[ericj]

I should first warn: don't be surprised if you never see me say anything positive about the new software. I complain about software for a living. I've been in software QA since 1998. When it comes to finding fault, I'm a professional. The last coder who challenged me to a battle of wills over a piece of software is now searching for inner peace on a mountain in Nepal (seriously). I try to be more lax about this sort of thing when I'm off the clock, but you're still likely to only see complaints come from me. Don't take it personally.
 
 
Losing the pull-down menu of forums and site functions at the bottom of the page was a mistake. Bring it back.
 
It is impossible to submit or edit a post from a minimal browser. I see you're sort of working on that with regard to mobile browsers.
 
The barber pole popups are annoying as all getout. I'm having CodeWarrior flashbacks. Make it stop.
 
Forum doesn't understand typed bb-code in the edit window, doesn't reveal codes when applied with the JS buttons at the top of the window. If i have to stop typing to move a cursor around, that annoys me. I greatly prefer to type my own markup in-line.
 
The profile page is confusing and has bad layout features. There is a column of functions on the left-hand side but it only does two things?! other functions are on buttons in the middle of the window. What gives? one or the other should go. Buttons or column - make a decision and stick with it. I vote that the column should stay, and be expanded to be at least half as useful as the old software.
 
I'll post more when i think of it. It's late and i should get to bed.

 

[ericj]

cripes,  I finally noticed in noscript that yahooapis wants to run something and have discovered how the 'more forums' thing works.
 
Did we need JS for that? really?
 
the quality of a piece of source code is usually inversely proportional to the amount of magic in it.

 

[jjinh]

Quote:

cripes,  I finally noticed in noscript that yahooapis wants to run something and have discovered how the 'more forums' thing works.
 
Did we need JS for that? really?
 
the quality of a piece of source code is usually inversely proportional to the amount of magic in it.

The extensive use of java is my main gripe... and now that you've mentioned it, those barber pole popups are also kind of annoying but they're easy enough to ignore.
 

 

[bcpk]

What's a "barber pole popup"? The sticky-note tooltips?
 
EDIT : Oh, yes, I press submit and my question is answered. They are indeed annoying.

 

[devwild]

The barber pole popups you speak of are part of what's breaking things on mobile browsers and the iPad, and like most places they are used, completely unnecessary. I agree completely with your sentiment, it's causing complexity and compatibility problems while adding nothing, and should go away. The editor is also reliant on JavaScript and doesn't provide any features on browsers with it disabled, just raw HTML. Very annoying, the old site worked perfectly on far more devices and browsers.

 

[SoupRKnowva]

The whole forum just feels clunky, way too much javascript, the reason why so many forums use vBulletin is because it works so well
 
it slows my macbook pro down quite a bit, im finding myself not using the forums anywhere near as much just because the usability went so far down. This is why i use a mac and not a pc...
 
Though i did finally figure out how to do my subscriptions, for a while i couldnt find those either.

 

[grokit]

Quote:

The whole forum just feels clunky, way too much javascript, the reason why so many forums use vBulletin is because it works so well

I agree, hopefully the new site is easier to administrate and will generate more revenue and take up less server space so at least some will be happier, even if it's not the actual users of Head-fi

 
I think that Head-fi is now "lost in the cloud", hopefully it will find its way soon...

 

[ford2]

 
Quote:

I agree, hopefully the new site is easier to administrate and will generate more revenue and take up less server space so at least some will be happier, even if it's not the actual users of Head-fi

 
I think that Head-fi is now "lost in the cloud", hopefully it will find its way soon...

The reason it will take up less space is because no one will bother hanging around here anymore,it is by far the worst looking forum on the web.
 
And if this is all about revenue then the site is on a one way trip.

 

[monsieurguzel]

All the unnecessary javascript is making it impossible to check Head-Fi from my iphone now (which is something I would religiously do).  Pages now take more than a minute or two to load, unlike the previous site which was very lightweight.

 

[upstateguy]

Does anyone know why we have this new software?
 
USG

 

[fatcat28037]

ericj............as a professional, what are the positives about the new format? Certainly there are will be bugs, converting data bases...etc.
 
Over all I think this conversion has gone very well and I for one think this is a step up. I like the new format. 

 

[promix64]

Quote:

All the unnecessary javascript is making it impossible to check Head-Fi from my iphone now (which is something I would religiously do).  Pages now take more than a minute or two to load, unlike the previous site which was very lightweight.

I second that! I mostly read this forum while commuting using my iphone, something that just isn't possible anymore.
I am seriously considering writing a transparent proxy that strips out all garbage (banners, unneeded textblocks and javascript crap) while still maintaing a readable forum. Too bad this is needed

 

[ericj]

Quote:

ericj............as a professional, what are the positives about the new format? Certainly there are will be bugs, converting data bases...etc.
 
Over all I think this conversion has gone very well and I for one think this is a step up. I like the new format. 

 
As a professional, the positive isn't my department. That's marketing's problem. In software QA, my job is to advocate for the user. But here, i am the user.
 
If I had to come up with positives as merely a member of the community, I'm having difficulty with that. In some ways it's prettier i suppose.
 
I'm sure that from Jude's perspective, the new software probably gives him many advantages. I understand that the old software was getting hard to maintain.
 
vBulletin is pretty well thought out on the user side - or maybe it just feels that way because it's so flipping common.

 

[Jon L]

Quote:

The reason it will take up less space is because no one will bother hanging around here anymore,it is by far the worst looking forum on the web.
 
 

Agreed 100%.  
My current main gripe is no BBCode support (just insane IMO), but I no longer look forward to coming to Head-Fi 

 

[ericj]

Quote:

Agreed 100%.  
My current main gripe is no BBCode support (just insane IMO), but I no longer look forward to coming to Head-Fi 

 
It's not that i have any great love of BBCode - I'm just as comfortable using straight HTML. It's just that it wasn't obvious.
 
I imagine that many users would like to have BBCode available, just because they're used to it.
 
fwiw, the 'submit' button crashes the android browser.
 
Also the "more forums" JS is only partially functional on my Android phone.
 
I'll be frank, when i said minimal browser, I meant that i often browse this site using a text-mode browser with no JS at all. It's a habit. Years ago i had to do it to circumvent firewalls and filtering, and i discovered that it somewhat helps me avoid spending too much time browsing at work. There's no reason i can't use this site from a normal browser at my current job - I just prefer plain text these days. Call me weird if you must, I'm oldschool and remember the internet before there was such a thing as markup languages, and remember spending a lot of time in gopherspace. I remember when someone explained to me that the .html files i was seeing on ftp sites were "like gopher with pictures, but different". 
 
I'm not expecting anyone to go to great lengths to make me comfortable with the new forum software in elinks, just putting it out there - right now the site is very awkward without JS.
 
I mentioned the lack of something like the user control panel before, but i should clarify, what irks me is that there doesn't seem to be a single place where i can manage settings to the extent that i could on vBulletin - i imagine that this is because there is simply less that i can actually configure, though.
 
I haven't been able to spend much time on the site since the relaunch (or really for the last few months) but I'll continue to share my thoughts as i have them.