I don't like it.

Here are views of the same content in both systems (From the Photoshop Forum):

Jive:
http://adobeforums.adobe.com/thread/294915

WebX:
http://www.adobeforums.com/webx/.59b806d3/0

Absolutely.

Just click and click and click for flashy Flash rubbish anything but actually stopping to READ something or (horrors!) be expected to LEARN something.

Adobe have seriously miscalculated their Customer Profiles and Demographics this time.

People who ask questions in the Adobe Forums are, on the whole, highly educated, mature, motivated and discerning artists and they have come to the Forums in the hope of receiving serious and thoughtful answers from like-minded Professionals.

I can't see that too many of those " like-minded Professionals" are going to want to wade through the muck in the Polluted Paddling Pool of the New Forums.

>Why do today's whizz kids think that visual junk and clutter equals "A Better Experience"?

The youngsters like to have many things to click.

Come on John. When have you ever seen any marketing ploy that was honest. It's "new and improved" not "more expensive so we can pay out all those bonuses". Do you really think Adobe would refer to the new forums as "a confusing and awkward experience"?

> Were updating Adobe Forums with some new features to create a better experience for everyone.

Every time I see those words at the top of the page I start to grind my teeth.

Who are they kidding?

Why do today's whizz kids think that visual junk and clutter equals "A Better Experience"?

OK, change the forum software if you must, but don't try and dress it up as a "better experience" we're not all teenagers here!

>and also viable

that's the subjective part oz. what's viable to us can be completely out of the question to corporate.

>Hands up anyone who knows enough about the practical criteria to say what other package would have (a) been better in function and form, however you define that, and (b) up to the job in terms of handling the load etc.

I know that when you don't know something, you find it out. (*) many times from someone who does, rather than from just manuals. i'm sure adobe has heard of and employed consultants. webcrossing sells services to help you tune, get going and learn.

> and so it goes. Praise pasta.

all glory to the noodly one! :)

(*)"Whenever you are asked if you can do a job, tell 'em `Certainly I can!' Then get busy and find out how to do it."
- President Theodore Roosevelt

> went and 'fixed' something that wasn't broke

Not true. The old software was badly broken. John Cornicello, who pretty much designed the look and feel of the current forums, said as much, and he is one person at Adobe I trust and believe. The old software is patchy and hard to work with ... that's why we can't get things like search and last buttons to work correctly.

The new forums are not as nice as I would like (I want to go back to the Compuserve model of the 1990s, dammit) but I think we will all learn to love them. Except maybe Ann, who will continue to scream about them as long as she stays around.

I had looked for some topics that were the same and could not find any (well, I did not waste a lot of time on it). Do you have one of the topics that can be found in both the old and new formats?

> It would be interesting if a few forums (if not already done) where ported over to the test site.

Well, they all have been, but I think you mean that they should be run live there and set read only on the original site (where we are now)?

For me, the activity level at http://adobeforums.adobe.com/community/general/english_discussions?view=discussions is perfectly sufficient to get a feel for how interacting for real in the new forums will be. Yup, it takes a lot more clicking and scrolling and brainpower to use the new forum format than this one if your objective is, like mine, to read all posts in certain forums and do so with the minimum effort to determine what they are, and to bring them to view as efficiently as possible.

In that regard I would have thought that the WebX software makes it as efficient as it could possibly be - one click per topic, plus some scrolling to go past the first post and the last already read reply (which IMHO is not a bad idea to refresh one's memory of the context).

However, many other types of user do not necessarily use the forums that way. They might want to just ask one question, get a straightforward answer, and never darken these doors again. For that kind of use, very good search facilities makes a lot of difference in, hopefully, enabling that user to realise his/her question has already been asked and answered a dozen times already.

In that respect I'd say the Jive software wins hands down.

So straying back to the subject of overall choice of software, if your main concern is (rightly or wrongly) to avoid repeated questions on the same topic, or you want to enable the customers to immediately get help without even needing to ask a question and wait for a reply, then you'd weight your forum software selection in favour of search capability, and you'd be less concerned about how easily all discussions can be tracked by those wanting to do that.

It's that same old thing about striking a balance between the needs of questioners and the needs of regular answerers and hosts. Not easy.

It would be interesting if a few forums (if not already done) where ported over to the test site. I wonder how long it would have taken my to scan this topic in the new format. It was a matter of simply turning the thumbwheel here with an easy read. My finger would probably be tired on the new layout (have to use page down).

So far my experience in the new forum setup is that I have to wait for everything. I thought that the Adobe forums were slow at times, but the new forums crawl by comparison. The editing on my machine is even slow. It takes extra time for the cursor to move. I wonder if the software requires a lot more memory and that is an issue or what? Too bad my Win 98 machine is not up so I could try it there.