***Update***
Ellis Walentine, Host
>Thanks for your forbearance, Bill. Here is a rundown that I posted earlier today on the main board. I'm sure we can't please all the people all of the time, but I think we're doing a pretty good job of addressing the concerns that have been voiced so far.
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Good morning, folks. I appreciate your patience as we try to address all the issues that you have brought to our attention in the past three days regarding the changes to our messageboard format. Your feedback has been very helpful and I thank you for it. I am sorry that some of you have had such strong reactions. Rest assured, we're only doing this in the interests of improving the existing board system. I admit that some of these changes could have been tested more thoroughly in advance, but many of them simply needed to be put out there for you to critique, and you have done that.
We did a detailed survey of all the comments that were offered on the Messages and Turning boards (the Hand Tools comments were in a similar vein) and found some interesting things:
- Of 149 comments, 56 were negative, 42 positive and 51 neutral (primarily advice, without a judgement one way or the other)
- Of the negative comments, 31 were about the speed of the new setup. Interestingly, we made numerous changes on Thursday that improved the speed of loading, primarily of the index page, and after Thursday there were only 2 negative comments about the loading speed. The speed issue is primarily a result of setting the sort-order default to UBB order instead of Mixed order. This change forces our server to go through an additional process each time you reload your message index. We are now planning to revert the default to the Mixed order, and those of you who really like the UBB order (and are willing to wait a little longer for the index page to refresh each time) can choose the UBB order in your preferences page. The google ads and the major sponsor ads in the left column only marginally increase the loading time, but we're continuing to work on them as well.
- There were 11 negative comments about navigating back and forth between messages and the index page. Those of you who didn't use the horizontal frames option before found very little difference. Those who did prefer the frames view before found yourselves having to explore new ways to navigate. The best suggestions offered so far are to open messages in either a new window or a new tab, and then to close that tab or window when you have finished reading a particular thread. I hope that those of you who complained have now had a chance to try one of these methods. (Hold either the SHIFT or CTRL key when clicking a message title.)
- Six negative comments were about the guestbook format, which really had nothing to do with the major changes, but we have removed the red boxes as requested.
- Nine negative comments were in regard to the Google ads overlapping the pictures and/or text in the message view. This only occurs when a picture larger than the available space is included in a message. Since the photo cannot be resized on the fly by our server, it simply dives under the Google text. When this happens, any accompanying text also dives under there. To fix this situation, we are about to introduce another innovation: thumbnailed photos. When you click on a thumbnail, the message frame will dim and the photo will open in a large dedicated window that you can close when you are done viewing the photo. I think you will like this innovation, but, asl ever, your feedback is appreciated.
Among other changes that have been going on largely unannounced here (I am on the road and unable to be in here 24/7 again until next Tuesday), we have "floated" the navigation box so that it stays visible as you scroll down the screen. We will be making a few more minor changes to this feature in coming days.
Later today, you will notice still more changes, including the thumbnail photos that I mentioned above. We have also shortened the long URLs that some of you mentioned, although it will cause all your messages titles to revert to blue (unread) the first time you visit the boards after we upload this change. We have also reformatted the Google ads to make them less obtrusive. Next week, we will address another of your concerns by substituting static "major sponsor" ads for the ones that are currently animated. We have also removed all the browser errors you reported, none of which had to do with tracking cookies.
So, as you can see, your comments are not being taken lightly. My concern is to come up with a new board format that fixes a lot of the problems we used to have with the old framed approach, notably unreadable pages, poor search engine visibility, clumsy navigation, and a host of other drawbacks inherent in this 15 year old software. Sooner or later, as soon as we can find the right package, we will consider moving yet another notch into the 21st century by adopting a PHP-based messageboard system, similar to those used by other forums you might visit. No promises on this, as I still have a lot of problems with those systems.
Meanwhile, I think we have now incorporated solutions to most (if not quite all) the issues you have raised. We couldn't have done it without you. I hope you will continue getting accustomed to the new setup. I think it will grow on you.
Thanks again for your indulgence.
Best,
Ellis Walentine, Host