New forum layout a work of evil!

[H@Mouse]

Baldrick, PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE, kill this bastard design before it takes root!

I've been struggling trying to post here for about 45 minutes, and the last post just outright vanished! It asked me to log in after submitting it, then brought me out to a new reply screen with all the text gone. I scrambled to the main list and saw my reply definitely did not make it out.

First off, you're killing off all Netscape users. It may work with 6.x, but on the older clients on systems like my speedy (at least other sites' forums) 350MHz, it takes MINUTES to navigate msg to msg, forum to forum!

With Javascript turned off, things display properly in various resolutions. With it turned on, everything is set for 1600 width! I'm in 800x600 and I literally have to page back and forth to see things!

To reply to your "forum design" post, I thought Netscape locked up so I killed it and tried again. Nope! It just takes that long now with the new php script design!

Why it ate my last reply, I don't know, and if it does this again, ARGH!

BTW: why the tiny little text box for composing?

FIRST: if you have javascript enabled in the browser, you GET NO TEXT BOX to type your msg!
SECOND: if you have it off, you get one, but it's so narrow, it's borderline USELESS! You have to page up and down constantly. In my longer oratives, I'd have to page through DOZENS of tiny-little-text-window-pages to see what I'm discussing! This one ALONE is about 6-8! I'll be forced to type my msgs/posts in a separate text editor and cut and paste it into that tiny box for posting. (Which is what I'm doing right now!)

Ah! I think I see what causes the new bastard forum code to throw out my posts: if I don't LOGIN FIRST, it throws out everything I've written, never to be seen again, and prompts me to login, then throws up a blank reply form again! The old forum DEFINITELY DID NOT DO THAT!

Hmm. Now what? It makes me log in again to create this new post (since I've had so much trouble trying to reply to your old thread)... what the?

Ok, couple minor issues: why all the wasted space?

On the forum selection list, all the text on the left makes the groups considerably more spread out... you have to spend time paging up and back to read what's covered in each forum. Granted, once you get used to what each forums covers, it's just a little wasted time scrolling further, but to newbies trying to read it all? You'll turn them off by doing this... probably get a slight increase in incorrect forum postings, but nothing notable.

Once selecting a forum, and the list of topics FINALLY draws itself up... it's spread out, much worse than the forums listing. Again, just makes viewers waste a boatload of time scrolling around, trying to find their topics of interest.

Please bring back the old forums. What was wrong with them? They're clearly far, far better than this monstrosity! I appreciate the work you or others put in to try to improve them, but, the old design was much better, more refined, and you could USE it fairly painlessly.

I have SOME history in contributing not only questions, but useful info to these forums, please, I don't want to be forced to stop using them...

H@

[Mrhide]

i actually kinda like it ! and i haven't stepped in here for 9 months...

(reason : http://www.vpforums.com )

nice smilies !!



just checking !! bye !

[pinoy2201]

this is actually a very good new version of phpBB i like the new faetures and new smilies

[d4n13l]

The forum works perfectly for me. It has some nice new features but it will take a bit of time to get used to it.
BTW, I use Opera browser and it works flawlessly - that is true for the this machine (P3 500) and on my girlfriends machine (Cyrix 233 of all things!). For me, the pages load just as fast as they always have done.

[Baldrick]

i know that the forum loads slow and looks like shit in netscape 4...i'm working to fix it as best as I can. i had to upgrade because the old forum was very bad mysql optimized so it killed the server when too many was browsing or searched.

[vitualis]

If anything, the forums load up faster than before on my dial-up connection (IE6 and Opera 5)...

Out of curiosity, just what is it that is making these pages load up slow in Netscape 4?

Regards.

[Baldrick]

i fixed the width problems in netscape 4.xx, it was always like 1600pixels wide but i still dont know why it loads so slow. it works better for other sites with the forum...