Posts on Current Forum | Archived Posts
|
|
|
||
|
||||
|
||||
|
||||
| Frequently Asked Forum Questions | |
|||
|
||||
|
|
|||
| ||||
| ||||
| ||||
| Search Older Posts on This Forum: Posts on Current Forum | Archived Posts | ||||
| ||||
| ||||
| ||||
| my last post on the subject (long) | |
| Posted By: kapowaz <halo.bungie.org@kapowaz.net> | Date: 12/15/02 9:22 p.m. |
In Response To: Re: Louis! Mnemesis! Anyone with power! (Louis Wu) : Seems to me you haven't bothered to look at the customization possibilities
I admit I'd not tried any of the options out before people started firing back at me, but this was because the page for customising them is simply so unintuitive. Tell me you can read the list of forum styles and really know what they're going to look like before you try them? The descriptions do help, but the problem is exacerbated by the fact that there are features in some (showing the content of a message, only showing initial posting etc.) that would be very useful if you could combine them, but they're not combined - the choices are predetermined. Having tried them out though I can see that they are all far less space-conscious than the existing layout (in my view). But just because X is better than Y doesn't make X great... : btw - show me a (credible) study that suggests that you shouldn't go over 40k
Well, I flick to page 48 of Jakob Nielsen's Designing Web Usability. He refers to the "ten second response time" which is necessary to keep a visitor's attention before they give up and go elsewhere. On a modem, that works out at 34Kb. Well under 40Kb, and yes that doesn't include images. A study cited places the bail-out rate at 25-30% for 40Kb files, meaning 25-20% of users won't wait for a 40Kb page to load. Of course that figure would be different for people who come here regularly and know what to expect, but what about new users? I'm on broadband, but would I have waited for 180Kb of html to load on a modem? Like hell I would! The book in question was published in December 1999, so of course many more people have broadband connections, but the same study puts the broadband 10 second limit at 150Kb... : For that matter - show me a UBB forum with a sub-40k page. That is a matter of inefficient markup on the part of the forum code developers - even if it's more than 40Kb, it's likely to be far less than 180Kb, as it was when I tested it. : But UBB is not threaded - and that totally kills conversation. Keeping track
This is the only argument so far given that I can actually agree with, just so you know I'm not being unreasonable. It does however only really matter that the conversation is threaded if posts are happening so frequently that another reply may be made between the time you start typing your own; otherwise a threadless conversation would make just as much sense, provided the message you're replying to is quoted - which in most cases here it is anyway, even though we *do* have threading. : If you really like flat forums, simply use the guestbook style here. I
I'll give it an extended try and see what I think. This doesn't, however, fix the problem I previously mentioned about what the default view is for new users - if other users experience the problems I have, then they might not see posts that get buried under a larger thread. : And again - show me a UBB-based forum that keeps off-topic posts in an
And how are off-topic posts kept off this forum? with that notice asking if your post is Halo-related...? As far as forum administrators go, that should always be a technology-independent issue. :: I really can't see why you would prefer this style...
I don't wish to seem like a young upstart, spouting off without due reason, so I will try my best to bite my tongue instead of respond to further replies. I don't think I'm talking crap here though; I'm convinced a happy medium can be found. But since I've said a lot about this, I intend to put these musings to good use; I'm starting a new forum system from scratch, since I've just read a critique of phpBB2 that puts me off using it myself. I'll be sure to mention it when I've got something to show, so that you can all tell me just how much you hate it... ;) | |
|
| Replies: |
The HBO Forum Archive is maintained with WebBBS 4.33. |