Coming Soon: New Message Board Layout

I'm inclined to agree with Alfadriver.

Different , but?   

I'll get used to it.

Please don't view this as "piling on", I'm trying to be constructive here:

"The latest" down the right side is a huge waste of space.  It's the same on every thread, so once I've seen those links once I don't care any more.  Then once you scroll below, it continues to force all the text into a single narrow column.

The margin on the left is also excessively huge.  This isn't a print magazine, there's no need for that much margin, I'm not trying to hold it up with my thumbs.  Screen real estate is precious -- use it to convey information.

The large font by itself isn't necessarily bad, but you're forcing the column size on the server, which means that even if I hit the "make text smaller" button in my browser, it doesn't reflow the text to fit in the box.  Instead it just makes the single column of text smaller, wasting even more space.

Vertical spacing also seems a bit wasteful, although I don't think it's as big a problem as horizontal.  It looks like you're trying to use whitespace instead of graphic elements, but I think you're sacrificing usability to get it.  For example, you're indenting quoted text by a bunch instead of using a box, but it's going to run into serious problems once you get 3 or 4 levels of quoting deep.  

Also, IMHO the default resizing of images is too small, and makes it hard to pick out details.  Build threads are a lot less interesting because of that, and you can't even click on the photos to get a link to the full size original.

My mouse's scrolling wheel just died.  I will be deducting the cost of repairing it from my GRM subscription price.  

All the white is a bit hard on my eyeballs. The ability to change/dim the background color without dimming the font would be nice. Otherwise ill continue to use it like normal from my phone. Have yet to try the new format on my pc.

Last whiney post from me today, I promise...

The site does not look "modern" because it isn't. It does not have alerting or post subs, it does not have a full editor, emoji, private messages, and many other things a modern off-the-shelf forum product has. Like a dedicated team of professional developers who constantly work to improve the forum product as their only mission. And that's fine... but what you were going for was a new look. And it's a shame that this forum software does not have polling to give numeric feedback on that look because I'm pretty sure the numbers would call for a rollback.

You would do well to look at the information density in this screenshot. Look at how much entertainment (your mission!) is being delivered in just a half-screen size window. There is more info and usability on each line than you have now - and  you could still cut that in half to place ads or article links and still deliver 2 or 3 times the info on a single screen than you have now. 

Duke said:

Ransom said:

Figure I'm basically just another data point for what's already being covered:

1. So much whitespace/wasted space/scrolling. Between lines, between elements, between columns...
2. Cache cleared, same issue on Chrome/Windows and Firefox/Linux
3. A bit less bonkers on Chrome/Android. Note that I only read it on my phone when I'm stuck somewhere waiting for something. 90% of the time, I'm reading it on a desktop. Few topics here are best served via Swype input...
   

It's not unusable, just unpleasant. I trust it'll improve with feedback. I'm excited about some of the new features being rolled out. I'm guessing looking at your metrics told you to optimize for mobile, but I'd ask that you not "pessimize" so heavily for desktop, and/or that the devs need to test across a broader range of browsers/resolutions, but now I'm getting prescriptive.

OK, the change in typeface between body text and callout text (lists, bullets, indents) is going to drive my OCD bugberk.

This has been fixed, as you can see in the quotes above. Browser spellcheck should work again, too.

The new layout treats all  screens as though they are phones. Sure "mobile first" is the fashion in front-end development -- and with good reason. The trouble is, the new layout really only works for phones -- The ginourmous whitespace isn't helping the readability. Why limit the text content area to ~635px wide? My laptop isn't a phone. This is becoming a "mobile only" layout :(

Desktop with 27" screen.

At 100% zoom:

When I open the "builds" page, I see only three lines of meaningful content. (three build threads)

The rest of the page does not provide any meaningful information.  I understand that advertising serves a purpose. 

I have about 10.25" , a little more than average.

If I increase the zoom to smallerize the white, then even less content on the screen.

Hope this helps.

A lot of people said they were leaving and not coming back last time too. Very few, if any actually did. 

I've zoomed out to 70% to make it readable, but it's still a VERY narrow column.

Huckleberry's post above is dead on.

Easy to read on a phone.  Abysmal on a desktop.  Giant leap backwards.

I'll leave it at that, since most of the issues have already been pointed out.

I like it, but it does feel a bit sparse.

I'm sorry but I agree this layout is pretty unreadable on a computer. And that's coming from someone who spends way too much time on the internet. Too much white space, comments and topics spaced too far apart. Too much scrolling. Everything has already been said by many people because it's all true. Looks good on a phone though.

I can't find any option that lets me browse more than 5 pages of topics.  New, latest, yours, ...  Am I missing something?  I might go 3 days or more without visiting (I know, withdrawls right?) and I used to be able to click a link like All posts and go thru days and days to see if anything interesting popped up while I was gone.

Also testing single return right here...  (While my eyes burn on this desktop monitor)

Posting a reply on current iOS using Safari still seems to be hit-n-miss for me.

Over all it is better on my phone but odd looking on the computer.  Will not keep me away but the forum does feel a bit "odd". 

So, I'all agree with most of the other comments previously made... the amount of white space padding between elements is too much... and feels like a bad way to delineate elements compared to "hard" design elements.  I'll get used to the space between the thread and latest... it's actually nice for using your finger to scroll with... but I'm having to do so much of it my wrist is bothering me.

Further, I'm having a hard time scrolling through the "latest topics" screen.  The way the threads are laid out with post count, thread author, forum location, latest comment time and author all the same size font and color makes it difficult for me to scan through and grab an idea of what's going on in a topic.  

I like the bigger page buttons for navigating on a tablet, although I'm getting some funky wrapping of that element as I'm in the middle of a thread to where the last page button and next arrow drop down from the rest of the page buttons.  

Currently surfing on Chrome on an older 9" iPad.  I'll report back in after trying out some desktop uses.  

One other thing I just found... if I go back up and start editing my first paragraph, the text box auto-scrolls down to the bottom and I can't see the text update.

Thanks for the feedback everyone. We're working on a way to widen the forum content now.

In reply to Ed Higginbotham :

One small, but somewhat annoying detail(which may have already been mentioned by someone else) - the thumbs-up/down buttons should really be back on the bottom of each post instead of the top. Otherwise you read through a post, scroll back up to "like" it, scroll back down, read the next post, etc.

Or it may just be me?

As a side note,  I disabled all of my ad blockers to see if the huge white spaces I am seeing in Chrome on a PC should be filled with ads.

They were not, they were just white space.

One small thing...could we please have square avatars?

I checked on my Galaxy Express using Dolphin. 1 5 word post takes up the entire screen.  3 thread titles take up just as much room.  This is doing the opposite of growing on me. I did notice the facebook and youtube video embed buttons while typing this though. So that's nice.

Jerry From LA said:

One small thing...could we please have square avatars?

I'm seeing square avatars.

The page doesn't need to be widened, it needs to be vertically condensed. 

The avatars I see are round.

Ed Higginbotham said:

In reply to alfadriver :

The forum refresh is the last stage on a yearlong project we've been working on to update the site to a more modern layout. You may notice that posts on the forum now match the styles from article pages Like this

And we did some side-by-side comparison on the space between the forum body and the items in the sidebar. Believe it or not, cutting down on the white space there actually made the threads longer.

Also, it looks like you are hitting return twice between paragraphs. Hitting it once in the new editor is sufficient.

I just realized something- with the format to look similar to the article pages- every single thread title looks like a headline.  

Not sure if that is the intention.  I'd rather it look like something other than an article.