New Format of BCO is a DISASTER

Jancie, I found a clue.

I pulled up the "All Topics" page in Firefox v. 3.0.19 on my MacBook Pro, and took a photo of it.  After uploading via Photobucket, here's what it looks like.  Sorry -- it's still fuzzy for some reason, but you can see there's no left margin or nav bars on this page:

Okay, so then I pulled up the same "All Topics" page in Safari v. 3.0.4, which is an ancient version of that browser that came with my laptop.  After taking a pic and uploading it in Photobucket, I brought it here -- also fuzzy, but with a completely different layout:

Now, why would those be so different?  This does appear to be a browser-specific problem, because you're looking at the same laptop running the same version of Mac OS X (v. 10.4.11) in either case.

otter

ETA: I've been playing around with the Safari version since I posted those pics above.  Compared to the full-screen, all-white, no nav bars version I see with Firefox, the Safari version is much more user-friendly. That left-hand column with the nav bars and drop-down menu could be narrowed, to allow more page width for the titles and posts, but I do like the options that version provides. (That's what we're supposed to be seeing, I suspect.)  One drawback to the full-service version in Safari is that I cannot use control-plus or control-minus to re-size the text in the titles or posts as I can with the Firefox version. There's a glitch in there, somewhere, for the techies to fix. 

On my smartphone... I think the reason why my eyes are bugging out... Is because there are so many different font sizes and boldnesses in the fonts. Under our replies, our signatures are a light font. Our replies are another. There just seems to be so many colors and fonts. It's too busy. And don't get me started with the scrolling. My finger was first blistered. Then calloused. Now it is Charlie-horse!

What if we don't want you to keep working on improving/fixing the new format? You haven't said anything about the chance of getting the old format back. Is that even a remote possibility? Some kind of yes, no, maybe would be great.

Don't get me wrong, I really do appreciate the effort you are making to "improve" the site, I think we all do, but this is just to much for a lot of us to deal with right now.

We, or I anyway, really like the few things in my life that don't have to change right now, and this is one of them.  

Re: "...simply reset zoom.  It should reduce the size of the information visible in your browser window."

Well, yes... that's exactly what it does. But that does not solve the problem.

I tried resetting my zoom (LOL) to see if it would bring up the gray left-hand column and the wonderful nav bars, which is the problem I'm having in Firefox. As I've mentioned and illustrated (above), all I see with Firefox is the beige/gray/white screen with wall-to-wall text -- the same stuff everyone else (except Jancie) sees inside the white box on the right half of their screens.

Resetting or decreasing my zoom just makes the print smaller. Same all-beige/gray/white screen, same wall-to-wall text, only now it's so tiny I can't read it.

otter

Another complaint; when I click 'Back to Top', I do not go back to the top. Don't go anywhere.

Dear mods, would your tech team consider a rollback to the old format whilst they iron out the glitches and test more thoroughly in a controlled environment, and then roll out changes gradually? I think the complete overhaul has thrown many of us, whereas a drip feed approach makes any bitter pills easier to swallow, and any problems easier to focus on and resolve. Their bug list per browser and device must currently be enormous and will take ages to resolve anyway, so why not make it a bit easier on the users?



For whats its worth, the reason I ended up here in the first place was the UK sites and forums I came across were hard to navigate. I would hate bco to go the same way as I think it is an invaluable resource, and the people on here are the best :-).



If the policy is that any rollback is totally out of the question then people can decide whether they can deal with the changes or if they need to look elsewhere. I hope the girls (and boys) decide to stay around.

WHAT on earth is the point of all that grey space on the left hand side??

The old format had posts in different colours - alternating beige and buff, or some such.....really easy on the eye. My eyes are watering as I type this, and I have only been browsing for a very short time.

Maybe the reason why most of my posts 'disappeared' is because there was a lot of behind-the-scenes tinkering going on; I joined in Oct 2003 and have made many, many more posts than it says under my name.I haven't looked around yet, but wonder what else has disappeared.

Please, please, mods, let us have the old format back....

How do we find our old posts?  I've looked under my name in the search, and nothing shows up even though I've posted in a few threads today.

I also tried another poster's name just to see what happens, and three threads showed up from a year ago, but nothing recent, and I picked a poster who has several new posts.

  There must be something I'm not getting.

Ok. I found the old posts in "Dashboard."  I'm trying here, really.

I suggest that the techs put this information in the "help" section that is next to our name on the opening page.

The nice thing is with a responsive "design", when I get tired of reading 32" across my screen I can grab the right corner and shorten the width of the window and the design collapses into a shorter width layout. Now I can read it more easily. Moderator: Thank you for mentioning that or I wouldn't have thought to try it.

I am still finding a lot to not like about this though. 

Okay , just had to delete 93 e-mail notifications and now will have to figure out how to get rid of them entirely from my laptop.  My DH is having a fit,  I am about to have a fit.  I followed the instructions as to how to refuse the notifications and obviously it didn't work.  I acan't imagine why anyone would think it is a good idea to send unsolicited material on this forum--we get enough of that through regular E-mail.  Whose bright idea was that and for what purpose?  This is just an unacceptable invasion of privacy.  This whole change just is nuts. 

I don't like it as well either.  Once you get into a thread to read posts, it seems okay, but the favorites page and the active topics page. . . well, it just takes too much scrolling.  I like to see the "big picture" all at once.  Then I can click on what I want.   Also, I don't like having the names of the last poster listed first--I'd rather see the post first.  Isn't that what is important?  I also miss how it used to be more in a grid-like format.  It seemed to separate everything a lot better. 

Voraciousreader - little bit harsh but I can understand your frustration. I've been 'in' computers since 1971 and do have a lot of UI design experience and this is not a good design at all.

I get tiny font at work and big font at home - what's up with that?

I haven't had any auto emails but I did notice the' Back to Top' link didn't work.

The idea of going back to the old format is good and you could get some of us to be beta testers for any new designs before you release it to the world at large.

Has anyone tried to upload a new avatar? I tried with both IE and FireFox, got the same error message on both attempts. I routinely upload pictures and never have a problem. I think the message said something like "not on the list" of something similar. Can someone else try and report back?



The format looks nice on my Android phone.