New Topics/Category Organisation Update 20:45 - Post 100

zeffabelli

Personally as I am right handed, the upper right hand corner is more convenient, it also happens to be where my eyes land instinctively because I read whole sentences at a time...My eyes move left to right, my hand and mouse often follow.

The cyberpscyhology experts and people who design for online education probably have more research on human interaction with the screen.

And what happeneed to the NOW YERE TALKING ...maybe that could replace TOPICS, widen the column to call attention to it as dominant and keep the NOW YERE TALKING in its original design.

Quazzie

If we all acknowledge that you've been working very hard, and your job is important, then will you change it back?

Peregrine

When I click on Television under Entertainment, the Finished/Cancelled shows drop down list is already open.

As in, by default, I'm getting:

Documentaries
A list of the 15 or so Finished/Cancelled shows
Then Game of Thrones
And so on.

Furez

Dont like it.
Change is good but this was a change for the worse. Everything I was interested in is in the Topics tab now which adds an extra step to the process of finding a thread.
Dont mention 'My Forums', never needed to use that before. Cant there be an option for the old format as a choice? I don't like being funneled towards regional, 'talk to' and adverts.

BOHtox

Don't like it I'm afraid. Is there an option to change it back? It was a good idea to maybe try come up with something that would make it easier to seach but this is way too difficult.

Also there's no need for 'politics' and 'politics cafe' to be two different sections. It should just go back to the way it was with politics cafe a sub-section like 'Irish Economy'

Macavity.

It's tacky and I hate it.

Eeden

I'm actually bewildered. I get that most people don't like change in general, but I really, really don't understand the hostility and (seriously) near-hysteria here?

Kenjataimu

Can we not just go with the flow and see if we get used to it?

Also

SpaceSasqwatch

christ its brutal

Rabies

Argh, whats going on? Are you trying to stop me from using the menu bar on the home page?

I'm glad the Cloud skin is still active. I prefer that style of menu.

FloatingVoter

Kenjataimu wrote: »

Can we not just go with the flow and see if we get used to it?

Also

Providing it flows backwards to when the site was usable. Relying on the search function to find fora that I'm aware exist is a handy shortcut for me. Any newcomers will be completely unaware of them.
If all the Admins, CMods, God Emperors step into the shoes of a complete newcomer for a moment - how do I know such wonders as Garda Recruitment, Bereavement, Non Drinkers and the biggie of the bunch - Bargain Alerts even exist. Off chance they'll appear on the main page - maybe for Bargain Alerts.....Bereavement, Personal Issues and Non Drinkers are deadly serious forums that deserve better than this.

The Saint

Don't like it. Make it stop.........

GLaDOS

I can't say I found it too difficult to find any forums through the new system. Having to click through an extra layer is mildly annoying, and there needs to be a better division between the levels within the menu, but its easy enough to navigate imo.

BOHtox

The big empty space to the right of the search bar looks awful aesthetically too.
I, too, thought that it was only going to be a bit of a reshuffling of where topics are placed. I was not expecting this massive overhaul. I'm voting for the previous layout I'm afraid.

G_R

TBH, I'm quite happy with the new categories, they are more intuitive to me anyway, and I think a new user would find them easier to navigate than Rec, Soc etc.

Like others, the only problem I have is that it is now a bit harder to actually navigate between forums I don't have subbed. Any forum I look a anyway frequently, I do have subbed so for me, it's not the end of the world, but I was thinking, what if you could hover over tops, then you got a second menu bar with the topics. Then you just need to hover over that and you have the same amount of clicks as last time, albeit with a miniscule more scrolling to do, as you'd need to start in the topics bar and move down.

I've attached a screen shot which I (badly) doctored in paint to show what I mean incase the above is unclear.

bodhrandude

If you use certain sub forums a lot then its just a matter of going to the browser bar and typing say After Hours, once you have af down the browser suggests after hours boards.ie and hit enter, gigs and events type gigs and the browser shows the forum you use a lot, well me. Anyway just a simpler way to directly find your forums without Boards.ie search.

FloatingVoter

Eeden wrote: »

I'm actually bewildered. I get that most people don't like change in general, but I really, really don't understand the hostility and (seriously) near-hysteria here?

We're not hysterics. Most people making complaints have histories dating back years and postcounts into the thousands. We don't like it nor understand the need for it.
At the moment my virgin eyes are seeing 5 things on top of my screen

Talk to... various consumer groups
Boards.ie .... dunno what that is...name of the site or something
Topics or is it Tropics......
Regional......local news then
...and ads. Good luck and thanks.

I'm clicking through and moving onto something interesting.

Joe Doe

Don't like it, twas better the way it was before.

e.g. Only x5 Level 1 menus (only 2 of which most would use and should be merged anyway)
On clicking on a Level 2 menu the arrow is redundant and send user to a messy landing page instead.

Run de rollback....

Annasopra

All the forums are gone missing in m.boards.ie

irishdude11

My morning browse through several boards.ie forums is now much more hassle. The hover-click menu bar gave very efficient access to every forum on the site. I have no interest in using a search bar when I just want to browse a few forums.

The hover-click menu bar was effortless, I could browse from forum to forum while having my coffee in the morning and chilling out. The hover menu with all the forums listed in columns was the best improvement ever made to this site site imo, and now they've gone and fecked it up and you have to start clicking through submenus to get where you want to go sigh...

irishdude11

The re-organisation of categories is a non-issue, that's just learning a new location for a forum.

The REAL problem is the navigation has been made more difficult because of the change to the menu.

Edit: Just came back to say that I was about to browse my usual forums after posting the above but my thoughts right of this minute are "Everything is buried deeper and I could not be arsed clicking through these submenus to get to my forums." I'm off to look at the other sites I check in the morning, but I just thought I might as well give that insight before I go as boards has been one of my favourite sites down the years and I wouldn't like to see them shoot themselves in the foot.

ThisRegard

January wrote: »

The only difference is we have to go through another layer to get to forums we don't have in our 'My Forums' list... I really don't know why everyone is moaning.

You don't have an understanding of good UI design obviously.

You need to remember that many of us earn a living doing this type of thing, you're getting free consultations if I want to be smart about it. I've been at it almost 20 years so I've seen and been involved in system design long enough to recognise the difference between good and bad.

Knocking these opinions as moans is irritating.

And I don't really buy into it's better for the new users, how did all the 'old' users ever manage? New users are a lot less likely to discover a lot of forums, sorry, topics, that may be of interest to them

my3cents

ThisRegard wrote: »

You don't have an understanding of good UI design obviously.

You need to remember that many of us earn a living doing this type of thing, you're getting free consultations if I want to be smart about it. I've been at it almost 20 years so I've seen and been involved in system design long enough to recognise the difference between good and bad.

Knocking these opinions as moans is irritating.

And I don't really buy into it's better for the new users, how did all the 'old' users ever manage? New users are a lot less likely to discover a lot of forums, sorry, topics, that may be of interest to them

Totally crap for new users! Can we at least have a link to a page with something useful like a SITE MAP?

Looks to me like Talk to and Adverts.ie get a lot of space on the menu bar because they make some money and everything else is just jammed in.

humanji

FloatingVoter wrote: »

how do I know such wonders as Garda Recruitment, Bereavement, Non Drinkers and the biggie of the bunch - Bargain Alerts even exist. Off chance they'll appear on the main page - maybe for Bargain Alerts.....Bereavement, Personal Issues and Non Drinkers are deadly serious forums that deserve better than this.

How did people know they existed before? Didn't they still have to browse through the categories, then click on them to see what the forums were about?

Dravokivich

Dades wrote: »

I don't see the parallel.

The drop down is supposed to recatagorise everything in such a way as to make it easier to find forums without searching. Nothing has been hidden at all.

It's been alluded to several times that the purpose of this change is to get people used to this recatagorisation - the new look is temporary while we await a full redesign.

If they were recategorised into their own headers, I'd say most people would never have noticed the difference. I never paid much attention to the header. But putting all the categories under the Topics header, means you need to expand each category to see what is in it.

humanji wrote: »

How did people know they existed before? Didn't they still have to browse through the categories, then click on them to see what the forums were about?

All you had to do before was highlight a category. Now you've to select it. Bit of a difference. Especially in how people have been using menus on websites lately. You highlight to browse through the options and then click/select what you want to use.

ThisRegard

humanji wrote: »

How did people know they existed before? Didn't they still have to browse through the categories, then click on them to see what the forums were about?

They were easy to stumble across when a menu dropped down, that's less likely to happen now. Even with existing users I believe they'll be less likely to discover any newly introduced forums.

Dravokivich

my3cents wrote: »

Totally crap for new users! Can we at least have a link to a page with something useful like a SITE MAP?

Looks to me like Talk to and Adverts.ie get a lot of space on the menu bar because they make some money and everything else is just jammed in.

Here's your site map:

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/forumdisplay.php?f=1671

It's basically the forum tree from the topics category.

Think it's what I'll be using as a work around until the headers/layout is sorted.

my3cents

Dravokivich wrote: »

Here's your site map:

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/forumdisplay.php?f=1671

It's basically the forum tree from the topics category.

Think it's what I'll be using as a work around until the headers/layout is sorted.

If I was a new user how would I find it?

Dravokivich

my3cents wrote: »

If I was a new user how would I find it?

Right click on Topics, Open in new tab/window.

Hercule

Having to go digging for the forums I read is a chore - change it back please