Take a Look at 2+2\'s Future Design
 

The newest archives are using the design which 2+2 will change to in April.

Please offer you comments on the new look.

*

Edit/MH: Updated link.

Re: Take a Look at 2+2\'s Future Design
 

Tommy Likey, Tommy want wingey.

Re: Take a Look at 2+2\'s Future Design
 

Generic but tons better than current site.

The thing is, when you eat dog food for such a long time, peanut butter and jelly looks like a 16 oz. NY Strip.

The biggest tests functionality wise are going to be cookie handling and viewing options. The current site logs users out periodically, and there are many ghost options that don't do anything, and many options that don't exist.

Things like jumping to the newest post whenever clicking on a thread should be option based, not automatic. To many, this is a nice feature, but to others, it is crappy.

It's too bad UBB was stayed with, the other options offer so much more. I can't think of a site on the net with even half of the traffic this one has that uses UBB.

Re: Take a Look at 2+2\'s Future Design
 

Very nice !!

Very subdued.

Re: Take a Look at 2+2\'s Future Design
 

Meh, I like the old site better. Keep in mind that I'm old and fear change.

Re: Take a Look at 2+2\'s Future Design
 

Will we be able to change the style (skin)? I'm not sure I like that look, but either way I'm not going anywhere.

Re: Take a Look at 2+2\'s Future Design
 

[ QUOTE ]
Will we be able to change the style (skin)? I'm not sure I like that look, but either way I'm not going anywhere.

[/ QUOTE ]

Yes. You will be able to select your own skin.

Re: Take a Look at 2+2\'s Future Design
 

Just click on the "My Stuff" dropdown menu and select My Preferences.

Re: Take a Look at 2+2\'s Future Design
 

[ QUOTE ]
Will we be able to change the style (skin)?

[/ QUOTE ]

Somewhere around 15 styles will be available on the main forum.

Re: Take a Look at 2+2\'s Future Design
 

[ QUOTE ]
Meh, I like the old site better.

[/ QUOTE ]

Agree. But at least they kept the "view all" button which is very handy for long threads. I would have shot someone if that had been taken away.

Re: Take a Look at 2+2\'s Future Design
 

Chuck mentioned in his post there was a postable forum.

If I logon, I get...

[ QUOTE ]
UBB Error
Access Denied.

Please use your back button to return to the previous page.

[/ QUOTE ]

...when attempting to acecss any forum.

Ship the credentials please...

[img]/images/graemlins/smirk.gif[/img]

Re: Take a Look at 2+2\'s Future Design
 

OMG you can change your mood just like at Full Tilt Poker!

It looks really good, I'm honestly pretty surprised.

Re: Take a Look at 2+2\'s Future Design
 

[ QUOTE ]
SITE ADMINS NOTIFIED OF ILLEGAL LOCATION. $.25 DEPOSITED TO YOUR BANK ACCOUNT. YOU WILL NOW BE RETURNED TO THE FORUM.

[/ QUOTE ]

Re: Take a Look at 2+2\'s Future Design
 

pwned.

Re: Take a Look at 2+2\'s Future Design
 

It's decent. One of the big pluses of the current system is its clarity. The color scheme, the font and the lack of signatures make following the discussion on 2+2 easier than any other message board. I think that's a design principle you should adhere to when making any changes.

Re: Take a Look at 2+2\'s Future Design
 

No "Quick Reply" feature?

Re: Take a Look at 2+2\'s Future Design
 

People who have changed their screen names show up as their old name (or maybe it's their login name or something) on the archive.

Re: Take a Look at 2+2\'s Future Design
 

[ QUOTE ]
The color scheme, the font and the lack of signatures make following the discussion on 2+2 easier than any other message board. I think that's a design principle you should adhere to when making any changes.

[/ QUOTE ]

Color scheme...they do have 'skins'
Lack of sigs...you can turn them (display of others') off in preferences
Font...agree. I don't like the font size/face options. They can make a board unreadable.

Re: Take a Look at 2+2\'s Future Design
 

No avatars?

Re: Take a Look at 2+2\'s Future Design
 

[ QUOTE ]
No avatars?

[/ QUOTE ]

Yes there are avatars. But the archive software currently picks up your old preferences, including viewing avatars and which avatar to use.

Re: Take a Look at 2+2\'s Future Design
 

Even without avatars, a response with one line of content takes up a ton of real estate, heightwise.

From my rough estimate, any post that is less than 10 lines is the same height, probably due to the stacking of the poster's information in the far left of the box [and the addition of the mostly useless, IMO, 'online'/'offline' feature]. I wonder if the boxes will grow even larger when there are avatars. Seems like a pretty bad use of visual space and will mean tons more scrolling to see a lot of posts that are not very long.

I would take a look at the pixel height of the box per post for a single line of text with avatar in the current UI and the new one and see if you really want posts with one line of content to take up so much room. Maybe consider making the width of the box with the poster's information a bit wider so there is less wrapping or get rid of the graphic next to "Offline".

You don't want a whole screen to be taken up by 2 or 3 people saying one word each.

KJS

Edit to replace width with height where i screwed them up in OP.

Re: Take a Look at 2+2\'s Future Design
 

The archive uses whatever was in the archives in terms of user names, etc. It does not have quick quote because you are not allowed to reply in the archives (they are read only) except for the temporary forum.

Re: Take a Look at 2+2\'s Future Design
 

Just because I am a nerd here is an MS Paint of what i am trying to say. Note the difference in height between the 3 panels.

http://img67.imageshack.us/img67/5276/2p2bt0.jpg

KJS

Re: Take a Look at 2+2\'s Future Design
 

Wow, there's going to be acres of empty space in Red Lion's posts.

Re: Take a Look at 2+2\'s Future Design
 

I just want to weigh in and say I think this looks fantastic. A definite and vast improvement over the current software design.

Re: Take a Look at 2+2\'s Future Design
 

looks good
being able to click someones name and get a menu to pm, see profile, or show posts is a nice feature.

Re: Take a Look at 2+2\'s Future Design
 

I was reading this thread in the archives and towards the end (Lazy Meatball's post) there are links to threads that clearly exist within the archive time frame, but they're Groupee and use this format. What am I missing here, are they just all not archived yet?

Just curious more than anything. Also please note in this upgrade that "g" and "q" are more distinct in the username field. Although I don't expect that to stop people from referring to me as tug, tup, tuj, etc.

Re: Take a Look at 2+2\'s Future Design
 

Meh, it's nice that you are updating but I enjoy my current viewing preference. The only thing I don't like is that is doesn't highlight the forums I click on more often (I use infopop2 I think)

Re: Take a Look at 2+2\'s Future Design
 

[ QUOTE ]
I was reading this thread in the archives and towards the end (Lazy Meatball's post) there are links to threads that clearly exist within the archive time frame, but they're Groupee and use this format. What am I missing here, are they just all not archived yet?

Just curious more than anything. Also please note in this upgrade that "g" and "q" are more distinct in the username field. Although I don't expect that to stop people from referring to me as tug, tup, tuj, etc.

[/ QUOTE ]

Direct links to "archiveserver" are still going to "archiveserver", rather than "newarchives".

Re: Take a Look at 2+2\'s Future Design
 

errrrrr, i want to play....

YELP MEEEEEE

Re: Take a Look at 2+2\'s Future Design
 

Sniper,

OIC.

Still, I thought the archives were hosted by Infopop Corp. and the forums on the sidebar were from that time frame. Not that any of this matters or is important or even remotely productive.

Re: Take a Look at 2+2\'s Future Design
 

tuq, after the archives are fully stress tested, I would expect that the situation would resolve itself, by newarchives taking on the archiveserver name... but I haven't talked to Chuck about that issue, so he may have a different plan.

Re: Take a Look at 2+2\'s Future Design
 

I notice that Carter/diebitter is an admin on the new site. I hope this means we will be kicking ModWars! up a notch.

Re: Take a Look at 2+2\'s Future Design
 

As long as there is an option to keep the old default color scheme with the other changes, great.

Re: Take a Look at 2+2\'s Future Design
 

[ QUOTE ]
I notice that Carter/diebitter is an admin on the new site. I hope this means we will be kicking ModWars! up a notch.

[/ QUOTE ]

Iron, Those of us that worked on the backend in the test environment, made a bunch of changes to default settings and implemented new features, I presume he's taking care of some of those things now on the newarchive server... the base new menuing is Carter's design, for example.

Re: Take a Look at 2+2\'s Future Design
 

[ QUOTE ]
I was reading this thread in the archives and towards the end (Lazy Meatball's post) there are links to threads that clearly exist within the archive time frame, but they're Groupee and use this format. What am I missing here, are they just all not archived yet?


[/ QUOTE ]

The link is a problem that I can fix but not until we finish the migration.

Re: Take a Look at 2+2\'s Future Design
 

Man, your advertisers really need to be told of these changes. The but ugly ads on the right don't fit in with the new forum. But it looks good.

Re: Take a Look at 2+2\'s Future Design
 

Sniper,

You seem to know your stuff and as such I have another question. What's the deal with this thread? Mat unregistered the OP which apparently whacked every single post of his in that thread. However, the quoted parts were kept intact (it's actually a somewhat interesting thread) but every post by the OP was listed as "deleted by Mat Sklansky".

When an admin removes a poster from the site does every single post they've ever made disappear and get replaced with that header? Plus whatever that user did to get deleted must have done it in some other thread.

Just curious, I know it's off-topic but thought I would ask.

Re: Take a Look at 2+2\'s Future Design
 

The new forum design is OK. I normally hate change and don't mind it.

Re: Take a Look at 2+2\'s Future Design
 

I think the bizzaro thing about it is looking at some old OOT posts and seeing diebitter as a red admin. I like the drop down menu options.