Upcoming Forum Upgrade

[Laura F.]

Hi everyone,
 
I am starting to prepare for our next forum upgrade.  The actual date is not determined yet but it is at least 1 - 2 months away.  Right now, I have two changes I wanted to share with you.
 
1. Position of leaderboards on forum boards:  By default the leaderboards for top kudoed posts, top kudoed authors, top tags, and top taggers for a particular board show up at the bottom of the page so I am doubtful that anyone sees them.  The new layout would move them to the right hand sidebar, along with the announcements module so that you can actually see what the top kudoed post is for a particular board and go look at it if you are interested. In the future, there are other modules that we would be able to feature in this area that I think would be of value to our community such as recent solutions.  If the leaderboards remain at the bottom of the page we would not be able to uptake the new modules so my preference is to move them to the right side.  Keep in mind that our page width varies as you change your resolution or browser window width so we have more horizontal space than many other websites.  The message pages will continue to be the full width of the screen.   
 
2.  Floating boards: While you will still be able to float threads, the ability to float boards is going away.  Instead, the recommendation is to bookmark your favorite boards.  They then appear at the top of the "Go To..." drop down list for easy access.  

As I find additional changes that I would like to notify you I will post them to this thread.  We will be getting some general improvements in functionality but it's a little too early for me to share just yet.   This is a big upgrade and it will position us to turn on new and exciting features from Lithium as they come available to us 

Happy 2010!

Laura
Web Support & Operations
National Instruments

[tst]

Maybe it's just that my set up is not the default, but I already see all those on the right hand side. The announcements section appears at the top, above the threads.

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Laura F. wrote:

the ability to float boards is going away. 

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I cannot stress enough how bad this is. I know that boards have new posts by going to the main page and looking at the floated boards, so without it, I'm going to be half blind (unless I write a VI which will parse the page for the boards I want, which is a problem, because the site requires some JS to recognize the login info).

Why is this feature being removed? What can be done to change that?

[TCPlomp]

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2.  Floating boards: While you will still be able to float threads, the ability to float boards is going away.  Instead, the recommendation is to bookmark your favorite boards.  They then appear at the top of the "Go To..." drop down list for easy  hidden access.  

Don't call it 'floating', call it favorize/favorise/favourize/favourise (pick your favorit)
Here's my current list, just to nice to have 'm handy.

If we put them in the 'bookmarks' they sink in the sea with the bookmarked posts.

Any other new features?

I very much like the system used by Stackoverflow, and I am sure Lithium is looking in that direction.

They have some fine features:

• Bounty:
  If you have a high need for an answer you can put your own reputation as a bounty for an answer
• Up and  down voting of answers (like kudos),
  Adding downvoting might be a good idea (esp. in the Idea Exchange)
• A system where users of a given reputation can mark an answer as a duplicate (I need a pong game)
• Different badges for different activities (like the bars)
• The title of the question is in the URL so google prefers it above other results 

Ton

Message Edited by TCPlomp on 04-01-2010 10:22 PM

[muks]

laura,

Any update regarding the first bar( trusted,proven..) ?

[smercurio_fc]

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Laura F. wrote:

2.  Floating boards: While you will still be able to float threads, the ability to float boards is going away.  Instead, the recommendation is to bookmark your favorite boards.  They then appear at the top of the "Go To..." drop down list for easy access.  

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OK, time for me to rant. This is just silly to me. Instead of fixing bugs (like the extra character that gets deleted when you backspace when you use Firefox that STILL hasn't been fixed in what seems like 2 years) Lithium sees fit to remove features that are actually useful! Accessing them via the "Go to" menu is NOT the same as being able to see at a glance what the status is with the few boards one might frequent. To get to the special interest boards, for example, you have to scroll down about 4 pages in the drop down, while having them as floating boards you see them right at the top. How is that considered to be "easy access"?

[Laura F.]

Thanks everyone for your feedback so far.  I knew the board floats were used by many of you.  Everyone that hasn't posted yet should feel free to give feedback.  

muks - the rank changes are not tied to the upgrade.  I am working on that separately and have made good progress.  When I am ready to make the switch, I will update everyone.

Regards,

Laura

[altenbach]

Do you still retain floating for official threads or will it disappear completely. 

I am fine with bookmarking over floating. Will currently floated thread be converted to bookmarks automatically or do I need to do something?

[tst]

Altenbach, the issue is not with floated threads, but with floated boards.

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Laura F. wrote:

I knew the board floats were used by many of you.  Everyone that hasn't posted yet should feel free to give feedback.  

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Laura, that's not really an answer. The floated boards are a crucial tool in my daily usage of the forums (and I'm sure others as well). Without them, for instance, I would not have noticed this thread, because the feedback board is way down in the bottom and I'm not going to dig through all the boards to find it. Saverio's point abour removing useful functionaility is very apt and I would go as far as to say that if the update doesn't have a super useful or critical improvement it should not be applied.

[altenbach]

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tst wrote:

Altenbach, the issue is not with floated threads, but with floated boards.

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Sorry, I wasn't paying attention enough.

Yes, floated boards are essential for me too. The "go to..." drop down list is not a valid replacement, because it does not bold boards with new posts.

[Darin.K]

It ain't broke, don't fix it.   Or should I say, It ain't broke, don't break it.

As a frequent iPhone surfer if I had to choose the two most annoying changes you could make it would be to stop floating boards (thumb breaker) and to move the leaderboards to the right hand side. 

I can not think of a single new feature I would want at the expense of floating boards.