New Matrix Forum

[berto]

ORIGINAL: Panjack

... the more narrow width of the forum (on non-mobile devices) makes individual postings easier to read.

+1

On a wide-screen monitor, the verrrrrrrry long lines of the older website are difficult to follow from one line to the next, especially with dense "walls of text".

Anything that narrows the paragraph widths is a plus, makes the forum text more readable.

[tcarusil]

Thank you for the changes. However, the topics in various sections of the forum, such as NEW RELEASES FROM MATRIX GAMES, should be in alphabetical order like the "old" forum. Scrolling through the whole list to find what I am looking for makes the forum less user friendly.

TomC

[76mm]

You haven't fixed the thing which drives me absolutely crazy with this forum: you have hundreds of games, I am interested in a handful. The only way I can easily get to the games that I want to see is to subscribe to them, in which case I can see those games, and only those games on my Subscribed forums page. From there it is easy for me to see new topics, etc. So far, so good.

What I DO NOT want, however, is to get an e-mail for every new thread on all of my subscribed forums. Most days most of the e-mails I get are spam from my Matrix subscribed folders. I DO NOT WANT THESE E-MAILS!!!!! I JUST WANT TO BE ABLE TO ACCESS THE FEW GAMES I'M INTERESTED IN WITHOUT HUNTING AND PECKING THROUGH HUNDREDS OF OTHER GAMES.

I've been complaining about this for years, and so far the response has always been "But it's supposed to work like that." Really, you're trying to annoy customers by spamming them with dozens of e-mail a day? Would you PLEASE fix this by allowing us to turn off e-mail notifications? I just looked and currently there is no such option. Meanwhile, EVERY SINGLE OTHER FORUM that I belong to allows you to turn off e-mail notifications for subscriptions.

Yes, if you can't tell, I find this feature (or rather lack of a feature) incredibly annoying...

[RangerJoe]

How about something in a cookie to see what type of device that a person is using along with the width? That could then be used to provide the most optimal layout for the user on that device. Me, I almost always use a portable computer and seldom a smart phone.

[actrade]

I read literally all day for my job and long ago started using the Dark Reader open source browser extension. It's super easy to install and even easier to turn on/off on those pages that you need to look at in their native color. I don't read ANYTHING in white anymore and my eyes thank me. I looked at the new forums using Dark Reader and they look great. Question: will the new forums get rid of the server errors/page hanging that have become common on the current Matrix forums?

[TitaniumTrout]

Comparing the two side by side I find readability to be easier on the older site. The newer font seems slightly different, though it could be the contrast of the background colors.

1. Is it possible to display the Username in a more prominent font? Iconography looks fine, but when scrolling and picking out users without icons it would be nice to see a larger font size.
2. Post breaks between the user bar and the post itself helps differentiate the columns. The black bar between posts is a pretty good defining line. Some users seem to have a more prominent break between posts than others. This looks to be very dependent on monitor, I can have it on one screen and see the alternating white bar and slight grey background while on the 2nd monitor it all looks totally white with no difference.
3. I'll say I don't mind the black dead space on the outside of the forum. With wider monitors it takes more eye movement to read from side to side so this is rather refreshing. Paragraphs look like paragraphs and not 24 inch long strings of text.
4. I see some posts display the BBCode, will the new forum parse this eventually? For example

Code: Select all

[b] [/b]

See the 2nd image.





Great improvement, looking forward to seeing how well it handles picture uploads and such.

[ncc1701e]

No more Matrix Elite ranking on the new web site? Is it really needed? I don't know. It was funny to have stars after 10000 posts then 20000 posts... [:D]

[RangerJoe]

I don't see where to automatically notify report a violation of the Matrix rules. Should that notification still happen to someone by pm? To the moderator of the forum?

[TitaniumTrout]

ORIGINAL: RangerJoe

I don't see where to automatically notify report a violation of the Matrix rules. Should that notification still happen to someone by pm? To the moderator of the forum?

Once logged in I see a "Report" button in the upper right of a post.

[RangerJoe]

ORIGINAL: TitaniumTrout

ORIGINAL: RangerJoe

I don't see where to automatically notify report a violation of the Matrix rules. Should that notification still happen to someone by pm? To the moderator of the forum?

Once logged in I see a "Report" button in the upper right of a post.

Thank you. I did not realize that I had to log in there as well. Oh well, issue reported . . .

[CGGrognard]

There is nothing that I don't like about the new forum format.
Here's what I do like.
The alternating background color of posts. It helps me keep track of which post I'm reading at the moment.
The CTRL scroll is excellent, in that I can make the page as big as my monitor if I want.
The Quick Links option is good too, along with the search feature.

[Macquarrie1999]

The new forum should have the lines that separate the posts like the old one. Also, I wish there was less dead space on the sides of my monitor.

I like the old style of the forum better, but a large part of that is I'm used to it.

[mainsworthy]

ORIGINAL: OldSarge

You can get the link to an individual post going to the icon next to the poster's name and right clicking and selecting 'Copy Link'.

if the new forum has links to my games then i like it

[Freyr Oakenshield]

Oooh! Aaah! Cool and sexy! [8|]

[sPzAbt653]

It looks the same to me, just worse because now there are no lines separating things so it all runs together. Its the same as any other forum I look at these days, they must all use the same template. No imagination or creativity, and little thought given to the user. It looks more like a cheesy advertisement for everything rolled into one page. Yuck.

You haven't fixed the thing which drives me absolutely crazy with this forum: you have hundreds of games, I am interested in a handful.

+1. My eyes have to navigate a hundred things I have no interest in. Maybe a 'tree' type system with the main categories listed, then we can click on the main to get to the sub-menu to get to the game I want. Then that is saved until it expires and resets say 14 days after use. That way TOAW will always be right at the top [because who doesn't go there every day?] and anything else I have recently looked at will be easy to find.

And yeah, why are we still reading 'ants on a light bulb' after all these years? DOS had it right with different screen/character color choices. The only reason Windows used black and white was to be different. Trash it and lets get back to the eye friendly choices [:)]

Please, and thank you.

[Curtis Lemay]

Since we can't post, we can't investigate how attachments are handled. Any change in sizes, numbers, or types of attachments?

[z1812]

ORIGINAL: Erik Rutins

Have you all tried using Control-Scroll Wheel to zoom in on the new forum? It's currently using a layout that's friendly to mobile devices. I'll see if we can do something to also have an alternate layout for desktop PCs that's more like our current one, but right now you can make it larger and fit the screen fully by zooming in a bit.

That works very well.

[z1812]

ORIGINAL: Macquarrie1999

The new forum should have the lines that separate the posts like the old one.

I agree with this.

[76mm]

Allow us to post png files instead of jpg. Again, this is the only forum I know that doesn't accept png...

[EwaldvonKleist]

Will the adresses of forum posts and images remain the same? I very much hope so because I have many cross references to posts and images in my posts and WitE 1 guides and it would be bad if they are all broken after the switch.


In small hamdy screens, there is a lot of wasted space on the posts since the text starts right of the user information, so there is a big white space beliw the username.