Pastel Overload

[DDA52]

Color is MUUUUCH better.

[Bob Miller]

Top Button

Admin,

Your on the right track.

The "top" button, used to be the "go" button only works after you post.
So lets say you finish reading a thread and you want to see what the fresh post is,
in the old days, you hit the "go" button and that would bring you back to the top of the Discussion page refreshed.

Now the "top" button does nothing until after you finish a post.

It just takes time to fix all the bugs, and all I have is time.

Thank you,
Bob Miller

Next time we'll talk about why my auto log in doesn't work any more.

[H80N]

Pretzel logic....

The logic of "UPGRADING" to something new that is alien to all users.... and then "WORKING HARD" to tweak it so that it looks and works like what we had before the "UPGRADE" ....... is somewhat puzzling.... ya think???
All that has happened here is to upset and frustrate all of the users... create a panic among the IT folks and generally disrupt.......
I suggest that we give a "RETROGRADE LOGIC" award to whoever OK'd this before thinking it out...
just my 2cents worth
Heiti

BTW... the old system was excellent why change???

[smooth72]

I would like a "view all" option like garagejournal.com has, for when post goes over one page.

[nfinch86]

Hello everyone,

As you can see, we've been working on getting things on track on the message board.

The backgrounds are now light gray/blue to help with the brightness, we've updated the template colors to a better "Miller Blue" and we've brought back the old smiles/post icons.

We've also adjusted some of the little bugs/glitches we had early on.

We're reviewing the forum jump options. There is one at the bottom right called "quick navigation" and at the top, you can navigate with the breadcrumb links near the little house icon at the top left.

Please let me know if you continue to see problems/issues that we can adjust or fix on the board.

Thank you for your patience.

Man, That's Much , Much Better !!!!!!!!!!!!

............ Norm

[Coalsmoke]

Thanks admin.

[PTsideshow]

Yes admin the colors are much better, it improves the contrast 150% The other issue with the log on and staying seems to have been resolved also. It is so much easier to read!

[fabricator]

Im starting to loose the urge to bake and clean. Now what the **** am I gonna do with all these **** cookies.

[fjk]

Admin
Thanks for the work to improve the readability and fix the bugs.
Things are much much better.

Thanks also for sending the response messages -- so we don't
feel the complaints got bit-bucketed...

H80N...
First, I of course have no direct knowledge of what was going on at Miller
both when they decided to upgrade the site nor during and after the
actual upgrade (other than what we saw on the site itself). But I have spent
30+ years professionally developing, maintaining, etc-ing software & hardware
systems so can shed some educated guesses on the topic.

First, I imagine that the provider of the forum software that Miller
uses has, as a normal business matter, made various desired upgrades
to the software. Some possibilities for these changes are enhancing
the security, privacy, performance, or scaling characteristics. They may also
have fixed a number of bugs. Finally, they may have made the software work
on later versions of the server's operating system (which in turn has its
own set of bug fixes, enhancements, etc). On that basis alone, Miller
might well have taken the decision to upgrade the software.

After the decision to upgrade was done, I would guess that one of two things
happened. Either Miller decided to change the layout & visual presentation
of the forum (possibly with the "advice" of a design/image consultant ...) OR
the upgrades made by the vendor changed the way a lot of
the default settings and parameters OR changed the effect of
some customization options that Miller used -- the net result of those
changes was things like a different set of smiley faces or the pastel
blue that showed up when the new site was unveiled.

If Miller made the changes to the format, changing back would be a fairly
painless operation AND the result would look as it did pre-change. All they'd
have to do is delete the new configuration file and replace it with a backup
copy of the old one (and any competent sysadmin keeps more backups of config
files than weldors have stubbs of rod!). Since the format changes have not resulted
in the same visual format that we had before, my _guess_ is that the new version
of forum software behaves differently than the old and that Miller's sysadmins
have had to create some new configurations to get the look and feel similar to
the old way.

I would guess that the sysadmins gave the new system a test run before
going live -- but in my experience sysadmins (both as a sysadmin and
watching other sysadmins) tend to look at general functionality of the
software (as long as it comes up and they can post messages to the trial
system, they're happy) or the functionality that they specifically use and
care about ("Cool, the new super-duper-spam-hunter works as advertised").
The details of the user interface (such as the colors or the exact smileys) tend
to get a lot less attention. (And even if they/we did pay attention to those
details, you might not like the results.... I have colleagues who set things
to use the smallest typefont they can so that more stuff is on the screen,
and then we (um, er, they :-) sit with noses mashed against the monitor...)

Frank

The logic of "UPGRADING" to something new that is alien to all users.... and then "WORKING HARD" to tweak it so that it looks and works like what we had before the "UPGRADE" ....... is somewhat puzzling.... ya think???
All that has happened here is to upset and frustrate all of the users... create a panic among the IT folks and generally disrupt.......
I suggest that we give a "RETROGRADE LOGIC" award to whoever OK'd this before thinking it out...
just my 2cents worth
Heiti

BTW... the old system was excellent why change???

[H80N]

Frank
I have been involved with computing since about 1975..... so am aware of how they do it..... just not why!!! the part that ALWAYS amazes the manure out of me is..... these things seem to be done under a crisis management atmosphere... and nobodey EVER seems to understand that a short test run or simulation EVER shows the bugs or problems.... the end user is NEVER consulted...... it has been ever thus...
thanks
Heiti

IT just seems to operate like "groundhog day".... and everytime they are amazed... The site is/was fine from a computing standpoint...... what we could really use is more input from Miller engineers, Techs and other welding experts... silly stuff like when they might be in our area demo ing new equipment etc (that question was ignored in a different post) who knows they might even sell a few more machines???

[Admin]

Clarification

To fjk's point: just as a clarification, we did not change/upgrade the software so much as perform our routine biannual messsage board update. We have not switched our software package, intentionally changed the layout or upgraded our options at all. Generally, these updates contain changes that are far more "behind the scenes" than what we've just experienced - fixing bugs, security, etc. We will continue to do updates twice a year as always, but my expectation is (as before) the layout/look will not be changing each time we perform an update - I presume this type of layout change is one that happens every few years or less.

Glad you like the new color changes! Please continue to let me know if you are finding anything amiss.

Thank you

[Admin]

Tweaks

Thanks for the feedback, will look at the "top button" and "view all" items. I would love a "view all" myself. I'll ask if it's something that we can turn on.

[Jack Olsen]

The pastels aren't really the problem, in my opinion.

Most users want to bring up the forum page and see the titles of the threads that have changed since they last signed in. Any other information is pretty much extraneous. Anything distracting the user from that information is making the "machine" of the BBS less effective at what it's supposed to do.

The huge envelope graphics are useless (in my opinion) and confusing. The "Started by" text repeating for every single post with the time and date it started is annoying. There's too much information getting in the way of the simple things the user is looking for.

I check a lot of BBS boards every day. I haven't seen this graphic scheme on any of them. I hope I don't.

[Admin]

Reply

Thanks Jack for your input. I've sent your post to our programmers to see if we can work on a few more of these things. I'll let you know what I find out.

[engnerdan]

The pastels aren't really the problem, in my opinion.

Most users want to bring up the forum page and see the titles of the threads that have changed since they last signed in. Any other information is pretty much extraneous. Anything distracting the user from that information is making the "machine" of the BBS less effective at what it's supposed to do.

The huge envelope graphics are useless (in my opinion) and confusing. The "Started by" text repeating for every single post with the time and date it started is annoying. There's too much information getting in the way of the simple things the user is looking for.

I check a lot of BBS boards every day. I haven't seen this graphic scheme on any of them. I hope I don't.

If you want to see just the new posts and those that have changed (been replied to) since your last visit clock on the "New Posts" in the upper left.

-Dan