New Style and Software

[Richard Haddrell]

On my laptop at least, we're not using the full screen width any more. Even the other place does that. Any chance of fixing this?

Seems to scale on my laptop quite nicely Richard at 1440 x 990 in Safari so which browser and resolution do you have?

Internet Explorer 11, 1366 x 768 (its native resolution). No difference with Firefox, Chrome, Opera. I'm doing better than Ian Thompson's 75% of screen width. More like 87%.

[Martyn Harris]

General style fine by me; not competent to comment on changed functionality.

On 1366 x 768 screen with Chrome there are vertical white margins either side of the main area, though this doesn't detract from my experience. In truth these probably wouldn't have registered had not someone else mentioned them. These shrink and eventually disappear if the width of the browser window is reduced. Further reduction results in the column giving info about the poster disappearing, though posted messages continue to word wrap so that they can be read easily. At the other place there seems to be a minimum width of window below which word wrapping stops so that then part of the text is out of window.

I almost invariably use the active topics page. With the old look, you could hardly miss the link. It is now somewhat less obvious.

I've long since bookmarked the active topics page rather than the site's home page.

[Carl Hibbard]

The new analytics added to this new software are both creepy and fascinating with 202 users from 17 countries since 8am this morning.

[Barry Sandercock]

I preferred the old one, but I guess I'll get used to it. I now realise there is no need to log out, but at first it seemed a problem.

[Barry Sandercock]

Oh, I now see you can log out.

[Christopher Kreuzer]

Couple of points:

i) It is possible to bookmark the active topics page, but if you are not logged in, you still need to hunt out the link after logging in (or reload the bookmarked link, I suppose). It is counter-intuitive to put four 'quick' links hidden away behind a quick links link... Having all four links out in the open is quicker to see and click on.

ii) I think, when using the mobile phone view, you don't get the 'Last post' column you get on the desktop view. I find this column very useful, as a way to check whether there has been new activity on a particular thread.

iii) Preferred the old layout, but as Carl said, no going back and we will all get used to it in time.

[Geoff Chandler]

It's awful.

Why did you ave to tamper with it? It worked just fine.

You have succeeded in pleasing two dips using a smart phone (what ever that is).

I find it harder to navigate the site to see who posted the most recent post
and the new layout is just not pleasing to the eye.
(I say new, it now looks like every other forum which I avoid.)

Does anyone remember the TV programme 'Boots and Saddles'.
At the end they played 'The Last Post.'

Well I have just written mine.

[Christopher Kreuzer]

Hope Geoff is exaggerating. I agree that the new site is not as easy to used. This may just be because I am so used to knowing where to go for certain links to click, and until I re-learn where the links are, it will be frustrating. The most annoying thing is trying to remember where things were in the old set up (does anyone have any screen shots?) in order to compare to the new set up. I am sure the 'page' links were below the thread title in the 'active topics' view, rather than to the right as they are now. Also, the link Carl refers to that takes you to the most recent post in a thread - that is very easy to miss...

EDIT: Ugh. The nice easy "green colour" for people online has been replaced by a small diagonal strapline saying "online". Again, easy to miss. Mainly because the name of the poster is on the right now, when it was on the left before?

[Carl Hibbard]

At the moment the original subsilver style we used previously has not been updated properly but I will keep an eye out.

[JustinHorton]

Is there any chance of your changing things back, please?

I suspect he means back before the 1832 Reform Act

That would still quite probably leave us in a more democratic state than the ECF as presently constituted.

[Michael Farthing]

Carl has a hard problem - designing the whole look and feel by oneself is a marathon task. It is very likely that subsilver will be updated, but it does seems ridiculous to me that PgnBB should have released such an update at the 'stable' level without such a popular style being ready to go in with it from the outset. Still, as I haven't bothered to take part in the discussions and vote I can't really complain!

Of more interest to me is what caused you to upgrade so quickly Carl? The old version was stable and working very well.

[Brian Towers]

For my tuppence worth I think it looks fine.

It also looks great on my Windows Phone.
Note that there is an app on WP which gives you a link direct to the forum along with a bunch of other chess related links called, unoriginally, Chess Links - http://www.windowsphone.com/s?appid=5d2 ... 415f6c559d

[Roger de Coverly]

Note that there is an app on WP which gives you a link direct to the forum along with a bunch of other chess related links called, unoriginally, Chess Links

This site is unofficial, the actual ECF (national chess federation) is
http://www.englishchess.org.uk/ with its own forum at
http://www.englishchess.org.uk/Forum/

[Carl Hibbard]

Carl has a hard problem - designing the whole look and feel by oneself is a marathon task. It is very likely that subsilver will be updated, but it does seems ridiculous to me that PgnBB should have released such an update at the 'stable' level without such a popular style being ready to go in with it from the outset. Still, as I haven't bothered to take part in the discussions and vote I can't really complain!

Of more interest to me is what caused you to upgrade so quickly Carl? The old version was stable and working very well.

The 3.1.x branch has been around since October time so I have just been waiting for it to settle down.

This sort of software needs keeping up date purely due to security issues.

[Christopher Kreuzer]

For me, the most frustrating thing is still the fact that the 'active topics' link is two clicks away rather than one. I am tempted to start a poll on this to find how many people find this annoying enough to vote in a poll about it... I suppose the only thing to do is to try and remember to click the bookmark rather than the link on the website...