Forum changes

[john beardsworth]

OK, there's good progress in not being forced to sign in every time, but there's some way to go. We're missing:

1. Number of posts in a thread

2. Indication of most recent contributor to a thread

[Rick Gerard]

I found the discussions tab, so now it's only four clicks to get to where I used to get when I logged onto the forum home page. Not a very great improvement.

The last posters name is also missing, as far as I can tell, from every page. Don't get me wrong, there's a lot to like about the new interface, but there are a few key elements that made the form fast and easy to navigate for folks that contribute a lot.

We are also missing easy navigation links at the bottom of the page back to form content or communities. Again wasted time strolling around looking for links. Links back to the discussion in the communities should be at the bottom of the page.

[johnrellis]

Rick Gerard wrote: I found the discussions tab, so now it's only four clicks to get to where I used to get when I logged onto the forum home page. Not a very great improvement.

Agreed.  I add browser bookmarks for the Discussions tabs of all the forums I frequent.

[Claudio_González1]

John R. Ellis wrote:

...

If you click on the Discussions tab, threads with unread content are in bold (as before):

Correct. Only problem is that this doesn't stick. That is, if I open one of the unread threads and then come back, I am taken to the All Contents view, not to the Discussions one. And if I bookmark the page in the browser, the Discussions choice is not saved. So there we have one extra and completely useless step.

[johnrellis]

Claudio González wrote: That is, if I open one of the unread threads and then come back, I am taken to the All Contents view, not to the Discussions one. And if I bookmark the page in the browser, the Discussions choice is not saved.

I've noticed that the first time I got to a bookmarked Discussions in a browser session, I end up at All Contents.  But subsequent invocations of a bookmark (to any forum) take me to Discussions, as intended.  (Likely state saved in a session cookie causing this unwanted behavior.)  I tend to keep my browser running all day, so I don't encounter this bug much.

For me, clicking on a thread from Discussions and then clicking the browser back button takes me to Discussions, not All Contents.  (Chrome, Windows 7 64.)

[SteveG_AudioMasters_]

When I reply to a thread, why is the system sending me a PM saying that I've replied to it?

How do I stop any of this software insanity sending me these messages? Is there any way to turn all that off?

What Adobe seem singularly unable to grasp is what punters actually want from their forums. They want somewhere appropriate to ask a question, and for somebody to answer it. They don't want all this social chit-chat garbage and feeling obliged to 'like' things, and have to 'follow' them - that's all completely irrelevant.

And for those people who regularly answer rather more questions than they ask, they want an easy means of tracking where a forum's got to, and an easy-to-spot indication of whom the last person replying to a thread was - that makes more difference than you might think. The previous version wasn't perfect by any means, but compared to what we've got now it was fricking bliss.

[Steven L. Gotz]

One big issue is it's really slow! Do you feel the same way?

Yes! It is quite slow.

[vincent solomito]

Can't figure out how to search for content. Every user icon shows the same no. of correct answers.

This must be part of HEALTHCARE.GOV

vince

[johnrellis]

vinsolo wrote: Can't figure out how to search for content.

You can "filter" topics by text:

But the "advanced search" features are particularly well-hidden.   Go to the Overview tab, and under Ask a Question, type your search terms but do not type return or click the Ask Now button -- just wait patiently until it finally decides to show initial search results, and then click "Search all results in ...":

This will take you to an advanced-search page where you can search by author, type of content, last-modified date, and sort order.

Beware: I get different search results when using the "filter by text" and the advanced search.

[Guest]

I am completely lost in how to use forum.  I am getting e-mails where I never have before.

What is this Follow button?

How do you get the old view back with a list of posts?

Or do us old guys just quit so Adobe gets less complaints?

[Laubender]

@Curt – You can change the view from a "tile" ordered list to a "text" ordered list.

I call that the "Tile List View":

And this one the "Text List View":

When in Tile View you can switch the tile by hovring the mouse over the right bottom corner of the tile:

And click. Here two tiles next to each other. The left one switched over. The mouse pointer is hovering over the right one at the right bottom corner (mouse pointer not visible here in the screen shot):

What is a bit obscure to me, to say the least, why does the text on the front of the tile is reading "last modified by" followed by name, when in fact the name represents the author of the initial question… It should be reading "Author:" instead of "last modified by"!

I need information about the last forum member answering in a particular thread. This is the minimum requirement!

Also I cannot see any points given, the Status of a particular forum member when inside a thread.

And hovering the mouse pointer of the member's icon to get this info is very, very slow.

Also missing the small context menu for inserting URLs and things like that…

And the bread-crump navigation at the bottom of a thread. Returning to "Discussion" (the overview) will require to scroll up.

Uwe

[Laubender]

And what is this?
A message "Widget too big" in the Overview section of the InDesign Scripting Forum below of the "Featured Content" section:

Uwe

[Guest]

Laubender, thanks for the reply.

This new design is so bad because the engineers completely disregarded all the hard fought changes we got back from previous "enhancements". Not sure I can go though months of comments again.

1.  No way to mark helpful or correct

2.  Can not see who  responded last

3.  Does not list number of responses

4.  Huge amount of wasted space on page

5.  Can not jump to last comment - how long did it take to get that included last time?

6.  No breadcrumbs at bottom of page - how long did it take to get that included last time?

[Jacob Bugge]

Curt,

1.  No way to mark helpful or correct

2.  Can not see who  responded last

3.  Does not list number of responses

4.  Huge amount of wasted space on page

5.  Can not jump to last comment - how long did it take to get that included last time?

6.  No breadcrumbs at bottom of page - how long did it take to get that included last time?

1): If you have started a Discussion that is a question, you should be able to click a green star for Correct Answer; Helpful is gone for all of us, except for the moderators who can mark any post (in a question thread) as Correct or Helpful.

3): The number under the speech bubble, just before the number of views in the Discussions thread list (here for this forum)

Forum comments

2) + 4) + 5) + 6): Indeed. Probably unchangeable.

If you use the Inbox (clicking the reddish yellow dot beside your avatar at the top right  of the dark grey bar), you can set it to Unread only, and you may be lucky that you can just click the posts and see them in context, and reply.

I have started having it open in a tab of its own. On any page you can see whether something new, that may be relevant, has been added by the number shown. You can mark all as read and start anew at any time.

This may ease the pain of 2) and 5) a bit.

[Guest]

In my list #2, #5, and #6 e are probably deal breakers for me.  We are volunteering time to respond and when Adobe makes it difficult it is not going to be worth the effort.  I am tired of constantly fighting to reinstate Forum features they eliminate. 

2.  Can not see who  responded last.   I like to see who responds last to see if it is worthy to read response.  I always read Chris Cox statements as can often learn something.

5.  Can not jump to last comment - how long did it take to get that included last time?  I hate to scroll down the responses to get to the last question.  And if there is more than one page it is worse.

6.  No breadcrumbs at bottom of page - how long did it take to get that included last time?  You get to bottom of page and then have to scroll back to go to discussion.  In past back arrow did not always work.

[Guest]

This new Forum format would be similar to Adobe changing all the code for each new version.  And the look and features would all be different for each version.

What happened to the concept of keeping what works and making it a little better?  That has been the tradition from PS1 to CC.

[Bob_Howes]

There's no point in going over all the same ground as others but suffice to say that the old software was pretty bad but this version makes helping people on these U2U forums almost impossible.

As others have said, I donate my time to try and help others (mainly in the Audition section) and the lack of being able to see the last poster, the way some queries are truncated so you can't see the whole question, etc. etc. is simply ridiculous.

Requesting customisations and such seems to me to be like throwing good money after bad (or good code after bad).  I have no idea why Adobe persists with this JIVE rubbish.  Just check out forum software like vBulletin or InVision which can be purchased out of Adobe petty cash and have EVERY feature we'd all want.

Seriously Adobe, these forums are like a shop window for your products.  If I checked out this so-called support I'd probably buy elsewhere.  I wonder how many customers JIVE has lost you over the years?

[mytaxsite]

Bob Howes wrote:

Seriously Adobe, these forums are like a shop window for your products.  If I checked out this so-called support I'd probably buy elsewhere.  I wonder how many customers JIVE has lost you over the years?

Probably not many.   The reason being Adobe is making products that no other company is making.  Microsoft Tried by introducing Expression Suite of products but they decided it is not for them.

People are not prepared to change from what they already know.  You have already seen in these forums.  Users are simply not prepared to spend some time to learn what is offered by these new forums and same thing applies with applications.  People don't change easily.  Adobe needs to target new customers who can start from scratch and who can accept these forums as the only means to get support.

In time people will get used to these forums and when another version comes out, the same complaints will arise and they too will get used to the new forums in the future.  That is how life is.

You may not have noticed but these forums have spell checker in real time like in Word Processors.  Now that is an improvement in my books!!!   In the previous versions you had to click on the abc icon to check the spellings.

[Bob_Howes]

I'm going to have to disagree with you on almost all your points, mytaxsite.

FIrst, at least in the areas where I work (Audio and some Video) Adobe has huge competition.  At the top end of the market Avid and Protools are the industry standard--I'm not a fan of either but had to learn both to stay employed.  At the lower end, things like Sony Vegas and Reaper offer excellent faciities for a fraction the Adobe cost.  For pure audio, I can probably name 10 other brands of good software.  It's worth saying that all the software companies I've mentioned have php based support forums like the ones I mentioned.  All those forums are easier to use and have far more features than the Adobe/Jive efforts.

I agree that the existing customer base probably wouldn't change because of the user forums but if Adobe want new customers in the Audio/video area, they have to be better than the competition.  Support is one area they COULD differentiate themselves but they are singularly failing to do so.

As for this forum software specifically, if you read through this thread you'll see that many of the complaints aren't just resistance to change.  There are serious issues with functionality which make it very difficult for regulars--who after all give their time and knowledge voluntarily-to provide the support that's so badly needed.

...and all the php forums I visit had real time spell check more than a decade ago!

[Laubender]

@Bob – I can only agree wholeheartedly. Three days after the change, I feel that I have to put in more energy and time for helping people. I'm constantly logged out (about three times per hour) inadvertantly, it's hard to follow different threads in different sub forums without swamping in e-mails. The only good thing could be the Inbox concept, if it only would show some more details like the sub forum someone posted in and if the editor would have the option to format code.

For regular users helping a lot, it is discouraging that the Status is not showing, that there is no easy way to see how many posts someone has generated, and that the list of Top Participants has shrank to (sometimes) six people where before there were twelve have been presented. That the option "helpful" is only available for system admins. It's hard to impossible searching for members, options available are leading to nowhere (like uploading files). More steps are needed to accomplish things. Bread crump navigation at the bottom of the threads does not exist. I could go on and on…

Uwe

[Jacob Bugge]

Curt,

2) and 5) are the worst for me (I am mostly posting this to get rid of the Inbox notification every time a new post is added on page 2 (soon page 3) in this thread by unticking Following in (Inbox) after posting.

[Samoreen]

Uwe Laubender wrote:

What is a bit obscure to me, to say the least, why does the text on the front of the tile is reading "last modified by" followed by name, when in fact the name represents the author of the initial question… It should be reading "Author:" instead of "last modified by"!

I guess that a post could be modified by the author himself, an admin or a moderator ?

[Laubender]

@Samoreen – could be. But the real thing is – found this out in the mean time – that:

"last modified by" is used every time a new contribution is made to a thread.

The bug in that is, that the name below is always the name of the original poster.

"created by" is used every time a new thread is started. The name below is the name of the original poster.

No bug in this case.

However, what we should see (but even cannot, if the bug in "last modified by" is resolved) is:

created by
Screen Name

last modified

Screen Name

Uwe

[mytaxsite]

Curt Y wrote:

I am completely lost in how to use forum.  I am getting e-mails where I never have before.

What is this Follow button?

How do you get the old view back with a list of posts?

Or do us old guys just quit so Adobe gets less complaints?

Have you tried clicking on the Overview Tab as shown in this picture:

It is one of the best workaround I have found though some people in DW didn't like it.

[emmrecs]

And why, when my profile still includes my "screen" name, am I credited as the author under my "real" name if I post to any thread?

[Dave Merchant]

As I explained before, when logged in you see YOUR real name used everywhere, but everyone else will see your screen name. Nobody knows why it's like that, it just is.