Just one question about basic performance

Don, yes. There will be a public preview starting sometime in March, giving about 3 weeks worth of tire kicking.

Everyone needs to keep in mind that John and his team are working with the best software that they could find to meet our expectations... but it's not this software and may not be as adaptable as we'd like it to be. Or... I should say, that it may be totally adaptable... if we expect Adobe to pay for a rewrite of the code... which would lock us into the same trap we ended up with in this software... something so customized that it became somewhere between difficult and impossible to apply updates to it reasonably.

In short... let's not lean on John to make demands that won't be reasonable to fill, and accept that some compromises to the ideal will likely be necessary.

That said... I haven't even seen what he's putting together yet. It ain't even alpha beta yet. I expect that we will likely be happier then our worst fears but still be left with stuff to grumble about. You guys know him well enough to know that he'll bend over backwards to make it good for us. But he has a lot of other people to answer to as well, and he's busy as all get-out during this period. It increases my volunteer workload as well, but I'll try to keep up with things and let folks know what's happening as best I can as well.

Well, the thread says "just one question" and we are all asking just one (at a time).

My question to John is ... will there be any beta testing of the look and feel of the proposed new forum? Hopefully by some of the regulars who come to the About the Forums pages. I'd sure feel better if some of those folk could come out in the week before the change and say ... it looks good, or it looks good except for ... etc.

What Ann, Bill, and Freeagent said, with the following additions:

The post headings in the threads correspond to about 6 lines, so there is a waste of some 5 lines; and the low density of useful information would be even lower if the locked message text size were not forbidding for people with less than optimum eyesight. Mentioning the subject of the thread in every post is also unnecessary, unless you need signs about the order of putting on shoes and trousers (or was it trousers and shoes?).

The list of threads has a density about half of what we see here.

A comforting answer to the questions in posts #26+63, maybe based upon the user option mentioned in the 8th bullet in post #14, would be comforting.

I am fine with small text sizes, but will they be adjustable?

Ann's point is evident in the sun reference she gave. Why does a user need to know when some one started checking the forums and such. It does not take long on a forum to see who the regulars are that have good answers. They are also available to answer your questions when asked. Many are professionals in their own right and do a great job with answers. However, for me at least, it is a lot easier to scan the messages without all the irrelevant information. Being able to select an individual to get more information would be fine. In modern times, a pass over could also be used - but that would slow the loading of the page.

Many of the things that are being requested can likely be done with preferences for those who want the avatars and other trivia versus those that do not want the author box, but just a header line as currently being used.

>ann, are you looking at the one's i linked in this thread?

That was the one, Dave.

And the abomination which precedes it:

http://forums.sun.com/forum.jspa?forumID=427&start=0

:(

50 topics view on that pages is pretty cool. i just tried it.

looking again, there's really no need for #views and author column (views MAYbe) so some space could be saved there, leaving more room for the topic headers and keeping most of them from wrapping. there is a bit of wasted space horizontally too in that topic grid, but i think that could all be adjusted and tweaked out to make it "better"...

ann, are you looking at the one's i linked in this thread? yea, they're ugly. check the links in this post:

dave milbut, "Decisions from on high?" #24, 17 Feb 2009 7:02 am

and the one right under it.

>2. Worst of all is the very small window that provides a truncated "List of Topics" per page. Currently, I can view some 60 threads per page in the Adobe Forums but the "Sun" layout provides the space for miserly 15.

I was gonna post earlier but got sidetracked by work. ;) there are user options controlling # posts per page and # topics on the forum index page, i think the max is 50 for both.

>1. Avatars and members self-portraits. Including these is an utterly puerile idea for a professional Forum. They are also a waste of screen space.

I don't mind little ones, 30x30ish... it's the 300x400 ones that piss me off!

>2. Signatures. These canned signatures are repetitious, unnecessary, space-wasting and very tiresome.

agree. the only ones who should have sigs (or headers actually) are forum moderators and adobe personnel where they announce their status as "special" participants, imo. all others ARE a waste of space and annoying if you have to read them over and over and over and over.

>ncluding these is an utterly puerile idea for a professional Forum. They are also a waste of screen space.

so you're saying the java people and sun microsystems are NOT professional, or that graphic designers are overly pretentious and stodgy? careful or you'll have to turn in your Mac for a PC!!! :)

rank company
184 Sun Microsystems
651 Adobe Systems

XD

(just busting ann! gr&d)

Concerning the "Sun" site:

Please can we NOT emulate that horrible layout?

The worst parts of that Site are:

1 Bad waste of page-space: Almost half the screen-height is wasted on their Banner and pre-thread pre-amble.

2. Worst of all is the very small window that provides a truncated "List of Topics" per page.

Currently, I can view some 60 threads per page in the Adobe Forums but the "Sun" layout provides the space for miserly 15.

This means that threads that drop down to the second page are very unlikely to get a response because I, for one, (and I suspect that I am not alone in this) never visit the second page unless I have a particular and pressing need to find, and refer to, an earlier discussion.

The irritatingly wasteful layout and truncated list of threads on the pages on the Macromedia Sites is the main reason that I almost never participate in them.

To the above, I plead that you should also spare us from:

1. Avatars and members self-portraits. Including these is an utterly puerile idea for a professional Forum. They are also a waste of screen space.

2. Signatures. These canned signatures are repetitious, unnecessary, space-wasting and very tiresome.

Also, while I do like to see the Moderators and Adobe personnel identified and acknowledged, I find the idea of labelling other contributors as "Forum Experts" or "ACEs" thoroughly deplorable because most of those that are so-identified in the Macromedia Forums seem to be neither "expert" nor even particularly knowledgeable so such labels are totally misleading!

Basically, there is NOTHING admirable in anything about the way that the Macromedia Forums were formulated.

Well I suppose if it temporary until they get stuff sorted out I can live with having to sign in one time each time I start my Browser.

By the way unlike other people that have unlimited budget for electricity I cut my computer off at night while I am sleeping. plus during spring and summer we have fairly heft T-storms. and even though I have a Trippe-Lite Surge unit I have my Computer equipment. I can't risk burning out my computer I don't have the funds to replace.