Yesterday we modified another aspect of the forums, which is the top navigation controls. The previous version feels outdated and used too much screen space. We took a fresh look and criss-crossed it with the cleaner, more modern feeling of the Challenges navigation, and came up with a much slimmer design:
You can find all the previous links neatly tucked away when
not used. When you do need to use them, hover your mouse over the action you
want to perform, and voila, the list expands!
Another reason we are changing this is because we need the space to put something more interactive and entertaining for the users. So stay tune and keep checking back to see what other new stuff we have in our pipeline.
I'm all for the uncluttered look, and it seems to work well. The next question would be... will you clutter it up again with something more interactive and entertaining for the users? ;-D
Posted by: Michael_J | Jul 12, 2009 9:28:25 PM
Is there a reason for the nofollow inclusion for links? It keeps links from registering to search spiders -- which defeats the entire purpose of organic links and search ranking based upon them.
Posted by: Joe Federer Photography | Jul 14, 2009 6:40:39 PM
While I appreciate your latest attempts to update the forums' GUI's, I am wondering if you have tested these changes with any handheld devices. I am having a real problem finding a browser for WM6+ that renders your new designs. I am hoping you are planning to address this issue, as this, being one of my favorite sites to browse during my commute, is the only one I cannot find a WinMobile Browser that will render.
Anyway, congrats on the new design ... it DOES render nicely on a desktop, and does look a lot nicer than the old one.
But maybe ... if you haven't trashed all the old code, you could work it in so that your client sniffer checks for a WinMobile device and renders the old pages instead. They used to work OK.
Anyway ... just a suggestion.
Best regards,
-pvs
Posted by: Paul Slabowski | Jul 17, 2009 3:36:35 AM
Generally, I like the recent changes. They do make navigation easier & more efficient. The one thing that annoys me is the inconsistency of your linking process. Sometimes a new browser window opens & others it doesn't. Seems like links used to always open in a new window. I much prefer that, but at least be consistent.
Posted by: AEH | Jul 18, 2009 7:55:53 PM
Please, PLEASE restore the ability to jump to the latest post in a thread from one's own personal thread list.
It is extremely annoying and time-consuming to have to navigate from the first page of a thread to the last page and then the last entry on that page. It is actually faster to return to the forum page and jump to the last post in the thread from there!!!!
Many of the new forum features are terrific - GREAT WORK, fellas - but this one AND the JUMPING CURSOR in a new post are very irritating.
Thanks, and kindest regards, john.
Posted by: John King | Jul 19, 2009 3:00:29 AM
Is there any way to automatically hide that distracting challenges bar? Images are really distracting. I know the point of placing them there is to attract attention but I frankly have no interest in them. If I want to view images I go to a forum, a thread or a website which is has them but I do not want to be bombarded with images when viewing an equipment forum (Mac, Lenses, Cameras, etc.).
Using Firefox with an image block works but looks ugly (apart from the fact that Firefox in itself looks ugly).
Posted by: hrmpf | Jul 20, 2009 9:42:02 PM
Did you just change something?
7/20/09. First 9 lines of the forum index is cluttered and unreadable in SeaMonkey now. I updated SMonkey but the new version is no better. Hmmm.
Posted by: jerry richards | Jul 20, 2009 11:03:52 PM
I just checked around and it is only this site that jumbled with overwriting on the forum index the first 9 lines or so. Please restore whatever you did. Thx.
JR
Posted by: Jerry Richards | Jul 20, 2009 11:23:54 PM
I agree with Paul Slabowski. I used to be able to read 'all' the forums posts with my Palm TX. But with the new code, I can't. :(
It would be nice to have it so I can since I am not always on a computer and have WiFi, I can't access the forums before this all new code changed it. Please fix this....
Posted by: sueanne | Jul 25, 2009 12:51:40 PM
Well, after quite a bit of searching, I HAVE found a browser that allows me to read the new formats on my PDA.
Sueanne, I'm not sure if there's a version for your Palm TX, but I have found the current version of the Iris Browser works for the forums.
It still has the nasty zoom issues, where sometimes if you want to scroll a page, the screen touches are misinterpreted as zoom-in/zoom-out, but THAT's a WinMobile issue prevalent in a lot of the current browsers.
Also, many of the pages, when zoomed-in, need to be scrolled back and forth in order to read the messages (which leads to them zooming back out many times ... annoying). It would be helpful if this site could sense mobile devices with smaller screens and adjust the lines of the text according to what fits, similar to the vBulletin systems ... but I don't think that change will ever be addressed here, unfortunately.
Anyway, I am happy I found this browser. It's not flash-ready yet, and cannot view Youtube stuff either, but I have other mobile apps that fit those needs. At least I can fight to see this board now, instead of it simply being unusable.
Hope this info helps somebody out there.
-pvs
Posted by: Paul Slabowski | Jul 29, 2009 6:00:36 PM
Thank you Paul Slabowski,
Good tip but I am not sure if Iris Browser will work on the Palm TX. I currently run Blazer and BEFORE Dpreview changed all the coding, I could read Dpreview and all the forums with no problems.
I guess when I am on the go, Drepview is out for me.
- sue anne
Posted by: sueanne | Jul 30, 2009 8:35:31 PM
Thanks so much for posting this information! We appreciate the time you must have taken to present this information so clearly.
Posted by: freisprechanlagen | Oct 14, 2009 11:01:22 AM
thanks so much. i am very much satisfying about dpreview.com
Posted by: fix mobile | Oct 14, 2009 12:56:04 PM
Although I signed up with this site in October 2006, because of illness I have been content to read the reviews and comments. Now I would like to email one a poster regarding the FZ28, but I don't remember where I sign in. Your help is greatly appreciated. I do remember my password.
Stanley Cronig
Posted by: Stanley Cronig | Oct 15, 2009 1:34:48 AM
Primitive interface suites the mostly primitives that post on this site. imho
Posted by: RetroGuy | Nov 18, 2009 12:34:28 AM