XenForo 2.0 Discussion

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Redor said:
I find myself wondering if the reason why XF2 looks the way it does is because that plays better on a phone screen, and if the focus is on that. I realize mobile is certainly a big trend and hugely significant in society in general, but personally the last thing I would want to do in terms of forums is use them by phone. I'm a desktop guy. Give me a nice big keyboard to do real typing and a normal size screen. Or is that not it?
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What's wrong with the way it looks on desktop?
 
Redor said:
I find myself wondering if the reason why XF2 looks the way it does is because that plays better on a phone screen, and if the focus is on that. I realize mobile is certainly a big trend and hugely significant in society in general, but personally the last thing I would want to do in terms of forums is use them by phone. I'm a desktop guy. Give me a nice big keyboard to do real typing and a normal size screen. Or is that not it?
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I think there is some small amount of compromise, but as it is so easy with CSS to programme a style that suits any screen size, it needn't be too much of a compromise. I like the xf2 style on both mobile and desktop.

I think the only area of compromise I dislike is that the alerts need to clicked on (as opposed to hovering) before cancelling, which I was told is because of mobile design being consistent on desktop. Which I really don't get. But apart from that I think it's ll good, a very nice clean and easily customisable style.
 
Not really consistent with just a mobile UI in general. You'd be hard pushed these days to find hover to activate menus anywhere in any software. If you broaden that to even desktop OS' and apps then click to activate is pretty much universally the expected behaviour.
 
Mr Lucky said:
I wasn't that hard pushed to find this:

https://www.amazon.co.uk
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Amazon offers a completely different experience on mobile, as does every ecommerce platform.

Because consistent user experience is a huge thing in the checkout process, Amazon and other companies cannot update their system to more modern trends to the same degree as other niches. If they would do so, they would frustrate people who do not do well with changes.
 
Mr Lucky said:
Exactly my point. Which makes me wonder why this is changed in xenforo.
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Because they have taken steps to include proper design cues which will quickly train anyone to that functionality, and will create less confusion or frustration by adopting a mobile first design language rather than stagnating with a desktop first approach?

At the end of the day, people are not stupid and are going to learn the new interactions quite quickly. The new design for XenForo is much more usable than the current XF1 version, and if designers properly maintain that design language than there shouldn't be much of an issue even for your older demographics.
 
Forsaken said:
Because they have taken steps to include proper design cues which will quickly train anyone to that functionality, and will create less confusion or frustration by adopting a mobile first design language rather than stagnating with a desktop first approach?

At the end of the day, people are not stupid and are going to learn the new interactions quite quickly. The new design for XenForo is much more usable than the current XF1 version, and if designers properly maintain that design language than there shouldn't be much of an issue even for your older demographics.
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Yes, of course people will quickly realise that they can no longer see the alerts from just hovering. That won't stop the complaining that it was better before and wondering why something that didn't seem broken has been fixed.

The logic works the other way round.

I understand the reason for the alerts needing to be clickable is to have consistency between mobile (where you cannot hover) and desktop where you can.

If it was left as it is (with hover for desktops) people (as you say who are not stupid) and who are used to the site on mobile will quickly learn that hover works with a mouse.
 
For me the hover is awful because I often accidentally activate the alerts menu when I don't want to. That alone is enough reason to change it. You shouldn't be able to accidentally action something that you can't undo just by hovering.
 
Mr Lucky said:
Yes, of course people will quickly realise that they can no longer see the alerts from just hovering. That won't stop the complaining that it was better before and wondering why something that didn't seem broken has been fixed.

The logic works the other way round.

I understand the reason for the alerts needing to be clickable is to have consistency between mobile (where you cannot hover) and desktop where you can.

If it was left as it is (with hover for desktops) people (as you say who are not stupid) and who are used to the site on mobile will quickly learn that hover works with a mouse.
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Ignore the complaints? More often than not it is a very small amount that complain, and they're the same people who complain no matter what you do.

If it's honestly a big deal for you, look at making it activate on hover or ask someone else to do so for you.
 
Forsaken said:
Ignore the complaints? More often than not it is a very small amount that complain, and they're the same people who complain no matter what you do.
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If it was a small amount I'm sure I would ignore them, but if it is a significant amount, including staff who i don't want to upset as they do a great job for free, then I don't feel inclined to ignore them. Also I am also complaint, and I prefer not to ignore myself.

What I don't understand is what is so bad about something that is such a huge part of the web, people are used to it, why change it?

It's already been argued I'd be hard pushed to find hover menus, yet there it is on Amazon. Not only that it's default behaviour on all recent Wordpress themes including TwentySeventeen. And isn't it something like 75 million websites use Wordpress?

This to me makes the non-hover menu less useful and less intuitive than a hover menu.
 
Just because it's like that in other places doesn't mean it's more intuitive or more useful.

Forgetting what Amazon and others do, it is more expected and more intuitive to mimic what most UIs use - you don't expect to hover over the File menu on your favourite desktop app or OS to be able to access Print.

There's potentially never going to be a consensus on which is best, and there's never going to be an admin defined option to control it on our part, so it will remain as it is and it will just be a case of getting used to it. Whether you like it or not initially I'm positive that won't take long for most people.
 
Chris D said:
Just because it's like that in other places doesn't mean it's more intuitive or more useful.
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I can't (objectively) argue with that, all I can base it on is what I (and other people I know) find useful. Also based on the premise that many people don't like change unless there is an obvious benefit. Obviously when xenforo was developed it was deemed good to have the alerts hover. I do agree that the way some hover menus are designed can be detrimental to useability but this was never the case with xenforo. I don't think a hover per se can be bad as other aspects of xf2 have a hover (hover over Avatar for member card which is basically a menu), so I don't really understand the reasoning behind losing this. Not consistent.


Chris D said:
Forgetting what Amazon and others do, it is more expected and more intuitive to mimic what most UIs use - you don't expect to hover over the File menu on your favourite desktop app or OS to be able to access Print.
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Very true. But not that relevant to my argument. It would be good if they did IMO.


Chris D said:
There's potentially never going to be a consensus on which is best, and there's never going to be an admin defined option to control it on our part, so it will remain as it is and it will just be a case of getting used to it. Whether you like it or not initially I'm positive that won't take long for most people.
Click to expand...

Maybe one day I will get used to it, but I am more concerned about the forum users and mods.

It still catches me out on xf2 when I hover over alerts and nothing happens.
 
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Mr Lucky said:
I don't think a hover per se can be bad as other aspects of xf2 have a hover (hover over Avatar for member card which is basically a menu), so I don't really understand the reasoning behind losing this. Not consistent.
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This is an excellent point.

Adding the hover to following four tabs would be great to have as an Admin Control Panel option:

upload_2017-6-21_10-11-32.webp

From a coding perspective I suspect it's not that easy to do, is this the primary reason not to add the option?
 
ioneti said:
themes and addons works on 2.0 in general, or have many problems?

thanks
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considering that it's still in developmental status, no (or very few) add-ons (1st party or 3rd party) have been released AFAIK. Same with the styles... the majority of the popular ones are still not released in a 2.0 stage and you probably won't see much of anything until XF2 releases a BETA status at the earliest.
In other words, XF 2 is NOT in a state that it's recommended to be used on a live site.
 
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