Questions and comments about the new look to the forum.

[KiltedPilot]

Overall, I like the cleaner appearance of this new design.

There is one criteria by which the design is failing in my opinion, however. You might call it the "relevancy factor".

When I click on a post, I want to see that post. That is what I clicked on the link for. I don't want to see anything else. So, an important measure is how much of the (vertical) area of the screen is dedicated to the information I wanted to look at (the post), and how much dedicated to stuff I did not want to look at (adverts, titles, logos, padding, etc).

At the moment, on my laptop, when I click on link to look at a post I see precisely nothing of the post itself. I have to scroll up one entire screen to start reading it. You might say the design currently results in a relevancy factor of 0%.

If I look at "new posts" instead, I see perhaps 20% of the vertical screen area dedicated to the display of the lists of posts.

Obviously, this factor depends on browser, operating system, and screen size. I get a different result on my larger desk machine for instance.

On the average vBulletin forum, the relevancy factor might be 60%-75%. Sometimes has high as 90% for really optimized forums. My observation is that 0%-10% is an unusually poor relevancy factor.

Bottom line here, is that the adverts, their title, and their frame, and the forum logo, are getting in the way of me seeing the real information on any given page.

For funding reasons, the advertisements at the top of the page might be necessary, but this should cause the downward pressure on the size of the forum logo to compensate -- it's actually grown to be very large instead. Furthermore, whilst advertisements might be necessary, a large frame+title around them is probably not.

Overall ... good work though ... keep it up!

Mike

[HeathBar]

I'd like to see a return of the tartan background. And change the where the tartan is now to a solid color. The vertical lines in the tartan make the white font hard to read. The whole look seems washed out. I applaud the removal of the titles, but would like to have some thing other than join date that shows a level of experience on the forum.

[ronstew]

There is one criteria by which the design is failing in my opinion, however. You might call it the "relevancy factor".

When I click on a post, I want to see that post. That is what I clicked on the link for. I don't want to see anything else. So, an important measure is how much of the (vertical) area of the screen is dedicated to the information I wanted to look at (the post), and how much dedicated to stuff I did not want to look at (adverts, titles, logos, padding, etc).

At the moment, on my laptop, when I click on link to look at a post I see precisely nothing of the post itself. I have to scroll up one entire screen to start reading it. You might say the design currently results in a relevancy factor of 0%.

Mike went on to say some nice stuff - it wasn't a slag. His whole post (# 15 in this thread) is here

But the situation he described is actually worse now than when he wrote it on March 8. A second row of banner ads has appeared, pushing content further down the page. This is mitigated somewhat by the slightly smaller header photo.

I don't love it, but I can live with it. Advertising pays for this site. I did want to mention it, though. I hope that it does not get worse.

[morrison]

Thanx fer the tartan!

I do indeed like the outlining tartan. I makes me feel all. . .

pleated-like? Wrapped in a comfortable, inviting surrounding.