The new site is essentially a modern piece of bloatware junk.

[Supercluster]

I understand that many people like it. I wanted this thread to exist for posterity.

SFF forum has transitioned to a more "modern" version that I do not find appealing in any way. It is harder to navigate as a database, and is more like a social network.
I am not expecting anything to change for the better really, since this is the way the internet experience is being designed now.

This is a simple statement that can be backed up by a 6.2 MB home page, which is shameful and ridiculous.

 

[batterybull]

Spoiler: CSS

.node-title{
    font-size: 3rem !important;
    font-weight: bold !important;
}

.thNodes__nodeList .block-container .th_node--hasBackgroundImage .node-body{
    background-image: none !important;
}

.node-extra{
    font-size: 1.2rem !important;
}

.node-description{
    font-size: 1.2rem !important;
}

.block-footer{
    font-size: 1.2rem !important;
}

Wrote this up if any of ya'll wanna give it a try. I use stylus.

Edit: improved version?

Spoiler: CSS

.node-title{
    font-size: 3rem !important;
    font-weight: bold !important;
}

.thNodes__nodeList .block-container .th_node--hasBackgroundImage .node-body{
    background-image: none !important;
}

.node-extra{
    font-size: 1.2rem !important;
    opacity: 0.7 !important;
}

.node-description{
    font-size: 1.2rem !important;
}

.block-footer{
    font-size: 1.2rem !important;
    opacity: 0.7 !important;
}

.block-container .uix_newIndicator{
    opacity: 0.7 !important;
}

 

[jØrd]

I have said this elsewhere but it bears repeating here

This may or may not come as a shock to anyone who hasnt read entirety of both threads on this but everyone on team is well aware that all the article links are currently not working. There is a reason for this, it is being worked on but w/ @PlayfulPhoenix being super AFK moving countries things got slowed down a little. Needless to say, we see all the feedback, we share your concerns, we are working on it. We are a small team of part timers, we are all devoting as much time as we possibly can to this but no one is nine to fiving it so change tends to be all at once or a little bit at a time as & when we can fit it in.

 

[BaK]

BTW: For the life of me I can't seem to find "Subscribed Threads" would someone point this old fart in the right direction on how I find my list of subscribed threads. Many thanks. Cheers and respects.

I would also like to know where to find that.

 

[ikt]

Change is ALWAYS a painful shock and adjustment but inevitable. Case in point... boy did I ever fight those push-button digital wireless phones in the late 70s and 80s much preferring the good ole dinosaur rotary dial hard line telephone. What a fool I was! As I SURE DO like and prefer my smart phone I have today!

BTW: For the life of me I can't seem to find "Subscribed Threads" would someone point this old fart in the right direction on how I find my list of subscribed threads. Many thanks. Cheers and respects.

I like how on the one hand you were pointing out that change is hard to deal with and that we should get used to it but then point out a design flaw.

I do like change a lot, I live on the bleeding edge but we're purely talking from a design perspective.

For example my biggest reason for coming here was the Ncase but after the design change I couldn't actually find the forum, the major vender forums should be on the front page, maybe after 1000 topics you graduate to the front page or something.

When we mention a bad change for example imagine in the Trade Forum it had the country of the seller in the thread title but then we changed to this new forum and lost the ability to see what country the seller was in so that it looks prettier, that's objectively worse and what we're talking about.

That said I don't want to be a debbie downer, this place is still #1 for everything SFF.

 

[ricochet]

That said I don't want to be a debbie downer, this place is still #1 for everything SFF.

Did you also happen to notice that we be avatar siblings!

 

[ricochet]

I understand that many people like it. I wanted this thread to exist for posterity.

SFF forum has transitioned to a more "modern" version that I do not find appealing in any way. It is harder to navigate as a database, and is more like a social network.
I am not expecting anything to change for the better really, since this is the way the internet experience is being designed now.

This is a simple statement that can be backed up by a 6.2 MB home page, which is shameful and ridiculous.

My eye avatar is better than yours! :-p...

 

[Supercluster]

My eye avatar is better than yours! :-p...

It is a nice one indeed.
Mine is an unedited image crop that I've shot myself, and has a story reflected. ?

 

[Protools]

It is a nice one indeed.
Mine is an unedited image crop that I've shot myself, and has a story reflected. ?

always thought your profile pic is from 'Requiem for a dream' for some reason

 

[eiselx86]

I like the header pictures but the "Most recent post" column should have a solid/close to solid color. I painted this example:

PS. DO NOT USE PATTERNS BEHIND TEXT
Keep up the good work

 

[RenG]

@eiselx86

With some editing in the CSS, here you go.

 

[JDK]

The new design (of the frontpage) made me frequent the site way less often. I basically just check if I have notifications, as navigating through the structure is a pain in the ass, if you are used to traditional forum structures.

 

[RenG]

Here is another version that resembles the old site.

 

[lawney]

I’ll put in my two cents as another critic of the new forum software. I’m far less commonly frequenting the site and even less engaging I believe, just put off every time I open the home page. I’m still getting lost in the navigation despite generally know where things are again.

I prefer traditional forums, period. They’ve been close to perfected already, and more glitz is just an off-putting distraction. Is it more stable though? Maybe that’s the case.

 

[chr]

I'm a newbie here (*), and I find the 'Forum' page, https://smallformfactor.net/forum/, quite unreadable.

The background images and general visual clutter make it difficult for me to try and find the relevant forum. It's really discouraging to be honest.
I miss some kind of sufficiently visual representation of hierarchy/classification of the forums, assuming there is one. As it's now, there might be a hierarchy/classification, but I honestly can't tell. For me, this leads to poor discoverability/ability to find a suitable forum (**).

The following is of course very old school..: However, a tabular or list based design where I could e.g. expand forum categories would improve the discoverability.

Further regarding readability and visual clutter: Each forum "block" (card?) has some extra "cruft" to add to the visual clutter, i.e. the small icons with number next to them that I don't know what they represent. In a tabular layout they could placed into extra columns on the right. And you could perhaps sort for the forum with most posts etc.

Going into e.g the 'Hardware category', https://smallformfactor.net/forum/category/hardware/, it's better. However, strictly speaking I'd prefer less visual intrusion from the user icons on the left. More importantly, I prefer not having the submitter name / data below each thread title, as it makes it slightly more difficult for me to quickly scan thread titles.

Btw, I tried expanding the dropdown 'Forums' in the left sidebar, and why does it have to have an animation delay? That's just annoying to me.
(Note: I'm not a fan of forced delays in the UI in general).

To end on a positive note, I do like that it's a dark theme.
It also seems I was able to add an RSS feed for the 'Hardware' category, although I'm not sure this will tell me if there's a new post in that thread.
I was unable to make an RSS feed for this thread.

cheers,
(*) I just registered in order to write this comment, so I guess the design had that advantage...

(**) Is there a forum for asking questions about which forum I should be using for a specific topic?

 

[Phuncz]

(*) I just registered in order to write this comment, so I guess the design had that advantage...

(**) Is there a forum for asking questions about which forum I should be using for a specific topic?

1. welcome, our scheme to lure people in has worked, FLAWLESSLY ! Muhahaha
2. below most of the subforum titles there's a description for the type of comments that go there. Shouldn't it be clear, try finding a similar topic to find where it was put. We're mainly hard on toxic behavior, not people trying to navigate the SFF rabbit hole of wallet destroying, endorfine releasing, amazeballs community projects.

 

[ricochet]

Will the "Subscribed Threads" view return at some point in the future. Is there another work around that I am missing?

 

[chyll2]

still miss the old forums

 

[Hifihedgehog]

still miss the old forums

Likewise. By the looks of it, the current theme is most definitely trying to mimic Discourse. This ends up masking and losing the benefits of XenForo's traditional forum system while not fully offering many of the features Discourse brings to the table. This issue naturally arises from shoehorning a forum (or any software solution, for that matter) to be something it was never designed to be. The bottom line is, the best approach is either migrating to Discourse and redesigning your forum ecosystem to embrace its unique virtues and sins or continuing with XenForo and making the most of it.

 

[NateDawg72]

I agree with much that has been said. The good folks who run this site / forum do so with largely volunteered time, and life is crazy. From what I've heard there hasn't been much time for working on big changes to the website for a while now due to life happening.

Edit: For those browsing on PC, there are browser extensions that can change the appearance of the website on your client side. That's what I've used to deal with the parts of the design I found unpleasant. I've shared links before, I can point people in that direction again if there is interest.

 

[Windfall]

Here is another version that resembles the old site.

Can we have this be the actual forum? Please?