replying to wolf (for those of you in flat view!)
is there any way to easily indicate quotebacks with W3T? Argh, I'll just use quotation marks:
"1 Adding complex icons could simply make things more confusing "
maybe, maybe not. But I'm totally open to other ways of doing it. Some of Muhammad's icon annotations are a bit techno for newbies and I can't think of good pithy substitutes, so I'm at a bit of a loss for now.
"4. As I put in my reply to your original, this would work but I personally hate JavaScript and not all browsers support it. This doesn't mean, however, that it should not be included. However, descriptive text links and perhaps a glossary of 'technical' terms at the bottom of screens would be a neater approach (allow the user to show/hide the glossary)."
javascript, huh? yeah, that's not ubiquitous. As for the stuff on bottom, I don't think we need to allow the users to show/hide...if it's all the way at bottom, who's ever gonna get pissed off about it?
"8. I never use flat mode so I can't really comment on this. I find flat mode horribly confusing and, although I can see why Rick allows both flat and threaded, perhaps the webmaster should be able to set one of them and not have the other available to users. After all, if a lot of them are new to the net will they know any better? If you are providing a forum for more technical people then let them choose."
I know what you're saying, but it's not true in my experience. Newbies are often accustomed to UBBS, in which case they crave flatness. And some people (it's just A Thing....you can never tell) want to read all messages on one page, even if they lose the threading. I actually consider the ability to choose view a newbie PLUS (and it's a major reason I'm drawn to W3T), but it'll only be so if they can easily understand what the choice means!
"11. It's not that long! From home I have a slight delay (56k modem) and from work its instant (ISDN). Perhaps you are referring to the confirmation screen?"
yeah
"15. Refreshing can be annoying. If you are looking at an index and the screen suddenly refreshes then you wonder what is going on."
no, I meant auto refresh everytime an index page is opened or returned to. Just to be sure an index is always current every single time you open it up. Of course, if users are working with multiple windows (or in Eileen's split board), there will be problems. But you can't win 'em all. In any case, auto-refreshing the index files in this way is a not-totally-illegitimate way of boosting traffic figures, as well (though that's certainly not the driving reason here).
"19. I removed the location info from my Who's Online screen. I want to do a hack to show more readable information if possible."
I kind of LIKE the location info...we should just remove those darned suffixes!
"21. I agree. I've got lots of notes about this in the instructions and on my forum information pages. It needs to be clearer."
Yeah, but that violates Leff's First Law: don't patch with notes! I kind of like my suggestion for fixing this, but would be totally happy with any other methods that don't involve corollary explanation.
"There is a real danger, as Rick has said, of making the screen too cluttered and confusing and people should be very aware of this."
Absolutely true. But nobody ever said UI stuff was easy. It's downright painful, I've been through it myself....
"The biggest fault is perhaps the icons (the text versions help a lot) and perhaps the option to use text-only links would help this."
agreed, as I said. Also the map. the hierarchy is very confusing. Hey, I'd love to see your text map...can you shoot me the URL?
I'm no programmer, but I find it hard to believe that it'd be hard to add ability to click on an icon next to a posting in flat view and be shown the parent message. In any case, it's necessary, I think.
In general, the hack files floating around seem troublesome to me, especially in light of scream's frequent updating. what a nightmare! If this were an open source juggernaut, I could see it, but it's not. Can't Scream use some of his ingenuity to somehow incorporate a bunch of the hacks into choices a webmaster can make at installation? Maybe charge extra $$$ (the last thing I care about at this point is money...I wanna get some damned s/w!!!!) for a deluxe version that shows you a number of hacks (on web or locally, Idunno), records the ones you like, then installs them along with the program. It'd take some work, it's above/beyond the regular program deal, so I think Scream's entitled to getting paid for this deluxe functionality.
chowhound.com
For Those Who Live to Eat
