This might have been discussed prior to be joining the effort but I wondered if there was any feedback / lessons learned gathered from folk on what they liked /disliked about the old forum and the current Google groups?
The old forum was before my time so I have no idea what is looked like. How similar is the new forum compared to the old forum?
Are there any additional areas of focus that we want to add with this new forum e.g. helping to convert non-WCC forum members to WCC members?
Great that is useful. Interesting looking at the post counts for the various categories. How many years was this active?
Tom, thanks for linking that. I was trying to think how to explain my initial reaction to the new forum (on all fronts, mostly positive but a few “could we somehow improve ____” a bit).
One area I’m wondering about is that, from my perspective, the old forum had masterful use of space. You could see 15+ messages at any one time, and could always see the higher order categories/link options off on the right hand side. Could we somehow reduce the amount of blank space that is currently on the new forum (and thereby increase the number of messages/replies that are viewable at any one time?). This might reduce the need for scrolling down topic chains quite a bit. But, maybe this is built into the platform/non-changeable?
We are still looking at changing things. I am certain there are things to be improved. Layout is not 100% open to change, there are limits to how the software works, but we can look at things.
Please let us know your comments on anything.
So @bdoberst the categories off to the side was probably done on the old forum via Frames. Frames are likely not going to be possible because that would mess up how this works on Phones.
Having this work really well on Phones was one of our big requirements, but that does mean some compromises must be made. Discourse works really well on phones and we are pleased with it.
How many messages can appear, and scrolling may be something we can look at. I will talk with @tcauduro
We will never get to a point where we please everyone with how the visuals look.
I have some vision issues with cluttered text being really hard to read on a screen (for some reason I have no issues with print media.) The white space between posts actually works really well for me. I didn’t make any changes to the default layout to have things this way, but I’m glad they are the way they are.
I understand not everyone might like it, but I’d rather not go down the rabbit hole of trying to fine tune every little visual attribute in order to please every user’s individual preference. It’s a task doomed to fail.
If there are some concerns from a disabliity or accessiblity perspective, I’m happy to dive in and help out as best I can.
Discourse currently borrows much of its design from current best practices in order to be readable on as many different platforms as it can (i.e., phones, tablets, laptops, chromebooks, microwaves, etc.)
Maybe not what you were looking for, but you could try something out. If you go into your preferences and select the Interface tab there is an option to adjust your Text Size
I have not tried this but am going to see how it works.
Yup, helps a bit…
