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The main thing I want to reiterate before we get into specifics is this: providing a help file to explain confusing functionalities is quick patch stuff. Users don't like to read manuals, they want to dive in. Any solution to issues below that involve having them read thru a bunch of text would be, IMO, a design cop-out...there are always more ingenious ways to do fix things.

here are some of the things I thought of:

1. Flat versus threaded (and collapsed) need to be MUCH more clearly signified (plus explained). These icons are not up to the task. Newbie users need a good graphical representation to better convey which is which. Adding the words "flat" and "threaded" (to annotate the icons) won't work--they are tech terms. A redesigned icon, probably a bit larger to fit more detail (I am not any kind of graphic designer, so this isn't something I can help with) would be a start.

2. The icons in general are confusing and unintuitive (thought they're well-drawn and attractive). Muhammed's annotated versions are better, but still not totally intuitive for newbies. Sorry I can't be the one to devise a better way. Cursor pass-overs (see point #4) will help a bit (e.g. explain when/why you'd want to "logout"). There are a LOT of icons that need work...e.g. the "go back" arrow on the "profile" page isn't clear...in W3T, arrows mean different things in different contexts, and that's not good. The reply icon looks like an addressed envelope. This indicates, pretty clearly, emailing the poster of the message. Again, IANAGD (I am not a graphic designer), so I can't make specific suggestions. Muhammad's solution of adding the word "Reply" helps, though. The "edit post" icon is REALLY unintuitive (in fact, I just realized what it is...I'd thought it was new message compose). Revamp the icons and the program can be 30% more newbie-friendly overnight.

3. There's got to be some sort of a map, showing users where they are . Users aren't good at understanding "levels", as webmasters should know; they need to be clearly shown (preferably graphically) where in the hierarchy they are at any point. Of all my suggestions, this one's the largest can of worms. It's delicate and critical. Ideally, it'd allow confident newbie exploration of a site with MANY boards and meta indexes. Maybe there could be an admin option to default to giving all users a little console window with this map. Idunno...just an idea....would provide something ever-present (or at least ever-accessible) showing the whole shebang.

4. While the interface should be designed so that it's intuitive as is, cursor pass-over explanations would provide a boost....though they shouldn't be used to "patch" confusing design. I'm not sure about platform/browser issues with cursor pass-overs....are any of you up on this? Do Netscape and MSIE in reasonably recent vintages enable this function on both PC and MAC platforms?

5. In addition, there should still be more extensive help available, and it shouldn't be in one central FAQ or manual...there should be clearly/concisely written info pertinent to various functions available from links close to the actual functions themselves. That is, near the icons, near the menu bars, etc. (I'd name the links "about these icons" and "about the menu bar", etc). I think Wolf is working on this, and I'd strongly urge Scream to build it in. Again, we won't need this kind of fancy help in the prefs windows, since there we can simply provide copy right next to the fields (see next point)

6. The fields in the pref windows (especially display) need to be much more clearly explained. I was working with Scream on this stuff, but he stopped getting back to me.

7. Regular users (who keep up to date and read every single posting) want to conveniently read thru all new postings. On sites with numerous boards, it's tedious to have to click and sort thru every index. For my site (suffering with a doctored version Matt Wright's script), we've designed a little javascript function called HotPosts that throws up a handy little window showing (unthreaded, of course) all new postings (organized by board) since a user configurable date. Take a look at http://www.chowhound.com/hotpost/hotposttoo.cgi (running the script this way yields a full-sized window...shrink it down to get the idea). Whether it's a solution like that or something else, it'd be great to make W3T much more convenient for regular users.

8. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe there are still different capabilities re: sorting, etc, in flat versus threaded view. It's very important, from a UI standpoint, to make the functionalities in both views as close to parity as possible. As is, it's a source of confusion.

9. Sorting via the profile window is cumbersome, clumsy, and unintuitive. Should be able to do it right from the indexes themselves.

10. Flat mode should allow you to find the parent message of any given message. Also, along these lines, I kind of wish there were a way for the flat view to do some semblance of quasi "threading" (that is, wherever possible follow messages with replies to that specific message), but I suppose that's a technical quagmire, if not a total impossibility.

11. Why the longish delay after posting? Why not just a second?

12. The FAQ needs revamp and beefing up. "If you have a browser that is Mozilla 4+ compatible" is strictly geek speak (c'mon, at least list the browsers and version numbers!). In general, include many more "How do I..." questions re: more advanced functionality rather than basics (which should be explained, per my earlier points, on the fly...e.g. get those button explanations out of there).

13. Not sure why the real specific date parameters in search...would be so much more powerful/flexible to offer user specified search dates than the hard and fast parameters in the scroll menu. Also (sorry, nitpick), make it "exact phrase" rather than "entire phrase"

14. Default to a much larger message compose window. Unless you guys all disagree, the present default seems uncomfortably small.

15. I hope Scream can fix the bug that makes you have to hit "refresh" an extra time to get current (this was discussed here recently...can't find the exact message, but you guys probably know where it is). "Refresh" is not a newbie maneuver. Maybe the indexes (if they're not already) can be set to refresh cache on every new viewing? That'd have the added advantage of handily inflating our traffic stats (gg).

16. Maybe this is the bug I just referred to, but I'm seeing a thread claiming "NEW" replies in a board index, yet when I look at the thread, there are no posts marked "new" (nor ARE any of them new). I've hit "refresh" on both index and thread pages to no avail. I AM logged on. Stuff like this shakes newbie confidence, because they figure THEY'RE doing something wrong.

17. Been thinking about it, and I think the titles are confusing if your old messages don't update to reflect your current seniority. It's confusing to users if they see Jim Leff-private, Jim Leff-corporal, Jim Leff-captain and Jim Leff-general all on the same board. It makes them not understand what the titles are about. Gerrit said, in another thread, "it would be a bit confusing to read a thread, see someone as "stranger", come back the next day....as "newbie"". Well...I can see that, to some slight degree, but it's not anywhere NEAR as puzzling as the same person having different titles depending on which message you're reading. His point that "it documents the progress, by displaying the title which the user had at the time he was writing the message" is a good/subtle/interesting one, but I don't think the (minutely small) benefit outweighs the confusing weirdness.

18. Why does the "check private" window give you all that info unrelated to private messages (last login, messages posted, a chance to logout)? And why would I want to send an email to myself? Also, those icons are unexplained and unintuitive. And the program should be smart enough to say "you have no private messages" if that's the case. And the footer links should be further down if there are no messages, especially cuz it's such a short page...it looks like I have three private messages called "wwwthreads.com", "contact us" and "forums powered by..."

19. In who's online, what's with the ".pl" suffix on all the location names? It's very techie looking. Also, shouldn't there should be a link to send a specified user (both in the "who's online window" and the "profile" window) a private message (with that user name plugged into the correct field)?

20. AOL Instant Messenger is much more common these days than ICQ. In fact, most newer users don't know ICQ. AIM handle should be a stated option in profile, either instead of or in addition to ICQ.

21. Login/new user registration are a bit confusing. I foresee newbies trying to figure out why they're not able to post, etc etc, because these critical features are somewhat low-profile, tucked into the menu bar. I'd like a front and center invitation to any non-logged on user to register/log in. Perhaps that could be combined with #22 below (please read it quickly and come back!). That is, the welcome screen will tell you why/how to register or log in if you're not recognized (there'll be lots of screen real estate to do a thorough explanation, perhaps even do the whole register and log-in right there!) If you ARE recognized (because you've stored your password, or because you've just registered/logged on), you get the "you've got replies!" message as discussed below.


Two feature requests I'd like to slip in if I might (anyone out there with me on either of these?)

22. The thing that made AOL successful, IMO, wasn't their sending zillions of floppies. It was the compelling Pavlovian response generated by "You've got mail". It tied people to the service in a deep, emotional way that compuserve, genie, etc never provided. Now, in any case, W3T needs some way to quickly find replies to your postings (the email thing is clever, but we want people returning again and again to our sites to CHECK for replies, not just to respond when summoned via email). It'd be great if there was a "you've got replies!" screen that showed users links to those replies. Extra points if it could also (further down the page) link them to new postings in threads in which they'd simply PARTICIPATED. And my extreme gratitude and respect if it could allow them to "mark" threads so that on every new visit this welcome page could link to any new messages posted to these specified threads. If all this could be added, it'd be a TREMENDOUS thing, and would have great impact on tying our users in more tightly. Which is what this community stuff is all about.

23. As I said in another thread, it'd be extremely handy for admins to be able to move posts and/or whole threads to a non-public board (i.e. out of sight except to sender and recipient). You can mediate a flame war, determine whether a post violated a rule (e.g. admin suspects but isn't sure of, say, a copyright violation or other breach of rules), junior admin can await ruling from senior admin while tucking the suspicious thread out of view, etc, etc. Every admin has posts they don't quite want to delete, and this kind of purgatory's a great solution. Compuserve sysops know exactly what I'm talking about with this one...

chowhound.com
For Those Who Live to Eat

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Some interesting points ... Here's my opinion of them ...

1. Adding complex icons could simply make things more confusing. I'm not convinced that threaded and flat modes can be conveyed properly through icons at all (at least, not to the degree that a complete newcomer would understand).

2. A solution to icon confusion would be to enable text only links in place of the icons. This is something I proposed a while ago (and then Muhammad provided me with his text buttons). Now that I'm getting more proficient with WWWThreads it is something I may look at again. The user should have the ability to choose between graphics and text.

3. I agree with the map idea but I would go for a simple text version. My site uses this throughout so adding it to the forum is on my list of things to do anyway.

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).

5. I am indeed going to be working on this!

6. True (but you can always edit the language files yourself).

7. A summary page of new posts would be good.

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.

9. Perhaps a drop-down list of sort options would work. I personally think that the sorting facilities are fine.

10. Tricky to implement ... Perhaps idea 8 covers this one.

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?

12. Agreed. Maybe the instructions should incorporate the FAQ. The last section of my instructions is almost a FAQ and is short because of the existing FAQ.

13. The search facilities could do with being beefed up (including the page selection system at the bottom which is missing in search screens but displayed in normal forum views).

14. This can be set in your config file but the subject text box should be wider.

15. Refreshing can be annoying. If you are looking at an index and the screen suddenly refreshes then you wonder what is going on.

16. The coloured icons are not ideal for new users to see new messages. Text links/notes would solve this ('New' next to a yellow icon rather than an orange icon).

17. I actually agree with this. When someone's title changes their old posts should be updated. Perhaps this should be configurable by the webmaster.

18. This should be changing soon with Gerrit's (I'm fairly sure it's Gerrit who did this!) modifications.

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.

20. I have no idea what AOL Instant Messenger is! It should be added in addition to ICQ if at all.

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.

22. A 'replies to your postings' would be useful and shouldn't be too hard to knock up. It is just a filtered version of a 'new messages' sscreen.

23. I think you can do this already.

---

You have a lot of good points and most are do-able. Whether Rick himself does them himself or other people step into the breach remains to be seen but I am guessing that some, if not all, will be covered at some point.

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.

One feature I would like to see would be some sort of Wizard option to help people register, log in and then configure their options. Obviously this should not be forced upon people but rather it should be a feature that people can easily find and use.

One of the great things about WWWThreads is that people can jump in and start posting without messing about with their options but the options do then allow more confident people to tweak the system to their liking. 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.

Simon Wolf,
Webmaster,
Access All Areas
<A HREF="http://www.athree.com" target="_new">http://www.athree.com</A>

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This is all excellent stuff. I agree wholeheartedly with every last point you make here. A lot of independent work has been done to address many of the issues you raise but the hacks are scattered across many different boards and it's hard to collect them all and stir them into one's own mix. It makes upgrading a nightmare. I've made so many changes to my newpost and edit scripts that it's become impossible to isolate them one from another and make any kind of clear abstract to share with the other people here. All these things *have* to be in the main distribution to be of any real use.

On the board I built for WOPR I simplified everything by eliminating a lot of choices. I removed the whole private messaging system. I required registration. They got one fixed layout (based on WebBBS, where we came from), no uploads, no digests. I used a lot of Javascript to aid navigation and put the whole thing in a split screen where they could see two screens at once. I haven't changed anything in a year and it gets a *lot* of traffic, with most of them checking in several times a day.

What I'm trying to say is, don't confuse them with a heap of options. Pick the one that works best for you and concentrate on making that childsplay to use.

I'm now going to print out your list and start working my way through it.
Thinks - there's a heap of eager customers out there for somebody selling customized versions of w3t...



<img src="http://www.amdragon.com/images/eileensig.gif" alt=" - " />

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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

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<blockquote><font size=1>In reply to:</font><hr>

"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.

[/quote]

Well, let me say that if they figured out how to get on to your site in the first place, and into the discussion, then they can understand what the word "next" or "reply" means, I think. (or hope!)

Muhammad Chishti
Creative dIRECTOR
<font color=white><A HREF="http://www.imcuniverse.com" target="_new">http://www.imcuniverse.com</A></font color=white>

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"Well, let me say that if they figured out how to get on to your site in the first place, and into the discussion, then they can understand what the word "next" or "reply" means, I think. (or hope!)"


"next" WHAT??? next board? next message? next bunch of messages?

same for "previous".

also, "expanded" and "collapsed" are nearly zeros, in terms of explanation for newbies.

your "flat" and "threaded" buttons are, likewise, an improvement but not an entire solution. The terms are geek-speak.

also, from newbie perspective, you have a very prominent button labeled "post", but does that mean that's the ONLY way to post to this board? what if a newbie wants to reply to another message? We get this sometimes on our matt wright board, where we make the distinction even CLEARER. About 10% of newbies nonetheless try to reply by hitting the "new message compose" link. This implementation is even more prone to that...I'm guessing 25% newbie problem. Moronic? Yes, from our perspective. But there are increasing numbers of blue haired hinterland grandmas out there; the percentage of clueless users skyrockets as the bottom of the pyramid goes online. To neglect them is to neglect huge masses. I'm not sure how to fix. Ideally, the button would read "start new topic" but that's too verbose....maybe a cursor pass-over could help here?

chowhound.com
For Those Who Live to Eat

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15. I think when you say you'd like it to "refresh", you actually mean you don't want the pages to be cached (forcing the browser to contact the server everytime, thus always drawing the newest, up-to-date page).

This can be done with a simple HTML Meta tag:
<META HTTP-EQUIV="Pragma" CONTENT="no-cache">

Beware though, this doesn't work on all browsers.

Instead, you might want to send "Pragma: no-cache" along with the "Content-type: text/html" header within all the CGI scripts. This should work regardless of browser type (although I've heard that some proxy servers don't honor "no-cache" pragma's... but there's nothing you can do about that).

Preventing pages from caching should do what you're asking, but it's also going to increase your bandwidth usage.

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Pragma no cache, right...thanks! That's what we currently use to ensure that users don't click back to old cached indexes (which would be a PAIN).

Can W3T be adjusted to do that?

chowhound.com
For Those Who Live to Eat

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In w3t.pm, find
<font color=blue>
print "Content-type: text/html\n\n";
print "<HTML><HEAD>";
</font color=blue>
and add
<font color=green>
print "<META HTTP-EQUIV=\"Pragma\" CONTENT=\"no-cache\">";
</font color=green>
That should do it <img border="0" title="" alt="[Smile]" src="images/icons/smile.gif" /> .

UPDATE: However, this should not be implemented until there is a better handling of the Preview and Spellcheck screens - with an edit area right there - because going back to edit will not be an option <img border="0" title="" alt="[Roll Eyes]" src="images/icons/rolleyes.gif" /> !

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Excellent points, chowhound, thanks for taking the time to lay it all out!

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you guys with fast US cable modem connections and infinite expense accounts for traffic allowance on your servers:

I am usually on a slow third world hotel telephone dialin
If I have to wait 40 seconds each time I return to an index, I will give up on this board. Also, for every justified refresh (new post) there would be 100 unnecessary refreshs (returning from one post to the index, to go to the next post)

I also exclusively use flat view, I would go crazy if I had to click my way through every single post, waiting 30 seconds for each new post.

For heavens sake, if you ever put this pragma no cache in there, allow for the webmaster and/or user to remove it.


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