Forums | MacLife

Please be as specific & detailed as possible in your feedback. For instance what resolutions are problematic what workarounds you've found, if any, for problems. This will guide the site managers to more properly implement repairs and improvements.

I should also warn you that there will not be be a quick resolution as it has been confirmed the Mac|Life staffers are in and out of the office due to MWSF and GUI no longer has server access.

GUI no longer has server access!!!???

Last edited by ukimalefu (2007-01-10 10:59 pm)

Non-geeks select an option from a menu, if there was any.

My complaint isn't about the forums, but about the main page. Lose the keywords in the page title, please.

"Mac,Macintosh,Mac tips,Mac hardware,Mac software,Mac printers,Mac help,Mac storage,Mac hard drives,Mac digital cameras,iLife,iLife tips, iLife help- Mac|Life" is just a bit long.

I'm kinda diggin' the new site and forums. Yeah, there's some fine-tuning to be done, but all in all I'm enjoying it.

justine wrote:

1. Color scheme is an eyesore for a lot of posters. No theme choices.

As noted elsewhere, it's actually painful to me   I'm on an NT laptop this week, and keep having to fiddle with the brightness & screen angle when switching back & forth between here and elsewhere.  I don't know what I'll do when I get back home to my desktop.  Probably spend much less time here until SmooveSmoke (or something comparable) returns, or see it if will be easy to override the CSS colors here without breaking other sites.

For detail, I think it's a combination of the white / light grey and the bright light blue.  It certainly doesn't help that the text is dark grey instead of black, particularly at the current point size.  I'll have to see if it's any better (or worse) on my Mac at home.

justine wrote:

3. Multiple forum tabs have all the same name making navigation between forums difficult.

Yes, each page of the forums having the same title is a big pain.  While browsing, I've noticed a couple of other "gotchas", in addition to what has already been mentioned.

First, after I have finished reading a multi-page topic, it's harder to go back in the history to the forum page; I have to carefully count how far back to go (or waste time jumping back through each page one at a time).

[edit:] The same problem also occurs after posting a reply, particularly if you <preview> a couple of times.

Second, I occasionally want to check the topic title while I'm reading it (& I have already started scrolling), particularly if I am coming back after leaving the computer for a while.  Normally, I just look to the window title, but I've caught myself reading the "non-title" a few times already.  Perhaps not everyone does this, though.

To be specific, There need to be "normal" specific titles at least for the main forum pages and the topic pages.  It would be nice if such titles were prepended to the static part of the title, but appending them is fine if that is easier.

For example, this thread's page title could be something like "Complaints about the forum design? Post 'em here | MacLife topic", or "MacLife | View Topic: Complaints about the forum design? Post 'em here".

justine wrote:

2. Page width is too narrow for high res screens

The fixed width is fine with me, but my browser windows happen to be about that width.  From the sound of it, it seems that several people run their browser window(s) maximized, and if your horizontal resolution is 1024 or more, I can see where there would be quite a bit of unused real estate.  It doesn't help that there seem to be rather large borders, either.

Last edited by Kosh (2007-01-11 5:15 pm)

I won't quibble over small details but there are 2 things that REALLY bug me badly:

The grey on grey text is simply intolerable. The contrast ratio is much too little for comfortable reading. This is a serious accessibility issue for people like me who have less than perfect vision. Other things people mention are matters of taste but this is not.
This needs to be fixed. Frankly I expect better of this outfit. Readability is not rocket science.

My second issue is much less important to me but still matters. I dislike the fixed widthedness. I like my browser open full screen and this forum looks ridiculous on my 1450x1050 screen. In the age of big wide screens 760px is awfully narrow. Back 10 years ago when 800x600 was not uncommon it would have been OK but this is the 21st century.
Lets get modern.

Last edited by Pariah (2007-01-11 6:18 pm)

Pariah wrote:

I post this as an example. Notice how less easy to read this line is than....
this one where I have set the color to black. Notice how much better the black pops off the grey.

<-----This grey would be a better choice for the body background.

I agree, Pariah. This whole "Web 2.0" text in shades of gray fad rubs me the wrong way. I don't have any vision problems and I find it hard to read too.

I can understand not wanting to go with a straight black on white, but dark gray text on a lighter gray background isn't the way to go. To be fair, I've seen much worse on other sites, so Mac|Life is hardly the worst offender. However, I've long since gotten to the point where I'll click off of a site if I see excessive use of this oh-so-trendy low contrast text.

Although I've been kinda lax lately, I design web sites and have always kept accessibility in the forefront of my designs. This whole "Web 2.0" thing just makes the hair on my neck stand on end. I guess it qualifies as a pet-peeve.

• Ok here is a good one. The Ads on the right make the forum 200px thinner and only really show for the first couple of posts. The next 13 posts don't even see it, but the page is being eaten up by blank on the right. A better suggestion would be having ads top n bottom of the thread and let it take up the width. Best of both worlds, the ads stay and generate revenue but they don't waste space. Above and below the Quick post box would be a good start!

• Grey and blue is just plain nasty. Please make the text black!

• More Max while ya at it. There are a few on Oatmeals page that really are useful and deserving of a spot in here. (I assume the author would approve)

• The Mac|Life black logo at the bottom, the nasty white around the edges is driving me crazy, fix it! So sloppy.

somehow, justice just wasn't done with that one

Lord know there's been enough image display errors around here. Do we know if that particular one was for everyone who saw his post, just him or was it a random spattering? Also barring more information on that is he sure his setting were/are correct. (There may be some weirdness in them associated with the move and it's none to difficult to hit something wrong without realizing it.)

Speaking of display errors, here's the same post as I see it macnuke.

:)

I turned smilies off for the post, so that was cheating.  But it's possible that that's what the other person you saw had done.