The 17S 4 Discussion Thread

[luckat she/her]

The new site looks great. Mobile is so much better. I like the new features. The messenger looks much more modern. The stream options are nice. Thanks for all the effort that went into this! There are a few things I wanted to mention though.

Problems

There's something that seems a bit like a glitch. If I go to a thread, then navigate to a different page in that thread, then hit the back button in my browser, I stay on the second page instead of going back to the page I was on before. This happens both on my laptop and my phone.

There's a problem where selection lists like the ones for content streams or for folders in PMs show up behind the blue bar at the top.

When looking at the options for activity streams, I couldn't find any link to get back to a stream I saved later if I didn't immediately make it my default. Also, when I figured out I could get back by changing the url, I noticed I could access the other user-created streams. Is that on purpose? Because it seems odd that you can't save those settings without making them sort of public. Then again, maybe that's good because it means I can make a personalized stream that I can access even from devices I'm not logged in on as long as I don't use options that require a user to view (like "unread").

Aesthetic Issues

The header doesn't look very good at the size I keep my browser window. The menu just plain looks like it's in the wrong place since the entire "create" blends in with the white sun, and it would actually be entirely outside the sun if it was moved to the top. Also, the logo looks off center and gets too close to the edge of the sun on the right. I've attached the image to show what it looks like.

Spoiler

I know this is because I keep my browser at quite a bit less than full screen, so it might not affect too many people, but there is a large range of desktop-sized windows where the placement of the menu blends with the sun. Even when I go to full screen I think having the menu in the middle of a large header instead of at the top looks weird. When the announcements are added (they weren't there yet when I took the screenshot), the combination of header and announcements takes up nearly the full screen, which is pretty bulky. It all even takes up well over half the screen when I go fullscreen. I think I preferred having the announcements in a black bar at the top of the header.

This probably isn't very important, but on the bottom of the news page there isn't any whitespace below the page navigation, which looks strange with the modern tons-of-whitespace design. In comparison, there is some whitespace at the bottom of the Shardcast page. Also, "Contact Us" and "Community Software..." at the bottom is very dark and hard to see. I'm not sure if that is on purpose though. (See relevant image in spoiler below.)

Spoiler

I think it's kind of strange that subforums with unread posts are marked with yellow, but when entering the subforums the threads with unread posts are marked with bolded text and blue dots while it is pinned threads that are instead marked with yellow. That seems a bit inconsistent.

Some of the staff title colors look bad on the default cover photo background when you hover over their names. Global Moderators in particular. That's probably best solved by them picking cover photos, although finding something that looks good with both the white username and darker title might be hard.

The round profile pictures look good for some (like mine), but for others it is obvious the pictures were designed as a rectangle. Even the default profile picture has a bit of the bottom corner of the shard cut off when trimmed to a circle.

Changes I don't like

It lists the number of posts in each topic, but not the number of threads anymore. I'd have thought the number of threads would be more relevant if just one of those were shown, but both would be preferable.

I miss the list of users on in the last 24 hours at the bottom. That was really nice for checking how recently users had been on. I also miss the "Who's Online" list stating how recently it is checking (15 minutes), and I think it is weird that section lists everyone who has been on in the last 25 minutes when it still removes the green dot that means they are logged in after 15 minutes. Also, it looks like the list of who is browsing each thread only lists members and doesn't mention if any guests are viewing now.

This might be more of a personal preference, but I really dislike posts saying how recently they were made instead of having a date and time stamp. For one thing, it gives the time since the page last loaded, which means I can only guess how long ago something was actually posted if I wait a bit after opening the page to read it or if reading the entire page takes a while, and if I reload it can be harder to tell what's new and what was already there. Also, if I "show new replies" in a thread, it shows the times between when they were posted and when I loaded them, but the times for previous posts are still shown as what they were when I originally loaded the page, which is confusing. Also, anything posted in the hours ago range doesn't give minutes, so context about the length of time between nearby posts or edits is lost. Similarly, posts from about a week or more ago only give the date, not the time. Also, figuring out the length of time between recent days of the week isn't as intuitive as between numbered dates. I know it's possible to see the date and time of a post by hovering my cursor over when it was posted, but that doesn't work on a phone and it doesn't work on quotes and it's annoying to have to do that for something I prefer to be able to see at a glance.

Is there a way for a user to remove or collapse any of the sidebars on the front page or the announcements at the top of each page?

Didn't there used to be a link directly to the comments from "Recent News" in addition to the link to the article?

I miss seeing people's statuses when I hover over their name.

I kind of miss the staff online sidebar, although that information is easy enough to figure out by looking at Who's Online.

[RippleGylf she/her]

My main complaint so far would have to be the lack of distinction between text and links.

Link vs Not link

The only thing added is the underline. If it is a different color, there's not enough difference between it and the default font color.

 

Overall, I'm really liking the new look.

[Dunkum he/him]

12 minutes ago, RippleGylf said:

My main complaint so far would have to be the lack of distinction between text and links.

Link vs Not link

The only thing added is the underline. If it is a different color, there's not enough difference between it and the default font color.

 

Overall, I'm really liking the new look.

there is a slight difference, but whether or not I can see it depends on the angle of my laptop's screen.  tilt it juts a bit and they look the same

[Iarwainiel I she/her]

Overall I like the redesign very much - it was obviously a lot of work, especially to keep everything intact yet make it all new. Kudos.

The one thing I absolutely hate about 17s-4 is how the "Do you want notifications?" box pops up EVERY TIME I GO TO A DIFFERENT PAGE! UGH! It's acting like a cat: "Do you want notifications now? OK, how about now? Then how about now? Come on, you want these notifications now, don't you? Here have some more notifications! ..." and on and on and on.

Other websites have something like this, where they keep wanting to know your location. I frequent those websites as little as possible - usually only when I have to for work research.

Please, please stop with the notifications. Give us a setting where we can turn it off or something. You might have done this already, but I don't have time to wade through 10 pages of comments on the redesign to find it. It should be opt-in; i.e., the default setting should be "Notifications OFF."

[Eki]

1 minute ago, old aggie said:

Overall I like the redesign very much - it was obviously a lot of work, especially to keep everything intact yet make it all new. Kudos.

The one thing I absolutely hate about 17s-4 is how the "Do you want notifications?" box pops up EVERY TIME I GO TO A DIFFERENT PAGE! UGH! It's acting like a cat: "Do you want notifications now? OK, how about now? Then how about now? Come on, you want these notifications now, don't you? Here have some more notifications! ..." and on and on and on.

Other websites have something like this, where they keep wanting to know your location. I frequent those websites as little as possible - usually only when I have to for work research.

Please, please stop with the notifications. Give us a setting where we can turn it off or something. You might have done this already, but I don't have time to wade through 10 pages of comments on the redesign to find it. It should be opt-in; i.e., the default setting should be "Notifications OFF."

If the notification comes from the browser, then you can choose "Never give me notifications" or something - it's asking every time because you didn't give an answer. This is how it was for me, at least. If that doesn't help, that seems like a problem about the browser rather than the site.

If it comes from the site itself in some way, I don't know what it is.

[Iarwainiel I she/her]

1 minute ago, Eki said:

If the notification comes from the browser, then you can choose "Never give me notifications" or something - it's asking every time because you didn't give an answer. This is how it was for me, at least. If that doesn't help, that seems like a problem about the browser rather than the site.

If it comes from the site itself in some way, I don't know what it is.

I did try making a choice - I've said "No" / "Stop" every way the thing will let me  - but it just keeps coming back. Need help from the Admin Obi-Wans. :-(

[Chaos he/him]

Um I know on Chrome it shuts up immediately whether you want desktop notifications or not. Just say Block and it's done. It is a Browser thing. What do you use?

[Ecthelion III he/him]

You can make it shut up on Firefox too.

[Argent he/him]

13 hours ago, RippleGylf said:

My main complaint so far would have to be the lack of distinction between text and links.

Link vs Not link

The only thing added is the underline.

I agree that links feel a little harder to notice, but I think I can live with that.

One thing I am loving more and more though is the notification I get when someone quotes me. All notifications are nice, but being able to check threads that are likely to require my input (or, alternatively, threads where people flatter me!) is very very nice.

Oh, something I forgot. When I am browsing the Unread Content page, the username (e.g. Argent), the action they took (e.g. replied), the OP's username (e.g. Chaos's topic), and the forum (e.g. 17th Shard Discussion) all use the same typeface, which makes them a little difficult to differentiate at a glance. Is this something we can change?

See image for reference:

Edited June 17, 2016 by Argent

[ccstat he/him]

Awesome work, Chaos (and everyone else involved). I know this has been a long, arduous process. All your effort really paid off.

I particularly love the new quote functionality. You can multi-quote on mobile! You don't have to select all of the desired quotes in the right order, or even all at once! Instead, clicking "Quote" inserts the quote box right where you are currently editing the new post. Yay! And you can quote selected text! This will make things so much nicer.

18 hours ago, luckat said:

I couldn't find any link to get back to a stream I saved later if I didn't immediately make it my default. Also, when I figured out I could get back by changing the url, I noticed I could access the other user-created streams. Is that on purpose? Because it seems odd that you can't save those settings without making them sort of public.

I like the activity stream functionality, though getting back to previously saved streams is not easy at the moment. As luckat described, you get to the stream you saved either by clicking the checkmark to make it default (in which case it replaces the "Unread Content" and newspaper icon) or by going to the url: http://www.17thshard.com/forum/discover/17/, adjusting the number to be whatever your saved stream is. I spent a while exploring, so for anyone interested, here's how it works:

The saved stream is just the combination of filters selected (and the title), and it will adjust to whichever user is logged in. (So if I go to discover/6/, made by Pagerunner, it will show me content I haven't read in the Cosmere subforum, not what Pagerunner hasn't read.) #1-5 are defaults, while 6 and above are user-defined. As of this post, 20 is the highest. If you go to another user's saved stream, you have the option to "Add to my streams" which will duplicate that set of filters as a new number, now owned at editable by you. Chaos mentioned earlier that he's planning to enable a dropdown on the newspaper icon, which should include (a subset of?) the defaults and all of the ones you've saved. In the meantime, you can look at your numbered url.

The default five are:

• Everything Unread (1)
• Threads You Started (2)
• Content You Follow (3)
• Members You Follow (4)
• Threads You've Posted In (5)

Finally, here is an example stream (20) that I made to illustrate some of the options available. It finds any posts made since your last visit in the selected subforums (Events and Signings, all Mistborn excluding Secret History, plus the Reckoners RP), along with new Cosmere or Rithmatist fanart in the gallery. I also like the option under "Read Status" that allows you to choose whether clicking on something unread takes you to the first unread post (super useful) or the start of the thread (default).

 

Edited June 17, 2016 by ccstat

[Jondesu he/him]

So I decided to try testing if I could make the icons next to unread topics larger (the circle or star), but I'm having trouble making it happen with a custom stylesheet for my browser.  Anyone have any suggestions for how to make that work?

jW

[Mestiv he/him]

@Jondesu Have you tried this CSS?

.ipsItemStatus {
  font-size: 20px !important;
}

Those icons aren't images, they are made using a special font.

[Jondesu he/him]

3 minutes ago, Mestiv said:

@Jondesu Have you tried this CSS?

.ipsItemStatus {
  font-size: 20px !important;
}

Those icons aren't images, they are made using a special font.

Ooh, thanks!  That tells me how to enlarge them. :-)

EDIT: And… nope, didn't work.  Ugh, really thought that would do the trick.

jW

Edited June 17, 2016 by Jondesu

[Mestiv he/him]

26 minutes ago, Jondesu said:

EDIT: And… nope, didn't work.  Ugh, really thought that would do the trick.

What browser and tool to set those styles do you use?

[Chaos he/him]

The activity stream menu is a thing I am actively building, ccstat. Stand by. I will have a post explaining these once that is done.

1 hour ago, Jondesu said:

So I decided to try testing if I could make the icons next to unread topics larger (the circle or star), but I'm having trouble making it happen with a custom stylesheet for my browser.  Anyone have any suggestions for how to make that work?

jW

Stand by. Stop hacking plz <3 

I'm working on this but those icons appear in more places than topic lists so I'm figuring out how to do this properly. Nontrivial changes. 

[Jondesu he/him]

1 hour ago, Mestiv said:

What browser and tool to set those styles do you use?

Safari on OS X, and I'm using a custom CSS style sheet set up within the browser. @Chaos, standing by. :-) I'm away from home at the moment anyways.

jW

[Ecthelion III he/him]

Am I blind? Because I can't find how to edit my signature.

[Mestiv he/him]

20 minutes ago, Ecthelion III said:

Am I blind? Because I can't find how to edit my signature.

Try this link:http://www.17thshard.com/forum/settings/signature/

[Chaos he/him]

To get to that link go to the account drop down on the upper right and it is under Account Settings.

[Meg]

 

I admit that I didn't read the thread but honestly that "editor" is an imposition. I've written a long answer then at first the preview only showed a part of it ... okay, I thought, try it: I click submit and get there is NO answer but a "message" near the submit button "this field is required". Also there is no save button or automatic save as it had been in the previous version. Quoting itself is most bothersome as for one has to scroll up to the text, highlight it, click quote, scroll down. 

I'm sorry, I do respect the work and your time you are investing in this forums but I'm very unhappy with those changes. 

[Chaos he/him]

17 minutes ago, Meg said:

 

I admit that I didn't read the thread but honestly that "editor" is an imposition. I've written a long answer then at first the preview only showed a part of it ... okay, I thought, try it: I click submit and get there is NO answer but a "message" near the submit button "this field is required". Also there is no save button or automatic save as it had been in the previous version. Quoting itself is most bothersome as for one has to scroll up to the text, highlight it, click quote, scroll down. 

I'm sorry, I do respect the work and your time you are investing in this forums but I'm very unhappy with those changes. 

BBCode still works. I'm not quite sure what you mean by it saying "this field is required".

There's not a lot I can do, though. We need to be on top of software updates for security reasons and this is the editor we get. I've found it to be pretty good. Typing in BBCode may help matters, perhaps?

[Pagerunner he/him]

I've lost a couple of posts. Typed them up, let them sit while I gathered links or did research, and then came back to the page. When I finally clicked "Submit Reply," the page refreshed and I lost the content. I suspect it's the computer I'm using; sometimes, I post from a machine with an older version of IE. (And, no, I cannot install a different browser on that laptop.) The old version of the forums used to autosave drafts of posts, and I used that a couple of times to recover content when I accidentally hit the Back button. I don't see that anymore; is that functionality gone?

[Sunbird she/her]

Just wanted to pop in here and say that I am pleased with the new update. I love getting notifications when somebody quotes me or gives me an upvote, and especially the fact that the notifs link me to the relevant post. Also awesome are the links back to subforums at the bottom of thread pages so I don't have to scroll back to the top. (This is especially useful on the mobile version!)

[Chaos he/him]

39 minutes ago, Pagerunner said:

I've lost a couple of posts. Typed them up, let them sit while I gathered links or did research, and then came back to the page. When I finally clicked "Submit Reply," the page refreshed and I lost the content. I suspect it's the computer I'm using; sometimes, I post from a machine with an older version of IE. (And, no, I cannot install a different browser on that laptop.) The old version of the forums used to autosave drafts of posts, and I used that a couple of times to recover content when I accidentally hit the Back button. I don't see that anymore; is that functionality gone?

In my experience when I have typed something on a particular topic and go to another page it does save the contents of what is in the editor.

In the old version of the site the Ajax post saving never worked on Chrome.

[Dunkum he/him]

7 hours ago, ccstat said:

Awesome work, Chaos (and everyone else involved). I know this has been a long, arduous process. All your effort really paid off.

I particularly love the new quote functionality. You can multi-quote on mobile! You don't have to select all of the desired quotes in the right order, or even all at once! Instead, clicking "Quote" inserts the quote box right where you are currently editing the new post. Yay! And you can quote selected text! This will make things so much nicer.

I like the activity stream functionality, though getting back to previously saved streams is not easy at the moment. As luckat described, you get to the stream you saved either by clicking the checkmark to make it default (in which case it replaces the "Unread Content" and newspaper icon) or by going to the url: http://www.17thshard.com/forum/discover/17/, adjusting the number to be whatever your saved stream is. I spent a while exploring, so for anyone interested, here's how it works:

The saved stream is just the combination of filters selected (and the title), and it will adjust to whichever user is logged in. (So if I go to discover/6/, made by Pagerunner, it will show me content I haven't read in the Cosmere subforum, not what Pagerunner hasn't read.) #1-5 are defaults, while 6 and above are user-defined. As of this post, 20 is the highest. If you go to another user's saved stream, you have the option to "Add to my streams" which will duplicate that set of filters as a new number, now owned at editable by you. Chaos mentioned earlier that he's planning to enable a dropdown on the newspaper icon, which should include (a subset of?) the defaults and all of the ones you've saved. In the meantime, you can look at your numbered url.

The default five are:

• Everything Unread (1)
• Threads You Started (2)
• Content You Follow (3)
• Members You Follow (4)
• Threads You've Posted In (5)

Finally, here is an example stream (20) that I made to illustrate some of the options available. It finds any posts made since your last visit in the selected subforums (Events and Signings, all Mistborn excluding Secret History, plus the Reckoners RP), along with new Cosmere or Rithmatist fanart in the gallery. I also like the option under "Read Status" that allows you to choose whether clicking on something unread takes you to the first unread post (super useful) or the start of the thread (default).

 

the one I created, 14, is a copy of 5, except clicking sends you to first unread post in the topic, instead of top of the page(edit: also only shows topics.  forgot I added that filter).  It seems like the admins would want to limit how many of these can be created, or else they might get a bit out of control if every user creates their own.  though I wonder if different users creating identical streams will actually create separate copies or just point to the same one(eg if someone created the same stream as mine, would their link be 14, the same as mine, or something else)

Edited June 17, 2016 by Dunkum