Discourse looks strange now

Looks like my attention to details is non existing today…

Selecting none used to mean none now you still get the main forum you’re in.

Stylebot does allow me to remove the category boxes so pretty much back to how it used to be :grinning: but it messes up the forum selection dropdown :roll_eyes:

Mark

There is a CSS customisation that can be applied to bring it back. Most communities prefer the change.

@sam
What do we need to do to make that happen?

I just changed the style of the category to be “bullet” instead of “box”. I know this doesn’t look the same as it used to, but maybe this is a little less obtrusive.

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How many of those put up a fight about not wanting to move from an efficient easy to read news reader to an inefficient web forum?:grinning:

I have figured out how to remove the whole box with the category and tag using stylebot so pretty much back to how it was.

Mark

Well, personally, I liked the category classification very much, it told me at a glance with its color coding which messages I wanted to read first and perhaps respond to and after going through those, decide which I would “mark as read”. Now I have to read all the titles closely, figure out if it’s, say, a Grasshopper question which I don’t want to answer, whether the person has an issue with Rhino for Mac or Windows, etc. The category info is almost as valuable as the title IMO.

6 Likes

Agree

I guess you use the All Categories section so yes having the categories would be useful. I generally switch between the sections i’m interested in using the dropdown, never use the All Categories option.

Mark

Superfluous information…

Much better.

I’ve still no idea why some topics are tagged and others are not.

Funnily enough, when this was first posted, my mind went straight back to the resistance (or lack thereof, on most people’s part) to the move from the old newsgroup to Discourse. Ever since, the information density has been on the slide. The latest change is just another few metres down that slippery slope. Give it another couple of years and each thread will have it’s own page, bordered by half an acre of blank page :laughing:

Personally, I find the very latest change to small bullet points even more distracting - I’m really having to pay attention to see which forum each topic falls into now because there’s so little colour to pick out. Wouldn’t putting those colour-keyed tabs on the far left of screen, aligned for height with the thread name, make most sense? Then they won’t clutter the view as much.

Why is the category superfluous information? I usually scan the forum based on category, and then decide which which specific topics to read.

I’ve done that a few times, but find it quicker to just scan through the All Categories list than to switch categories several times.

Because I already know which category I’m in, I just clicked the link, in this case “Rhino for Windows”. It doesn’t need to be repeated incessantly, hence it is superfluous information.

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That’s one style of browsing. Many others initially bring up a page with all the latest or unread topics and scan through to choose which ones they want to view.

I do that too, and still find the change is unnecessary.

Look at all the white space/screen real-estate.

My eye is drawn to the labels, not the topic titles.

Two issues:

  1. The labels are redundant/superfluous when you’re in topic.
  2. The labels are in the wrong place for quickly reviewing topic titles on the main (summary) page.

Sounds like this is a battle of portrait (mobile) versus landscape (PC) screens.

That’s the last of my 2 cents.

Yep, that’s exactly what it sounds like.

…or more like ‘occasionally’ versus ‘continuous’. I have a discourse displayed on my second screen at work most of the times.

Ok I take back what I said previously. I’m liking the new look less and less as I use it. I feel it strains my eyes more, although that’s probably just in my head.
Is there a way to get a count of users who access Discourse say in a day both on their mobile devices versus users on their computers?
I’m wondering if the change was made due to hard data or just because.

There have been the same sort of “IMPROVEMENTS” on the Autodesk sites and the same dislike from users. Someone made the observation that the site had been optimised for mobile devices but as most users will be using CAD on a desktop or notebook the majority of visitors will not be on mobile devices so the IMPROVEMENTS are for the minority not the majority. Probably going to be the same here, you have a problem you’re going to use the PC\MAC you have Rhino on to access the site.

Mark