Coming Soon: New Message Board Layout

Two things

1. I write a post and hit send and no post is made. It just resets to the blank post screen. Unforchinitly this is a random problem. I can not make it happen regularly.

2. When editing a post oandthe content is larger than the editing window and you are editing something at the beginning of the post as soon as you try to type the editing window scrolled to the end of the post so you can not see what you are editing. You have to edit from memory then scroll up and see what you have done then edit and repeat until you get the edit correct. It is impossible to add large edits as you can not see what you are typing. 

test test test 

dean1484 said:

2. When editing a post oandthe content is larger than the editing window and you are editing something at the beginning of the post as soon as you try to type the editing window scrolled to the end of the post so you can not see what you are editing. You have to edit from memory then scroll up and see what you have done then edit and repeat until you get the edit correct. It is impossible to add large edits as you can not see what you are typing. 

I have seen this too... on Chrome on an iPad4 running 10.3.3.

Just tried it on Chrome running on a Chromebox, and no issue.

edited to put correct iOS version

My iPhone 7 seems to be where these issues are happening. 

In reply to sleepyhead :

Thanks for the info. I'll pass this along.

There are multiple similar issues related to posting from an iPhone 7. 

The site seems to ignore default iPhone settings for punctuation. So, a double space at the end of a sentence will not make a period. Starting a new sentence or paragraph will not begin with a capital letter. Today I made a post that was a reply, and it made all the text boldface. 

But it's not consistent. It seems to be much worse when editing or back spacing and trying to overwrite. 

Dean is right about esiting a post a post and it jumping- super annoying  

I miss the preview before posting. Was it removed on purpose? I tend to write long posts with many pictures and I always catch something wrong while reading the preview

2_3 said:

I miss the preview before posting. Was it removed on purpose? I tend to write long posts with many pictures and I always catch something wrong while reading the preview

I'm going to guess that with the text-entry box doing all the markup work so that links/bold/etc "just work"... that the web developers said "preview isn't required" since "what's in the box is how it should look when it's posted"...

but that's, just like my {guess}, man

Oh, yeah, that makes sense. It even shows the images

Be nice if the forum remembered you and only showed the new threads since the last visit...

I just updated my build thread with some pictures for the first time since the new design and I'm loving the "add a picture" button.  It's really easy to copy/paste the link to the picture and then go to the next tab and copy/paste the link to the album.  If you made any changes at all to that interface, it might be even nicer to have those two things on the same tab, but as it is, I love it way much.

I know is a stupid little thing but thank you for changing the Post button back to saying Post instead of Save.

sleepyhead said:

2_3 said:

I miss the preview before posting. Was it removed on purpose? I tend to write long posts with many pictures and I always catch something wrong while reading the preview

I'm going to guess that with the text-entry box doing all the markup work so that links/bold/etc "just work"... that the web developers said "preview isn't required" since "what's in the box is how it should look when it's posted"...

but that's, just like my {guess}, man

Mostly correct, the different effects and images show up in the actual post you're typing now.

wae said:

I just updated my build thread with some pictures for the first time since the new design and I'm loving the "add a picture" button.  It's really easy to copy/paste the link to the picture and then go to the next tab and copy/paste the link to the album.  If you made any changes at all to that interface, it might be even nicer to have those two things on the same tab, but as it is, I love it way much.

Glad you like that. It'll get even better in a couple weeks when we start rolling out phase two.

Ed,  It looks like the "Readers Rides" has disappeared.

(or I'm an idiot and don't see it) Accessing from a Windows desktop machine.

Indy-Guy said:

Ed,  It looks like the "Readers Rides" has disappeared.

(or I'm an idiot and don't see it) Accessing from a Windows desktop machine.

From the sidebar? I can see it. Is anyone else not seeing it? (second to last item in the right sidebar)

Sidebar ?

Ed Higginbotham said:

Indy-Guy said:

Ed,  It looks like the "Readers Rides" has disappeared.

(or I'm an idiot and don't see it) Accessing from a Windows desktop machine.

From the sidebar? I can see it. Is anyone else not seeing it? (second to last item in the right sidebar)

Oh, now I see it.

Might I suggest some formatting change there.  It's not clear that it's "click-able". When I see it now, it only looks like you guys are high-lighting a members ride, not "hey click here to see members rides."  If that makes sense.

Either way, thanks for pointing it out.

I love you GRM guys. I do. I love the forum, I've learned a lot here and have had lots of fun. I see my subscription as a way to support the forum -- because interacting with all you like-minded nut jobs is great fun.  :)

All that said, I hate to be a wet blanket, but the truth is the truth. The new forum design is just painful to use on the desktop. I'd like pretend that this doesn't have an effect on my participation here, but it does. I just don't want to deal with how hard to look at the new design is. It's damned unpleasant.  It makes me want to not come here and participate anymore. And that for me, anyway is what's happening.

In reply to LuxInterior :

Is there anything in particular that makes it hard to use? Is it just new look? 

In reply to Ed Higginbotham :

Scrolling on my galaxy 5 is very jumpy in the new format.   Thought it was my phone, couple of  generations and 3 years old, but I am not seeing the same jumpy scrolling when I go to the site via classic Motorsports. I also don see it when I'm viewing barnfinds. Typically it's a first world problem and I'd live with it but I had a bad day at work today my head is killing me and the jumping is is just adding to the pain.

Ed,

My biggest issue is that there is just way to much white space between everything. For the PC and large phones and tablets visually everything needs to be tightened up to make it look good.  However if you do this then everything will be so close together that it will make it difficult to use on a standard cell phone.  I can see how the new format is much more user friendly on a phone (on a regular sized phone).  I have one of the large I7's and a large Apple tablet and the formatting is ok to navigate on the I7 (still to large for me but nothing that is worth changing).  With my stumpy finger it makes navigation better and I can see how it would work better on a smaller phone. My windows phone is a smaller phone and the new format works well for my stumpy fingers.  Where it fails is in my tablet and on the PC.  There is just to much space between things.  You are looking around the page and there is just a huge amount of nothing.  It is a game of perpetual scrolling to find things and to navigate the site.  

I completely get that it is a compromise and it seems that you are leaning towards making the site more orientated towards cell phone users (with standard size phones).  I assume that you have done some sort of study or the site software can tell the devise that is being used and you keep statistics on this.  I think what people are missing is that what is visually pleasing (on both a phone and a PC) is not user friendly on a phone.  I really don't have an answer for you on how to make it better.  It is always going to be a compromise between the two.   

Am I off the mark with my thoughts on this?

I'm pretty sure the old color and contrast helped break things up and make it more readable, partly addressing Dean's concerns. 

I have an iPhone 7 (not the S).  That's the smaller screen (normal cell phone)  

This is much harder to read, scroll, list, and find things than the old format.

But I really can't give you solid positive feedback because I can't get past the terrible editing issues and default punctuation issues previously discussed .  I can't spend enough time here to come up with constructive feedback until those things are fixed- it's really unuseable .

i just retyped this post 12 times trying to get it so you could at least read it. I really don't have enough time to try to do this, and am surprised at how hard this is.   

Just for FYI purposes.

On the cheap desktop in the garage with windoz 10, 24" monitor, it's very usable.

On my office desktop on windoz 8.1, 30" monitor, it's very usable.

On my laptop windoz 8.1, very usable.

On my LG v20 cell phone Android 7.0, very usable. 

Edit: All of these are running Chrome. 

I wouldn't mind a off white background, but it's not a deal breaker. I did like the preview window, also not a deal breaker. The font in the post body could be a point or two bigger, not a deal breaker. 

Over all, I'm actually starting to like it. It has taken some getting use to, but that's mostly because it's just different rather than actual problems. 

I no longer think its unusable.  I've gotten a bit used to it.

I'd just call it 'frustrating'.  I can navigate and use it fine (except quote button doesn't work sometimes), its just frustrating that its easier to read and use for some reason in the old format, despite offering much more content density.

Somethings seem spread too thin while others are jumbo for no good reason. (Viewing on large Android phone and 8" tablet). Also, what side bar!? I'd love it if some of this excess white space within the thread were taken up by a side bar that enticed me to go look at awesome articles and cool build threads.