feeling lost in the forums / reading difficulty

[Steffen]

This is a difficult topic.

Now that we have switched to the new forum software, and now that some months have passed since that,
I find myself in the situation that I feel completely lost inside it.
I very much appreciate all the features it has, but I find its current skin containing too much distracting stuff,
too many buttons, too many things on the screen.
also, in the design there is "too much air".
in the previous software, I was able to mentally keep track of various threads, and I found it easy to jump
back and forth between them. today, whenever I go to my "home link" for the forum,
http://forums.ldraw.org/search.php?actio...ly&days=14
, I just see a long, confusing list
and do feel so lost inside our forums that I
(a) do not read much there anymore
(b) lose track of discussions going on
© lose track of my own posts

I wonder how this could be solved. My first request would be if it would be possible to get a much, much simplified skin,
with all the bells and whistles reduced to a bare minimum.
for example, in the link mentioned above, I would like a view which has 1 line per post.
it should not cite the contents, and not use 2 lines for showing the thread topic and the post topic, just the post.


does anybody feel the same?

[Michael Horvath]

This is a difficult topic.

Now that we have switched to the new forum software, and now that some months have passed since that,
I find myself in the situation that I feel completely lost inside it.
I very much appreciate all the features it has, but I find its current skin containing too much distracting stuff,
too many buttons, too many things on the screen.
also, in the design there is "too much air".
in the previous software, I was able to mentally keep track of various threads, and I found it easy to jump
back and forth between them. today, whenever I go to my "home link" for the forum,
http://forums.ldraw.org/search.php?actio...ly&days=14
, I just see a long, confusing list
and do feel so lost inside our forums that I
(a) do not read much there anymore
(b) lose track of discussions going on
© lose track of my own posts

I wonder how this could be solved. My first request would be if it would be possible to get a much, much simplified skin,
with all the bells and whistles reduced to a bare minimum.
for example, in the link mentioned above, I would like a view which has 1 line per post.
it should not cite the contents, and not use 2 lines for showing the thread topic and the post topic, just the post.


does anybody feel the same?

A darker or grayer skin might make the forum more readable. Right now the white on white theme is kind of garish and hurts the eyes.

Here are some skins: https://mods.mybb.com/themes

I like this one a lot because I don't like round corners and edges:



Also it would be cool to have the LUGNET feature of being able to preview older and newer posts in a thread at the bottom of the screen. But that I know that is unlikely.

[Orion Pobursky]

Customizing the skin is very easy to do and if you have some web coding experience I can give you acces to tinker. That said, the skin is high on my todo list.

[Martin James]

I don't know if it helps, but I use this as the starting link: http://forums.ldraw.org/search.php?action=unreads. It took a little digging around the message exchanges to extract it, as it's not directly exposed as a link or button, but it will give you a much cleaner list. This one is of "unread posts" across the whole forum. There are probably other such lists you construct with a little more research.

Try it and see.

--
Martin James

[Orion Pobursky]

The link to that list is right up top on every page: "View Unread Posts"

[Martin James]

The link to that list is right up top on every page: "View Unread Posts"

Indeed it is -- but you have to be in a forum page before you can use it, which kinda defeats the object. I wanted a browser bookmark that took me straight to the list. The original question was about making a "home link" to the forum.

--

Martin James

[Orion Pobursky]

The link to that list is right up top on every page: "View Unread Posts"

Indeed it is -- but you have to be in a forum page before you can use it, which kinda defeats the object.

I confused by what you mean here. The link is part of the forum header. It appears on every forum page site wide. There should be any part of the forums that doesn't display the header.

[Orion Pobursky]

Also it would be cool to have the LUGNET feature of being able to preview older and newer posts in a thread at the bottom of the screen. But that I know that is unlikely.

If you switch to threaded view you should get something similar to LUGNET

[Orion Pobursky]

I wonder how this could be solved. My first request would be if it would be possible to get a much, much simplified skin,
with all the bells and whistles reduced to a bare minimum.

Can you maybe give me a "mockup" of what you'd like to see?  Themes can be set on a per-user basis so if the current theme isn't to someone's liking, I can make a new one that only those users who want it will see and, if it's popular enough, it'll become the default.

[Michael Horvath]

Also it would be cool to have the LUGNET feature of being able to preview older and newer posts in a thread at the bottom of the screen. But that I know that is unlikely.

If you switch to threaded view you should get something similar to LUGNET

I am using threaded view. There is no preview of message contents like on LUGNET.