New Responsive Design for DCUM

[Anonymous]

A lot of the coding when people are quoting is showing up in responses, so it makes threads harder to read/see. An example would be from the pecking order of Boston schools thread in the college forum, this is from page 8 somewhere:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I think BC's reputation is inflated here. I would consider it a step below Tufts, equivalent to Brandeis.

I have never met anyone who went to Tufts because it was their dream school or #1 choice, except for tufts dental school. I have met plenty of BC diehards and multigenerational BC families and super proud alumni.

I disagree with the first point but I take the second-- and for a long time BC had a good alumni network in the Boston area (30 years ago in some lines of work you were better off with a BC degree than one from Harvard). But I don't think school loyalty actually makes the school "better" -- Notre Dame isn't a better school just because some people venerate it (and BC wasn't better than Harvard just because the alumni network was strong).

I guess I'd say you get a better education at Tufts but a BC degree might be more useful if you stay in the Boston area.

[Anonymous]

^^^ up there the coding worked, but in Firefox on my Mac Air it's not working and comes out like...(removed outer brackets to demonstrate): quote=Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I think BC's reputation is inflated here. I would consider it a step below Tufts, equivalent to Brandeis.[/quote

[jsteele]

Anonymous wrote:A lot of the coding when people are quoting is showing up in responses, so it makes threads harder to read/see. An example would be from the pecking order of Boston schools thread in the college forum, this is from page 8 somewhere:

This is an old problem that occurs when posters click the "Disable BB Code in this message" option. I should probably just remove that option since I am not aware of a good reason to ever use it. The "Disable smilies" can come in handy if you want to to a parenthesis and a colon and not have it turn into a smiley.

[Anonymous]

I thought this design change would finally free me from the grip of DCUM. Not so- it only took a couple of days and I’m completely used to and like it.
I’m sure it was a lot of work. Thanks.

[Anonymous]

Maybe consider a bit of extra space and/or a thin light grey horizontal rule between threads when viewing a specific forum? It’s all very cramped right now and hard to distinguish separate posts. It’s not like vertical space is limited. You have a similar treatment on the sticky posts already. Just a small tweak that would make the site easier on the eyes and easier to navigate.

[jsteele]

Anonymous wrote:Maybe consider a bit of extra space and/or a thin light grey horizontal rule between threads when viewing a specific forum? It’s all very cramped right now and hard to distinguish separate posts. It’s not like vertical space is limited. You have a similar treatment on the sticky posts already. Just a small tweak that would make the site easier on the eyes and easier to navigate.

Okay, I've done this.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I thought this design change would finally free me from the grip of DCUM. Not so- it only took a couple of days and I’m completely used to and like it.
I’m sure it was a lot of work. Thanks.

Jeff, you should pin this reply somewhere. It’s perfect.

[jsteele]

Anonymous wrote:Count me as one of the people that sees this layout as an improvement. I am in the camp that showing less information would be better, particularly on smaller viewports.

People will slowly get used to it. Modern website design favors legibility over cramming as much information into the screen as possible. See Gmail and its "comfortable" vs. "compact" layout. This helps with accessibility and general readability.

One thing I would vote for is to de-emphasize user information, since 99% of the posts are from Anonymous users, it takes up valuable real estate.

The same goes for "Subject" which I have never seen someone change on a reply, but I suppose it's possible. Perhaps only show it if it is not the same as the subject of the OP?

Now I sound like "that guy", but other suggestions:

Make the "report" just the icon with proper tags (aria/title/alt) to make it accessible

I would actually make the post icons (like the little sheet of paper next to the date) larger to coincide with the font size.

Use something for relative date. You might have to throw something like moment.js on top and transform things on the frontend, depending on the forum software you use, but I prefer that representation of the date, personally (again, see: Gmail)

I have thoughts on the forum list as well, but I will stop here because it seems like I don't appreciate the work that has been done, and I do. Great step forward and I can actually use the site on mobile now!

I meant to thank you for these suggestions. I've been busy making simpler changes but will go over this list carefully eventually. Feel free to post your ideas for the forum design as well.

[Anonymous]

jsteele wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Count me as one of the people that sees this layout as an improvement. I am in the camp that showing less information would be better, particularly on smaller viewports.

People will slowly get used to it. Modern website design favors legibility over cramming as much information into the screen as possible. See Gmail and its "comfortable" vs. "compact" layout. This helps with accessibility and general readability.

One thing I would vote for is to de-emphasize user information, since 99% of the posts are from Anonymous users, it takes up valuable real estate.

The same goes for "Subject" which I have never seen someone change on a reply, but I suppose it's possible. Perhaps only show it if it is not the same as the subject of the OP?

Now I sound like "that guy", but other suggestions:

Make the "report" just the icon with proper tags (aria/title/alt) to make it accessible

I would actually make the post icons (like the little sheet of paper next to the date) larger to coincide with the font size.

Use something for a relative date. You might have to throw something like moment.js on top and transform things on the frontend, depending on the forum software you use, but I prefer that representation of the date, personally (again, see: Gmail)

I have thoughts on the forum list as well, but I will stop here because it seems like I don't appreciate the work that has been done, and I do. Great step forward and I can actually use the site on mobile now!

I meant to thank you for these suggestions. I've been busy making simpler changes but will go over this list carefully eventually. Feel free to post your ideas for the forum design as well.

Based on reading some of the replies here, note everyone will agree with all of my suggestions, obviously, but..

On the forum list:

Shorten some of the numbers. Instead of "265171" make it "265k". Instead of "2095107" make it "2m", etc

Same suggestion as before on date/time

[list]in mobile view, if people want the numbers mentioned above, can they go below? so the vertical order is title, then description, then 255k topics, 2m views, last message yesterday at 16:56. You may have to adjust the styles to be display: inline-table or something [/list]

If people want to see more, but I would argue for more spacing. The more I work in the space, and use sites, I actually appreciate space between things instead of small text and lots of stuff. Maybe I am just getting old.

Purely a taste thing, but I don't love the folder icon. I prefer something flatter. It also seems to just take up real estate that could be used to make the last couple of columns a little cleaner.

I would bring the header font size/etc more in line with everything else

I don't touch the recent topics, but..

It feels a little bit like a hodgepodge of the old and new to me, especially with the font sizes. I think a lot needs to get crammed in here and that's why it has happened.

perhaps..

Move the forum name into the same column as the subject. Possibly:

Subject
Forum
[pages]

Actually, checking against mobile, it would be more in line with the way mobile is. But perhaps people have specifically asked for this format.

The last 3 columns really run together. I think more padding between them and do the date/time stuff I mentioned before. "Anonymous" still seems superfluous. perhaps link to the date instead of the author? or use the arrow->paper icon (which is VERY small)

spacing wise, on desktop, the pages are really close to the subject, and a really small font size

I will try to revisit this thread/forum after more time with it.

The only other thing, for now, is, I'm sure the ads help you with running the site, but it really crams in the space for your content. There's probably not much to do about that, but it is unfortunate that you lose that much real estate.

[jsteele]

Thanks for the ideas. I've been buried in the new design for about 3 weeks to the detriment of a lot of other things. So, I'm going to try to take a few days away from it and catch up. When I can back to it, I go over your post more carefully.

[Anonymous]

I like the new larger font size. I find it easier to read when my phone is upright. But, when I rotate my phone, it seems to make the font smaller. I swear on the old design that made it bigger?

[Anonymous]

jsteele wrote:Thanks for the ideas. I've been buried in the new design for about 3 weeks to the detriment of a lot of other things. So, I'm going to try to take a few days away from it and catch up. When I can back to it, I go over your post more carefully.

I'm not sure how I could help, but if you want to figure out how let me know. I assume this is something you prefer to just do on your own, though.

[Anonymous]

Sorry if this has already been mentioned, I wish I could see the original date of posts when looking at a forum.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Sorry if this has already been mentioned, I wish I could see the original date of posts when looking at a forum.

Maybe it’s only in Recent Topics?

[jsteele]

Anonymous wrote:Sorry if this has already been mentioned, I wish I could see the original date of posts when looking at a forum.

It's missing from the phone version of Recent Topics. I left it out by accident, but the feedback I received is that it was better that way because it allowed posters to see more threads.