The mobile screen jumping is definitely next on our list to tackle. Second are the performance issues with battery drain and CPU usage. We’ll have a solution soon! I say this all the time, but I really do mean it: thank you, thank you for your patience!
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The scroll feature doesn’t always work. I can see some threads have 200+ posts, but no matter how much I try to scroll to the bottom on my android there are times when it freezes at post 130 or whatever and won’t go further. The point of the website is to be able to read and respond to posts, so this function has to work.
Yes, the screen jumping is unbearable. Is it due to ads loading?
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279 ads have been blocked in FIVE minutes!!!
I still haven’t figured out how to navigate the boards. Once I’m finally in the thread I’m looking for I’m good.
It went up to 315 ads while I typed that sentence.
I need to put in an ad blocker, I guess. I hesitate to do it because so many times news sites make me disable it if I want to read articles.
Right now I’m looking at two obnoxious, identical ads to the right of posts. They flash on and off and then are replaced with two new identical ads. It is so distracting. 
I wonder if your loading speed is faster and power usage (and battery drain on a phone?) lower because of your adblocker? If we all used adblockers, would these issues be resolved? (Not that I think we have to make changes to our computers and devices to make a site work better – that should be happening without users having to do certain things, plus does CC want its paying advertisers blocked?)
I still can’t figure out how to determine whether threads I am interested in have new posts. There is Latest, New and Unread across the top, but what I see in those links appears to be completely random. In a forum, there is no way for me to determine which threads I have looked at already, which have no posts, etc. And what is with the blue dot next to some threads? That too appears randomly (i.e. if it were next to all threads I’ve never opened, I would assume it meant it was a “new to me, unopened” thread, but alas, that does not seem to be the case).
Some threads I have opened and read but not bookmarked or “tracked” say I will be notified of new posts because I have “read” the post. But other threads I have opened and read do not have the same indication.
It has become increasingly frustrating to me to visit - I have gotten to the point where I now mainly just visit the “Parents of Class of …” threads and the couple of threads that actually show a “new posts” count. When I try to open other much linger threads that interest me, like Inside Medicine, it jumps all over the place, does not being me back to where I last read, etc.
And last I checked, the “bookmarks” tab under my profile did not match the “bookmarks” on the menu of the Forums page.
Editing to add, when I’m on the main forum page, it shows I have 4 “unread” posts and when I click there, I see four threads listed. However, when I go to the Parents Forum and click over to Parents Cafe, that screen says I have 3 “unread” but when I click on “Unread” there is NOTHING there. This is why it is so frustrating- i just cannot seem to find a reliable way to find new posts.
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I am experiencing these inconsistencies too.
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I think the performance problems that people have been writing about are entirely due to ads. I use an adblocker on both my iPad and Mac and I haven’t had any problems with the screen jumping around or battery drain that others are reporting. It’s easy enough allow ads on specific news sites that don’t allow you to read with a blocker on.
@me29034 I almost exclusively use an iPad and have an adblocker on. I don’t have that much battery drain, but I get the jumping around on longer threads when I’m trying to scroll.
My adblocker is on and I’m still experiencing the jumpiness. I’m on an iPhone.
Then I wonder why I’ve had no problem if it’s not the ad blocker. Maybe I’ve got something obscure settings that are different than other people.
I use an ad blocker. I just opened the Cafe (about 10 minutes ago), and the blocker says 556 ads blocked! I counted about 10 seconds, and it jumped to 623!!!. WOW. I’ve never seen any website like that. The PC fan is also very very loud. That must be a lot of memory being used in the background, although it does not show on the task manager.
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I’ve discovered you can set an entire forum to “tracking” - it’s the symbol that looks like a bell. The system seemed to be setting it on a thread-by-thread basis depending on whether I looked at/posted in it, but I can set it at the top level and it seems to override that. So I have the forums I’m interested in set to “tracking” and I seem to get indications (on the main categories page) of which ones have new posts. Still unclear on the difference between “new” and “unread” but not sure if that matters at this point.
I’ve been accused in the past of using this board as an “adult hobby”. Whatever. All I know is that for now the hottest topic seems to be this thread. The same thing happened the last time the board was upgraded; people were so consumed by the new bells and whistles (or the disappearance of old ones) that it froze the discussion boards for weeks. I’ll check back every few days to see how long it persists this time.
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What happened to the PMs I received? Were they deleted?
For everyone who hates scrolling. Over to the right is a blue bar for post numbers. You can click on the bar anywhere and go to approximately where you want immediately. Much better for the most part than the page numbers in my opinion.
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Kind of missing the mark here. Thoughts as both a user and as an online publisher of over a decade.
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Pagination. I can’t say that loud enough. Nobody on earth wants to scroll, wait, load, scroll, wait, load on some of these posts with hundreds of replies. It’s kind of lunacy.
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User Intent. It does not feel as though that was the top priority here. Have you guys sat down with individuals (well, in this era, done a share screen session) and watched them use it? A small focus group of completely new and current users to do this with would likely be incredibly helpful.
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Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS). While this feels better than the old version (which was quite possibly the worst for that on the internet I’m sorry to say) there is a reason Google has added this to their core metrics. The jumping of the page makes it very hard to read, and I’m sure I’m not the only reader who gives up and logs off.
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Forums main page. That’s great, it’s easy to look around at, the recent posts load nicely allowing users a quick glance at what’s new.
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Fonts & colors are all pleasing, adequate contrast.
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Ads. Listen, I too make my living off ad revenue and have for many years. I get it. Simply put they can be profitable and less intrusive (again too much CLS). I don’t say that to be picky, I say that as someone whose online almost all day, both consuming and creating content, and hands down every time I’m on here I think to myself that this site has the most intrusive ads on the internet. I read so many people talking about and recommending ad blockers. Frankly as a publisher I want to do all I can to discourage that, by making my ads as minimally intrusive as possible, and I hope my fellow publishers feel the same way, because with the impending Google phase out of third party cookies, we really to do all we can to safeguard our revenue. As an industry let’s not make everyone want to block our ads and kill our revenue, okay?
Finally, thanks for providing a great place for people to exchange info. I think this forum can be tweaked and adjusted to be pretty darn awesome.
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What do we think of the new board? Sure is quiet around here… seems like lots of people have decided.
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Agree with @aupaircj regarding ads, especially when not logged in. When I am logged in, the ads seem a bit less intrusive than before. However, if the goal is to get more traffic to the site, the site needs to be inviting for those who have not yet set up an account.
CC is a great resource and I hope the new boards will keep improving and that people stick around and give it some time.
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