our posts now as we type. How can these auto-saved versions be retrieved again?

[wpcoe]

• Animated GIF avatars are no longer animated
  

In many cases, I view that as a welcome new feature...

[xthAi76s]

Contrast is a bit tricky esp the replies box.

When I click on my content, I do not see anything even though I have many posts.

Everything else looks good. You know people don't like change -- esp old people, so you'll get mostly complaints. But, it's alright.

[dantilley]

• Animated GIF avatars are no longer animated
  

In many cases, I view that as a welcome new feature...

On the old version you could always stop animated GIFs by pressing Esc on any page.

Edited December 22, 2011 by dantilley

[AleG]

Yikes! so much wasted space. The thread titles take about 3 times more screen space than before, the preview button is awful, before you could just hover the mouse over the thread title and see a preview of the text, now is click... waaaaaaaitttt... intrusive preview panel pushes its way in and then you have to click on the button again to hide it. Its an awful waste of time, definitely a few steps backwards.

Mostly it bores me to have to scroll up and down so much. Would be nice to have the option to switch to a more compact display.

[Oberkommando]

Don't like the skin and there's far too many ads.

As well as Thai Visa I use another up and coming Thailand expat forum where there's no advertising allowed and the skin is a beautiful dark colour.

[naboo]

Logged on to the mobile view through my Android phone earlier and all looked a little better, some ironing out of the sizing of the text and icons under the menu button at the top of the page needed and that seemed to be good.

Found this thread and all the moaning, thought it might be a little worse here. Logged on and I don't see the problem. OK, I don't allow google ads to be displayed on my computer so I don't see a million ads, but to me everything seems fine. Will have to get myself an avatar though.

Oooh! Just got a message pop up over screen that someone has just posted a new reply..... If I click show will my posting disappear or will the new post be opened in a new tab/window? Too late, gone now.

[geriatrickid]

The bigger fonts will be welcomed by many, especially those with vision problems.

Unfortunately, the blow up gives the impression of more ads and a "busier" workspace. Perhaps reducing the font size by 10% will fix that perception.

[wpcoe]

• Animated GIF avatars are no longer animated
  

In many cases, I view that as a welcome new feature...

On the old version you could always stop animated GIFs by pressing Esc on any page.

Hey, thanks for that forum trivia! I hope it still works if/when the fix the current "problem."

[autan]

I have to agree with some of the other posters. The old forum was a thing of beauty, the new forum is the morning after when you wake up next to her. Roll back to the previous version pleeezze.

[Encid]

I like the new forum look.

And it seems to load pages much faster than the old version.

[VocalNeal]

As it wasn't broken why fix it? Some IT nerds believe they have to change sh1t just for the sake of it.

Oh well there is always T*

[pattayadingo]

10 minutes in and my eyes are aching. Not because it is too bright but maybe the layout.

[wpcoe]

(5) On the forum list, the first column is rather narrow, making for very short text lines. Maybe, rather than fixed pixel length, use a % of available screen width? e.g. On my 1050px wide screen, see how everything is squished up in the first column:

Too late to edit that item now. I see that the squishing of the columns is due to the column of ads at the right side of the screen, higher up on the page.

So.... "never mind!"

[Insight]

I fear change.

Especially when it kills the Android/Mobile version, and kills the forum dropdown box on the desktop version (priorities should be in the order stated ).

Going to give the look'n'feel a week or so before having a rant. Seems like many websites are now moving to this clearer, spread-out format (Gmail/Google Reader etc), which suggests that it is popular and preferred. Can't say I see the attraction personally to the old versions.

Humbug.

[sbk]

Yes, change is difficult but many important security features have been added by Invision to this upgrade and were necessary.

Please try to keep the complaints specific, ie bugs you have encountered , recommended changes etc

We all agree the colors are not great and that is being tweaked now.

As for the ad layout, as george has pointed out, the ad numbers remain the same, the placement has changed. I am sure its great for other small forums to be able to run an ad free forum but Thaivisa is rather expensive to run and is free for you to use.

[merijn]

Where is the scoll box at the bottom to switch between the forums ?

Please bring this back as it is very usefull, otherwise i would like to stick with the old version.

[mijan24]

I assume this is a new feature - it certainly confused me thought it was a typical computer gliche,

[dantilley]

Back up again after another update I see - the old bugs still seem to be in place though.

Another one for the list, I think topic reply notification emails have stopped again.

[Beetlejuice]

My son is colorblind and viewing this layout is going to be rather difficult for him.

Many of the complaints on here are from those that are not too advanced on their computers and haven’t worked out the new format placements yet, but I think there should be a choice of skins or the facility to allow to return to the classic view.

At least this would give the viewers a more personal feel to the forums and a format they are more comfortable with.

Appears that this mish mash has a lot of creases to be ironed out and I would expect that business will slow down until they are.

Should be a notice: Normal service will be resumed as soon as possible.

[Guest]

While you are modifying the site, why not to put the Pinned topics to the bottom of the page?

Those are nice, but only for the first time users, repeated users look at those very rarely, I think.

OR one option would be that only the topics, which have unread content would be shown. In that case, the pinned topics would come visible only when there is new content. Same would modification would be great for other topics as well.

This could be one visible button "show only topics with new content on this forum".

[george]

Thanks for your feedback so far. I have forwarded your valuable suggestions to the tech people. Some issues will be fixed right away and others will be updated in a software refresh asap.

[Orac]

Overall I do like the new format but just a couple of missing features from the old version (probably down to my settings??) are when I used to click a topic I had already viewed it would to take me to the first unread articicle since I last opened it - now it is taking back to the beginning of the thread. Also, as others have mentioned, the Android version on my SGII just shows the standard web page rather than one that was optimised for the small screen before.