119 ответов в этой теме

[mrotton]

So far I'm unimpressed with the website. The search may be active, but it's apparently not very good. No Dev post button is a killer. I hate having to page through tons of dialog to find the dev post, and I just don't really like the way it looks.



I know this is a purchased software package, but perhaps they should have purchased a better one.

[Snoteye]

I'm genuinely surprised at the number of complaints about the missing developer post filter. I can honestly say that in my total eight years I have never once used it intentionally.

SoulBlazer wrote...

I am not advocating for a larger fixed width website, I am advocating for a website with a style layout that scales with the browser resolution. vBulletin and MANY websites do this...

AFAIK, vBulletin by default does not resize the post width. That's because a 1500px post width is actually a Bad Thing™.

[Kelston]

Snoteye wrote...

I'm genuinely surprised at the number of complaints about the missing developer post filter. I can honestly say that in my total eight years I have never once used it intentionally.

I actually use it a lot.

I don't want to run through a 20 page thread to find a developer post. It's even more annoying if I just ran through 20 pages and discovered the developer post was just a community manager being social instead of truly related to the thread.

[Rynas]

Valaryyn wrote...

Who had the awful idea of taking Bioware's newest game and forcing all their paying customers into this awful website of headache inducing agony? 

The crappy colour scheme alone is enough to throw a man into siezures....the poor search capabilities and cramped framelike style is giving me flashbacks to early 90's geocities sites.

Awful move. 

Couldn't agree more with you there.  The forums are horrible.  Is there no message-text search?  If there is, I haven't been able to find it.

Search results search only the titles.  On top of that, there seems to be a limit to the number of hits (i.e., there are topic titles I KNOW exist that do not show up in search results).  Even worse, they seem to show up by default in chronological order by when the topic was started.  Who the hell wants to see the OLDEST topics first?  Who in their right mind cares how old a TOPIC is, instead of when the last post was?

The old forums had some issues, but at least you could find what you were looking for.  Did nobody point out how awful the functionality is on this one?  Is this some tacky way to artificially generate tons of redundant posts?

[Amaron]

70% of the users of this site are running with < 1500px wide displays, and the layout is optimised for that group. 

The daforums were much much wider. Are you telling us that everyone is buying smaller monitors these days? Even with the size:cost ratio plummeting? That doesn't address the font size either. The font size on even the old bioware forums is much better than this.

this forum software was purchased - BioWare is not reinventing the wheel, we are avoiding doing so.

I don't think there's anything wrong with the software. What's wrong is that the stylesheets which govern how the page looks are HORRIBLE. There's no way you guys don't have your own style sheets at least.

[wader2k]

I always research a game heavily before buying.



This website is enough for me to put off Dragon Age for some time to come. Risen here I come.



Egads......what a mess this is. I can only assume the game is the same.

[Lamu]

Btw, what's with the "Buy now" ads on the player profile page???
I mean, come on, if I have a player profile, I obviously already bought the game!!!
This is beyond stupid.
This website is nowhere near the quality of the game... really awful.

Сообщение изменено: Lamu, 20 Ноябрь 2009 - 10:43 .

[Snoteye]

wader2k wrote...

I always research a game heavily before buying.

Egads......what a mess this is. I can only assume the game is the same.

Heh.

[Dark0ne-]

Where the number 1500 came from when this site is only 1000px wide is also amusingly questionable.

[Cathail]

Personally I like the colors and overall theme quite a bit. The font size could be a bit bigger of course.



While I can't stand fixed width web pages the web page designers do have to go with the majority. If indeed the size is set up for 70% of the users that visit the site then this is what they should continue to do, rather than cater to the vocal minority. While I personally run at a screen resolution higher than what this site is optimized for, I don't run my browser full screen, I like to be able to see the various other applications such as IM and so forth that I have open so while I don't like fixed width, the size works.



Overall I would have to say this site is a good start.

[Dark0ne-]

While I can't stand fixed width web pages the web page designers do have to go with the majority. If indeed the size is set up for 70% of the users that visit the site then this is what they should continue to do, rather than cater to the vocal minority. While I personally run at a screen resolution higher than what this site is optimized for, I don't run my browser full screen, I like to be able to see the various other applications such as IM and so forth that I have open so while I don't like fixed width, the size works.

Fixed width caters to 70% of the users here. Percentage-based width caters to 100% of the users here with no extra work. Which would you choose?

[DarN71]

I'm working on a user stylesheet to get the forum into shape.

http://darnified.net...cialbioware.jpg

This fixes static width for resolutions > 1200px.

While I'm here, I'd like to request a "Preview" button for posting. SMF is free and has essential features like this already - I don't see the reason for custom forum software.

[Snoteye]

DarN71 wrote...

http://darnified.net...cialbioware.jpg

This just makes me even happier the forum doesn't scale.

I would definitely welcome a preview function, though.

[Dark0ne-]

Darn, you are a god send for the TES and Fallout communities, and now you'll be a god send here too. Let us know as soon as you have the stylesheet out, that screenshot looks awesome.

[Varus Praetor]

Bioware....get your money back, seriously. If I were you I'd be super pissed that I actually spent money on this technojunk.

[Akka le Vil]

Well, the politeness of Jesse compels me to answer in kind, as much as I hate these new forums :x

So allow me to make the complaints more precises :

Forum search has been re-enabled for over a week.

The problem is that the search function lacks in functionality - or in clarity.
A "Bioware's posters" option would be good - even better, an in-thread search function. The dev-search existed in the previous forum after all.
Also, the search results are a TOTAL MESS. You ends up with several results for the same thread, and they are listed in a seemingly random order. So you have a lot of redundant answers and non-sorted results. Bleh.

70% of the users of this site are running with < 1500px wide displays, and the layout is optimised for that group.

I can understand the decision about the size (though 30 % starts to be noticeable), but it doesn't justify to have such a large part of the already restricted display eaten by the right column. My triple-size avatar doesn't really make the site more enjoyable than an expanded text area would. The said right column could be easily halved in size to make room for actually useful content. Same for the avatar column. A LOT of space could be gained by reducing the size of the pictures (and the columns accordingly).

In the same way, the large avatars in the thread list are completely useless, use ressources, and make the display cluttered and a pain to navigate by showing a lot less thread and lot more wasted space.

The colour theme is painful. As a general rule, remember that dark font on light background is easier on the eyes and prettier than light font on dark background. Why do the reverse of what is actually a verified phenomena ? :-/

The refresh of the content is horrible. I very often have to reload several time a page to have the recent messages displayed. Often you see a new message posted, but when you click on it, the thread still doesn't show it. I don't want to have to clear my cache each single time I look at a thread, thanks...

The auto-jump-line is pretty irritating. It messes up how I format my message with added lines and spaces.

And a pretty unimportant gripe, but the smileys of this forum are ugly and lacking compared to the previous one. But well, that's really a minor point ^^

this forum software was purchased - BioWare is not reinventing the wheel, we are avoiding doing so.

It was probably a DLC-website. You were ripped off.
(sorry, it was a bit cheap, but I couldn't resist :innocent:)

More seriously, people largely prefered the layout and colour of the old forums. Why didn't you simply copy it ?

No offense but did BioWare decide to limit the screen width of Dragon
Age because 70% of the PC players had screens less than 1500px in size?
Of course they didn't, that would just be stupid, right? The same logic
applies here. It's simple for anyone with a bit of web knowledge to
make a site based on percentages rather than fixed-width pixel
measurements. It's half arsed to go fixed width.

In his defense, it's actually not that simple to make a dynamically div-based site that doesn't end messed up on various resolution size.
Because you would need some part of the site with fixed width (typically the menus), and some with dynamic (typically the content). And this f***ing stupid CSS can only work with ONE of those (what I mean is, it's either entirely fixed, or entirely dynamic ; at least, I've not found how you can say "this div takes X pixels, and this one takes the remaining"). That's dumb, but that's how it is, and until they actually change the norm, we're going to have fixed-res websites.

Сообщение изменено: Akka le Vil, 20 Ноябрь 2009 - 09:39 .

[DarN71]

Dark0ne- wrote...

Darn, you are a god send for the TES and Fallout communities, and now you'll be a god send here too. Let us know as soon as you have the stylesheet out, that screenshot looks awesome.

Hey Robin.

I'll post here the minute I'm done. The forum portion is finished - there's a few other sections that needs looking into though.

Also needed: Multi-quote, thread preview while posting.

[Dark0ne-]

And this f***ing stupid CSS can only work with ONE of those (what I mean is, it's either entirely fixed, or entirely dynamic ; at least, I've not found how you can say "this div takes X pixels, and this one takes the remaining"). That's dumb, but that's how it is, and until they actually change the norm, we're going to have fixed-res websites.

Nah, that's not the case at all. You can have fixed width navigations and percentage based content areas no problems at all.

[Akka le Vil]

Dark0ne- wrote...

And this f***ing stupid CSS can only work with ONE of those (what I mean is, it's either entirely fixed, or entirely dynamic ; at least, I've not found how you can say "this div takes X pixels, and this one takes the remaining"). That's dumb, but that's how it is, and until they actually change the norm, we're going to have fixed-res websites.

Nah, that's not the case at all. You can have fixed width navigations and percentage based content areas no problems at all.

Well, if it's possible, just tell me how !
Would help a lot of my headaches when making web content.

[DarN71]

One way is to set the width of the first one to a fixed value, then use the margin-left/right of the second to offset it. Use "float" and "display" as needed. Several ways around this.

[DarN71]

I've tweaked the sheet a bit: WIP

[ZanThrax]

I can live with this sit wasting half my screen with its ridiculously narrow design, but the menus and tools all seem pointless and/or useless. All I really want is to be able to see the threads I've posted to / subscribed to in one place and a dev chat list. I know I've subscribed to a couple of threads that seemed interesting, and I've made a few posts (no idea how many since I don't see anywhere that tells me that), but I can't *find* any of those posts anymore.

[wader2k]

I'm still not getting email notifications to topics I've started or replied in....looks like I have to MANUALLY subscribe?

Сообщение изменено: wader2k, 21 Ноябрь 2009 - 05:42 .

[Amaron]

Nice work Darn. I'm thinking of making a greasemonkey script myself. I already have a dinky one to remove the sidebars but it needs to do a lot more than that.