Too much white space

[trademark2 485]

 

Personally, I always have come back to this site because of how nice it looked, and how easy it was to use. I even made a thread here earlier about how ergonomic and beautiful the (old) site was. It was just so well put together. If this is an upgrade for forum security or something I understand, but IMO it should at least temporarily be rolled back, or else significant changes should be made. Learning how to use features are one thing, but the downgrade on the sites' appearance is quite another.

The main issue with the new site is that there is just too much white and off-white space. Just take the text box for example. before it was a nice looking box to type in, with a blue background, a grey format bar, a border, ect ect ect. I don't remember everything. Now it is a sad looking white box. I don't feel like the site is very fun to use like this. Add some borders, some different colors. The background picture is nice, but the middle of the page is just full of white. 

The other issue with this is that there are less widgets on the top, and on the side. Before, there were recently posted and new topic widgets together on the top of the page, and this looked very nice. Now the new topic section is far down on the side of the page. This will likely affect forum participation adversely if not corrected. The new topic section should be aligned with the recently posted section, like it was before, giving ponies an easy summary of the new content on the forum. The recently posted section should be made narrower, its got much more space than it needs.

The 'add friend' button is also missing when visiting other ponies' profiles. This should be readded. "Following" someone is not the same as adding them as a friend, from a linguistic standpoint at least. Following someone means you want to see their content. Friends means you are... friends. Following is a one way relationship status, while friends is 2 way. If I am friends with someone, it implies they are friends with me, but if I am following someone, it implies I am interested in them, but they are not necessarily interested in me. Maybe this was done to allow one sided relationships, but I would much rather be friends with people than their 'follower'. If you no longer officially have 'friends' on the site, it just doesn't feel as good.

On yet another note, we no longer get our own "About me" Page, where we can edit the background. Instead it is now only a tab on our profile. Having the about me page displayed when we went to another users profile was really cool, and while the information is still available, it doesn't have the same flavor if it's within a tab instead of a customized userpage.

If these changes are made, the forum could look good again. I think that before it was the best looking forum I have ever used, and now, it is merely an 'average forum'. I am really sad about this. Sorry if this comes across as harsh to Feldo and whoever else worked on it. I know you are talented ponies, and appreciate the work you do.

Edited April 1, 2017 by trademark2

[Guest]

24 minutes ago, trademark2 said:

The main issue with the new site is that there is just too much white and off-white space. Just take the text box for example. before it was a nice looking box to type in, with a blue background, a grey format bar, a border, ect ect ect. I don't remember everything. Now it is a sad looking white box.

I agree with that there's just so much white space going on - it'd be cool if there was at least an option to change the color of it (I've seen another forum that uses the same layout and has an optional dark theme that is easier on the eyes, so maybe there's a possibility to have that option here too?). Another thing that adds to the quite blank look of posts is the space around the avatars that are really small now.  I wonder if the size they're now is the largest size available for avatars.

 

29 minutes ago, trademark2 said:

The other issue with this is that there are less widgets on the top, and on the side. Before, there were recently posted and new topic widgets together on the top of the page, and this looked very nice. Now the new topic section is far down on the side of the page. This will likely affect forum participation adversely if not corrected. The new topic section should be aligned with the recently posted section, like it was before, giving ponies an easy summary of the new content on the forum.

This part has all my agreement! It also reminds me of the widget that had the topics I've posted in has gone away, which was a nice thing to have as well.

[Colt 45 148]

I just zoomed out the page to 80-90% and it feels a lot like it did before.

[trademark2 485]

yea! your right actually! That's a good intermediate solution, though I still hope they address this. I mean peoples opinions are different but... really hope we get our bells and whistles back

Edited April 1, 2017 by trademark2

[Props Valroa 26,033]

I also don't like all the white space, it hurts my eyes when I wake up in the morning and go here.

[Fhaolan 4,468]

Yeah, I'm hoping we get to fixing the white space issue. It's on the list of things to deal with, but we have to deal with the functional issues first. The active topics list widget is being worked on right now by our syspone, Lavo.

Unfortunately, this was not a 'we want to do this' upgrade where we had time to get down to the details in test. This was a 'we have to do this, and we have to do it now' as the company that made the forum software stopped issuing security fixes for the version we were running. And the new version is sufficiently different the upgrade 'path' is full of holes we're desperately trying to fill.

[Rikifive 23,485]

I totally agree with the about me page part. It's really messy and its design is pointless.  

The profile page is supposed to be your little nice corner, where you can customize things and introduce yourself - now by default it's covered by activity history, that is extremely exciting and absolutely what everybody would want to know about the member they visit. That totally should be the other way around, I have no idea what IPB devs were thinking. 

[trademark2 485]

Hey devs, good job fixing the site! it looks really good now.

But, could you add friend capabilities as opposed to just follows? that's the last thing!

[Jeric 46,834]

20 hours ago, trademark2 said:

But, could you add friend capabilities as opposed to just follows? that's the last thing!

I don't believe that is likely (outside of IP Gallery or whatever they called the image hosting system in the new version). IPS completely reengineered the 'friend system'. I mean, they abandoned it entirely for a content subscription system instead. Adding that functionality back in would not be trivial ... at all. 

IPS has agressively defended the decision to drop friends for follows and has publicly stated that they haven't see a legitimate reason to have both. 

It doesn't mean it won't return in a later version, but it's unreasonable to expect the Poniverse dev team to undertake that sort of enhancement up by themselves (though I would be impressed beyond words if they did run with that ... kudos would be due).