Legend

Question

Is The New Forum Design In Transition?

Forum|Forum|13 years ago
May 10, 2012
3 replies
3554 views

I've got to say, the forum just feels broken as it is.

And I'm not just talking about little formatting glitches needing cleaning up. I'm talking about the fairly significant number of features that have gone missing, such as listing who a reply is to, listing the post and points counts, etc.

More broken than it did.

My question is this:

Is what we see what we're going to get, or are we in transition to something better?

-Noel

This topic has been closed for replies.

B

Bob_Peters

Inspiring

This whole forum complex has been in a state of transition since it was first inflicted on users. For every improvement we get at least one step backwards.

And now we have light blud on light gray, light gray on slightly darker gray, etc, etc. I an't see that any real thought has been put into this New and Improved "design".

Yes, I'm complaining!

Jacob Bugge

Community Expert

A new meaning of WYSIWYG.

D

Dave Merchant

Legend

Yes, and yes!

The skin you're looking at now is the overall design that Adobe have decided to keep, but the team developing it are still releasing updates to fix issues and alter the feature set available.

Noel CarboniAuthor

Legend

Dave Merchant wrote:
Yes, and yes!

Thanks, Dave - I guess. It's the terminology that bothers me I think... This is not just a "re-skin".

"Skin" implies colors, shapes, sizes - but not functionality.

This recent change is therefore more than a "re-skin" of the old forum. I have to say, I don't mind the colors and layout - it's usable. And I understand the need for modernization, though I didn't see a real need to change the look before getting the functionality working better.

We seem to have entered the era of UI simplification. Not long ago someone somewhere came up with the term "cognitive overload", which always seemed like a backhanded way of saying "most folks are too stupid to deal with a lot of stuff on the screen at once", and so everyone began simplifying their user interfaces. Hell, Microsoft even stopped making their Windows OS actually do windows. Kind of a slap in the face to people who yearn for more and bigger monitors just so they can get more stuff up there for use "at a glance".

I urge everyone to think of the derivation of Albert Einstein's immortal comment:

"Make everything as simple as possible, but no simpler."

-Noel

D

Dave Merchant

Legend

Dave Merchant wrote:

Adobe have re-written both parts.

On purpose, and with a plan, right?

As a career software engineer, and one who runs a software company now, I perceive that something's wrong with the process.

It seems to me one or more of these factors must be influencing the changes to the web software here:

Incomplete or insufficient design work (plans)
An "I'm not sure what I want but I'll know it when I see it" attitude
Inexperienced developers
Inability to get to the core of what's wrong because proprietary software was purchased and is inaccessible
A philosophy of "let the public test it"
Insufficient in-house testing environment (multiple computers, multiple browsers)
Lacking process to evaluate and prioritize reported bugs
Unreasonable management pressure to release changes too soon, before they're tested and bugs are fixed

This latest change is the buggiest, most incomplete work yet exposed. Adobe will not continue to succeed unless someone important decides that the quality of the web work here matters. I sincerely want to see Adobe succeed, as my own business is tied to Adobe's products and success.

-Noel

Yes and yes - but that doesn't necessarily mean the plan worked.

Noel Carboni wrote:
On purpose, and with a plan, right?

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