Let the first tests begin...

A more calm view now.

Everything is extremely low as compared with this forum, almost on the verge of being unbearable.

Most of the things work as expected, and formatting is much faster and easier than here. Quoting, however, tends to produce long chains of quoted messages.

The ability to include images is a great addition. However, my test image took ages to become available, although it was less than 50 kB in size, well below the maximum. I'm not interested in including videoclips, and have no way to test if this works.

Not counting the huge amounts of wasted space, the formatting can be tolerated; it could have been much worse.

I find gratefully that I remain logged, even cross platform and through shutdowns.

I miss very much the flags and an indication of where you are within a thread (the 36 of 36 I was seeing in pj's message while writing this).

Not counting the fact that I would gladly do without avatars (could there be an option for not seeing them?), they leave too much wasted space below them. This could probably be improved through a better placement within the frame.

I'm sorry to disagree with Ann, buy I find most things perfectly usable and functional. Of course I prefer these forums by far, but I could more or less easily adapt to the new format if it weren't by its sickening slowness. I very much hope this can be corrected, or at least, noticeably improved.

I noticed under the new System my user name is PjonesCET, on this system its pjonesCET

It was a Firefox 2.0 thing. John may want to test that. I was able to log in fine with IE.

The HTML code thing also seems to be FF only. The announcement is fine in IE.

I find it is not easy to see how to start a new thread. This is something that will have to be made more clear, or we will see a real spike in people hijacking threads to ask unrelated questions, if they can't easily figure out how to start a new thread. The "Action" start a new discussion might be renamed "Ask your question". Most users don't want a discussion about their problem, they want to ask a question about it. Even then, the location and size of that action is easy to miss. If a line at the top could read "Ask your question" then it would help the new users.

I noted in the Photoshop Win section there is no FAQ? Is this an omission forced by the software? I foresee a lot of problems if we don't have a FAQ ... I certainly don't want to have to explain how to reset preferences over and over again.

Don

I couldn't log in either ... the login/register buttons didn't work. Is it a Firefox 2.0 thing?

I found the leading too tight on the lines. I know some have complained about the format being too open, but this leading will make it harder to read long messages (one to three lines is okay, but over 4 and it is very annoying. I suggest the leading be 120% or 1.2 ems. I think it is 1.0 (although I didn't dig through the CSS to be sure).

The color does not bother me. It is sufficiently muted to be a non issue.

I wonder about the screen width. It seems geared for a 1024 pixel window, and requires scrolling on smaller windows. I wonder how hand helds will access the site, or if that is a factor.

I was pleased on the usability front that everything seems to scale nicely when you select larger font sizes. The visually impaired should be able to make use of the site at the largest font size.

A bug. In the announcement in the new forums discussions, the HTML code displays, rather than being interpreted.)

That's all from me ... I will go to IE and see if I can login and play some more.

Don

the toughest thing i think, is going to be getting used to having to wade through dozens of posts you've already read instead of jumping in to see just new posts. or keep the post/thread count very low.

There is no doubt that John C and the team have done good work in customising the interface. However I get the feeling that in spite of their efforts the jive format will never match the current WebX forums for speed and usability.

It will probably be fine for casual visitors and posters who use mainly a single forum, but that's all.

:(

Folks, I'd give John and his team at least a four-star rating at this point. This rating would go up or down, depending on the speed we ultimately get.

[EDIT: I'm not suggesting that the new Jive format comes close to this one here; but considering what John had to work with, this is tolerable.]

John C,

Not bad at all! If the speed picks up substantially, I'll be a happy camper. My fears were mostly unfounded.

The points thing is silly, of course, but we'll figure a way whether to get rid of it or to work around it (making you and your team wish you had gotten rid of it in the first place. ;) )

The number of posts listed appears to represent active posts (not scrolled off), and not a total running count since the day we joined, as was the case during the initial phase of the last changeover.

In my case, it shows me as having joined four days ago, which is off by about six years. The number of posts attributed to me right now is approaching 8,000 and that's a small fraction of the total I was shown last time, but way too much for four days! :D

To me the things to fix would be the speed issue and second to include options so that those of us that don't want all the waste can get rid of things in the display. That means more preferences than simply 2 layout formats (flat and threaded). What is wrong with an additional layout like we have here as an option. Of course, the software may be the limitation here - to bad.

At this point, my experience in the new forums have been one of wait, wait, wait. It is much slower than this forum. The page load takes about 15 seconds. Many of the page loads are taking this long. That is getting a bit long to wait when browsing.

I have not quite figured out the thread format. Also, the topics are listed in terms of the last one to be accessed, rather than a flag to show I have been there. I might get used to this, but I like the little flags.