Feedback/Development

Time Magazine

There are a few things I'd like to suggest for here oul Boards. Some of them could probably should be on the Development forum but my level of cyb0r skillz are nowhere near good enough to suggest how you could implement them so I'm putting them here as some suggestions.

1. Modify the fonts
I don't know if any of you are this pedantic, but I really prefer justified text to left-aligned, and like different fonts for different sorts of posts/discussions. I know there are different 'Styles' of boards, but the standard white one is by far my favourite. Would it be possible to have to option to justify the text? I know alternate stylesheets are available - perhaps this is how the Style-changer works - but would it be possible to have alternate stylesheets within the different Styles?

2. User-defined drop down menus
I, like most boardsies, only frequent three or four boards regularly. This is provided for in the subscribed forums tools (which I don't use yet), but would it be possible to have the drop down menus completely user-defined? I'm not sure how the cache affects this, but I remember the JavaScript being a bit of a drain on the load-time. Maybe this could be offered through an iframe or perhaps something less ghastly?

3. Lower the search times - saved pages of posts.
I'm not a fan of the new search system, but appreciate its importance (speedy new boards ftw). I have noticed that quite a few of my searches are searches of previous posts by me. Instead of having to run a search for this could it just loads a saved page that updates every now and again? Perhaps you could run a little script to automatically to refresh the most-searched posters?

4. Give Ruu signature-editing abilities
That man is a legend, award him a medal and cut out a line of bureaucracy!

Sid Deuce

Please infrom me how you search? I have attempted but it said [You do not have ability to do so]?

-eidtd- sorry it has changed and now I can search!

KdjaCL

2. User-defined drop down menus
I, like most boardsies, only frequent three or four boards regularly. This is provided for in the subscribed forums tools (which I don't use yet), but would it be possible to have the drop down menus completely user-defined? I'm not sure how the cache affects this, but I remember the JavaScript being a bit of a drain on the load-time. Maybe this could be offered through an iframe or perhaps something less ghastly?


Your subbed list becomes a drop down list with all your fav forums in it. * for new posts.


Thats all i use tbh.


kdjac

Ruu_Old

Sid Deuce wrote:

Please infrom me how you search? I have attempted but it said [You do not have ability to do so]?

I wish to search a user called Stak!

Thats not hard to do, click Members List above and then click the Search Members box on the right side.

pic attached if you cannot find members list link.

EDIT:-thanks for the mention there angryb.

oscarBravo

KdjaC wrote:

Your subbed list becomes a drop down list with all your fav forums in it. * for new posts.


Thats all i use tbh.

Me too. If I'm ever browsing boardsie from a location where I'm not logged in, it takes me a while to find my favourite boards.

seamus

Angry Banana wrote:

2. User-defined drop down menus
I, like most boardsies, only frequent three or four boards regularly. This is provided for in the subscribed forums tools (which I don't use yet), but would it be possible to have the drop down menus completely user-defined? I'm not sure how the cache affects this, but I remember the JavaScript being a bit of a drain on the load-time. Maybe this could be offered through an iframe or perhaps something less ghastly?

Do you mean that users can choose to disable the menus, or users can choose which forums appear? If it's the former, then yay, but if it's the latter then nay.
Back in the day, the entire menu was generated each time you loaded the page. For every forum, you could see if there were new posts and your private forums appeared under "Hosted" (then "Community"). It turned out to be a massive drain on server resources, so the menu was redesigned to what we have now. What you propose is essentially a step back to what we had before. It would only server to increase page loading times IMO.

Ruu_Old

The admins would have 200% more headaches than normal and a rise of 200% more posts on feedback with users threatening to quit boards if their sigs arent reinstated.:)

Time Magazine

seamus wrote:

Do you mean that users can choose to disable the menus, or users can choose which forums appear?

What I was thinking about was something like a hybrid, mostly off but personalised. There would be a single dropdown with desired links in it. If this was saved in the database I can't imagine it being a bandwidth whore, but as I said I don't know too much about this sort of thing,They're just thoughts in my head that could improve Boards a little so feel free to add/subtract to/from them .

seamus

Angry Banana wrote:

What I was thinking about was something like a hybrid, mostly off but personalised. There would be a single dropdown with desired links in it. If this was saved in the database I can't imagine it being a bandwidth whore, but as I said I don't know too much about this sort of thing,They're just thoughts in my head that could improve Boards a little so feel free to add/subtract to/from them .

It would kind of need to be a hybrid of the two ideas then - you either choose to have a full menu with subbed list, or simply a subbed list only.

I like having all of the forums at the top of the page. Even though I don't look at most of them, it's useful to have them there for when I do have to look at them. But it's also handy to have the subbed list there too.

stevenmu

Angry Banana wrote:

3. Lower the search times - saved pages of posts.
I'm not a fan of the new search system, but appreciate its importance (speedy new boards ftw). I have noticed that quite a few of my searches are searches of previous posts by me. Instead of having to run a search for this could it just loads a saved page that updates every now and again? Perhaps you could run a little script to automatically to refresh the most-searched posters?

I still think the best way of doing this is in your User CP change the setting to subscribe to every thread you post in automatically (without email notifications). Then just go to the page that shows you all your subscribes threads and you can easily see which ones have new posts and which don't.

irlrobins

stevenmu wrote:

Then just go to the page that shows you all your subscribes threads

Doesn't doing this cause a slow down of boards? I asked this before on a thread on feedback and was told that while subscribing to a thread and getting notifications doesn't burden servers, listing your subs does.

Think it was boardtracker or pidgin who gave that answer. Can't find the thread though. (I miss old search at times, can't limit the new search to just one forum)

masteroftherealm

New search SUCKS!!
Sorry but its useless it is so unflexible.
I understand it may be nessesary for a time.
But I sincerely hope its not a long term solution.

stevenmu

irlrobins wrote:

Doesn't doing this cause a slow down of boards? I asked this before on a thread on feedback and was told that while subscribing to a thread and getting notifications doesn't burden servers, listing your subs does.

Think it was boardtracker or pidgin who gave that answer. Can't find the thread though. (I miss old search at times, can't limit the new search to just one forum)

I suppose it probably does to some degree, I've no idea how much but I'd expect it would be much more optimised than doing a search of posts for your own user name. Hopefully one of the admins can let us know.

irlrobins

Found the post in question.

Now Pidgin mentions that it was inefficient back then and they were advising admins on how to fix this. Wonder if it was indeed fixed so that accessing subbed list is not longer a burden to server.