The official "Features we would like to see implemented on the new platform'' List - Page 2  

Add the Forum Nav drop down to the "Home" page above and/or below the subscription list.

That's become my "home" page, as intended. But there's no way from there to go straight to a forum of interest. Similarly, if there's zero new posts to read, there's no way to jump to a forum and scan for interesting new threads. Instead, I have to go to thread in the right forum, then hop out of that thread to the forum.

Cue Sam's only "I told you so" allowed in this transition =)

Okey-dokey...I waded back through all 14 pages of the "Observations" thread and have consolidated my various requests made throughout that thread (and maybe added another one or two!  ).  Here they are, in random order:

• Please include "Home Page" in the drop-down menus for forum navigation (preferably at the top).  For those of us who use the home page as their main forum "home," it would be convenient to use the main navigational tool to travel to the most commonly used page.
• Conversely, it would make great sense to include the drop-down menus on the "Home" page.  This just makes logical sense in terms of navigation.
• And, PLEASE, move the drop-down menus to ABOVE the Reply box.  If someone reads a thread and wants to reply, they're all set.  But if someone reads a thread and wants to jump to another thread, they have to scroll past the reply box to the drop-down menu.  Doesn't make sense.
• Please bring back the option to select "Favorite Threads."  These would be threads to which people regularly posted or would often refer other members.  They were displayed at the bottom of the User Control Panel page for quick access.  Maybe they could be added to the Home Page.
• The date a thread was started is important on the index and home pages.
• Also important is to know how many posts are in a thread when you are reading that thread.  Please put back the feature in the upper-right-hand corner of each post that would simply say you were reading Post "#56 of 64."  This lets you know how many more posts are ahead...especially useful at a page break. 
• Please return the flashing envelope that used to greet us when we had a new PM.  So far I don't think I have missed any...but it's kind of comforting to have a blinking reminder...much like the blinking number on an answering machine to let you know you've got messages. 
• Alternate forum skins would be great.  They don't need to be as themed as our past Ironman or Homer Simpson skins...but just some choices might help a lot of people deal with the new look for the forum and placate those people who just like variety!
• Another vote for smilies on-the-fly and a few more options for smilies, too, please. 
• I really think 16:9 avatars would be awesome--especially since this is a forum dedicated to all things home theater. 
• Please return the offline/online notifiers in the left-hand column near our forum names/post counts.  VERY useful info.
• Signature pictures were an important part of the old HTF.  In fact, my avatar makes a lot more sense when adjacent to my signature text (and vice-versa). 
• More options for signature text...colors, size, smilies.  It would be great to set them off from regular post text.  I am currently using bold & italics to make mine be set apart.
• The old software had an option to select "Forum Leaders" and get a list of all the administrators, moderators, owners and to see who was on-line, which areas they moderated, etc.
• The old software also had a member search option...which would not only allow you to seek out a particular member but also sort members by way of post count, alphabetical, ascending/descending, etc. 
• Under the old software, whenever you used the multi-quote feature, the final "quote" would always be placed at the TOP of the list of all quotes.  This prevented a fair amount of re-ordering when the various quotes would appear in the reply box. 
• And, in the places where various threads are spotlighted (for example: the floating box and the "Recent Discussions" listing at the bottom of every page), there is no indication of what forum that thread is located in.  Unfortunately, thread titles are often not as descriptive as they should be and i've already been on a few wild goose chases not knowing fully what I would find at the end of the rainbow.  Is there also forum software to reduce the amount of mixed metaphors?  I think I could definitely profit from such a thing! 

Thanks again to the Huddler team for being so responsive during these first few days.  it was amazing to see how many issues they addressed in those first few, tense days of the switchover.

Thanks, as well, to Ron & Parker for their continued commitment to the Home Theater Forum. 

Please make all links inside posts automatically open a new browser tab/window (target="blank") at least for those that go off-site, though I'd prefer it for all of them.

To be fair though, aren't we talking about half a roll of the scroll wheel? And wasn't it below the reply box on the vBulletin install before? I like having it at the very bottom because once I'm finished reading, I can just hit the "End" key on my keyboard and get right to it. Agreed 100 percent. This is really important to me, too. I have an animated GIF that updates automatically with my latest movie reviews. That used to be my signature, but it won't work now. I wish the mult-quote would automatically arrange the quoted posts from oldest on top to newest on bottom. I can't think of a situation where I'd want to reply differently than the original posted order.

Provide a simplified user-code for quotations, like the [quote][/quote] comand from vbulletin.

Before, if I wanted to quote someone and then break it up into individual quotes to address them individually, it was trivial to edit the [quote][/quote] system. Now, I have to use a more cumbersome GUI driven cut-and-paste process clicking the quote button, along with hoping the quote system doesn't trap my cursor in a quote box (preventing me from writing outside a quote).


My broader request is a non-web-expert markup language, as vbulletin used. I can envision the power the using raw HTML for the source, but my days of knowing and using HTML are about a decade gone. The current HTML code is undecipherable for a casual user.

Generally, I'm fine with a GUI. But the current GUI interface is still a bit sluggish, so that hand-typing codes is still faster. If the GUI gets tuned up a bit more, I think the need for codes will go away.

Agreed. BBCode has become pretty standard across most forum software for bold, italics, links, quotes, emoticon-to-smilies, etc. It'd be nice to have it implemented here, though it looks like they are using FCKeditor or something similar for embedding a text editor and the ability to switch between WYSIWYG and HTML mode.

The keyboard shorcut key combos ala word processors are nice to have though, but it'd be nice to embed the shortcuts into tooltips since not all of them are obvious.

Yes please!  Other than the background color, the editor is the other item that I've found that I don't like.  I'd much rather have a simple BBCode-based editor where I can easily add simple markup tags for bold, italics, quote, etc, without having to resort to entering raw HTML code.  I realize that I can do all of this with the editor toolbar, but that's much less efficient and slower than doing so with the keyboard.

Seconded!

Cross site scripting (especially those from sites notorious for tracking and collecting personal data for such) is a big no-no in my security world.  Yes, I'm paranoid, especially on the web.  I typically stop using sites who require APIs from Google, Yahoo, MS, and a few others I no longer trust implicitly. It also seems that almost every site employing such junk runs slower than sites who rely on all internal code.

They run slower by definition because of the round trips for the APIs.

As you are undoubtedly aware, you can force a link to open in a new window using various techniques that might be related to which browser you use.  In my case (using IE8) I can either right click a link and I get lots of choices regarding how to open the link or just use the key to force a new window (which in IE8 produces color coded tabs to identify linked tabs).  Other browsers probably have their own set of link "tricks."

However, I think that your point was that you wanted the "open new window" to be the default which I think was the case with the old software.  While that's also my preference I do wonder whether there is any way to override this as a default (if implemented) for people who might actually prefer to stay in the same window (I'm not one of them)  relying on the arrow keys for navigation between windows.  Browser "link tricks" might handle this as well but I can't check that out here because the current method stays in the same window by default.

RAF, on a site I run/code where we post lots of links, some internal, some external, we wrote a piece of code into our HTML-generation that checked against the domain name in the URL. Any internal links would stay normal, any links to outside sites would automatically generate the HTML snippet to designate a new target window. This seems to be a custom website now and not an off-the-shelf package, so it can be done. And there are multiple ways it could be implemented.

If done right, it could even be set a user preference so that it could stay the current way or act in the way I requested.

If I was Ron or Parker, why would I want any link that any of us could add to the website to automatically take users away from the website? Keeping HTF open while opening an external link into another tab is a better way to retain visitors. Part of the motivation for all these changes was to increase revenues. Gotta keep users on the site to do that.

Another request for the personalized home page - how about a " mark all threads read" button?

This is fantastically helpful Mike - we've been keeping a list as well. We've already started on some of these changes and we're also working on some admin/moderator functionality. We have a call with Ron and Parker tomorrow morning to discuss and prioritize. Thanks again.

You're very welcome.

Hope you all had a nice weekend and took the opportunity to watch one of the HTF's favorite films:  1776. 

I second that one, I usually don't remember to click open in a new tab when i click a linnk.

I have this problem too. Everytime I go to a last page to read the newest posts, i am automatically scrolled down to the bottom of the page, and have to scroll up to find the last read message. It seems to do this on all the forums i read. I have a MAC with the newest Safari browser. thanks

Ok how about this for a thought.

Sure the colors are dull and drab and lifeless, but the biggest oddity I see is that everythig is so square.
nothing has a rounded corner.

every post and every anything is a box and it makes the web site feel like a plain box.
It's time to round off some of the edges and soften up the site.

I believe I mentioned these in the "observations" thread, but I'll consolidate them here:

• Please add the forum name to places that show the thread title. For example, the sidebar at the right. Add the forum name below the thread title. The date when the thread started would be helpful here as well.
• I know a lot of mentioned the "whitespace" at the right, but I'd like to remove the extra "whitespace" at the left. Please remove the maximum allowed width of the posts column. When the browser window is wide enough, the page content is centered in the browser window with any extra space unused. Please let the posts column fill up any available space of the browser window width minus the sidebar width. See below for an example:

This. Agreed. A lot of wasted space on a widescreen display. Since widescreens are gaining in popularity, it makes sense to spread the content around. Heck, the *old* forum software got it right by simply auto-adjusting based on the browser size. It seems like a step backwards to do this in-the-center-of-the screen stuff.

The RSS feeds are showing every reply, instead of just showing new threads.

Is there a way (or have I missed it) to set parameters of how old updated threads are which should appear on your index pages?   

It used to be we could set it so that only threads with new posts that were one week (or two weeks or a month, etc.) would appear on the index pages.

Joe,

Very good points.  I would have no problem if that's how it could be set up.  I was just offering some easy work-arounds in the interim for those who are truly bothered by this.  I wish that we could have consistency throughout the Internet (at least in the way that forums behave) but that's just not the case.  I've come to adjust on the fly when windows don't behave as I expect them to.

Thanks for the comments.

Not quite nothing: they do stay depressed. From what I can tell, basically you're "checking off" the posts you want to quote, it remembers them even as you navigate to other pages, and then -- here's the sticky part -- you either click the regular Quote button on the last post you want to quote, or click Advanced Reply, and then everything you wanted to quote gets quoted.

So the problem is you're clicking Multi-Quote -- one, two, three, four times -- and then there are no more posts to read. If it so happened that you got to the most recent post and wanted to quote that one, you could see you're at the end and click the regular Quote. Otherwise, you're forced to use Advanced Reply; click Quote on any other post and delete that quote; or find the last Multi-Quote, and click Quote there....


I dislike that behavior. Let me control when tabs/windows get open. For novices, it also breaks the fundamental Back navigation.


People are free to do the wrong thing, like putting ketchup on hot dogs. But many web sites look lousy when forced to fill the increasingly common 24" widescreen display. You can get too much text on a single line, leading to poor readability; like reading a paperback novel that's eighteen inches wide. You can lose your place going from the end of one line to the beginning of the next one, or get neck strain moving your head back and forth instead of scanning the text with you eyes. So web designers constain the maximum width on purpose.

With the additional screen real estate, you can arrange multiple windows in more usable ways, like putting two narrower windows side-by-side. Or put the browser 1200 pixels wide on one side, a 700-pixel video window in the other top corner, and a chat window in the bottom corner.

If all you ever want is a single window to browse the web, you'd be better off rotating the screen, so that it's 1200 wide by 1920 tall. (Of course, not all hardware supports this.)

Ken, I agree wholly with your comments on line width and big monitors.
I thought that meant it was broken: the buttons grayed out when clicked, but nothing happened. No text appeared in the Reply box. No notice to take further action. And clicking a second time didn't un-gray it. Mouse hover over multi-quote says nothing about anything. It was finally explained to me in a different thread, and I thought it was a puzzle sequence from the old Action-Adventure games.

As clicking any of the Post buttons causes an immediate effect to take place, a zero-action MQ button appears broken. As clicking the Quote button immediately quotes the post into the Reply box, it's expected that the MQ button would also cause immediate results; it doesn't so it seems broken.

At a minimum, mouse-hover over MQ button should give instructions on how it works. Better, each click of the MQ button would immediately put the quote into the Reply box.

Better, remove the Multi-quote button and make the Quote button serve all functions. Click it once, as now, and the quote is in the Reply box. Click it again in a different post, and that quote is added to the Reply as well. This is easy to understand and matches user expectations.

Get rid of the Reply button. What purpose does it serve?

Merge Multi-Quote into Quote buttons.

Change Quote icon to "Quote & Reply"

:)

It takes you straight to the reply box from any reply button on the page. A convenient shorcut.



I wish there was a way to include nested quotes when quoting. Anyway, this was a reply to my open in new window/tab request.

I did also suggest that it could be made a user preference. Then the target attribute would need to be added on the display end of processing rather than the posting end, but not really a big deal.

Browsers have tabs now, and I like to use them. It sorta breaks Back functionality, but not really because you never actually left the page. It's still there on the tabs.But there are just some types of sites where it makes sense to keep the user on the site while they go to a different site. News aggregators and message boards are 2 of them.

Maybe Firefox has a plugin that would do what I want. If not, I'd write it myself, but that's too advanced for me.

When I click on "Forums" and get taken to the main index page of sub-forums, each cluster has a +/- sign next to it to expand/collapse the list of sub-forums within the index.  I have collapsed a number of those sections on at least a half-dozen occasions since the switchover and that selection keeps coming undone.

Shouldn't that "stick" once done?  The top three sub-forums are places I never go (Insiders/HE Magazine/DIY) and I would like for them to stay collapsed (along with the archives section at the bottom).

Which prompts me:  wouldn't it be cool if we could re-order the index page to put our "favorite" forums at the top of the main index page?  That would be a very cool bit of functionality.  Doable?