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:
 
XenForo is perfect as it currently is.
Bloating it up into everything for everyone would kill the User-Experience.

Perfect might not be the right word, but the ebb and flow of the current feature-set is amazing. Things flow wonderfully and it's very lightweight. What I'd like to see is more new functionality added, not bells and whistles on top of current functionality...that's what brings the bloat, the basis of this thread.

Don't ever tell them that it is perfect. Then you risk them stopping development :p
 
Perfect might not be the right word, but the ebb and flow of the current feature-set is amazing. Things flow wonderfully and it's very lightweight. What I'd like to see is more new functionality added, not bells and whistles on top of current functionality...that's what brings the bloat, the basis of this thread.

Don't ever tell them that it is perfect. Then you risk them stopping development :p
You'll be seeing alot of really good stuff shortly, I'm sure.
 
Double post detector, someone call the XenMod Squad!
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::nods::

I just want to buy a copy a soon as humanly possible so I can get it on the testbed!

What it really comes down to is this:

There are many MANY things that I want to have in XF. But there is nothing that I want as much as the initial commercial release of a clean, streamlined XF. XF 1.0 gold is orders of magnitude higher priority than anything else I can think of.

Everything else will come in time, esp once the dev and design community get a taste for what a fantastic platform XF is to develop on. :)

BTW, anyone looking for an extra vB license or two? ;)
 
::nods::

I just want to buy a copy a soon as humanly possible so I can get it on the testbed!

What it really comes down to is this:

There are many MANY things that I want to have in XF. But there is nothing that I want as much as the initial commercial release of a clean, streamlined XF. XF 1.0 gold is orders of magnitude higher priority than anything else I can think of.

Everything else will come in time, esp once the dev and design community get a taste for what a fantastic platform XF is to develop on.

Totally agree, just get XenForo out and release the first version of it to the public.
Then everyone can get a hold of it to see what it does and does not and what feature would make sense for his specific website/community to be added or not added.

Currently this is just like everybody is throwing in ideas and features they would like to see or don´t like to see.

Let´s get that software implemented at some of your new or existing Forum-websites and have a look how your very own community reacts to it.

No need to hold Mike and Kier busy with hundreds of feature-requests for the moment.

It is key to release XenForo as soon as possible, so we can all go and test it in real life at our own Forum-communites and then provide proper feedback to the developers based on real-world-experience.

I want to buy a XF-licence now, I do not care if there are some bugs still in there or whether any features are missing. I just want to buy it and use it. I will not complain about any bugs (if there are any) as I do understand that every great software-product needs TIME to evolve.
 
It is key to release XenForo as soon as possible, so we can all go and test it in real life at our own Forum-communites and then provide proper feedback to the developers on real-world-experience.

While I agree that it's important to release the product in a reasonable amount of time, I do not agree it should be at the expense of software quality. We already saw that with vBulletin 4. I would be in support of development copies, selling a license to receive it, etc. Nevertheless, XF 1.0 Gold should be released when it's ready, and not a moment sooner. There are numerous features that still need to be implemented and/or tweaked to put XF on matching grounds with other commercial forum software.
 
While I agree that it's important to release the product in a reasonable amount of time, I do not agree it should be at the expense of software quality. We already saw that with vBulletin 4. I would be in support of development copies, selling a license to receive it, etc. Nevertheless, XF 1.0 Gold should be released when it's ready, and not a moment sooner. There are numerous features that still need to be implemented and/or tweaked to put XF on matching grounds with other commercial forum software.

so you still wanna wait a year or something, until XF has build in all the features other Forum-software is offering ?
You might want to do that, I am not.
 
so you still wanna wait a year or something, until XF has build in all the features other Forum-software is offering ?
You might want to do that, I am not.

Different strokes for different folks.

Not every requested feature needs to be, nor should be, implemented prior to a Gold release. There are some, however, that are basic to even the best free software nowadays. For example: an Infraction type system. VB has the infraction system, IPB has the warning system, and PHPBB has a combination report center and warning system. To larger forums, as discussed in this thread, this is an absolute necessity. This is just one example.

I completely understand where you are coming from, and I to do not want to see ridiculous things added to the software. However, there are some components that are not meant to be flashy or "fun" addons (an arcade or more jQuery functions for example), but rather are necessary features that need to be in place to reasonably compete with the market (like what I mentioned in the previous paragraph). I do not anticipate that Kier and Mike will allow development to drag, but at the same time, I do not expect they will want to release the product with big gaping feature holes or a drop in Gold quality software.
 
for larger forums an Infraction type system might be needed. But this "necessity" as you call it, can still be implemented at a later stage (as per comments on the link you posted).
 
putting that confirmation link is a compromise to its position. I think the new position is fundamentally wrong, but others like it there. Given the potential irreversible damage that can occur with an accidental click of this button, a confirmation dialog is not only justified, but in my opinion, absolutely necessary.

lol Kier, I think you should put the link where you want it to be lol
 
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