I had a new thread completely deleted earlier on. Got to go with the Mods and the rules and `ethos` of the site though. Better that than mixing it with some of the `interesting people` on the usenet mech forums. At times though , I`m really tempted....
Anyway, hope the new site works and more power to the Mods ;=)
My email prog ripped everything out but the text and then deleted that, so assume its not up yet?
Regards
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I dunno - I'm a computer duffer as well really, although I've used them for 25 years odd and my neighbours out here in France seem to come to me for help.
But I use AOL, which everyone slags off, with Topspeed because I can't manage broadband - if anyone wants to know why and have a darn good laugh, I'll email them the pic of a recent repair to our village phone line by France Telecom - and pop-up blocker and I never seem to have suffered any problems to speak of.
Only problem I've ever had is with HJ's hat and sunspecs really - but then, I guess he is a journalist...
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Had minor hiccoughs yonks ago poss' down to my machine. This place is one of the slickest on the net. NO NO NO.....don't tell 'im!
VVBR MD.
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A great plus for the current HJ site (..and I hope the next incarantion too..) is its non-reliance on 1st year computer graphic student 'project'
level interpretation of kewl. Keep anything marked Adobe, Flash or Java away & you'll have a generally quick loading, robust & browser agnostic environment.
As for those who have probelm posting due to lost 'magnum opus' - hey, if it happens once & you know the fix, the second time it's your fault!
The subscriber email from HJ indicates a greater cross reffing for site sections, i.e. the roadtest will indicate futher links to CbCB, forum posts etc. - excellent! Something, if I might immodestly say, I've mentioned or requested previously.
Evolution , not revolution always seems to work best!
cheers to all the 'real' backroom boys (..and girls!)
woodbines
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Let's hope it's not full of the same mangled inglish that appears in the advert.
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GM,
You can rest assured that the "language" police are on patrol again !
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I've had loads of problems in Internet Explorer (on multiple machines, so not a local glitch). I've had none in Firefox.
That said, the old site is pretty pants by modern standards. For example, pictures in the road tests look like they are clickable thumbnails.... only they're not - they're meant to be tiny! Hopefully the new site wil fix that!
Oh, and also maybe ditch some of the gazillion adverts :-)
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Oh! Changes are not as radical as I expected.
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New home. I struggled with the front door but here we are. There's a bit of an echo in here and a smell of fresh paint ......... but I'm sure we will soon get used to it.
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There must be more to it than this, there are some empty spaces, must be ongoing.
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There's a bitof an echo in here and a smell of fresh paint .........
only thing is ive been made to sit in the cheap seats at the back behind the post :-(
site looks so much more professional though 100/100 so far.............
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The colours are a bit pale and insipid but otherwise it's OK.
--
L\'escargot.
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I preferred the old colour scheme myself. It looked classier, somehow.
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I preferred the old colour scheme myself...
I prefer this colour scheme, the only complaint being that new posts are still shown in a sort of vomit-beige colour, which doesn't fit in with the new sleek icy blue.
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>> I preferred the old colour scheme myself... I prefer this colour scheme the only complaint being that new posts are still shown in a sort of vomit-beige colour which doesn't fit in with the new sleek icy blue.
yes, your browser is probably caching the old stye sheet. It should refresh now.
We will be continuing with the tweaks over the next few days.
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Stephen Khoo
www.khoosys.net
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yes, your browser is probably caching the old stye sheet. It should refresh now.
Ahhh, much better!
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new posts show up with a pale blue background for me
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new posts show up with a pale blue background for me
On my PC the old ones are pale blue, the new ones are medium blue.
--
L\'escargot.
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Professional? I'm losing a good chunk of viewing area on my widescreens! Anyone got the old CSS file to hand?
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There's a bit >> of an echo in here
It's very "bouncy", isn't it. Reading threads in threaded mode it is, anywar! Pass 'round the "Joy Rides"!!
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other than the colour which is horribly like MS default blue I can't see much of a difference. I hate to say it but the photo doesn't really do HJ justice - sorry.
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Re photo ....... any one remember Fred Dinenage?
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who?
how............ de de de
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The new site functionality (linking road tests, CbCB, relevant BR posts, deals etc) is really good : everything on one page. A question though: when you search road tests & the corollary info appears, do BR posting links work in the same way as say, 'standard' forum search on a 'car name'?
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Hmm, trendy yoof t-shirt, perhaps some highlights in the hair, cheerful disposition...it all adds up. If I was Mrs HJ I'd be checking his mobile phone bill and going through his pockets for evidence.
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I think it is John Major, unusually with a smile on his face, and the hat has been Photoshopped - nobody would actually buy and wear a thing like that! I like the first impression of the new site though!
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I agree, the hat is the most suspect thing about the new site. If the hat has to stay it needs to be with a camel coat in full Arfur Daley style.
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Best thing on the new site for me is that I can now click on new and it takes me straight to the newest post in the thread.
And yes I know it worked for others before but never for me...
Dan
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Best thing on the new site for me is that I can now click on new and it takes me straight to the newest post
Well, you learn something new every day!
--
L\'escargot.
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Best thing on the new site for me is that I can now click on new and it takes me straight to the newest post in the thread. And yes I know it worked for others before but never for me...
It was always previously tempremental for me. Sometimes it would, sometimes it wouldn't. Does it everytime now though.
Can't say I like the light / dark blue for read / unread posts. I preferred it as it was earlier this morning, and last week when I had a sneak preview.
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>>>Best thing on the new site for me is that I can now click on new and it takes me straight to the newest post in the thread.
And yes I know it worked for others before but never for me...<<<
That doesn't work and never has worked for me :-( probably Firefox to blame?.
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That doesn't work and never has worked for me :-( probably Firefox to blame?.
I have Firefox and it works all right for me.
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>>That doesn't work and never has worked for me :-( probably Firefox to blame?
Correction, just realised I always clicked on the thread title not the new in red that is alongside it , and I have been on this site for years!!!
Yes you learn something new every day :-)
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I agree the hat is the most suspect thing about the new site. If the hat has to stay it needs to be with a camel coat in full Arfur Daley style.
The old full-colour picture of HJ was much more memorable than this B+W one, and the new colour-scheme seems a bit washed out: it lacks the clear visual identity of the old one.
But in general the new layout is much clearer, and the trick of having related items pop up on the right-hand side is very useful. Well done to the designers ... and if someone can persuade them to tweak the colors to something a bit stronger, it'll be great.
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"nobody would actually buy and wear a thing like that!"
He does, though. It's the shirt that's been Photoshopped...
tinyurl.com/33xsla
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Did the old site wrap the subject line? I find it looks clumsy with just a single word wrapped - especially when it is just "new"
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Seems a bit slower - maybe loading the ads on the side is slowing it up a bit. Or my PC has got the Monday morning blues!
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To dispell any hearsay on speed, we benchmarked this site and found that without ads
- the home page takes around 70ms,
- Road tests 250ms,
- Best Deals 280ms.
There are a lot of lookups to make the context-sensitive panels to work. So to improve performance further we cache pages and these take around 5ms to deliver. (The forum isn't cached at the moment).
So any slowdown is usually pulling in the ads. We now use our own ad server for all of these, but they still are being ultimately delivered from other ad servers for some ads.
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Stephen Khoo
www.khoosys.net
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In this day and age, does the forum really have to be locked in resolution to 1980ies Amiga standards? Why can't the back room page resize dynamically? I seat here with a narrow strip of text on 1/3rd of my screen and the rest is filled with blank space.
Repeated logins and loosing text. Why do we need to repeatedly log in every 5 minutes ONLY when posting? You can browse the threads for months without being logged out, but try to post and you'll loose your text to the notorious timeout. So notorious it is featured in forum manual. Doesn't make sense. Just give us proper cookie. And I don't want to hear about workarounds. No forum should need external word processor as a minimum requirement. End of. Just stop the login timeouts. They have no other purpose than to serve as poor excuse for substandard software coding.
Edit button. 99.99% of forum software out there have edit buttons. It means edit buttons are useful. There is no reason to suspect that Backroomers finally got one they would start using it to add threats and swearwords to their posts. If we are moving out of dark ages, we might as well get all the small necessities modern times provided other forum users with...
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[Nissan 2.2 dCi are NOT Renault engines. Grrr...]
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What you mean there is still the incredibly annoying time-out when posting, and still no edit button??
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1) >>In this day and age, does the forum really have to be locked in resolution to 1980ies Amiga standards? Why can't the back room page resize dynamically?
Well that would mean that the following sites are also old-fashioned:
- BBC News, The Tmes, Telegraph, Daily Mail, New York Times
- Apple, Microsoft, Dell...
.. I could go on.
Basically you can't plan for data in columns, ads and panels etc. without fixing the width.
Also it would be bad design to have very long line lengths to read - that's in basic typography, sorry.
On my Mac here the site sits in its own window within a 1920x1200 screen. So if I maximised the HJ window to fill the screen (like is typical in Windows) it would have a load of whitespace around it. But then don't maximize your screen. Then you can see the rest of your documents at the same time.
2) Repeated logins.
It should only time out the site session after 20mins of inactivity. So if you take more than 20mins to compose a post it will ask you to log in again. We will add an auto login on post as it isn't hard to do, but it isn't a priority at the moment as the site is much bigger than just this forum - even if this section is a popular place to be.
3) Edit button. Again, we can add this so that you can edit up to first reply, but again not a priority I'm afraid.
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Stephen Khoo
www.khoosys.net
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Well that would mean that the following sites are also old-fashioned: - BBC News The Tmes Telegraph Daily Mail New York Times - Apple Microsoft Dell...
News sites are still optimized for 800x600 because they are used A LOT on portable devices , media terminals, phoneboxes etc. plus ease of access for impaired users. Sites such as MS, Apple or Dell are 800x600 so they can be used even in "safe mode" and default browsers in old OS's. I would risk a wild guess that car enthusiast forum, on the other hand probably doesn't have that many sight impaired users or posters typing from old Reuters terminals on Windows 3.11 to justify such a load white space in a modern browser. :)
Basically you can't plan for data in columns ads and panels etc. without fixing the width.
Yes you can. See any vBulletin or PhpBB forum page, how most setups stretch dynamically to any resolution on the fly.
On my Mac here the site sits in its own window within a 1920x1200 screen. So if I maximised the HJ window to fill the screen (like is typical in Windows) it would have a load of whitespace around it. But then don't maximize your screen. Then you can see the rest of your documents at the same time.
Funny you should say that - I actually thought this site looked like a typical Mac design, where lack of proper taskbar usually means users acquire habit of never maximizing any windows (myself included, I do that on my macs too). Mac is only 5% of market though, even less so in UK. The remaining 95% these days mostly use tabbed browsers which are open full screen, because other sites in remaining tabs are coded to resize with it...
2) Repeated logins. It should only time out the site session after 20mins of inactivity. So if you take more than 20mins to compose a post it will ask you to log in again.
Which is why it is so discouraging, because it's usually the big posts that get wiped by the "identity amnesia" feature.
We will add an auto login on post as it isn't hard to do but it isn't a priority at the moment as the site is much bigger than just this forum - even if this section is a popular place to be
Auto login would definitely be useful. Why is this timeout even there though? Login never times out when you browse text, so why make it timeout when posting?
3) Edit button. Again we can add this so that you can edit up to first reply but again not a priority I'm afraid.
We know it's not a prority - people asked for edit button to fix spelling mistakes and missing words ever since I can remember.
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[Nissan 2.2 dCi are NOT Renault engines. Grrr...]
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News sites are still optimized for 800x600 because they are used A LOT on portable devices media terminals phoneboxes etc. plus ease of access for impaired users. Sites such as MS Apple or Dell are 800x600 so they can be used even in "safe mode" and default browsers in old OS's. I would risk a wild guess that car enthusiast forum on the other hand probably doesn't have that many sight impaired users or posters
Yes, that would be the case if it were true, but those three you mention - MS, Apple, Dell are NOT 800x600! They are all around the 900-1000px mark like this new HJ site.
.. and excepting the BBC news site which is 800px wide the other news sites I mentioned are also around 900-1000px wide. I see your point, but I'm sorry, but the facts don't support you here.
Yes you can. See any vBulletin or PhpBB forum page how most setups stretch dynamically to any resolution on the fly.
It's not a question of whether it can be done, but whether it should be done. Ever seen MPU ads on a phpBB or vBullitin page?
Funny you should say that - I actually thought this site looked like a typical Mac design where lack of proper taskbar usually means users acquire habit of never maximizing any windows (myself included I do that on my macs too). Mac is only 5% of market though even less so in UK. The remaining 95% these days mostly use tabbed browsers which are open full screen because other sites in remaining tabs are coded to resize with it...
I use a tabbed browser on Mac and PC and don't know how this relates to opening full screen.
Auto login would definitely be useful. Why is this timeout even there though? Login never times out when you browse text so why make it timeout when posting?
It times out in the same way when browsing. It just always times out around 20mins after the last page you get on the site. You would want it to timeout in case you are logged in and then go away without remembering to log out.
So one way to get around the system timing you out on post is to open a new page to the HJ site in another tabbed window, before posting your message. If it asks you to log in then you have been logged out by the system. Then just log in in the new tab window and you can then post your message without having to worry about whether you are logged in on that window.
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Stephen Khoo
www.khoosys.net
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Yes that would be the case if it were true but those three you mention - MS Apple Dell are NOT 800x600! They are all around the 900-1000px mark like this new HJ site.
I'm not sure how to understand it - so you follow no particular resolution standard at all in your design, because what - Dell does it?
.. and excepting the BBC news site which is 800px wide the other news sites I mentioned are also around 900-1000px wide. I see your point but I'm sorry but the facts don't support you here. It's not a question of whether it can be done but whether it should be done. Ever seen MPU ads on a phpBB or vBullitin page?
I have a better example - your own site - www.khoosys.net - you have advert bar on left hand side, adverts on the right hand side - content in table in the middle magically resizes with window. Can be done. Or at least you guys could do it back in 2004, whoever example you were following back then. ;)
Message plus ads have predefined dimensions. As far as I can see, all the ads around backroom have predefined dimensions, not sure what problem would it create for ads if table with forum in the middle of them had no strict width and stretched to the browser window?
I use a tabbed browser on Mac and PC and don't know how this relates to opening full screen.
You said yourself you view this forum "in its own window within a 1920x1200 screen" and told me "don't maximize your screen". I merely pointed out people outside mac work with clear window management and mostly will maximize their browser windows and it's not exactly your call to tell them not to. In most of us seat here with massive white margin on the left and half a page of empty space to the right, reading your squashed post in the middle on how this is how Microsoft does their page. Well, they don't - their forums resize - forums.microsoft.com/MSDN/default.aspx?ForumGroupI...1
:D
It times out in the same way when browsing. It just always times out around 20mins after the last page you get on the site. You would want it to timeout in case you are logged in and then go away without remembering to log out.
No we don't. That's what we've been telling you guys for years now. :)
So one way to get around the system timing you out on post is to open a new page to the HJ site in another tabbed window before posting your message.
Or.. or... you could just presume that when we specifically click the option of "Remember login on this computer" when we log in to The Back Room we actually mean please DO remember MY login on THIS computer". No?
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[Nissan 2.2 dCi are NOT Renault engines. Grrr...]
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Oh, was rushing my reply because of timeout and bang - forgot to close [/b] tag - that's my vote for edit button. :)
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[Nissan 2.2 dCi are NOT Renault engines. Grrr...]
{Sorted for you - DD}
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I'm not sure how to understand it - so you follow no particular resolution standard at all in your design because what - Dell does it?
Actually the site is designed by a separate company, but I happen to agree with most of what they do.
As for Dell, I was merely pointing out that many large commercial sites don't use full screen and don't use 800x either. It would have been polite if you could have checked before having a go at us. Either way, we don't go by them, but need the site to fit the majority of users on 1024x768 including scrollbars. There is some method in the madness. Do you really think we are that daft?
I have a better example - your own site - www.khoosys.net - you have advert bar on left hand side adverts on the right hand side - content in table in the middle magically resizes with window. Can be done. Or at least you guys could do it back in 2004 whoever example you were following back then. ;)
Do you read my posts - or am I really wasting time here. As I said it isn't a matter of whether one CAN do something, it's a matter of whether one SHOULD do something. I still agree with designers who say there are optimum line lengths for font sizes. Sorry, the Microsoft forum is simply unreadable at 1920 pixels across as your eye loses which line it is on. Ever thought why newspapers have columns of text? We actually read down the page glancing at significant words.
Anyway I am not here to justify what designers have known for a long time, and really I can sidestep all this as we didn't do the design at the end of the day. I just happen to agree with them.
I merely pointed out people outside mac work with clear window management and mostly will maximize their browser windows and it's not exactly your call to tell them not to.
They can do what they like, but don't imply that people within mac work don't have clear window management. I must have around 40 windows open at the moment on 6 virtual panes so I think I know what I am talking about.
You would want it to timeout in case you are logged in and then go away without remembering to log out. No we don't. That's what we've been telling you guys for years now. :)
I trust you speak only for yourself!!! Sorry, we would be hauled over the coals if logins in general didn't automatically timeout.
>> So one way to get around the system timing you out on post is to >> open a new page to the HJ site in another tabbed window before posting your >> message. Or.. or... you could just presume that when we specifically click the option of "Remember login on this computer" when we log in to The Back Room we actually mean please DO remember MY login on THIS computer". No?
Remember login means exactly that. So when you go back to log in your username and password are filled in. It does not mean keep me logged in.
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Stephen Khoo
www.khoosys.net
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>> >> You would want it to timeout in case you are logged in and then >> >> go away without remembering to log out. >> No we don't. That's what we've been telling you guys for years now. :) I trust you speak only for yourself!!! Sorry we would be hauled over the coals if logins in general didn't automatically timeout.
Stephen, there is a happy medium between the current situation and a never-logout-automatically setup, and it's this:
when the post button is clicked by someone whose session has logged them out, take them to the login screen as now, but pass the POSTed form data to the login page ... and then, when the login is completed and the user is returned to the edit page, use that data to populate the form again. It's really a very simple programming task, and is implemented on most other sites which use login timeouts.
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Thanks, yes we could do that and as you say it isn't too hard. .. and yes, we WILL do it at some stage. However, the site upgrade - road tests, carbycar, news and soon directory are all really what this place is about - impartial (as you can get) advice on cars. It's our job to make it easier for users to get to that advice. So yes, the forum will get updated, but it's a bit down the list.
We have altered the code for the popups above though to URL redirecting instead of form posting to get rid of the POSTDATA expired kind of messages with Firefox and so on. It also means you can bookmark the filtered search page as the URL will display the actual results for you.
You will need javascript on though to make this all work, but then a whole load of stuff doesn't work without JS anyway.
We have already got the code for autologin from another project, so it isn't too hard to add.
(Parable of the persistent widow comes to mind here)
Any problems I am sure you will all let us know!
S
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Stephen Khoo
www.khoosys.net
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It would have been polite if you could have checked before having a go at us.
No one is having go at you Stephen. If anything, I hope you don't mind me saying, I'm a bit surprised how hard it is to communicate some things from where I stand. I, as a user, put forward my suggestions on how I, once again, purely from user point of view, think forum could be improved, since it's already being redesigned.
You, on the other hand, are going slightly Basil Faulty on me for.. what - not browsing it like designers intended, right? That way we can have new design every week and users, such as myself will be still be annoyed by the same things. Don't get me wrong though - I'm not having go at you or any other designer - please understand - I, and I think anyone else who's used to vB or phpBB features and standards, participate in Back Room despite it visibly lagging behind regular forum software for years now. In truth we couldn't care less of how minimalistic and stripped of basic features this forum front end is - we, Back Roomers are here because the content itself and knowledge shared by our fellow forumites is a great read. I understand, in terms of commercial element of entire site we are probably not a priority, but to be honest, majority of dynamic content happens here. So we might as well enjoy it?
but need the site to fit the majority of users on 1024x768 including scrollbars.
But you see, if it was resizing dynamically, 1024x768 would be as happy as 1280x1024 and beyond.
Do you really think we are that daft? (...) Do you read my posts - or am I really wasting time here.
Wouldn't try to imply anything like that in million years.
Sorry the Microsoft forum is simply unreadable at 1920 pixels across as your eye loses which line it is on.
I have to admit 1920 across is probably a bit overkill when it comes to web browsing - I would imagine most pages of text end to end look unreadable in a window that big. MSDN forums, however, look just fine in all common resolutions though. Their designers were not daft either... ;)
Ever thought why newspapers have columns of text?
I always thought it was to do with old typesetting techniques and then was re-adopted by newspapers so you can fold the otherwise large sheet multiple times and still have the story in front of you. But I'll take a byte - why?
They can do what they like but don't imply that people within mac work don't have clear window management. I must have around 40 windows open at the moment on 6 virtual panes so I think I know what I am talking about.
But you feel it's ok for you to tell me how to keep my single window with 43 other tabs open in such a way so one forum among them doesn't look weird?
It's one of the core Mac over Windows and vice versa things - Mac users and Windows users point and move between tasks in completely different manner.
I trust you speak only for yourself!!! Sorry we would be hauled over the coals if logins in general didn't automatically timeout.
That part I don't understand. I'm on the forum, I click "reply" button, I'm type, chances are I might actually be willing to post! Millions of vBulletin, phpBB, Power Board or SMF users don't haul their developers over coals for logins actually working and not timing out, why would anyone haul YOU over coals? You know it's a problem, repeatedly reported, it's even in a Back Room "sticky" under "Long replies" - please don't insist it's only problem to myself...
Instead of providing us with multiple descriptions of "workarounds" such bizarre scenarios of how to go about single post using two tabs to cheat the timeout, why not just make it a preference in "My settings" panel?
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[Nissan 2.2 dCi are NOT Renault engines. Grrr...]
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Funny you should say that - I actually thought this site looked like a typical Mac design where lack of proper taskbar
Nothing to do with taskbars.
In Windows the menubar for a given window is on the window itself. Which means if you have a large screen and you don't maximise the window the menubar is never in quite the same place on the screen twice in a row. This leads to inaccuracy and annoyance. On the Mac however the menubar for the active window is always in the same place, right at the top of the screen, regardless of where the window actually is. This means that you can move the mouse onto it without even thinking. I use Linux, Mac, and occasionally Windows and the Mac way of doing this is far less effort. If there is one thing I would change on the other two it is this.
Incidentally you can make the Mac's dock behave like a taskbar. You can even add a programs menu if you like. Personally I hide everything but the open windows (11 currently) and use Quicksilver to do everything. This thing is probably the biggest advance in usability since 1984:
quicksilver.blacktree.com/
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>>This means that you can move the mouse onto it without even thinking.
Fitt's law in action (well, a bit of it). Don't see what use the green expand button is on a Mac window - I prefer the maximse on the PC, makes more sense to me.
-------------------------
07 Kia Ceed LS
05 Citroën C4 VT
04 Mazda MX5
85 Mini Mayfair
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Moral of the story...don't use Macs -they are the Devil's work.
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The well known thing about the Devil is that he has all the best tunes. With that in mind is it any wonder the Mac was his idea? ;-)
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Is that's what it is? It's good anyway. It's strange that the Start button in Windows works the same way, but nothing else does. Unless you maximise all windows to fill the screen, which is barmy for most things on a 30" widescreen. On the other hand on Macs with big screens you may have to move the pointer a long way. I think the Expand button on the Mac is to account for different sized screens without having to drag the corner.
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Different hat, check the band. Still a strange angle at which to wear anything on one's head IMO!
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