(2012-07-10, 10:20 AM)Yumi Wrote: How well does the signup page work with Javascript disabled? In particular, I suspect Javascript is being used to display the "Username", "Password" etc text, but what happens when it's disabled? Only other method I can think of is HTML5 placeholders, which isn't supported in any stable version of IE anyway. Actually, it may be possible with hacky CSS, but I wouldn't be so sure IE supports that either.
Actually, I am using the placeholder element -- and I wasn't aware of IE's abysmal support for it. I guess I'll hit the drawing board again on that.
Quote:The 'error: log-in' page partially serves the purpose of notifying users that they need to log in. If I click on a link to a thread then a login page comes up, it can be confusing - at least having a message clarifies why I cannot see the thread. A short message should be suffice - no need for all the bullet points (though the bullet points in this post is required)
I'm not sure if you miswrote, but just in case, this window would never come up (on my implementation) when clicking on a thread. Only on actions -- e.g. New Topic, Post a Reply, Quote, would it appear. That said, I like the idea of adding an error message, though I wouldn't be satisfied to add it unless I could customize it for each attempted action.
Quote:Paging links - MyBB's suck in the forumdisplay, but you should make them bigger. Not everyone has perfect skills with a mouse, so make the click target larger. Especially useful for people browsing on touchscreens
The page numbers are about the same as in the default, but the arrows are too small, I agree.
Quote:Your new thread seems to favour widescreen monitors, as you've mentioned - true that they're becomming commonplace (though not universally, eg iPad is 4:3) but not everyone has their browser fullscreen'd
I don't have my browser full screen either, but it downscales pretty nicely. There's room for improvement on the downscaling though. I'll continue to work on it.
Quote:MyBB's standard for submit buttons is to have them below the form and centered. I suppose you've switched them everywhere to be on the right column (except profile page)? Interesting to note is that the new reply, it's aligned to right-bottom, whilst in quick reply, it's right-top. Not a UX concern, but just being anal about consistency.
It's interesting that you changed a "single column" layout to "two column" for your new thread page, but did the opposite for the profile page. Change for the sake of change?
It's not change for the sake of change as much as it is change depending on the context. For the New Topic, it's easy to fit all of the content on the screen with zero scrolling, but it's not possible for the User CP. What I would like to do actually is have the Save Changes button floating on the right and follow the user's scrolling. I wasn't satisfied with the implementations I could come up with, but I'll continue to work on it.
Quote:You've got yet another layout for the private messaging. I would consider that PMs should resemble the forumdisplay layout, but you've got the new thread button on the top-right, but new PM button on the top-left. The author/subject is a little confusing as there's no obvious distinction between the two. I personally prefer your forumdisplay layout.
There's definitely too many interaction models here. I'm not totally happy with the message design yet. I should note however that the "full" editor resembles my posting pages more closely.
http://i.imgur.com/LpPd6.png
Quote:Stripping out cruft is fun, yes, but some things that may seem useless could be nice to keep. Stuff like thread view counts may be mostly pointless, but can provide interesting statistics for users (not just the topic creator), just like images, colours etc. Not really a UX issue, and different people will have different tastes, but perhaps something to keep in mind.
I agree, and I'll come back to this in a second.
(2012-07-10, 10:55 AM)Tomm M Wrote: As Yumi points out there are some weaknesses to your designs, Brad.
Well, I never expected there wouldn't be, haha. This is the first pass at building a better foundation, and I plan to iterate on it when I find ways to make improvements. I think overall, though, it has less weaknesses than the current MyBB designs.
Quote:But, ultimately, this is a perfect example of how to customise MyBB to your genre. While some of your changes might not be suitable for some I hope others realise that you can push the boundaries of what you can do with a forum to make it truly unique.
From a professional mode; if you released a forum software that behaved with your changes, I think you'd be getting people asking for the things you've removed. Maybe when 2.0 comes along with shared activities, improvements to reputation, a centralised User CP and a much better profile your changes will feel much more at home in a forum.
I agree that releasing this as-is would be a disaster waiting to happen, and my goal here wasn't to say, "All of these things are useless and you should get rid of them," although some of it is. But ultimately it depends on the audience you're serving and what the priorities are for your site. A webmaster forum would probably find this interface way too simple, and some people genuinely like things like view counts.
Of course, at some point admins have to make decisions to cut things that some people may like. There is no such thing as no compromise.
What I really want from this is for people to get inspired. Forum admins are generally pretty lazy and expect everything to be perfect out of the box. This attitude needs to change. To run a great site, you need to put more work into making it your own.