Please Don't Get Carried Away

Ryan

Well-known member
It's been about 2 weeks now. Things are moving rapidly and shaping up very nicely here. I had a concern early on and that concern still lingers. There have been many cases where I've seen a new feature implemented that looks cool and is flashy, but it interferes with my use of the forums.

Examples

- Multi-Quote
That feature, to me, is for single-quoting, and nothing more. It's fine when quoting one person, but it is not realistic as a multi-quote feature. It's annoying to have to scroll up and down and up and down and up and down to quote multiple people.

- The confirmation dialog on "Mark all forums read"
It's just unnecessary. I know why it was put there - and that's because people were accidentally clicking on the link (myself included) when it was first in the sub-navigation. Problem is, you fixed this accidental clicking by moving the link - you don't need to add a confirmation on top of that.

- The "mini me" avater to indicate you've posted in a thread
When you shrink an avatar down that small and then put it on top of another avatar, it looks like a mess. It's hard to pick out when scanning an entire page, defeating the purpose of the indicator. Also, when you shrink an avatar down that small, it's hard to even tell what it is a picture of. The fact that it's your avatar is a moot point by the time you lean in close to the screen to squint at it. A simple icon is all that is needed there.

- The "bouncy" effect used when zooming to quotes or resizing images
When you click the up arrow in a quote, you're shot up to the original post. When you get to the top, the screen bounces back and forth real quick. It looks cool the first few times, but it gets annoying fast. The same is true for the animation effect when you click on an image that's been resized. Unnecessary animations make me cringe.

- The floating description when you hover over a subforum
The description should just be fixed underneath the title


Now, before you start throwing stones at me...Kier and Mike are doing a lot of things correctly here. There are a lot of flashy features here that I love (member card popups, thrread page number scrolling effect, quick nav in the footer, alerts...). They're being very innovative and cutting-edge. Most times, they're hitting the target, but a lot of times they are not. I understand that in order to be innovative, you've got to be radical. When you are radical, you're going to try stuff that doesn't work, and maybe that's what they're doing.

Not here to argue individual features (there is a separate thread for every one of these). I'm more here to point out this basic trend that I've noticed that features are being add that look cool and hip but aren't very practical. I don't want XF to get bloated with animations, popups, etc. Part of what is so appealing to me about XF is how sleak everything is.

Am I alone? :oops:
 
To be honest I don't see why people feel the necessity to complain about style problems. Just because XenForo has something a certain way on here doesn't stop you from customizing it. I doubt the license will force you to have Mark All Forums in the same spot :).
 
You always have the option to customize it. The [if condition] is there, if you don't like the avatar placement, then you can simply input your own button or some sort and place the already functional [if condition] around it.
 
Currently I think the devs should just focus on the core product, and not nitpick with customers over the little things too much. The product is flexible and dynamic enough to allow users to tweak it to their personal liking.


You can't satisfy everybody their opinions anyway.
 
There are a few things. First, if the request for the ability to spam your address book with forum invites is implemented, that would be an immediate deal breaker. No wiggle room on that. I'm that firmly against the idea.

The confirmation popup for marking the forum as read is beyond annoying at this point.

I'm seeing a tendency to request more and more "fluff", rather than functional options that would put the software at the top of the list. I suspect this is being done because many want to see the forum software more as a social networking deal like Facebook. As I'm one of those rare individuals who despise Facebook, requesting features of that type is an immediate turn off for me.
So everything should be like you want it to be?


Don't get me wrong, everybody's entitled to their opinions. Personally, I could care less about Facebook. However, if people want that, I like that they put time in it to check the suggestion out and possible integrate it. And honestly, if you dislike software because you have to click once more, you might be a bit of a perfectionist. Go build it yourself, then.
 
To be honest I don't see why people feel the necessity to complain about style problems. Just because XenForo has something a certain way on here doesn't stop you from customizing it. I doubt the license will force you to have Mark All Forums in the same spot :)
.

You always have the option to customize it. The [if condition] is there, if you don't like the avatar placement, then you can simply input your own button or some sort and place the already functional [if condition] around it.

Currently I think the devs should just focus on the core product, and not nitpick with customers over the little things too much. The product is flexible and dynamic enough to allow users to tweak it to their personal liking.

Ehrm...first, I can't accept the "you can change anything you want later, so why should you care" answer. If that were truly the case, then I would just go write my own forum software to do exactly what I want it to do. The reason I don't do that is because it's very time-consuming and there are people out there who are a heck of a lot better at it than I am. I buy packages (vB and IPB) because they come slam-packed with features that I will use. I don't like the idea of buying software with popups and animations all over the place that I have to go through and remove myself - in code.

It's not just style/theme problems I'm concerned with (like where the "Mark read" link is). I'm concerned with core functionality (the silly zooming animations, popup confirmations, etc.) This isn't stuff that can be removed by editing templates. It's in the core files. I also would venture to guess that changing the "mini-me" avatar to an icon instead is not just a simple template edit. If the trend continues with bouncing animations and popup confirmations all over the place, the forum script is going to get more and more difficult to navigate.

Also, I'm in the business of making and selling skins. I want the XenForo package to look and perform its absolute best out of the box so that all I have to do as a skin provider is change the look, not functionality, of the skin ;)
 
Yes, but everybody has different opinions, sometimes you just have to pick something, move on, and allow time in the future to have a) experience and b) bigger crowd feedback, and revisit the situation. :)
 
Ehrm...first, I can't accept the "you can change anything you want later, so why should you care" answer. If that were truly the case, then I would just go write my own forum software to do exactly what I want it to do. The reason I don't do that is because it's very time-consuming and there are people out there who are a heck of a lot better at it than I am. I buy packages (vB and IPB) because they come slam-packed with features that I will use. I don't like the idea of buying software with popups and animations all over the place that I have to go through and remove myself - in code.

Exactly. If I'm going to put forth the funds for a purchase of this type, I'm going to look at it on face value. I don't look at software with the thought of "I can always change it" and prospective buyers should not be expected to.
 
Exactly. If I'm going to put forth the funds for a purchase of this type, I'm going to look at it on face value. I don't look at software with the thought of "I can always change it" and prospective buyers should not be expected to.
So, some people want Facebook, some don't. Some people like the avatar thingie in topics you posted in, some don't. Some people really really want an arcade, some don't.


Which should you pick to please everybody, so that no one has to expect that they can change things themselves if they don't like it?
 
Exactly. If I'm going to put forth the funds for a purchase of this type, I'm going to look at it on face value. I don't look at software with the thought of "I can always change it" and prospective buyers should not be expected to.

How about something more constructive like a counter-request for a enable | disable toggle for things that you don't like?

And with that kind of thinking vBulletin 4.0 was borned. Crowded and clutted.
 
Heh, again, I said I wasn't here to argue individual features. Each has its own thread. I was only trying to point out a trend I'm seeing.

+1 Like the fact this product doesn't come with a 1,001 features that are only of interest to fanbois and that don't get used day to day. Let the 3rd party developer folks work on small addons, (reputation, country, whatever), and keep the bloat out of the core product. Each new feature leads to a fraction of a milli second more in page display while not really adding overall to member posting.

That being said love me some multi-quoting and invariably use that feature of another product a number of times per day. Has anyone discussed multi moderation ..... see the feature set can really blow out while not adding to your member enjoyment. KISS principle folks.
 
Looks like the posted in status has been removed.



Could just be temporary - they could have just been testing functionality and getting a bit of feedback.

Alpha 1 is not finished and in current development. Near RC/Gold status we will see what has been decided upon.

Remember; they have a LOT of little features, options, tweaks, optimizations, style, and code to write for every little thing, while finalizing the whole product, and their company site, and what not ..

I am perfectly fine with things showing and changing and leaving, .. it gives them time to get live feedback, and time to fix things behind closed doors and put it in the later release, etc.

XenForo is amazing :D
 
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