In no particular order, and I will remove items from this list as they are resolved:
1. Fixed-width layout is bad. The new site, as with every site that's related to Curse, has font sizes that are way, way too small for me to read without squinting from an inch away from the screen. Therefore, I use my browser's zoom function to enlarge the page. I'm currently using 160% zoom. If I were more tired, or had been coding all day, I'd probably be using 180% or even 200% zoom. With the old WowAce layout, the page's width was always 100% of the browser viewport's width, so it shrunk (relatively speaking) when zoomed in... not to mention the fact that I didn't need to zoom in as much in the first place because the text was a reasonable size. With the new fixed-width layout, the layout does not adapt to the (again, relatively) changing viewport size, causing horizontal scrolling. Horizontal scrolling, I think we can all agree, is bad. Possible solutions: use relative units to specify the layout's width, or just make the damn letters bigger. (ticket)
2. Puke-colored background is bad. I know it's the "official" color, but I'm sorry, I've hated it since day one. It is overwhelmingly reminiscent of vomit, it's dark enough that the text has insufficient contrast for comfortable reading, and the "warm" hue is tiring to my eyes. On the old forums, I used the "SMF Default" theme. The cool, light blue-gray hues were soothing, had sufficient contrast with the text, and didn't remind me of unpleasant bodily substances.
3. Forum theme does not distinguish between sticky and non-sticky topics very well on the topic list. The old forums made this very clear, by adding a thick divider row between sticky and non-sticky topics, and giving sticky topics a darker background.
4. Forum theme is too "busy" with dark lines everywhere. This is less a usability issue and more an aesthetic issue, but I'll post it anyway. The borders on every table cell are thicker and more visually prominent than the actual content of the table cells (text and links). A much more aesthetically pleasing solution to the issue of separating rows is to alternate the background colors with slightly different darknesses. Or, you could just tone down the border color.
5. No easy way to view updates to threads I'm interested in. The old SMF forums had a "view new replies to your posts" link at the top of every page. vB buries subscriptions at the bottom of the User Control Panel. The link in the header requires at least two clicks and additional mouse movement, and does not exist at all when JavaScript is disabled. Suggestion: see #6.
6. Scripted dropdowns are bad. This a forum. It's not MySpace. There is no need for buddy lists, social groups, and photo albums. There is no need for all of this garbage to clutter up the main navigation to the extent that a dropdown must be implemented to prevent them from taking up 12 lines of screen space. Dropdowns that only work when JavaScript is enabled are a huge accessibility no-no. Even with JavaScript enabled, the dropdowns are slow, clunky, and annoying. Suggestions: get rid of the "Quick Links" dropdown in the header, add links to "Subscribed Threads" and "Private Messages", and move infrequently used links such as "Calendar", "FAQ", and "Members List" to the footer. Thread view pages would need significantly more work, as they are plagued by tons of dropdowns with less obvious alternatives.
7. Related functions are not grouped on the page, especially for moderator functions. Some moderator functions are in a scriped dropdown at the top of the page, while others are in a standard dropdown form element at the bottom of the page. Suggestion: place all of the functions in the non-scripted dropdown at the bottom of the page.
8. Natural text links > tiny icon links. For example, look at the quotes in a post. SMF made the whole "originally posted by ..." text a link to the quoted post; vB gives me a tiny, nearly invisible icon at the end of the text. For another example, look at a forum index. SMF made the whole date of the last post in each thread a link to that profile; vB adds a tiny, nearly invisible icon at the end of the last poster's name, which is itself a link to that user's profile. Natural text links give users a bigger area on which to click (important for users with visual or motor impairments, and still easier for unimpaired users), takes the guesswork out of navigation ("try it an see" is almost always a bad strategy for anything on a website), and reduces page load times and bandwidth usage. Icons are difficult to see and click for users with any kind of impairment, difficult to guess the function of, take longer to load, and use more bandwidth. There's really no argument in favor of using them. They don't even look good; they just add more clutter to an already information- and link-dense page.
9. No ability to insert quotes from topic review on post form. This means that before I start replying to anything, I have to go through every post and click the ones I want to "multi quote". I greatly preferred SMF's "insert quote" links on each post in the topic review. I usually just click "quote" on one post, type a reply, select all and copy, hit back, repeat until I've quoted all of the posts I want. Even though it's more time-consuming and more physical work, I find it easier overall than having to figure out everything to respond to ahead of time.
10. No navigation at the bottom of the page. This means that once I'm done reading a thread, I have to go all the way back to the top of the page to navigate to the thread index, the forum index, or anywhere else that isn't the page I was previously visiting (which more likely than not was the previous page in the thread). Suggestion: Duplicate at least the breadcrumb navigation at the bottom of the page, and add a "Back to top" link.
11. Expected functions have cryptic or misleading names that make them appear to not be the expected function. A great example of this is the quick reply form when viewing a topic. Nearly every forum I have ever used has a "Submit" button and a "Preview" button. What does vB have? "Submit" and "Go Advanced". What the hell does "Go Advanced" mean? It's a vB-specific term that has absolutely no meaning to someone unfamiliar with vB. It's certainly not obvious that it gives a preview of what you've entered in the text area. Even when you figure out what it does mean (switch from this form to a form with additional formatting helper buttons) it still doesn't say anything about a preview. I'd be willing to bet that most people who are using quick-reply forms are using that instead of a full reply page because they don't need all of that extended UI to insert BBCode. If they wanted it, they'd just click "Reply" to go to the reply page instead of typing their post and then going to another page to apply formatting. "Preview" is a more natural label for the most common use of this function, and is immediately obvious to anyone who's ever used any forum software. Suggestion: Change the text on the "Go Advanced" button to "Preview."
12. No way to get to the full search tool without first running a "quick" search. As with the above, this is extremely unintuitive, especially for people without a great deal of experience using forums. Suggestion: Add a "Search" link to the main navigation bar. Also see #6.
13. Scripted image popups appear partially offscreen when the page is zoomed. This occurs regardless of where the originating thumbnail is on the screen when clicked. Scrolling the page causes the popup to close. Suggestions: don't use a scripted popup (they are invariably slower, less intuitive, and less accessible than just linking to the image), or use a script that works with basic browser accessibility functions like page zooming.
I absolutely promise you tickets our not ignored, we read them often and respond as we start work on things. We'll also be closing a lot in the upcoming weeks.
1) it is good and bad. Your points are absolutely valid and no I'm not quite happy with the current typography for readability and will be making it easier. But for the time being we *will* be staying with the fixed width style.
2) Puke? lol, first I heard salmon. But its parchment I swear! I'm aware that the current site design is kinda warm. On my list of long range ideas is to allow more themes per site. But I'm not sure how far out that is.
Also with all else that was changing I'm wanted to keep something of the old site, and really the colors are about all that's left.
3) Definitely valid. I'll talk to nev and see what we can do.
4) I'm not sure I agree with that. But I will look closer at it.
I use Firefox. On this site, and many others, I feel the text is much too small. Therefore, I use page-zoom. On the old site, it worked flawlessly. Here, apparently, the webmaster is stuck in 1999. My widescreen monitor is apparently not wide enough. To be intentionally annoying: "PLZ FIX NOW!"
For now, I *just* discovered (cause I was having to zoom in to read Phanx's post with tired/strained eyes, too) that in ff3, you can check "zoom text only" and then the graphics on the site do not change, just the text size.
BTW - the top-right tab (where it shows login status, etc for forums) has a gap in it. :(
For now, I *just* discovered (cause I was having to zoom in to read Phanx's post with tired/strained eyes, too) that in ff3, you can check "zoom text only" and then the graphics on the site do not change, just the text size.
BTW - the top-right tab (where it shows login status, etc for forums) has a gap in it. :(
1) it is good and bad. Your points are absolutely valid and no I'm not quite happy with the current typography for readability and will be making it easier. But for the time being we *will* be staying with the fixed width style.
It's just bad, all around. Any accessibility-aware web design resource will tell you so. :)
That said, if you must keep the fixed-width layout, make it the same width as CurseForge. I can zoom into 160% there without a horizontal scrollbar appearing.
2) Puke? lol, first I heard salmon. But its parchment I swear! I'm aware that the current site design is kinda warm. On my list of long range ideas is to allow more themes per site. But I'm not sure how far out that is.
Doesn't vBulletin support themes natively? Even just a color change on the current layout would be an improvement. And your "parchment" has always made me think "puke", lol.
For now, I *just* discovered (cause I was having to zoom in to read Phanx's post with tired/strained eyes, too) that in ff3, you can check "zoom text only" and then the graphics on the site do not change, just the text size.
I prefer Opera's "zoom everything" approach. It maintains the page's integrity, and prevents me fromt having to scroll 5 times as much vertically because there are now only 4 words per line in the narrow layout. :p
BTW - the top-right tab (where it shows login status, etc for forums) has a gap in it. :(
That too.
Some other things I dislike about vBulletin and/or every vBulletin theme I've ever used:
1. Natural text links > tiny icons. For example, look at the quotes in this post. SMF made the whole "originally posted by Name" text a link to the quoted post. vB gives me a tiny, nearly invisible icon at the end of the text.
2. No ability to insert quotes from topic review on post form. This means that before I start replying to anything, I have to go through every post and click the ones I want to "multi quote". I greatly preferred SMF's "insert quote" links on each post in the topic review.
About fixed-width: It sucks. As a compromise, you can do fluid / variable-width but have it expand to a fixed percentage of browser width. My guild's forum has sub-styles of each variable-width style that is a 75% width version for people that like narrower forum styles.
Better yet, give users the choice via vBulletin's style chooser functionality :p
For now, I *just* discovered (cause I was having to zoom in to read Phanx's post with tired/strained eyes, too) that in ff3, you can check "zoom text only" and then the graphics on the site do not change, just the text size.
Forum login is still squirrelly. I clicked to another page and was suddenly logged out. A dozen logins later, it seems to be sticking.
More small things that seemed to have been overlooked in the SMF -> vB transtion:
The "tongue smiley" emote no longer works with a capital P, only a lowercase p. This breaks all tongue smileys that were ever posted, and is counter to every forum I post on. I'm used to typing ": P", not ": p". Shouldn't take more than a few seconds to add?
The login is "stupid" and doesn't remember what page I was on when I logged in, dumping me unceremoniously at the forum index. I don't think this is a vBulletin issue in general, as I post on other vB forums that don't have this problem. It occurs both on my home computer and here on my work computer; both have referer logging enabled and no restrictions on cookies between subdomains.
Edit:
Here at work, the background is less vomit-colored, but it is a rather bright yellowish color. It's clearly a monitor color calibration, but it seems to be unpleasant everywhere. :p
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1. Fixed-width layout is bad. The new site, as with every site that's related to Curse, has font sizes that are way, way too small for me to read without squinting from an inch away from the screen. Therefore, I use my browser's zoom function to enlarge the page. I'm currently using 160% zoom. If I were more tired, or had been coding all day, I'd probably be using 180% or even 200% zoom. With the old WowAce layout, the page's width was always 100% of the browser viewport's width, so it shrunk (relatively speaking) when zoomed in... not to mention the fact that I didn't need to zoom in as much in the first place because the text was a reasonable size. With the new fixed-width layout, the layout does not adapt to the (again, relatively) changing viewport size, causing horizontal scrolling. Horizontal scrolling, I think we can all agree, is bad. Possible solutions: use relative units to specify the layout's width, or just make the damn letters bigger. (ticket)
2. Puke-colored background is bad. I know it's the "official" color, but I'm sorry, I've hated it since day one. It is overwhelmingly reminiscent of vomit, it's dark enough that the text has insufficient contrast for comfortable reading, and the "warm" hue is tiring to my eyes. On the old forums, I used the "SMF Default" theme. The cool, light blue-gray hues were soothing, had sufficient contrast with the text, and didn't remind me of unpleasant bodily substances.
3. Forum theme does not distinguish between sticky and non-sticky topics very well on the topic list. The old forums made this very clear, by adding a thick divider row between sticky and non-sticky topics, and giving sticky topics a darker background.
4. Forum theme is too "busy" with dark lines everywhere. This is less a usability issue and more an aesthetic issue, but I'll post it anyway. The borders on every table cell are thicker and more visually prominent than the actual content of the table cells (text and links). A much more aesthetically pleasing solution to the issue of separating rows is to alternate the background colors with slightly different darknesses. Or, you could just tone down the border color.
5. No easy way to view updates to threads I'm interested in. The old SMF forums had a "view new replies to your posts" link at the top of every page. vB buries subscriptions at the bottom of the User Control Panel. The link in the header requires at least two clicks and additional mouse movement, and does not exist at all when JavaScript is disabled. Suggestion: see #6.
6. Scripted dropdowns are bad. This a forum. It's not MySpace. There is no need for buddy lists, social groups, and photo albums. There is no need for all of this garbage to clutter up the main navigation to the extent that a dropdown must be implemented to prevent them from taking up 12 lines of screen space. Dropdowns that only work when JavaScript is enabled are a huge accessibility no-no. Even with JavaScript enabled, the dropdowns are slow, clunky, and annoying. Suggestions: get rid of the "Quick Links" dropdown in the header, add links to "Subscribed Threads" and "Private Messages", and move infrequently used links such as "Calendar", "FAQ", and "Members List" to the footer. Thread view pages would need significantly more work, as they are plagued by tons of dropdowns with less obvious alternatives.
7. Related functions are not grouped on the page, especially for moderator functions. Some moderator functions are in a scriped dropdown at the top of the page, while others are in a standard dropdown form element at the bottom of the page. Suggestion: place all of the functions in the non-scripted dropdown at the bottom of the page.
8. Natural text links > tiny icon links. For example, look at the quotes in a post. SMF made the whole "originally posted by ..." text a link to the quoted post; vB gives me a tiny, nearly invisible icon at the end of the text. For another example, look at a forum index. SMF made the whole date of the last post in each thread a link to that profile; vB adds a tiny, nearly invisible icon at the end of the last poster's name, which is itself a link to that user's profile. Natural text links give users a bigger area on which to click (important for users with visual or motor impairments, and still easier for unimpaired users), takes the guesswork out of navigation ("try it an see" is almost always a bad strategy for anything on a website), and reduces page load times and bandwidth usage. Icons are difficult to see and click for users with any kind of impairment, difficult to guess the function of, take longer to load, and use more bandwidth. There's really no argument in favor of using them. They don't even look good; they just add more clutter to an already information- and link-dense page.
9. No ability to insert quotes from topic review on post form. This means that before I start replying to anything, I have to go through every post and click the ones I want to "multi quote". I greatly preferred SMF's "insert quote" links on each post in the topic review. I usually just click "quote" on one post, type a reply, select all and copy, hit back, repeat until I've quoted all of the posts I want. Even though it's more time-consuming and more physical work, I find it easier overall than having to figure out everything to respond to ahead of time.
10. No navigation at the bottom of the page. This means that once I'm done reading a thread, I have to go all the way back to the top of the page to navigate to the thread index, the forum index, or anywhere else that isn't the page I was previously visiting (which more likely than not was the previous page in the thread). Suggestion: Duplicate at least the breadcrumb navigation at the bottom of the page, and add a "Back to top" link.
11. Expected functions have cryptic or misleading names that make them appear to not be the expected function. A great example of this is the quick reply form when viewing a topic. Nearly every forum I have ever used has a "Submit" button and a "Preview" button. What does vB have? "Submit" and "Go Advanced". What the hell does "Go Advanced" mean? It's a vB-specific term that has absolutely no meaning to someone unfamiliar with vB. It's certainly not obvious that it gives a preview of what you've entered in the text area. Even when you figure out what it does mean (switch from this form to a form with additional formatting helper buttons) it still doesn't say anything about a preview. I'd be willing to bet that most people who are using quick-reply forms are using that instead of a full reply page because they don't need all of that extended UI to insert BBCode. If they wanted it, they'd just click "Reply" to go to the reply page instead of typing their post and then going to another page to apply formatting. "Preview" is a more natural label for the most common use of this function, and is immediately obvious to anyone who's ever used any forum software. Suggestion: Change the text on the "Go Advanced" button to "Preview."
12. No way to get to the full search tool without first running a "quick" search. As with the above, this is extremely unintuitive, especially for people without a great deal of experience using forums. Suggestion: Add a "Search" link to the main navigation bar. Also see #6.
13. Scripted image popups appear partially offscreen when the page is zoomed. This occurs regardless of where the originating thumbnail is on the screen when clicked. Scrolling the page causes the popup to close. Suggestions: don't use a scripted popup (they are invariably slower, less intuitive, and less accessible than just linking to the image), or use a script that works with basic browser accessibility functions like page zooming.
I absolutely promise you tickets our not ignored, we read them often and respond as we start work on things. We'll also be closing a lot in the upcoming weeks.
1) it is good and bad. Your points are absolutely valid and no I'm not quite happy with the current typography for readability and will be making it easier. But for the time being we *will* be staying with the fixed width style.
2) Puke? lol, first I heard salmon. But its parchment I swear! I'm aware that the current site design is kinda warm. On my list of long range ideas is to allow more themes per site. But I'm not sure how far out that is.
Also with all else that was changing I'm wanted to keep something of the old site, and really the colors are about all that's left.
3) Definitely valid. I'll talk to nev and see what we can do.
4) I'm not sure I agree with that. But I will look closer at it.
2) Puke is GREEN, *DUH* This is more of a flesh color, you like nekkidness right? If not you're a commie.
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Project AuthorQFT * (amount-agreed-upon-by-myopic-folk)
I use Firefox. On this site, and many others, I feel the text is much too small. Therefore, I use page-zoom. On the old site, it worked flawlessly. Here, apparently, the webmaster is stuck in 1999. My widescreen monitor is apparently not wide enough. To be intentionally annoying: "PLZ FIX NOW!"
P.S. - :D
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Curse PremiumBTW - the top-right tab (where it shows login status, etc for forums) has a gap in it. :(
ya... I just noticed that too... NEV!!!! hehe
It's just bad, all around. Any accessibility-aware web design resource will tell you so. :)
That said, if you must keep the fixed-width layout, make it the same width as CurseForge. I can zoom into 160% there without a horizontal scrollbar appearing.
Doesn't vBulletin support themes natively? Even just a color change on the current layout would be an improvement. And your "parchment" has always made me think "puke", lol.
Whose puke have you been looking at? o_O
I prefer Opera's "zoom everything" approach. It maintains the page's integrity, and prevents me fromt having to scroll 5 times as much vertically because there are now only 4 words per line in the narrow layout. :p
That too.
Some other things I dislike about vBulletin and/or every vBulletin theme I've ever used:
1. Natural text links > tiny icons. For example, look at the quotes in this post. SMF made the whole "originally posted by Name" text a link to the quoted post. vB gives me a tiny, nearly invisible icon at the end of the text.
2. No ability to insert quotes from topic review on post form. This means that before I start replying to anything, I have to go through every post and click the ones I want to "multi quote". I greatly preferred SMF's "insert quote" links on each post in the topic review.
// ==UserScript== // @name wowace forum width // @namespace http://wow-eot.de // @include http://forums.wowace.com/* // ==/UserScript== var thepage = document.getElementById('page'); thepage.style.width = '100%'this will change the page to 100% width wenn the page is loaded .. better solution would be a own style but until then ,)
Better yet, give users the choice via vBulletin's style chooser functionality :p
I dunno though, didn't look at the source :p
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Project AuthorThankye. Not perfect, but workable. :)
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Curse PremiumThankums! :)
Or just use enough padding/margin on the sides to allow the cards to fit
http://gist.github.com/14181
I use this in stylish, but I belive there's a way to load them in greasemonkey as well.
Awesome.
More small things that seemed to have been overlooked in the SMF -> vB transtion:
The "tongue smiley" emote no longer works with a capital P, only a lowercase p. This breaks all tongue smileys that were ever posted, and is counter to every forum I post on. I'm used to typing ": P", not ": p". Shouldn't take more than a few seconds to add?
The login is "stupid" and doesn't remember what page I was on when I logged in, dumping me unceremoniously at the forum index. I don't think this is a vBulletin issue in general, as I post on other vB forums that don't have this problem. It occurs both on my home computer and here on my work computer; both have referer logging enabled and no restrictions on cookies between subdomains.
Edit:
Here at work, the background is less vomit-colored, but it is a rather bright yellowish color. It's clearly a monitor color calibration, but it seems to be unpleasant everywhere. :p