You may have used Mike Keller's trick for getting rid of the stupid "Bulletin 4" ad in the bottom right corner of the browser window -- that also nukes much of the useful stuff on the left side of the screen too.

While I agree that these things are not very nice, they're mostly cosmetic.

I don't care what information is justified and how in the sidebar, or that the gray is a slightly different height than the main text area. For me these are the nit-picky things that fog the real problems such as:

Server times out a couple of times before I can post threads.
Everything loads slower, and doesn't always work the first time.
Embedded images don't appear all the time. I won't even know they're there unless I get clues that I should be seeing something. Then I can click "reply with quote" and copy the image into a new window.
"Last" button for thread pages is gone. I know you can click the time to see the last post, but it's not a user friendly unless you've read everything up until the second to last post.
"Last" button in the thread is counter intuitive, go ahead click it.

List is from most to least irritating in my opinion.

There's talk of re-loading yet another version soon that will fix a number of problems that have been reported.

I'm running Firefox, and am not having time problems any more (for 3 or 4 days now), and am not seeing alignment or image issues. The look/feel is admittedly, still not growing on me, but ... oh well.

I haven't chimed in on any of the threads yet, but I'm certainly leaning towards the "don't like it" side. I don't dislike it enough to not come here, but it is a shame that a forum upgrade takes a step backwards in usability.

I'll make do though. I've used worse forums and I'm still alive.

Probably my least favorite thing about the new forums is the Quick Navigation at the bottom of every page. In the old forums it had "Classic & Vintage" already selected and you could just click "Go" and it would take you directly to the C&V main page. Now, you click the "Classic & Vintage" quick navigation link and it brings up a menu which you have to scroll down a ways to find the C&V forum option, then click it. It's not nearly as quick or easy it was before.

Yeah, if so you will find cudak888's post in that thread about how to remove only the images you want gone.

I haven't spent much of any time on here since the "upgrade" because of the "upgrade."

I find the look annoying and distracting.

I believe this is the first time I'm posting since the change- I don't like that my text in the Quick Reply box is much smaller than the rest of the text on the page.

:lol:

Search for my posts in Tom Stormcrow's special comments thread. And read a few pages of what others have said.

Try using the "Quick Navigation" function. Then if you don't remember what our old "Forum Jump" function did that was different, go to the RoadBikeReview site and try the one they have. It's the same as the one we used to have.

Look on the C&V listing of threads. See if you can start to read a thread by immediately going to the last post in that thread. I can't see how to do it. That's not enhanced function, that's lost or reduced function. If a user had a habit of using a feature that is no longer available, it takes a while and may be frustrating to either use a less-convenient alternative or to find an alternative that may have been provided.

I'm not sure I like your use of the term "egregious." Are you intending to judge my opinion as to what is really a big problem and what isn't? I don't think you should.

Actually, Charles, I tried to find the function he was talking about in my Mac Firefox 3.5 installation, and I can't even find it. No nuking for me.

I just figured it out, based on instructions another moderator posted. There's a Firefox plug-in called "Remove it Permanently". Install this, then...

... that said, I don't run a Mac.

It's my membership and I'll whine if I want to, brownshirt. :p

It's more of an orange/rust color.

Hey!?!?! How did you know? :eek:

There are so many basic navigation issues it makes one wonder if the techs who designed the upgraded version actualy actively participate in on-line forums. Its uncomprehensable to me that there could be so many basic forum101 issues.

I'm siding with the whiners. Regardless of whether you are a paying member or not, you have a right to gripe. The website is a vehicle for the owers to make money. The money is made via advertisers. The advertising revenue is proportional to the traffic on the site. The traffic on the site are the members. Without members, the owners don't make money, so they would be foolish not listen.

I put a lot more into this site than I get out of it. I dispense a lot of advice. Basically, I'm attracting and servcing other people for the owners and making money for them. In return, I get the personal satisfaction of helping others but nothing else. If the site becomes more difficult for me to use, why should I stay? I can always go back to Old Roads or another forum. I've noticed a lot of regular contributers have been absent lately. Mayber they've already left.

My top three pet peeves:

1. There's no longer a flag to readily identify threads to which I've posted a response. I like to follow these threads in case someone has further questions. Currently, I have to venture into my personal profile to do this. This is very time consuming.

2. There's no flag to identify PMs to which I've responded. Sometimes I have numerous PMs and can't respond to them all at once. I don't want to have to go into the sent folder to find the PMs to which I've responded.

3. Constantly being logged out before I can post a response. I have gotten into the habit of copying my repsonse so that I can paste it after the inevitable refresh and log-in, without having to re-type a whole response. Guess what I"m going to do next?

Not whining, just stating a fact. Currently there is a bug on this site which prevents users of Internet Explorer from posting new threads. Considering that IE is probably the most commonly used web browser, this is a pretty major problem. I have corresponded with the webmaster on this, and he acknowledges that this problem exists. Maybe this is why we have not seen a lot of new thread postings.

Excellent - more people to Firefox! :p

-Kurt

I'll leave the forum for good before acquiescing to a forced migration to yet another chunk of S/W on my PC. IE7 works well for me, and for the gazillion other folks that seem to like it ok. It is by far the most prevalent browser, and to roll out a bloated, untested piece of crap that doesn't work well with IE7 into an environment whose preponderance of users are utilizing IE7 is suicidal.

I'm "in the business", and if we did a major roll-out without test-bedding it to death, we would be in a world of hurt. On any production network that I've been involved with, this roll-out would have already been backed out, the blame would have already been assigned, and heads would have been removed from bodies.

Seriously, people would have lost their jobs over this.

The jackboots give it a brownish tint. :D

ok - now I know you're just bluffing. I've been wearing sandals all day. :p

Not to minimize all the headaches we've been experiencing, but I have found that a couple things I had at first thought were broken, simply work considerably differently than how I was used to them working. I just figured out how to navigate the folders in my PM file. There are a couple extra mouse clicks involved than previously. Look for the little black arrow on the left side menu. Moving things to/from those folders also takes an extra step. It's definitely a PITA, but not as broken, or buggy as I initially thought.

Can't disagree with a single statement. All I can say is that I know that Tom is breathing down the necks of everyone at IB to figure out why this happened and how best to get it resolved as quickly as possible. The site looks pretty good in IE7 for me here at work, but I have seen screen shots of other people using IE7 and other versions of IE which are having issues. I wonder if some of the issues are related to javascript versions not being up to date or a half dozen other things outside of simply what major version of IE is being used.

Personally, I switched over to Google Chrome browser for all of my non-work related web work some time ago and have been very pleased with it. (Though I admit, VeloBase.com needed some major work to look good both in Chrome and IE after developing it primarily for/with IE initially.)


edit: no, me and Zorro didn't intend for the double mod post here. ;)

It's obvious that the project team, (using that term loosely) had no clue concerning not only IT best practices, but also in web usability and accessibility issues. IMO, I'd bet they don't even have a development environment, let alone a QA/user testing environment. Amateur hour fer shure...and if that offends somebody, tough crap - they need to be offended.

It isn't the fault of the mods nor Tom and the other admins either...I doubt they had any input whatsoever into the planning or implementation decisions. This was purely a business (IB) f up.

I'm back using IE this time. I see what people mean about the contrast. The look and feel is definitely a bit different, but the times it takes to execute actions seems comparable, and I'm not seeing it as being significantly slower than what I'm accustomed to.

One of the major f ups is the Image Verification requirement for replying or posting new threads. This type of stuff is nothing new, yet the very basic best practices have been ignored. The thing is hard for some (me being one of the some) to read, but there is no alternative scheme for those with vision impairments, blindness or folks who like to use the forums with images turned off. Indeed, the forum itself is pretty much unusable with images turned off. This is basic web interface stuff...you'd think a company called Internet Brands might at least understand the basics of web interfaces, even if they don't have a clue about IT best practices.

Hell, I had to refresh the image verification 6 times to get something I could read to post this reply!

Have you tried to post a new thread using IE?

1) There should be a green arrow on the big envelope next to the thread if you've replied to a thread. If you're not seeing this, then this is a new issue that I'm not aware of yet and would be interested to know what browser you're on so I can relay this information on to Tom.

2) Same as #1, I see a white "replied" arrow on PM messages I have replied to. If you're not getting this then something is most certainly wrong somewhere along the line that this isn't getting flagged correctly for you, or the image isn't getting set correctly for some other reason. I won't speculate too much on the reason, I've long lost the desire to imagine up the why.

3) This is a known issue and I'm sure one that is very near the top of the issues to be resolved. Hopefully this will get fixed very soon and you won't have to deal with that. I know having to copy your replies before submitting is annoying, my internet connection at home is spotty at best and have had to resort to this strategy fairly often because of it.