Migrating the forum to Discourse

[tooki]

The flat UI trend is easy to explain. Graphics cards can draw filled rectangles really fast. So it is easy if UI is just flat rectangles.

Doing 3D control elements is also hard on 4K and 8K monitors, since  your elements need to scale appropriately now. And again, filled rectangles scale easily.

I don't mean to be rude, but that is the most ludicrous, patently absurd thing I've read all week.

Our computers 20 years ago could handle complex, layered, shaded UIs with real alpha transparency, without a problem. Our GPUs today are hundreds of times more powerful, and have 20 times the VRAM. Scaling up a UI to 2x (i.e. 4x as many pixels) is peanuts to them.

You're talking as though this is some novel challenge, when in fact it's one we faced and solved decades ago. (I'm not exaggerating when I say 20 years: it was in early 2000 that Apple first released Mac OS X's Aqua interface, with its gratuitous alpha transparency and image transforms. It ran them surprisingly well in software (!), but they really came to life on machines that could do it in hardware, which was pretty much all machines released from that point on.)

If you encounter speed problems with high-dpi UIs, that is strictly a software implementation failure. But well-built GUIs have absolutely zero problem with this.

Remember, we now use GPUs capable of drawing millions of triangles per second, with complex math applied to them. You forget that that hardware is available to 2D applications as well, since 2D is merely a subset of 3D where the Z-axis is zero.

[ataradov]

Our computers 20 years ago could handle complex, layered, shaded UIs with real alpha transparency

It is not about performance. It is about UI element design that scales well and does not get blurry.

Old Win95 style 3D buttons had 3 pixel border that created 3D effect. You can't see pixels anymore, so all those UI elements need to be designed to be adaptable to the display resolution. This is not an unsolvable issue, but turning everything into simple primitives automatically solved the issue.

I'm not saying that I like or happy about it, but it is what it is.

[tooki]

This same trend is the first thing I noticed about Win10 when my former employer moved over to it, everything was a just floating in a jumble on a sea of bright white, suddenly it was no longer obvious what was a clickable control, text entry box or background object. Decades of UI design and refinement thrown out overnight in the quest of being trendy and fashionable.

There were rumours that the MS UI design team was drawing the new UIs in powerpoint and then sending these off to the programmers.

I'm 100% sure they did that, because until just a few years ago, it was an extremely common way of doing low-fi prototypes. It's really only in the past 5-10 years that halfway decent UI prototyping software has come out and taken hold in the UX world. (Though IMHO, calling it "halfway decent" is being extremely generous. From a usability standpoint, those UI prototyping systems are atrocious. Oh, the irony…)

But everyone understood that the PPT mockups were not intended to be pixel-perfect final art, but just symbolic representations.


Me, when I was working in UX, I liked to work on pencil and paper as long as I could. That way, there was never any confusion about "but I don't like the color of that button" and such nonsense.

[tooki]

Our computers 20 years ago could handle complex, layered, shaded UIs with real alpha transparency

It is not about performance.

Sorry, you can't claim you weren't talking about performance, since your post opened with "The flat UI trend is easy to explain. Graphics cards can draw filled rectangles really fast." That is unambiguously a statement about performance, and as such, it's just plain wrong. Graphics performance has nothing to do with the flat trend.

Our computers 20 years ago could handle complex, layered, shaded UIs with real alpha transparency

It is about UI element design that scales well and does not get blurry.

Old Win95 style 3D buttons had 3 pixel border that created 3D effect. You can't see pixels anymore, so all those UI elements need to be designed to be adaptable to the display resolution. This is not an unsolvable issue, but turning everything into simple primitives automatically solved the issue.

I'm not saying that I like or happy about it, but it is what it is.

Again, a problem that was solved long ago, albeit not as long ago as the performance side.

Apple and Microsoft both had solved that problem long ago. In the case of Windows, however, it took lots of apps a long time to unblur, because the apps were still using antiquated graphics APIs that were pixel-based, so the app was actually rendered at low res and then scaled up. That, however, has fuck-all to do with design choices, since even simple rectangles and plain text were blurry in such apps.

[Whales]

Me, when I was working in UX, I liked to work on pencil and paper as long as I could. That way, there was never any confusion about "but I don't like the color of that button" and such nonsense.

"What's that, 2H?"

Gah, you're giving me anxiety thinking about it    Showing off website prototypes is always easier if you keep the colour scheme of the old website.

[KE5FX]

I will say that I like what Rennlist does.  They maintain the familiar look and feel of traditional BBS-style forums like this one, but if you keep scrolling up or down when you reach the top or bottom of a "page" of posts, it expands the page in that direction. 

This is a convenient and relatively harmless affordance that lessens the need for the 'All' button.  It does waste bandwidth to some extent, since it's easy to find yourself dumped into the middle of a thread full of large image attachments that you've already seen but that still have to be fetched from the server for whatever reason.  The 'End' key doesn't always take you to the real end of the thread, but rather to the end of the content you've already cached. 

If they'd make the End key work properly and keep the page # control for those who prefer navigating that way, it would be more or less perfect.  Can't tell what forum software they use but it would be a good fit for EEVBlog if you (Dave) ever do get the itch to change. 

[tautech]

I will say that I like what Rennlist does.  They maintain the familiar look and feel of traditional BBS-style forums like this one, but if you keep scrolling up or down when you reach the top or bottom of a "page" of posts, it expands the page in that direction. 

This is a convenient and relatively harmless affordance that lessens the need for the 'All' button.  It does waste bandwidth to some extent, since it's easy to find yourself dumped into the middle of a thread full of large image attachments that you've already seen but that still have to be fetched from the server for whatever reason.  The 'End' key doesn't always take you to the real end of the thread, but rather to the end of the content you've already cached. 

If they'd make the End key work properly and keep the page # control for those who prefer navigating that way, it would be more or less perfect.  Can't tell what forum software they use but it would be a good fit for EEVBlog if you (Dave) ever do get the itch to change.

What we have now is arguably better in that you can access a thread in whatever board it's in and go to a page #, New, Home or End.

I used to think SMF was the pits but another forum I'm on changed to Xenforo quite painlessly and it's really little if any better than what we have here however that wouldn't be so if Dave hadn't done the many forum mods he has over the last few years.
Strongly support staying as we are.

[BravoV]

I just noticed the OP is from Italy... maybe the stress of the quarantine is getting to him.

Worst .... -> HERE

I was changing job when the pandemic started. All interview cancelled, all position suspended.
Moved country, can't go back, can't work here.

[SilverSolder]

[...] Anyway, the data under the posts is small, just some JSON, the generated HTML is heavy, but is generated dynamically as you scroll. like all apps of this decade.

I prefer the model where the whole page is loaded...    while I'm reading the top part of the page, the rest of it finishes loading below.   Load-on-scroll forces the user to wait, and wait, and wait...   

[LaserSteve]

Oh God No.  No no no no.

Steve

[james_s]

I also loathe those pages that just keep loading as you're scrolling, I didn't know the name for it but it has driven me nuts every time I've encountered it. You can't tell how much further you have to go, it just keeps loading more and more. Then of course the issue someone already mentioned about the difficulty in getting back where you were after reloading the page.

[2N3055]

[...] Anyway, the data under the posts is small, just some JSON, the generated HTML is heavy, but is generated dynamically as you scroll. like all apps of this decade.

I prefer the model where the whole page is loaded...    while I'm reading the top part of the page, the rest of it finishes loading below.   Load-on-scroll forces the user to wait, and wait, and wait...   

Not to mention you cannot use browser search (because some of the page is not loaded) and most of them have problems with select/copy..

[Electro Detective]

KIS and DFIIIABroke definately applies here !!!     

[drussell]

I have had this thought for a few years. Wouldn't it make sense to migrate the forum to the Discourse platform?

Surely this was either an attempt at trolling or a very early April fools' joke?

I suppose the timezone is quite different on whatever planet you're on!

[rrinker]

 10 Print "No!"
 20 Goto 10

RUN

 For the love of everything actually USABLE - NO. These new "social media style" platforms are nothing but junk. I can't stand the stuff. This forum, in particular, works VERY well. The software is great (hopefully not because of hundreds of hours per week of behind the scenes work by the admins) and checks all the boxes. In my other hobbies, the one I use most often is so far out of date it isn't funny - their message editor for example blocks the spell check that is in every modern browser, and it is severely lacking a great feature here - the notification that someone else has replied to the thread while you were typing yours. The other one, which I gave up (spending too much times on forums, not enough time actually DOING things), is in the more modern 'discussion' format and I absolutely hate it

I just want some place, like this, that just keeps on using what works, and doesn't change completely in format because "all the cool kids are doing it". Change for the sake of change is NOT improvement. The experience of setting up a new postage meter at work proved that. The old one was simple and easy to use, probably some micro in there, interfacing the scale and printing mechanism with a multi line LCD character display that displayed the pertinent information and basic prompts. Worked well, even the most tech illiterate people in the office could use it - and being an IT consulting company, it's amazing how many tech illiterate people actually work there. New one - this is no longer good enough (despite a practical monopoly - so it's not like competition forced their hand - the new one has a full color graphical LCD and runs Android. And is insanely complicated to do the simple task of weighing an envelope and printing the correct postage on it based on the entered destination.

So no, we do not need this form changed to another platform just because it's the 'trend'. It needs to stay right how it is, it is perfectly usable.

[tggzzz]

So no, we do not need this form changed to another platform just because it's the 'trend'. It needs to stay right how it is, it is perfectly usable.

Precisely, for all the reasons you mention.

[KE5FX]

Note that this is your actual complaint:

I also loathe those pages that just keep loading as you're scrolling, I didn't know the name for it but it has driven me nuts every time I've encountered it. You can't tell how much further you have to go ... Then of course the issue someone already mentioned about the difficulty in getting back where you were after reloading the page.

... not this:

it just keeps loading more and more.

I don't understand why the bad part of this feature always seems to accompany the good part.  Why can't we have both types of navigation?  It feels clunky and archaic to scroll to the top of the page and hit a wall for no reason, where I'm forced to move the mouse and keep clicking on the same (separate) control to continue reading in that direction. 

The infinite-scrolling model doesn't have to suck.  It just happens to do so, in all of its current incarnations.

[Wilksey]

Why are people still discussing it? Dave has already said no so it is not going to happen 
I think you'll just have to agree to disagree and some people like it and some people don't, either way EEVBlog is not going to be moving.

[@rt]

Isn’t that like throwing away a bunch of advertising income?

[PlainName]

Why are people still discussing it? Dave has already said no so it is not going to happen

Because people are still interested in either what it's about or having an opinion? I've learnt a few things from this thread, unrelated to what Dave may or may not do, which I probably wouldn't have if everything you're not personally interested in got banned.

[SilverSolder]

[...]
The infinite-scrolling model doesn't have to suck.  It just happens to do so, in all of its current incarnations.

If a big enough buffer is loaded at a time -  one that corresponds to a whole normal page, for example - it shouldn't suck more than having separate pages, I guess. 

The load-on-scroll should work in the background, so it always loads +/- one "page" from where the browser window is currently displaying. 

In other words, the user shouldn't have to scroll all the way down to the bottom (or all the way to the top) before loading the next segment...   this should be "anticipated" by the software long before it happens.

If it was done this way, it might be nicer than separate pages. 

Search is still a challenge.

[Brumby]

If a big enough buffer is loaded at a time -  one that corresponds to a whole normal page, for example - it shouldn't suck more than having separate pages, I guess. 

The load-on-scroll should work in the background, so it always loads +/- one "page" from where the browser window is currently displaying. 

In other words, the user shouldn't have to scroll all the way down to the bottom (or all the way to the top) before loading the next segment...   this should be "anticipated" by the software long before it happens.

If it was done this way, it might be nicer than separate pages.

Sorry - but, no.  A thousand times no.

[hli]

Also, I have looked at a few discourse forums, the selfloading monstrosities. Please show me a thread comparable in size to this: https://www.eevblog.com/forum/testgear/test-equipment-anonymous-(tea)-group-therapy-thread/ in discourse. How well would it scale? When I want to see something on page 562, what do I have to do?

The home-assistant forum has some larger threads. I did not look too deep, but there are some with 3k+ posts (not as big as the TEA thread, but still): https://community.home-assistant.io/t/echo-devices-alexa-as-media-player-testers-needed/58639

What you can see:

• no threading
• very rare use of quoting
• you don't browse by page, but instead by date (on the right side)
• one can link to individual posts

Seems to work quite well (and scrolling to a certain date in the time-line is quite fast), but I find it quite unreadable (I have a 27'' screen, just use it). Too much whiete, to less distinction between the posts.

[tggzzz]

Also, I have looked at a few discourse forums, the selfloading monstrosities. Please show me a thread comparable in size to this: https://www.eevblog.com/forum/testgear/test-equipment-anonymous-(tea)-group-therapy-thread/ in discourse. How well would it scale? When I want to see something on page 562, what do I have to do?

The home-assistant forum has some larger threads. I did not look too deep, but there are some with 3k+ posts (not as big as the TEA thread, but still): https://community.home-assistant.io/t/echo-devices-alexa-as-media-player-testers-needed/58639

What you can see:

• no threading
• very rare use of quoting
• you don't browse by page, but instead by date (on the right side)
• one can link to individual posts

Seems to work quite well (and scrolling to a certain date in the time-line is quite fast), but I find it quite unreadable (I have a 27'' screen, just use it). Too much whiete, to less distinction between the posts.

If it doesn't have easy multi-level quoting, then the context of a conversation will be lost. That means the only conversations will be very simple, therefore very boring and relatively uninteresting. All that is left is single-line questions and answers like "which button do I press to squirdle the gammeticon?". Examples: stackexchange, edaboard. Yuck.

In contrast multi-level quoting allows and encourages subtle conversations including discussion of "why", "why not", "in what circumstances".

[SilverSolder]

If a big enough buffer is loaded at a time -  one that corresponds to a whole normal page, for example - it shouldn't suck more than having separate pages, I guess. 

The load-on-scroll should work in the background, so it always loads +/- one "page" from where the browser window is currently displaying. 

In other words, the user shouldn't have to scroll all the way down to the bottom (or all the way to the top) before loading the next segment...   this should be "anticipated" by the software long before it happens.

If it was done this way, it might be nicer than separate pages.

Sorry - but, no.  A thousand times no.

It would be like auto-loading the next page as well as the one you're viewing.  It could be an advantage when you read sequentially.