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pchapman

What do you think of the new dropzone.com format?

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Here's an example of what I'm thinking, replacing the bottom blue dot with the orange new alert. Whether that NEW alert links to the first unread post or whether we make the title link to it, is also up for discussion.

Yes to this. 

 

:ph34r:(Put that emoji because I don't know what the hell it is and will probably never use it again. Would like the beer emoji back, though. )

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I liked the former feature that had all the threads in which I had a comment listed in order of most recent activity (by anyone).  Sometimes, I posted in a thread just so it would appear in that list. Easy to scroll through the topics and find what I was looking for.  I actually used that a lot.  I do see the "see my activity" button under my profile, but that's not the same.

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23 minutes ago, topdocker said:

I don't see concrete rebound hammer anywhere....

 

top

You aren't looking hard enough.

I finally tried the 'search' function.

It gives helpful suggestions after the first search.
Tried "Concrete Rebound Hammer", and it gave me a zillion results with "concrete" or "hammer" or "rebound" in it.
It has a top bar that gives the suggestions. One was "Concrete AND Rebound AND Hammer", which gave me this:

https://www.dropzone.com/forums/topic/115683-rip-concrete-rebound-hammer/?tab=comments#comment-4813283

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While I reject the idea that anything free shouldn't be criticized (as one poster seemed to suggest), it is encouraging to see the rate of change on the site. Every few days there's another little tweak to make the new site work better...

(Naturally some changes are easier to program than others, within the overall structure of the site.)

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57 minutes ago, pchapman said:

While I reject the idea that anything free shouldn't be criticized (as one poster seemed to suggest), it is encouraging to see the rate of change on the site. Every few days there's another little tweak to make the new site work better...

(Naturally some changes are easier to program than others, within the overall structure of the site.)

Most of those changes seem to be a direct result of suggestions and criticism. 

 

I didn't have much problems with the old format, and the new one has taken some getting used to. But I'm getting used to it. 

 

One thing that I'm having a hard time with (harder than I think I should) is the order of the 'skydiving' subjects. 

It used to be General, Safety, Gear & Rigging, Instructors, Tandem, Incidents, Wingsuit, Events, History (or something like that).


It's very different now. 

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Two minor things.

Clicking on a fully open thread does not open the thread, it just reloads the sub forum.

When one opens a thread with new posts, the first new posters name is off the top of the screen. One has to scroll the screen down to see who the poster is (if one doesn’t recognise the posters avatar) and then read the contribution.

This is what it looks like on a random pick:

90F631A8-8882-44B1-AC23-4F53828AEF47.jpeg.b2514179233a845f3b3abafc7880cd00.jpeg

It’s a minor thing but it niggles me a little. 

I echo the thanks offered above for the effort put into this site improvement. 

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2 hours ago, pchapman said:

While I reject the idea that anything free shouldn't be criticized (as one poster seemed to suggest)

Yeah, as it is said, "if you are not paying for a product, you are the product". The site is designed to be ad-supported, so it is in the best interest of site management to make it as user-friendly as possible to increase number of users, and time users spend on the site. And we the users are the ultimate judge of what is user-friendly, so it is better for us to recommend changes than just quietly stop using the site.

I also appreciate the responsiveness to suggestions that I am seeing.

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The option of clicking on a "reply to" button is gone.  Hard to see what the context is much of the time unless it's a quote reply.  I understand why it was done that way but I think the option should be "reply to" "quote" or "reply to forum".

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12 hours ago, yoink said:

I disagree with the ability to have inline GIFs - at least in any forum except The Bonfire.

They make for lazy forum posts.

I can support that, although since this entire site is deader than heaven on a saturday night, allowing them until they become a problem is fine with me too. At least in Skydiving General, which is a little more free wheeling than the topical subforums.

Image result for gif this place is dead

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Hey, Bryn,

Okay, I still can't figure out how to change the font in my post. That would be nice (might be because of the system I usually surf from -- there are a lot of buttons I don't see that are mentioned on this thread).

The other thing is that I would like to request something else for your to put on your list of tweaks.  You said you're working on the flags -- sweet.  I would vote for that, too.  The other thing missing from that space is what number each post is out of the total number of posts.  That helped a lot when trying to remember what post I wanted to go back and answer or quote, or knowing how many posts I are still left to read from the one I'm on. It also identifies when posts have been deleted. 

Oh, and do you have a way to put the available emojis off to the side like before, so we can just click away, instead of having to open the option and place each one individually? 

I'm getting used to the new version.  I can only blame myself for not being ready, since you sent me the test site to check out.  At least I was prepared to expect a change! Thanks for the good communication a the roll-out process was proceeding. That was helpful.

T

:D

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9 hours ago, TriGirl said:

Hey, Bryn,

Okay, I still can't figure out how to change the font in my post. That would be nice (might be because of the system I usually surf from -- there are a lot of buttons I don't see that are mentioned on this thread).

The other thing is that I would like to request something else for your to put on your list of tweaks.  You said you're working on the flags -- sweet.  I would vote for that, too.  The other thing missing from that space is what number each post is out of the total number of posts.  That helped a lot when trying to remember what post I wanted to go back and answer or quote, or knowing how many posts I are still left to read from the one I'm on. It also identifies when posts have been deleted. 

Oh, and do you have a way to put the available emojis off to the side like before, so we can just click away, instead of having to open the option and place each one individually? 

I'm getting used to the new version.  I can only blame myself for not being ready, since you sent me the test site to check out.  At least I was prepared to expect a change! Thanks for the good communication a the roll-out process was proceeding. That was helpful.

T

:D

The ability to change font is there, but limited to things like italics, bolds, strikethroughs etc. We can't allow additional functions as they are too easily abused. We want to avoid any obnoxious colouring of posts etc. But in order you adjust the fonts with the same abilities as the old site, you should see the icons to do so at the top of your message box, along with the quote, attachment, emoticons buttons.

We can look into post numbering, but it wouldn't be a priority at this point, just given that it's not that common of a piece of functionality on forums.

With regards to the emoticons, they will likely stay where they are ;) The emoticon list is rarely accessed in reality, and one usually just memorizes the shortcode for the icons. For example, if I typically use the :$ emoticon, I know to access it in future I just need to add : and $ together, so the shortcuts are super easy to memorize.

Thanks for the feedback :) There's a lot of requests at this point and we're going through and seeing how to prioritize.

 

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3 hours ago, Meso said:

We can look into post numbering, but it wouldn't be a priority at this point, just given that it's not that common of a piece of functionality on forums.

I just spot-checked 3 other forums I use, and they all have post counts. The post count number on all three is also a perma-link for the post, which you have as the "share this post" feature.

I also vote to bring back a post count. 

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2 minutes ago, SethInMI said:

I just spot-checked 3 other forums I use, and they all have post counts. The post count number on all three is also a perma-link for the post, which you have as the "share this post" feature.

I also vote to bring back a post count. 

The direct link to the post on our new forums is the timestamp at the top of the post. So the permalink to a specific post is still there, it's just merged with the timestamp, to streamline the process and display.

 

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3 hours ago, Meso said:

We can look into post numbering, but it wouldn't be a priority at this point, just given that it's not that common of a piece of functionality on forums.

The post count function is probably not even noticed by the casual users. But the hard core find it VERY helpful. More hard core users equals more ad views. But even more than that, I am missing the country flags. It was very helpful in understanding world viewpoints. In the classifieds the lack of geographical information for ads is driving me, and I suspect others away.

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37 minutes ago, Meso said:

The direct link to the post on our new forums is the timestamp at the top of the post. So the permalink to a specific post is still there, it's just merged with the timestamp, to streamline the process and display.

I'd prefer to see the post count returned, as well... the sidebar is pretty much pointless at the moment.

Has anyone commented in the various threads about "last visited."  We should be able to turn that off just like before...

Furthermore ... What is this reputation nonsense; a "likes" counter?

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The flags I still want to do, it's just finding those damn files at this point since they weren't brought over in the migration. I'll try find some time soon to get on that, my to-do list is making me feel like a development Santa at this point though.

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16 minutes ago, Meso said:

@dmcoco84 I've enabled a function called "Anonymous Logins" now, this will give you an option when you login to do so anonymously, which will accomplish the hiding of the "Last Visited".

As for the flags, I think I've got a solution, which should be implemented soon.

Appreciate the [temporary] fix... but that's gonna get pretty damn annoying.  

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