XenForo 2.0 Discussion

[Gamorreaner]

@Pierce It was, but the reason they cried might have been a different one .

I doubt that the "beauty is in the eye of the beholder" argument has any legs to stay on, if so it is quite shaky (I would challange it in every aspect of life!). It can be defined, just google "old-fashinoned room" and "new-fashioned room" and you already got to the first criteria (time), the second would be color, the third shape. All car manufacturars produce curved cars (shape), most sold color would be black? (color) and in 20 years nobody knows if one of those two statements will still be true (time).



vB 3 was angular shaped, blue and everyone loved it that way. If you look around here most is still blue, but everything is curved.
My personal guess would be that borders will eventually be eliminated in the new style, but that it still stays blue, also maybe with less gradient graphics or none at all. The mantra of todays time is "less is more".

 

[TLDR]

Like stated in this thread, I think the default XenForo style needs to be re-made. I would love a simplified color palette, no use of gradient images what so ever, and universal borders and fonts.

It is already confirmed that there will be a new style. It will be one of the last things, though.
https://theadminzone.com/ams/interview-with-chris-d-xenforo-developer.454/

 

[The Sandman]

From the interview with Chris:

Out of the box, what will the big differences be between XF 1.5.X and XF 2.0?

It's certainly going to look different because we do want to give XF a fresh look after all this time. The XF 1.X style has served us well for 6 years or so now and really this is an extremely long time in terms of web development so it's time for something new. But, at the same time, it should look familiar with some new bells and whistles to boot. The thing is, generally the style is something that is the last thing to finalise, so it makes it difficult to show you what we've been working on until that's finished.

 

[Davyc]

Personally I believe the base style should be something that can be easily customized by the end user - so the less complex the design elements are, the easier it should be to customize. In fact it would be great if a theme customizer could be built in that is visual in nature with say the elements down the left of the page in a column with the end results shown in a panel on the right; now that would be neat.

Of course for those who don't want to/can't be bothered to style then out of the box needs to be reasonably pleasing to the for everyone looking at it.

 

[Pierce]

@Gamorreaner people tell me that the new xenforo direct from a vb3.x is confusing and hides content?!?!

I did full side by side screen shots and it does highlight issues in some areas where old navigation links are missing but there's only so many ways to organise categories with threads which are made up of posts!

There is of course the issue of some people won't join a site because it doesn't look modern!

 

[Divvens]

I sincerely hope 2.0 also touches on some basics, Emoticons has the option to be organized in categories and you can organize display order for each, yet Warnings & Trophies don't have this feature, in my honest opinion categorization and organization of Trophies & Warnings are far more important than Emoticons, and since the categorization is already possible with Emoticons, the code exists and there is a way to do it, with 2.0 being a re-write I hope these basic elements of XF are also improved

 

[TPerry]

I doubt that the "beauty is in the eye of the beholder" argument has any legs to stay on

Actually it does have a basis. In each era the "beauty" is specific to that period. What you find "perfection" another will not. I'm not fond of "glitzy" and prefer a more staid, flat square style personally. Others like the rounded corners and the gradients (and some need some lens flare!). All you can do is find a neutral color scheme (which XF currently has) and then go with it. The beauty of XF is it's very easy to change it up.

 

[Neutral Singh]

With the advent of social media, new age members/posters simply love to perform a single click operation!

Most of my decade old members, simply hate to start a new thread, the way it is set-up in forums... they are so much addicted to copy paste a link on a box and it populates itself with content including images just like on Facebook, press publish and boom you are done!

The saving grace for forums is that the content on social media websites is of perishable nature and impossible to retrieve later on for a future reference..

Going forward, in xF 2.0, i would love to see a option to create content on the fly, all in a one step! where you don't have to venture through a big list of forums to go through an appropriate forum.

Something like:

Right at Forum Home > Create New thread > Opens a popup > Choose a thread prefix (drop-down) > Choose an appropriate forum (drop-down) > Thread heading > Type in the content > Publish > Done!

And, i would also love to see an option to move the forums/sub-forums in the sidebar. Remove the age-old redundant maze of forums/sub-forums off the forum home, to make room for content on the forum page.

More drag and drop functionality to create a forum home to suit your taste.

@Chris D @Mike @Kier

 

[Jake B.]

Right at Forum Home > Create New thread > Opens a popup > Choose a thread prefix (drop-down) > Choose an appropriate forum (drop-down) > Thread heading > Type in the content > Publish > Done!

There are add-ons for that

https://xenforo.com/community/resources/ad-quick-thread.4622/

 

[Triops]

Most of my decade old members, simply hate to start a new thread, the way it is set-up in forums... they are so much addicted to copy paste a link on a box and it populates itself with content including images just like on Facebook, press publish and boom you are done!

...

Going forward, in xF 2.0, i would love to see a option to create content on the fly, all in a one step! where you don't have to venture through a big list of forums to go through an appropriate forum.

That's exactly I hear from those users, which moved away and went to Facebook. Really, I've heard that a lot of times.

That's why I will reduce the number of sub-forums by far when migrating vB to xf, keeping in total maximum 9 to 12 forums with no more than 3 forums for a main thing. Additionally I will add that wonderful addon showing all valid prefixes above all forums for the needed "sub-organization". What is missing is to make thread creation itself and uploading images much more easy... Edit: thanks, just bought that add-on, @Jake B.

xf 2.0 could perfectly support a similar setup with some helpful features and keep that optional for those who do not want that way. Ok, should move this to the suggestion threads, but I wanted to second @Neutral Singh's comment.

 

[Neutral Singh]

That's why I will reduce the number of sub-forums when migrating vB to xf by far, keeping in total maximum 9 to max. 12 forums with no more than 3 forums for a main thing.

I agree! You would be shocked to learn, how many forums/sub-forums i had in vB... and how many i culled after moving on to xF shocks me... and still there are aplenty of them still cluttering my homepage... This is always in my to do list and an ongoing process!

 

[Gamorreaner]

@Gamorreaner people tell me that the new xenforo direct from a vb3.x is confusing and hides content?!?!

I did full side by side screen shots and it does highlight issues in some areas where old navigation links are missing but there's only so many ways to organise categories with threads which are made up of posts!

There is of course the issue of some people won't join a site because it doesn't look modern!

I don't think it's more confusing/hiding. The thing that hides things and make things confusing is in both the same. The font is too small/bad font choice. I already changed it in vB 3 and with Xenforo I think removing "Trebuchet MS,Helvetica" is a good way to start every new style.

Also the thing with modern look. There is a really large gap between what most of here know as the common forum softwares and that which even some bigger sites use, which is more like a list of topics and all responses to a topic are not visible as soon as you open the topic, but instead they are shown like a tree with different branches (response direclty to the first post and seperate discussions inside of the topic). Those kind of forums give me goosebumps and I avoid them whenever I can (like this: https://forum.selfhtml.org/self).

Actually it does have a basis. In each era the "beauty" is specific to that period. What you find "perfection" another will not. I'm not fond of "glitzy" and prefer a more staid, flat square style personally. Others like the rounded corners and the gradients (and some need some lens flare!). All you can do is find a neutral color scheme (which XF currently has) and then go with it. The beauty of XF is it's very easy to change it up.

With the second phrase you support what I said, but we lose each other as you go on. Blue is in no way a neutral color, colors are not neutral to begin with! Colors have different meanings to them, which might differ sligthly in different cultures (in asia white is the color of mourning) and changes over time (Grey used to be the color of the future in most SciFi series - today it's white), but overall to the majority of people they have the same meanings. Forms have their meaning aswell, round is conceived as being new while things that are angular shaped are seen as old. Those meanings are "the beauty of the time" which every designer uses to his advantage.

Also, changing a style is for most people a nightmare and I'm not talking about the part where you have to add this or that to the CSS. Many people even have difficulties with the basics (no light color on light background), but to mix some colors and find harmony in them can be really difficult, that is why people like to go with something preset rather than trying to make their own.

 

[Neutral Singh]

There are add-ons for that

https://xenforo.com/community/resources/ad-quick-thread.4622/

Yes, but this does only a part of what i am suggesting... Post New Thread should open a whole dialog box like below without even another page load:

 

[surfsup]

With the advent of social media, new age members/posters simply love to perform a single click operation!

Most of my decade old members, simply hate to start a new thread, the way it is set-up in forums... they are so much addicted to copy paste a link on a box and it populates itself with content including images just like on Facebook, press publish and boom you are done!

The saving grace for forums is that the content on social media websites is of perishable nature and impossible to retrieve later on for a future reference..

Going forward, in xF 2.0, i would love to see a option to create content on the fly, all in a one step! where you don't have to venture through a big list of forums to go through an appropriate forum.

Something like:

Right at Forum Home > Create New thread > Opens a popup > Choose a thread prefix (drop-down) > Choose an appropriate forum (drop-down) > Thread heading > Type in the content > Publish > Done!

And, i would also love to see an option to move the forums/sub-forums in the sidebar. Remove the age-old redundant maze of forums/sub-forums off the forum home, to make room for content on the forum page.

More drag and drop functionality to create a forum home to suit your taste.

@Chris D @Mike @Kier

Yes, but this does only a part of what i am suggesting... Post New Thread should open a whole dialog box like below without even another page load:

View attachment 138444

I +111111111111111 on this, seriously ppl want the simpleness of Facebook/Twitter type of posting these days, hopefully the Xenforo team is listening to us about this and noticing the other social networks as people want simplicity and quickness to get their post out there fast, not look around for minutes, then post. If something like this is not added in Xenforo 2.0 then to me they are following Nintendo's steps of staying behind in times. I am just being blunt about this.

 

[Wesker]

There are no plans to develop XF 1.6. The next major version of XF will be 2.0.

Do we have a range date on when xf 2.0 will release?

 

[Amaury]

It will be released when it's released.

 

[Wesker]

It will be released when it's released.

So 2016-2150 Sometime between then.

 

[rdn]

Probably next year.

 

[Wesker]

Probably next year.

That's what I thought since no Alpha yet. Thanks!

 

[ENF]

I +111111111111111 on this, seriously ppl want the simpleness of Facebook/Twitter type of posting these days, hopefully the Xenforo team is listening to us about this and noticing the other social networks as people want simplicity and quickness to get their post out there fast, not look around for minutes, then post. If something like this is not added in Xenforo 2.0 then to me they are following Nintendo's steps of staying behind in times. I am just being blunt about this.

This may work for some - but the simplicity of posting usually will wind up with the same junk replies that aren't worth much on FB or Twitter. I see FB and Twitter posting as a place for quick comments and short replies as where a traditional forum is more for discussion with real writing and not the mindless dribble you seen on social networking sites.