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Topic: Idea: forum migration? (Read 9360 times) previous topic - next topic

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  • Fat Cerberus
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  • Sphere Developer
Re: Idea: forum migration?
Reply #15
I haven't tried it on mobile yet, but on a desktop browser everything seems spaced too far apart.  Other than that it looks nice. Maybe a bit too stark and minimalist, though.

One bug I noticed is that the login bar didn't work.  It took me to the full login page saying I didn't enter anything in the username field.  Logging in from there worked fine.

edit: The font is way too big on mobile, and yeah, everything is still too spaced out.  I don't understand the obsession with large fonts in mobile UIs recently.  The iOS beta has these really ugly headings on every screen too.  Just because I have a 6-inch screen on my phone doesn't mean I want to compensate by making everything ginormous, that defeats the purpose of having a large phone :P
  • Last Edit: July 01, 2017, 12:21:22 pm by Fat Cerberus
neoSphere 5.9.2 - neoSphere engine - Cell compiler - SSj debugger
forum thread | on GitHub

  • Rhuan
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Re: Idea: forum migration?
Reply #16
So I like it both on my laptop and my desktop BUT I do tend to like lower resolutions and larger/brighter images than the average person.

  • DaVince
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  • Used Sphere for, like, half my life
Re: Idea: forum migration?
Reply #17
Wow, yeah, the text DOES look quite big on a phone. Nothing a few theme tweaks can't fix though. As for the spacing... I dunno, I personally think it looks a lot more comfortable with the added whitespace. But as it is, I actually have to zoom in the current forums in order to get a comfortable experience.

I can reduce the maximum side width though (on a 1366x768 screen it looks perfect but it gets too wide beyond that, it seems).
  • Last Edit: July 02, 2017, 04:25:14 am by DaVince

  • Rhuan
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Re: Idea: forum migration?
Reply #18
I personally prefer ElkArte to Flarum for navigation/appearance, but hey, I don't like change.

  • Fat Cerberus
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Re: Idea: forum migration?
Reply #19

Wow, yeah, the text DOES look quite big on a phone. Nothing a few theme tweaks can't fix though. As for the spacing... I dunno, I personally think it looks a lot more comfortable with the added whitespace. But as it is, I actually have to zoom in the current forums in order to get a comfortable experience.

I can reduce the maximum side width though (on a 1366x768 screen it looks perfect but it gets too wide beyond that, it seems).


The main thing for me is that the excess of whitespace makes me lose context.  Buttons and such start to look like they're swimming and not attached to anything.  Maybe it's not so much the spacing though as the lack of a clear separation between things that should logically be distinct.  That seems to be the trend with UIs nowadays: Let's make them really really minimal and make everything white so you can't tell where one thing ends and the next begins.  It's like someone looked at a newspaper and then said "Let's make a user interface look like this!".  And then everybody else followed suit.

The thing is, people do seem to love the minimalist thing--look how successful Google was with Material Design on Android.  Not me, though.  Maybe everyone else is normal and I'm actually the strange one! :P

Oh, on a sidenote, this whole "being a mod" thing is really messing with my muscle memory.  I keep accidentally trying to edit people's posts when I really just want to quote them, hehe. :P
neoSphere 5.9.2 - neoSphere engine - Cell compiler - SSj debugger
forum thread | on GitHub

  • DaVince
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Re: Idea: forum migration?
Reply #20
Well, whitespace is ultimately also supposed to aid in what belongs together: elements that belong to each other will be grouped together while keeping sufficient space between the next group of things. I get what you're saying about the excess of whitespace, but it's the lack of whitespace that would really make it unclear where one things ends and the next thing begins.

That said, going too far in either direction WILL cause usability issues. I was mainly talking about the desktop version here, but I also find the mobile version to look significantly more cluttered and it could use some more contrast. Contrast between elements also separates them better and right now this contrast really isn't high enough.

All that said, I just picked a theme that looked like it really matched Spherical itself well. From here I can keep looking for themes, or I can modify the one that's there. I think I'll do the latter, make it a little darker, give things more contrast, try to play around with what works and not.

  • Fat Cerberus
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Re: Idea: forum migration?
Reply #21
Yeah, I realized it was the lack of contrast that was bugging me most.  That's what I meant about lack of clear separation.  That, when combined with the surplus of whitespace, just makes it borderline unusable.

The cluttered look on mobile I attribute to the huge font.  Shrinking the text would go a long way to fixing that, I think.
neoSphere 5.9.2 - neoSphere engine - Cell compiler - SSj debugger
forum thread | on GitHub

Re: Idea: forum migration?
Reply #22
Using the Firefox Android app, radio inputs look wrong, and I'm unable to select them.

  • Fat Cerberus
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Re: Idea: forum migration?
Reply #23
Yeah, we need a new forum system posthaste.  The spambots have opened the floodgates and the moderation features on this one are... lacking.  Deleting hundreds of spam posts one by one is not my idea of a fun time :(
neoSphere 5.9.2 - neoSphere engine - Cell compiler - SSj debugger
forum thread | on GitHub

  • Rhuan
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Re: Idea: forum migration?
Reply #24
Wow, what on earth is going on with these spambots,  they're not even advertising anything, they're just generating junk, have we annoyed someone?

  • Fat Cerberus
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  • Sphere Developer
Re: Idea: forum migration?
Reply #25
There are pothole links embedded in the spam posts, but a huge word salad wall of text certainly isn't going to make anyone want to click them, so... yeah, it doesn't make much sense to me either.

I tried to see if I could deny new users the ability to post links to fight them off, but it doesn't seem like that's one of the available permissions.
neoSphere 5.9.2 - neoSphere engine - Cell compiler - SSj debugger
forum thread | on GitHub

  • DaVince
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Re: Idea: forum migration?
Reply #26
I've disabled registration. Looks like with the new SMF update, all the anti-spam mods got disabled, and re-adding all of those is a greater effort than just moving to the new forum system.

Anyone against moving please speak up now. Otherwise I'll be moving it tomorrow (or whenever I see the time to do it). Also, sorry for the trouble with the spam.

Re: Idea: forum migration?
Reply #27
Yeah, I think it's best that we ditch SMF. Even if it's an inconvenience, I'd rather have us do that then block registration, as that could be a deterrant to people interested in using Sphere. I'll make a post on the Facebook page.

  • Rukiri
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Re: Idea: forum migration?
Reply #28
Xenforo is pretty good :)