@KevinMcCabe - are you one of the software/ IT guys who contributed to this “update”?
- it looks like a reply has not been posted when in fact it has.
- Font too thin and pale. Very hard to read on phone. Need better contrast.
- Very very small font, very cluttered list presentation - very uncomfortable.
@HMom16 @CCadmin_Sorin said they were reading and taking feedback. Efficiency in providing it to them will hopefully be helpful.
@jym626, #571, cont.
- Bring back the easy to find list of threads within each forum.
- Improve the color differentiation to easily find new posts, pinned posts, etc.
- No white background.
- No double spacing in the text box.
- Eliminate the ad that constantly plays in the top left corner (I've got a post-it on my screen so that I can stand to type this.)
- Keep the menu on the right stationary as you scroll so that you can use it regardless of where you are on the page.
- Eliminate everything below the reply box. Posters don't have time to do a slow roll up and down the page to find it.
- Eliminate the video that's constantly playing in the center of the page on phone screens. It makes the page jump several times every time time a new page tries to load.
- Eliminate the white space on the left and right sides of the screen and broaden the horizontal space available for threads so we can see more than a couple of lines of text at a time.
- Reduce the size of the buttons at the bottom of each post ("Agree" --> "Flag").
- Eliminate the leaderboards. We don't care about them anymore than we care about badges.
- Eliminate the poster's personal info. in the header under their name in each post. It's a space waster.
- Move the date/time posted to the top of the post.
- Make it easier to navigate among the pages in a thread.
- Make page numbers visible in portrait mode.
Even easier:
Go back to the old format and layout and UI. The little bar at the bottom was helpful for quickly navigating. But the CC devs can keep the new “art style”. So basically apply the new updated art design onto the old format and layout. Problem solved. Long time users can stay with the tried and true familiar interface and the website gets the modern facelift the company wants.
Also something to note. According to badges, only 585 people have 1000+ comments. Meaning less than 1,000 people are providing the majority of activity in terms of physical content on the forums. And most people commenting on this thread are members of that group. I hope cc listens to us because we provide a lot of the posts that the general public views on the site as non profile users. Alienating the active users reduces content. Which reduces traffic for lurkers. That lowers ad revenue.
CC relies on experienced posters to help with the “What course should I take” and other repetitive posts that should be answered…it is often the posters first foray into CC. But if it is too difficult /annoying/hard for us to find those posts we won’t bother.
The problem for the devoloper is they might of used a plug and play system. No way this is a custom site. If so, then they might have little control to change something which eludes to switching back to the old forum and try again and get your volunteers involved this time. I have no problem with change but logical change would be best.
“new”, announcing new replies in a followed thread, should be easier to see.
Ouch my eyes are hurting. I tried again on my phone and the “new improved” site was unusable. Now on desktop, it’s literally causing me pain from the color scheme and ratios of text to background.
This kind of change happened to Snopes (became ad-clogged) and GardenWeb (structural like on CC) and both sites had major down-turns in popularity as a result when they became almost unusable.
Who are the decision-makers? Why are they not responsive?
As others have said, at least this will break our addictions to logging in to check if there are questions to be answered, etc.
Oh GardenWeb - yes, that went through something similar. Never went back.
It would be interesting to see the requirements doc for the CC redesign.
@austinmshauri post #583 has the right idea. Copy and paste that numbered list and then add on any issues you have that are not already addressed in post #583 list. Like we used to do long ago with user names/college acceptances - build the list by copy and pasting.
First…I hope they get this fixed ASAP as the 2020-2021 admission application and financial aid application questions are usually asked now. Folks also inquire about college visits…
I’ve added three things to the list.
- Bring back the easy to find list of threads within each forum.
- Improve the color differentiation to easily find new posts, pinned posts, etc.
- No white background.
- No double spacing in the text box.
- Eliminate the ad that constantly plays in the top left corner (I've got a post-it on my screen so that I can stand to type this.)
- Keep the menu on the right stationary as you scroll so that you can use it regardless of where you are on the page.
- Eliminate everything below the reply box. Posters don't have time to do a slow roll up and down the page to find it.
- Eliminate the video that's constantly playing in the center of the page on phone screens. It makes the page jump several times every time time a new page tries to load.
- Eliminate the white space on the left and right sides of the screen and broaden the horizontal space available for threads so we can see more than a couple of lines of text at a time.
- Reduce the size of the buttons at the bottom of each post ("Agree" --> "Flag").
- Eliminate the leaderboards. We don't care about them anymore than we care about badges.
- Eliminate the poster's personal info. in the header under their name in each post. It's a space waster.
- Move the date/time posted to the top of the post.
- Make it easier to navigate among the pages in a thread.
- Make page numbers visible in portrait mode.
- Save draft button...how hard is that?
- Please put my name at the top of the forum so that when I’m logged on, I don’t need to hunt and peck to find my own profile.
- Please make the push pins some color like red or yellow so they are clearly visible, and keep the pinned pages together at the top of their forums.
@abasket-
See post #571. This is a perfect example that its hard to follow the bouncing ball with this new format. Too few posts per page so too hard to follow a conversation. I forgot to list that.
- Bring back the easy to find list of threads within each forum.
- Improve the color differentiation to easily find new posts, pinned posts, etc.
- No white background.
- No double spacing in the text box.
- Eliminate the ad that constantly plays in the top [s]left[/s] right corner (I've got a post-it on my screen so that I can stand to type this.)
- Keep the menu on the right stationary as you scroll so that you can use it regardless of where you are on the page.
- Eliminate everything below the reply box. Posters don't have time to do a slow roll up and down the page to find it.
- Eliminate the video that's constantly playing in the center of the page on phone screens. It makes the page jump several times every time time a new page tries to load.
- Eliminate the white space on the left and right sides of the screen and broaden the horizontal space available for threads so we can see more than a couple of lines of text at a time.
- Reduce the size of the buttons at the bottom of each post ("Agree" --> "Flag").
- Eliminate the leaderboards. We don't care about them anymore than we care about badges.
- Eliminate the poster's personal info. in the header under their name in each post. It's a space waster.
- Move the date/time posted to the top of the post.
- Make it easier to navigate among the pages in a thread.
- Make page numbers visible in portrait mode.
- Save draft button...how hard is that?
- Please put my name at the top of the forum so that when I’m logged on, I don’t need to hunt and peck to find my own profile.
- Put more posts on each page so there are fewer pages to navigate in a thread (selecting how many posts to have per page used to be a personal preference many iterations ago on cc. Bring it back).
- Have the reply box at the bottom of the page like it used to be so we don't have to search for it (and using the "reply" in the post makes it hard to find where the reply ended up.) Don't have other threads listed below the conversation. Too confusing and distracting (as noted in suggestion #7).
- Bring back the easy to find list of threads within each forum.
- Improve the color differentiation to easily find new posts, pinned posts, etc.
- No white background.
- No double spacing in the text box.
- Eliminate the ad that constantly plays in the top left corner (I've got a post-it on my screen so that I can stand to type this.)
- Keep the menu on the right stationary as you scroll so that you can use it regardless of where you are on the page.
- Eliminate everything below the reply box. Posters don't have time to do a slow roll up and down the page to find it.
- Eliminate the video that's constantly playing in the center of the page on phone screens. It makes the page jump several times every time time a new page tries to load.
- Eliminate the white space on the left and right sides of the screen and broaden the horizontal space available for threads so we can see more than a couple of lines of text at a time.
- Reduce the size of the buttons at the bottom of each post ("Agree" --> "Flag").
- Eliminate the leaderboards. We don't care about them anymore than we care about badges.
- Eliminate the poster's personal info. in the header under their name in each post. It's a space waster.
- Move the date/time posted to the top of the post.
- Make it easier to navigate among the pages in a thread.
- Make page numbers visible in portrait mode.
- Save draft button...how hard is that?
- Please put my name at the top of the forum so that when I’m logged on, I don’t need to hunt and peck to find my own profile.
- Please make the push pins some color like red or yellow so they are clearly visible, and keep the pinned pages together at the top of their forums.
- Make the layout smaller with less wasted space so that more threads, and more forums, are listed and visible in each screen. (Similar but not totally covered by #9)
- Fix the app/mobile version so that when clicking the "back" arrow, it actually goes back to where you were, not to the "landing page" with whatever junk CC decided you should be forced to wade through first.
- Reverse the use of bold/not so that "bold" means you have NOT read it yet.
- Fix the email notifications so the same thread gets put in the same email thread, not a separate notification because it's a new poster.
Unfortunately, aside from obvious bugs, I doubt many of our requested changes will happen. The “Fresh New Look” seems to be for one purpose only - to increase ad space and ad revenue. The large margins on the sides will someday be filled with ads. The large layout of each thread forces users to scroll through pages and pages of lines to get where they want - this is by design. The more clicks and scrolling you do, the more valuable the site becomes for advertisers. The ‘top users’ and ‘badges’ are a sad attempt to ‘gamify’ the forum.
It’s awful. I really hope I am wrong, but I doubt its changing back.
Imo, a list of improvements folks want needs to include the vehicle- cell, tablet, laptop, desktop- Android vs Apple, and browser.
The new structure is one thing. Eg, some choice to put Parents forum under College Admissions, like Why? or to hide the Highlights (jumping to Bookmarks or Latest) under posts or to the right, so you have to seek it out.
But it seems, for a lot of the visual and user issues we seem to be having, it’s different patterns of problems depending on the vehicle. And portrait vs landscape.
I don’t have the video, I dont have large white when reading individual posts, or tool large font. Not on my cell, Android Chrome, in either portrait or landscape.
On the Android tablet/Chrome, I do have too much white space, can’t easily locate the “Highlights” thing where Bookmark and Latest can be clicked.
Others have other roadblocks. And preferences.
I’d also warn that any complaints should be about the ultimate functionality, not our emotions.
@STEM2017 - I agree with you, this is a revenue-booster. And if we’re right, then I’m gone.
I prefer to be vocal and use my voice. We can doubt that no changes will occur. Let’s prove or unprove that by making our “ransom list”. At some point maybe the list gets edited by powers that be to “we can edit that” and “not happening”.
I imagine they might have their own list of things that aren’t working - maybe?
Also if anyone has specific ways to contact board owners - like a specific email - let’s figure out a way to share that and again, use our voice.
Maybe all for naught but if you’re invested to want to stay, you have to invest TO stay.
I have no objection to ads - CC should be able to earn money. But ads should fit the audience. It should be obvious that the CC audience is the very critical, fine-print reading kind of crowd. You are not going to successfully sell them things with v ideo ads and click-bait.
It would be more effective to use sponsored links based on discussion topics and keywords.