The 17S 4 Discussion Thread

[Chaos he/him]

Just now, Mistrunner said:

GUYS.

You can highlight text from a person's post and there's a button that pops up for "quote this."

This is amazing.

That would be one of the minor features that aren't super sexy in a blog post, but makes things SO NICE.

[WayneSpren he/him]

How do you check member status? Can't find it

[CaptainRyan he/him]

41 minutes ago, Chaos said:

For the Allomantic symbols... I'm going to be honest, it seems that there were a lot of fans of them, now that I read this topic. But I actually think that the symbols were unclear as to their function, so I did not go for putting them into this version. Those symbols do have functional meaning and obfuscating them with Allomantic symbols--while flavorful--were unclear. They didn't really scream what the icons meant, you know? Good UI design shouldn't force you to mouse over the icon to figure out what it means. 

@Chaos First, please get some sleep! The site will survive for 8 (or 10, or 20!) hours while you get some well-deserved rest!

As to the Allomantic symbols, I do not think the circle/star options are any more intuitive to be honest. When I first joined the 17S it took me a bit to understand what the symbols meant but, after a few days, I could glance at a forum and know exactly which topics I had only read and which I had posted in. Now, obviously, the same thing will occur as I adjust to the circle/star design. My point, as I ramble on, is that neither design, in my opinion, is necessarily more intuitive to a new user but one design brings Cosmere flavor whereas the other does not. As always, you, and the rest of the staff, are super awesome amazing in my eyes. I am merely providing some feedback and will be happy regardless of what symbols you use.

[Oversleep]

Okay, first of all, respect and thanks to the Chaos and all the people who made that change. *Applause*
I can't (yet) properly thank for all the things you've done, as I haven't had time to surf around the site. But from what I gather from reading this thread, there are some super neat things implemented <3

A few things that (unfortunately) stand out:

1. The color scheme. I feel like a Tin Savant who was flashbanged. Really, it's not a figure of speech, I caught myself squinting my eyes. (and I have my eyes checked regularly, I don't have any problems in that field)
   One thing, it's too bright. Second thing, there's too much white. Why use white and gray? Gray doesn't really differ that much from white, everything bleeds together and I can't properly see anything. What only makes brightness worse. I already turned down the brightness on my laptop and I never needed to do that. I already thought that the old design was a little too bright, but now we don't even have other colors breaking it up. Seeing where the one post ends and a new one begins started to be a problem.
2. Icons. Those Aons are really similar and don't glow like the old ones used to do. I have much trouble seeing which forums have unread posts. Also, new posts icons suffer from the same problem, they're too alike. (Also, there is no 'map legend' of currently used Aons, I dunno what a few of them mean)

Basically, everything is too bright and sterile and blends together.

I don't really have feelings towards new shape of avatars, but from user viewpoint I'd say rectangular is better (easier to make and edit et cetera).

Reputation system... well, the whole point of the titles display is to see who has how much points. No one possibly remembers the whole hierarchy and even if someone does, it's much more difficult to tell at first glance who has more (as I'd trust the knowledge of someone with 3,000 reputation points more than I would someone with barely 40 points).

6 hours ago, king of nowhere said:

I used this device for 6 years, and I always liked it exactly as it was, for everything I ever did.

I may retort by saying that if you like it bright, you may turn up your device brightness

I upvoted you, but since somebody had already downvoted you, it comes out as zero.

Edited June 14, 2016 by Oversleep
adding more things. And now adding even more things.

[Kaymyth she/her]

1 hour ago, Chaos said:

Bah, that's totally not orange!  Come on  

As for Unread Posts, it appears on the breadcrumb off of the Forum home. http://www.17thshard.com/forum/discover/unread/

I will be making a dropdown for the newspaper icon soon for these Activity Streams so they are more obvious.

Yeah, I can't for the life of me figure out how to get to that customized activity stream you posted without following the link.  I found the newspaper icon, but I haven't the foggiest clue how to customize the feed.

Huh.  New forum hyphenizes wordwrap.  Interesting.

59 minutes ago, Chaos said:

I will investigate this after I have slept and can properly comprehend what you mean here  (Not that you aren't making sense, but just that I am extremely, extremely tired. I still haven't slept!)

For the love of sweet baby Heru!  Get some SLEEP, man!

[WayneSpren he/him]

Question: What does typing @(user's name) do exactly? I don't understand

(And does somebody know how to access status updates?)

Edited June 14, 2016 by WayneSpren

[Ecthelion III he/him]

I remember when the exact same thing happened to Fantasy Flight Games forums--that is, when they turned from an ultra-dark color scheme to one that looks basically like this, with bright colors. The first couple days, everyone was making threads everywhere I AM PERMANENTLY BLINDED and I LITERALLY HAD TO TURN MY COMPUTER BRIGHTNESS DOWN JUST TO READ THE WORDS and HELP! MY EYES!!! Trust me, you'll get over it within the week.

And @Chaos: Seriously. Get some sleep. You've earned it, man.     (Or just tap your bronze metalmind. You are the Lord Ruler, after all.)

 

[A Joe in the Bush]

@WayneSpren You should have received a notification that I mentioned you in a post. It allows us to bring posts to people attention, as well as occasionaly summon people to threads. Pretty nifty in my opinion.

 

@Chaos, why is there a plus sign next to our Reputation titles?

Edited June 14, 2016 by The Only Joe
My reasons are my own, I don't need to answer to you foolish edit box! I'm my own man!

[Mailliw73 he/him]

1 hour ago, Chaos said:

Oh, by the Maillw, I'm not ignoring you. We're thinking about how the phone editor UI should go.

I will investigate. 

Sounds good, thanks!

48 minutes ago, Mistrunner said:

GUYS.

You can highlight text from a person's post and there's a button that pops up for "quote this."

This is amazing.

This isn't a thing on mobile, is it?

[Oversleep]

21 minutes ago, Ecthelion III said:

I remember when the exact same thing happened to Fantasy Flight Games forums--that is, when they turned from an ultra-dark color scheme to one that looks basically like this, with bright colors. The first couple days, everyone was making threads everywhere I AM PERMANENTLY BLINDED and I LITERALLY HAD TO TURN MY COMPUTER BRIGHTNESS DOWN JUST TO READ THE WORDS and HELP! MY EYES!!! Trust me, you'll get over it within the week.

And @Chaos: Seriously. Get some sleep. You've earned it, man.     (Or just tap your bronze metalmind. You are the Lord Ruler, after all.)

 

It's not only about brightness, though. It's about the monocolority (is that even a word?). It's too monotonous. White, broken up by gray.

[Ecthelion III he/him]

13 minutes ago, The Only Joe said:

@Chaos, why is there a plus sign next to our Reputation titles?

There's a plus because if you're negative reputation, it's a minus.

(Also, for those who are meticulously keeping track of the member titles, the negative ones I've seen so far are Negaspren, Lifeless, Hoed)

[Argent he/him]

Yeah, now that I've used the new forums for a little while I definitely second the suggestion to make the "Go to the first unread post" icon bigger and/or custom. It's the primary way I navigate the forums, so it should be as easy as possible to click.

[Chaos he/him]

Hello! Instead of going to sleep (which I should probably do because I initially typed "insteading" there), I Skyped with Monica (coloring extraordinaire) and we did some adjustments.

First we adjusted the grey on the topic view, which should make things seem less bright and also have more contrast between posts. 

We agreed that, in practice, unread forums were not obvious enough, so we've also done another iteration on the "unread" forum markers. Like the old site, when things are unread, there is now a light color accent to signify it. The lit up Aon is also ten thousand times more obvious. We might do some additional tweaking as things progress, but that should make things better for this purpose. This has the added benefit of having unread topics in the topic list in a particular forum from having that light blue hue. It is subtle but it being brighter was definitely not optimal.

I'm well aware that Aon Sao--the one used as the regular forum marker--isn't appearing great on mobile. We will be investigating this another day, so bear with us for now!

And now for me to answer some questions and finally go to sleep soonish.

1 hour ago, WayneSpren said:

How do you check member status? Can't find it

There doesn't seem to be a centralized place to see member statuses anymore. This probably has to do with the depreciation of Friends as a concept on the forums. I'm sorry  

1 hour ago, CaptainRyan said:

@Chaos First, please get some sleep! The site will survive for 8 (or 10, or 20!) hours while you get some well-deserved rest!

As to the Allomantic symbols, I do not think the circle/star options are any more intuitive to be honest. When I first joined the 17S it took me a bit to understand what the symbols meant but, after a few days, I could glance at a forum and know exactly which topics I had only read and which I had posted in. Now, obviously, the same thing will occur as I adjust to the circle/star design. My point, as I ramble on, is that neither design, in my opinion, is necessarily more intuitive to a new user but one design brings Cosmere flavor whereas the other does not. As always, you, and the rest of the staff, are super awesome amazing in my eyes. I am merely providing some feedback and will be happy regardless of what symbols you use.

Well argued. I will definitely take this under consideration.

57 minutes ago, Kaymyth said:

Yeah, I can't for the life of me figure out how to get to that customized activity stream you posted without following the link.  I found the newspaper icon, but I haven't the foggiest clue how to customize the feed.

Huh.  New forum hyphenizes wordwrap.  Interesting.

For the love of sweet baby Heru!  Get some SLEEP, man!

That's because you can't, for now, because when I held the power of the Well of Ascension, I gimped the menu for Activity Streams. For now! 

10 minutes ago, Argent said:

Yeah, now that I've used the new forums for a little while I definitely second the suggestion to make the "Go to the first unread post" icon bigger and/or custom. It's the primary way I navigate the forums, so it should be as easy as possible to click.

I'll work on that!

The site seems to be performing okay now... but I will still keep an eye on this. 

[Mailliw73 he/him]

@Chaos is there a way to look at a member's upvoted/down voted posts? The old "Reputation" tab on profiles is gone. 

[Chaos he/him]

3 minutes ago, Mailliw73 said:

@Chaos is there a way to look at a member's upvoted/down voted posts? The old "Reputation" tab on profiles is gone. 

That's going to actually take significant time to make work properly like you are used to. It might be on the backburner for a bit. At least you can get notified for reputation on your stuff in the meantime!

Also, I hope everyone doesn't think I'm ignoring the comments on the brightness. As my previous post showed, we are listening! However, I would also like to point out that it could be worse! This is what the default IPS forum looks like: https://invisionpower.com/forums/topic/430302-return-to-top/ Yeah. Now that's retina-searing. So we really have made an effort to tone it down! Maybe the balance is still a little off, but we'll see.

[A Joe in the Bush]

Is there a way to view how many times a person has replied to a specific topic? Previously you would get a list when you clicked the total replies.

[Chaos he/him]

2 minutes ago, The Only Joe said:

Is there a way to view how many times a person has replied to a specific topic? Previously you would get a list when you clicked the total replies.

Hmmm... I guess not, on my cursory look... 

[BeskarKomrk he/him]

I'm not sure exactly how to phrase this, but it seems to me like the Shardcast button on the menu bar has a larger click-box than it really should. For example, in this thread, I'll go to the top and put my mouse on the forum name (17th Shard Discussion). Sometimes (not all the time) when I do this, the Shardcast button will light up as well, and clicking then will bring me to the Shardcast page.

If you really want met to listen to the Shardcast this badly, you could have just asked 

[Chaos he/him]

1 minute ago, BeskarKomrk said:

I'm not sure exactly how to phrase this, but it seems to me like the Shardcast button on the menu bar has a larger click-box than it really should. For example, in this thread, I'll go to the top and put my mouse on the forum name (17th Shard Discussion). Sometimes (not all the time) when I do this, the Shardcast button will light up as well, and clicking then will bring me to the Shardcast page.

If you really want met to listen to the Shardcast this badly, you could have just asked 

You know, I had noticed that. I need to figure out why the crap that is, because that's extremely weird. It's not like it is coded any different from the others, but it definitely interferes with the breadcrumb.

And you totally should listen to Shardcast for all that non-existent ad revenue we get from it. Dollah dollah bill, yo.

[Straw he/him]

2 minutes ago, BeskarKomrk said:

I'm not sure exactly how to phrase this, but it seems to me like the Shardcast button on the menu bar has a larger click-box than it really should. For example, in this thread, I'll go to the top and put my mouse on the forum name (17th Shard Discussion). Sometimes (not all the time) when I do this, the Shardcast button will light up as well, and clicking then will bring me to the Shardcast page.

If you really want met to listen to the Shardcast this badly, you could have just asked 

I am having the same issue.

[BeskarKomrk he/him]

Upon further inspection, it does actually seem like all the buttons share that behavior. The Shardcast one is just the one I'm near the most.

[Windrunner he/him]

Yeah, I've had a similar issue as well. It does seem odd that you can click those buttons by accident when your cursor isn't even over them.

[Ecthelion III he/him]

I love the new golden Aon by unread forums!

[Chaos he/him]

10 minutes ago, Windrunner said:

Yeah, I've had a similar issue as well. It does seem odd that you can click those buttons by accident when your cursor isn't even over them.

I have identified the problem. The solution may take a bit of time, though. But identifying the problem is half the battle.

2 minutes ago, Ecthelion III said:

I love the new golden Aon by unread forums!

Glad you like them. I wasn't quite sure about them. But that's kind of like the best we will get because they can't glow anymore.

[Ecthelion III he/him]

SLEEP MY FRIEND! YOUR BRONZE DOESN'T LAST FOREVER