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Boards Skins

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  • 13-01-2020 12:30pm
    #1
    jester77
    Registered Users Posts: 11,262 ✭✭✭✭


    So, all the useful skins have been removed and it seems there are only the eye piercing bright default skin and the weird halloween styled dark theme.

    Plus the really nice menu that the boards beta skin had is now no longer available and you have to perform multiple clicks to find forums. Not very user friendly :confused:

    Anyone aware of any chrome extensions to make navigation more pleasant?
    Post edited by Shield on


«13

Comments

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    #2
    keano_afc
    Registered Users Posts: 8,711 ✭✭✭keano_afc


    I want the classic skin back.


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    #3
    Fr_Dougal
    Registered Users Posts: 9,167 ✭✭✭Fr_Dougal


    Can’t post a thread with this skin, it’s sh1t.


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    #4
    weldoninhio
    Closed Accounts Posts: 14,311 ✭✭✭✭weldoninhio


    this is a joke of a skin.


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    #5
    McMurphy
    Registered Users Posts: 13,365 ✭✭✭✭McMurphy


    Not just me so.....

    Why though? Why just out of the blue?


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    #6
    The One Doctor
    Registered Users Posts: 2,339 ✭✭✭The One Doctor


    McMurphy wrote: »
    Not just me so.....

    Why though? Why just out of the blue?

    It's to push people away from Boards and on to the comment section of Journal.ie


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    #7
    marcbrophy
    Registered Users Posts: 6,429 ✭✭✭marcbrophy


    McMurphy wrote: »
    Not just me so.....

    Why though? Why just out of the blue?

    There was an announcement posted last week :)

    https://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?p=112184230#post112184230


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    #8
    Ken.
    Closed Accounts Posts: 12,898 ✭✭✭✭Ken.


    Mod-^^^^^^^^ This. Locked


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    #9
    Buford T. Justice XIX
    Closed Accounts Posts: 20,633 ✭✭✭✭Buford T. Justice XIX


    Mod note: I'm moving this to Feedback as it's a forum more suited to this discussion.

    Buford T. Justice


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    #10
    Beasty
    Administrators, Social & Fun Moderators, Sports Moderators Posts: 75,378 Admin ✭✭✭✭✭Beasty


    Now it's in Feedback, thread re-opened

    Please note you need to have been on the site a minimum 3 months and have a postcount of at least 100 to post in Feedback


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    #11
    Boards.ie: Niamh
    Boards.ie Employee Posts: 12,597 ✭✭✭✭✭Boards.ie: Niamh
    Boards.ie Community Manager


    The announcement was posted last week here but tl;dr we are performing some upgrades at the moment and the skins were not compatible with them. They have not been supported for some time and using a skin with the coming upgrades would have made the site unusable so we've removed the skins in advance of that happening.

    On the default version of the site now you can choose between the light and dark theme, use Cosy Mode to reduce padding around elements on the page and switch to Full Width to expand to the width of your monitor. All of these are available at: https://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/profile.php?do=appearancesettings

    How can I? User's guide to some features on the new site



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    #12
    osarusan
    Registered Users Posts: 16,553 ✭✭✭✭osarusan


    There no comparison in user-friendliness between this current dropdown menu:

    U7QBQZb.jpg



    and this old dropdown menu:

    MFw1CaM.jpg

    The old one is just so so much better.


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    #13
    Boards.ie: Niamh
    Boards.ie Employee Posts: 12,597 ✭✭✭✭✭Boards.ie: Niamh
    Boards.ie Community Manager


    The old one was also very outdated and didn't contain any of the new forums opened in recent times, right?

    The more condensed menu is not great and we will look at improving that in the future as soon as we can but the team are working on other more fundamental projects at the moment.

    How can I? User's guide to some features on the new site



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    #14
    osarusan
    Registered Users Posts: 16,553 ✭✭✭✭osarusan


    Boards.ie: Niamh wrote: »
    The old one was also very outdated and didn't contain any of the new forums opened in recent times, right?


    Correct.


    But there is nothing stopping boards from creating an updated one.


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    #15
    Boards.ie: Niamh
    Boards.ie Employee Posts: 12,597 ✭✭✭✭✭Boards.ie: Niamh
    Boards.ie Community Manager


    osarusan wrote: »
    Correct.


    But there is nothing stopping boards from creating an updated one.

    Also correct and something we plan to do in the future but we don't have any dates for that yet.

    How can I? User's guide to some features on the new site



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    #16
    Headshot
    Registered Users Posts: 53,874 ✭✭✭✭Headshot


    I thought this was a bug at first and created a new thread in the development forum and was surprised to find this change was on purpose.

    This new skin/template is god awful and horrible to navigate.

    The old/legacy was just a joy to navigate and easy on the eyes
    Boards.ie: Niamh wrote: »
    Also correct and something we plan to do in the future but we don't have any dates for that yet.

    If you plan to do it in the future why doesnt boards revert the changes on the old skin and once the new one is live then do the change over?


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    #17
    Headshot
    Registered Users Posts: 53,874 ✭✭✭✭Headshot


    Boards.ie: Niamh wrote: »
    The old one was also very outdated and didn't contain any of the new forums opened in recent times, right?

    The more condensed menu is not great and we will look at improving that in the future as soon as we can but the team are working on other more fundamental projects at the moment.

    The old one was fine for me.

    Why dont you let users decide on what skin they want to use????


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    #18
    Mr.Nice Guy
    Registered Users Posts: 45,535 ✭✭✭✭Mr.Nice Guy


    I too would welcome the return of the classic skin. It looked more polished and aesthetically pleasing than this version. As the old saying goes, if it ain't broke don't fix it. Think the previous version was perfect, honestly.

    'It is better to walk alone in the right direction than follow the herd walking in the wrong direction.'



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    #19
    Seve OB
    Registered Users Posts: 15,832 ✭✭✭✭Seve OB


    Headshot wrote: »
    This new skin/template is god awful and horrible to navigate.

    The old/legacy was just a joy to navigate and easy on the eyes

    well said


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    #20
    _Kaiser_
    Registered Users Posts: 28,680 ✭✭✭✭_Kaiser_


    Boards.ie: Niamh wrote: »
    The old one was also very outdated and didn't contain any of the new forums opened in recent times, right?

    The more condensed menu is not great and we will look at improving that in the future as soon as we can but the team are working on other more fundamental projects at the moment.

    To be fair, that was asked for years ago when this menu was implemented for most users of the "legacy"/full site.

    All the arguments against it were given then, but in short it's a massive pain to navigate, hides half the site from the users, and encourages people to only stick with their favourites.

    Shouldn't take that long to change it to something more like it used to be as shown in the screenshot above


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    #21
    colly10
    Registered Users Posts: 3,002 ✭✭✭colly10


    I don’t care about the look of new vs old.
    Previously a new posts link was on the top bar when you were viewing any thread. Is there an equivelent without returning to the home screen all the time?


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    #22
    ED E
    Registered Users Posts: 36,165 ✭✭✭✭ED E


    Back in 1963 all we had was a keyboard. We used that, it was fine. Clickty clack. Then in 1964 some boffin came up with this idea of a mouse. Mad I know, but it kinda took off. Why you forcing me back to 1963 here lads?


    Explained:
    With the legacy skin I could be reading consumer issues, float my mouse up to sports then down to cycling, single click and its done. Then over to Online B&A with similar effort. Pretty much anywhere on the site in a single click. Now its multiple clicks and page loads of moving my hand from my coffee to type the name of the sub I want. Moving backwards.


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    #23
    Hotblack Desiato
    Registered Users Posts: 33,956 ✭✭✭✭Hotblack Desiato


    My biggest problem with this skin is that you can't have a window less than 1000 pixels wide, or else the text of posts doesn't fit.

    That's a shocking waste of screen real estate, which is always at a premium on a laptop.

    Now I can't even fit two Boards windows on the screen at the same time (e.g. cross-referencing two threads) without the windows overlapping each other - even on a 1920x1080 laptop screen!!!

    Ridiculous and totally unnecessary.

    This is on Opera. Tried it on Firefox and it's less of an issue - I can make the window almost as narrow as it used to be. But I really don't want to have to switch my browser over this - Opera has great keyboard shortcuts, Firefox is hopeless in comparison. Scratch the above. On Linux, Firefox is slightly better, but still worse than the old skin. On Windows, there's no difference between browsers and the new default skin still requires a massive window.

    Life ain't always empty.



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    #24
    [Deleted User]
    Posts: 17,381 ✭ [Deleted User]


    I just tested this and on touch, it's five clicks to get from here to Relationship Issues.

    Five.

    That's four page loads hitting the boards.ie servers for a static menu.. That's four extra pages I have to go through. All you need is some JavaScript and the list of forums in html with a drop down menu. Why is a database getting hit repeatedly for menus that don't change..

    Niamh, I'm not sure what your criteria are for "fundamental" but when your mobile site basically requires that users already know the name of the forum so they can type that in, get the search results, and click the forum from there, I would classify that as Critical. That is the fastest way to get around the site and some forums feel impossible to find without doing that.

    When a user first visits the site on desktop, do you know what they see? They see a yellow cookies notification along the top with a little red X. The type of cookies bar that people in 2020 don't bother clicking away. It must be like 14px high so it doesn't need to be clicked away.
    And do you what that covers? The entire menu... All of it. That is way above Critical. That is get your developer out of bed to fix it right now as new users can't see what most important thing on the page.


    It seems that no one cares. If I am viewing a user's posts and type something into the search bar, I expect it will search for that term within that user's posts. Same with a forum or a thread.
    Nope. It's a new search from scratch.
    I posted 17 lives of JS in Development that fixes this to give expected behaviour and no one cares. I could fix the menu problems today with some JS, and then I'd post it into the void.


    Just open source the site and let us work on it. It would save ye money, too.


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    #25
    KevIRL
    Registered Users Posts: 39,498 ✭✭✭✭KevIRL


    M.boards gone now too? Since this morning it's just routing to a twitter post about maintenance


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    #26
    Boards.ie: Niamh
    Boards.ie Employee Posts: 12,597 ✭✭✭✭✭Boards.ie: Niamh
    Boards.ie Community Manager


    KevIRL wrote: »
    M.boards gone now too? Since this morning it's just routing to a twitter post about maintenance

    No, we had a maintenance window this morning at 5am and the site was redirecting to the tweet about that. If you are still being redirected, clear your browser's cache and that should resolve the issue. A few other users have had the same issue and that sorted it for them.

    How can I? User's guide to some features on the new site



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    #27
    Dravokivich
    Moderators, Category Moderators, Music Moderators, Politics Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 22,360 CMod ✭✭✭✭Dravokivich


    Headshot wrote: »
    I thought this was a bug at first and created a new thread in the development forum and was surprised to find this change was on purpose.

    This new skin/template is god awful and horrible to navigate.

    The old/legacy was just a joy to navigate and easy on the eyes



    If you plan to do it in the future why doesnt boards revert the changes on the old skin and once the new one is live then do the change over?

    Consider yourself lucky they ditched the "Responsive Site."
    Headshot wrote: »
    The old one was fine for me.

    Why dont you let users decide on what skin they want to use????

    They removed it because you wouldn't have been able to use it.


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    #28
    Discodog
    Registered Users Posts: 15,828 ✭✭✭✭Discodog


    No wonder Boards is losing users. You consistently ignore the opinions of your customers, us. Most companies/organisations are keen to discover what their clients want & then provide it. Boards is the absolute opposite.

    This compulsory update doesn't just look dreadful but the menu changes are bonkers. What is the logic in making it harder for people to find fora & post in their favourites ?

    Why is there this constant desire to fix things that aren't broken & then force your customers to accept them ?


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    #29
    vicwatson
    Registered Users Posts: 28,403 ✭✭✭✭vicwatson


    I hate this new boards. Where can I even find “new posts” that used to be in the middle of the screen, all the menus have gone :mad


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    #30
    Paddy Cow
    Closed Accounts Posts: 6,576 ✭✭✭Paddy Cow


    This new layout is awful. I missed the memo about the classic layout being taken away and couldn't believe when I logged in and my layout had changed. It's clunky, awful to navigate and something I imagine boards would have looked like when it first started. I cannot express how much I hate it. I can't believe this is considered an upgrade :eek:


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    #31
    [Deleted User]
    Posts: 17,381 ✭ [Deleted User]


    I got forced onto the blue and white one a good while back.. The one with Talk to... Topics Regional Adverts.ie along the top.

    Were you guys using the really old skins up until now? I miss my old green one.


    Edit: Stylus chrome extension + some CSS means I have my green back. A couple of bits to clean up and it's done.

    YvBkZIY.png


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