So much empty space...

[Yamamura]

7 hours ago, Matt said:

We've tried to keep everyone informed as much as possible with blogs like this.

Quote

"The lack of a consistent spacing scale has led to some arbitrary values being used in any given situation, which again has had a negative impact on the visual harmony of our design. We've therefore implemented a 4px spacing scale (using CSS variables rather than theme settings this time) and applied across almost all padding/margin values. In time, we anticipate fully switching all measurement values to the scale."

[christopher-w]

Come on guys, Invision is never going to please us all. And even if they adopted granular ACP theme adjustment tools same as Xenforo has, we'd still need to sit back and adjust dozens and dozens of margin, padding, line height and similar parameters to suit all of our individual tastes. And then you have the menu, which in my view should be docked in an object that can be bound to the DOM either on the server or in a CSOM. But, even if Invision did that, we'd still need to position it ourselves, and move it around depending on the app currently in use. So I say, be careful what you wish for as even though I'd like to see pages that are rendered a little more tightly and menus that break from the current paradigm, you can bet if Invision did that, we'd still be back with another set of demands next month.

So how about we get together, put our hands in our pockets and see if we can find a designer come dev to create a configurable theme for us - and I mean a theme, not a (wanit in green, blue, red?) skinning exercise. It could include all sorts of presets including spacing, fonts, menu positions and so on, including specifics for desktop and mobile. Won't be cheap, but at least at the end of it we will have something we can use to give us what we want, rather than assuming Invision can pull a theme styling rabbit out of the hat which is going to miraculously please us all. I just don't see it.

Of course, Invision are more than capable of doing this themselves. But a bit a string only goes so far, and if they do this, then all the other stuff we need like video transcoding (ok I need that 🙂 ) will get pushed to the back of the queue.

So how how about it? Put our energies into something creative?

[Fast Lane!]

17 hours ago, Matt said:

I appreciate the feedback here. We're listening as always.

My only request is that we keep it polite. We don't need to scream in each other's faces to be heard. If we don't reply or action the feedback immediately, it isn't because we disagree, or are ignoring what you're saying; it's more likely that we need to consider every change as a team and this takes time.

Thanks Matt.  Fair point and the same way many of us run our sites.

I'm personally hoping we can tighten up the layout a bit. I insert ads manually in the layout / skins and want to minimize extra white space (and any custom edits needed to get it back).

[Fast Lane!]

9 hours ago, christopher-w said:

Come on guys, Invision is never going to please us all. And even if they adopted granular ACP theme adjustment tools same as Xenforo has, we'd still need to sit back and adjust dozens and dozens of margin, padding, line height and similar parameters to suit all of our individual tastes. And then you have the menu, which in my view should be docked in an object that can be bound to the DOM either on the server or in a CSOM. But, even if Invision did that, we'd still need to position it ourselves, and move it around depending on the app currently in use. So I say, be careful what you wish for as even though I'd like to see pages that are rendered a little more tightly and menus that break from the current paradigm, you can bet if Invision did that, we'd still be back with another set of demands next month.

So how about we get together, put our hands in our pockets and see if we can find a designer come dev to create a configurable theme for us - and I mean a theme, not a (wanit in green, blue, red?) skinning exercise. It could include all sorts of presets including spacing, fonts, menu positions and so on, including specifics for desktop and mobile. Won't be cheap, but at least at the end of it we will have something we can use to give us what we want, rather than assuming Invision can pull a theme styling rabbit out of the hat which is going to miraculously please us all. I just don't see it.

Of course, Invision are more than capable of doing this themselves. But a bit a string only goes so far, and if they do this, then all the other stuff we need like video transcoding (ok I need that 🙂 ) will get pushed to the back of the queue.

So how how about it? Put our energies into something creative?

I think dialogue is good.  And do nothing is an "Apple" approach ("it's a feature").  There are many well thought out replies on this thread where people took the time to suggest css and layout changes that would help improve things. Many are excellent suggestions. I'm hopeful many get included -- but understand if not all.

Fwiw this is why I typically wait 6-12 months to upgrade my website to the latest .X version.  Rev .x.0-5 are typically loaded with minor issues that iron themselves out over time. The traffic impact (what we should all care about more than a new version of IPB) is the ultimate measure and waiting longer rarely does anything but help. 

 

 

Edited September 29, 2020 by Fast Lane!

[kmk]

10 minutes ago, Fast Lane! said:

I think dialogue is good.  And do nothing is an "Apple" approach ("it's a feature").  There are many well thought out replies on this thread where people took the time to suggest css and layout changes that would help improve things. Many are excellent suggestions. I'm hopeful many get included

＋1

[FZ]

I have just noticed that the button to join a club (when shown to guests) is truncating with ellipses. Is this normal? It shouldn't be.

Edited September 29, 2020 by FZ

[Morgin]

23 hours ago, christopher-w said:

So how about we get together, put our hands in our pockets and see if we can find a designer come dev to create a configurable theme for us - and I mean a theme, not a (wanit in green, blue, red?) skinning exercise. It could include all sorts of presets including spacing, fonts, menu positions and so on, including specifics for desktop and mobile. Won't be cheap, but at least at the end of it we will have something we can use to give us what we want, rather than assuming Invision can pull a theme styling rabbit out of the hat which is going to miraculously please us all. I just don't see it.

Could open source this with a git repository that anyone inclined to assist could contribute to. I have none of the skills required to do anything technical and all I can do is cheerlead. Frankly I also like the default skin save for some decisions about how big text and other elements are on mobile/tablet which is why I run at 75% zoom on mobile, so not a huge vested interest either. But clearly there are a lot of people who want a default skin that is far more flexible for their needs, and there is absolutely the talent here to help. Doesn’t seem like a candidate for a paid exercise, but something the community will need to figure out on its own. Ultimately, maybe providing a working framework that can be compared to what Invision provides and makes the case for certain changes. Would love to see that sort of collaboration. Can also happily assist with any grunt work lower skilled tasks if they are needed. 

[christopher-w]

On 9/29/2020 at 7:16 PM, Morgin said:

Could open source this with a git repository that anyone inclined to assist could contribute to. I have none of the skills required to do anything technical and all I can do is cheerlead. Frankly I also like the default skin save for some decisions about how big text and other elements are on mobile/tablet which is why I run at 75% zoom on mobile, so not a huge vested interest either. But clearly there are a lot of people who want a default skin that is far more flexible for their needs, and there is absolutely the talent here to help. Doesn’t seem like a candidate for a paid exercise, but something the community will need to figure out on its own. Ultimately, maybe providing a working framework that can be compared to what Invision provides and makes the case for certain changes. Would love to see that sort of collaboration. Can also happily assist with any grunt work lower skilled tasks if they are needed. 

TBH I don't think there is a strong enough community here (ironically) to work together on a labour of mutual love. That's why I suggested a paid project, which in itself hasn't attracted much interest.

It seems to me that most folks just want to solve 'their' problem and off they go. Which is a shame because I see mutual client cooperation as the only way some of these projects will get completed. Otherwise we are left with the Hobson's choice of wait for somebody else to solve our problems for us.

On a more positive note, based on my belief that there is a lot of reinventing the UX 'wheel' here, some of it buckled, we've been looking at developments on Apple News, Twitter and FB. Apple News in particular has really nice UX patterns on both its desktop and mobile apps. At first it looks very simple, but benefits from a light and open design, whilst keeping information itself tightly packed. This follows Google's material design pattern mentioned by me earlier, and sort of has us thinking, these guys have put $billions of user clinic tested UX into common usage - so why not learn from them and follow suit. So that's the direction we are headed for now.

[rfcontreras]

My two cents. Some posts with images in my site are flooded with small messages like "nice", "awesome", and post with just a sentence.

Would be great if in this scenarios instead of showing the full user data (name, avatar, about, rank, etc) just show the username only. This way you'll avoid a lot of wasted space for small replies.

Regards

[DesignzShop]

On 10/20/2020 at 11:48 PM, rfcontreras said:

My two cents. Some posts with images in my site are flooded with small messages like "nice", "awesome", and post with just a sentence.

Would be great if in this scenarios instead of showing the full user data (name, avatar, about, rank, etc) just show the username only. This way you'll avoid a lot of wasted space for small replies.

Regards

Your personal preference may be getting in the way of what your community really thinks. As an example I redone my themes post profiles and even made them larger in accordance to where they were. One of the biggest compliments and most feedback I've gotten is how the post profiles stand out.

Most users now days are all about the me, me, me thing. Take social media for example. Facebook, Twitter etc... are all about highlighting one person as a general rule. I'm not referring to businesses here, just an individual account. They want to be seen, they want to have their posts, tweets, counts, likes, etc.. out there for everyone to see. Again, it's all about me, me, me.. 

From my past feedback, users wanted full post profile pictures, highlighted post counts, wider post profile to take up more blank space in the post. By making the profile wider I removed some of the posting area and made each post more about the user than ever before. This may not be for everyone, but like I said, it's been a pretty big hit from the feedback I've gotten.

Of course not every individual may not like one approach but in general, but what I've done has far outweighed the no compliments to a bland, stripped down user post profile.

Another issue I've seen also in the past is admins / people who are more code conscious tend to want things stripped down. Most end users however want to see more, especially if it's about them.

Edited October 22, 2020 by DesignzShop

[Runar]

41 minutes ago, DesignzShop said:

One of the biggest compliments and most feedback I've gotten is how the post profiles stand out.

This sounds interesting. Would you be able/willing to post a screenshot of how posts look with your modifications?

[DesignzShop]

1 hour ago, Runar said:

This sounds interesting. Would you be able/willing to post a screenshot of how posts look with your modifications?

 

In my listing below in the screenshots you can see the post profile attachment. The post profile screen is in the middle of attachments. Keep in mind I use everything for an example of a full profile. You can see the text area size was reduced. If you done something like outline and widen the profile and not use ranks or extra fields etc... You'd be able reduce the size of the text area and still be able to have a reduced profile area. Doing it like I did also really shows off each member too.

 

[Morrigan]

2 hours ago, DesignzShop said:

Your personal preference may be getting in the way of what your community really thinks. As an example I redone my themes post profiles and even made them larger in accordance to where they were. One of the biggest compliments and most feedback I've gotten is how the post profiles stand out.

Most users now days are all about the me, me, me thing. Take social media for example. Facebook, Twitter etc... are all about highlighting one person as a general rule. I'm not referring to businesses here, just an individual account. They want to be seen, they want to have their posts, tweets, counts, likes, etc.. out there for everyone to see. Again, it's all about me, me, me.. 

From my past feedback, users wanted full post profile pictures, highlighted post counts, wider post profile to take up more blank space in the post. By making the profile wider I removed some of the posting area and made each post more about the user than ever before. This may not be for everyone, but like I said, it's been a pretty big hit from the feedback I've gotten.

Of course not every individual may not like one approach but in general, but what I've done has far outweighed the no compliments to a bland, stripped down user post profile.

Another issue I've seen also in the past is admins / people who are more code conscious tend to want things stripped down. Most end users however want to see more, especially if it's about them.

I did the same thing. People like to show off, they want their data out there (especially in the case of my site which is a site for other sites to list at). I have badges for people to show off their nerdy pride (like which type of Bender they are, which GoT House they are, which Hogwarts house they are a part of etc).

I'm working on my 4.5 version of my site and I am likely moving this away from being a sidebar into being a header of author information instead.

But as @DesignzShop said it really depends on the community.

[Yamamura]

3 hours ago, DesignzShop said:

Your personal preference may be getting in the way of what your community really thinks. As an example I redone my themes post profiles and even made them larger in accordance to where they were. One of the biggest compliments and most feedback I've gotten is how the post profiles stand out.

No wonder. Most people are stupid and lack an understanding of good design.

1 hour ago, DesignzShop said:

In my listing below in the screenshots you can see the post profile attachment. The post profile screen is in the middle of attachments.

OMG 😱🤣😭

[DesignzShop]

1 hour ago, Takohashi said:

No wonder. Most people are stupid and lack an understanding of good design.

OMG 😱🤣😭

Thing is you can take out ranks and pips and with my theme adjust the size of the profile picture and width of profile area. The reference I was making is you can make the width of the profile area to go into the text area to make it smaller. 

I also wouldn't say people are stupid either. In todays world like I said it's all about me, me, me. If that's what people want, I give it to them, if it's not what they want, I make it adjustable 🙂 

Also as I said above, most of the people who use my themes like it like you see it. Whether they post a word, 5 lines or 20, it's about them. 

If you looked also you'd notice the only thing that's been enlarged in that screenshot is the profile picture. Everything else has stock IPB css as far as spacing goes. I just wrap around it. Pretty simple, you don't want a large post profile photo, adjust it. But I can guarantee most people want the full size post profile photo instead of something they can barely see.

I've also never had a complaint about that area or the adjustability of it, most end users don't live in 1990 with everything smashed together.

Edited October 22, 2020 by DesignzShop

[zyx]

After upgrading to 4.5 from 4.4 the first thing that really stands out is how much excessive empty space there is. Everything seems further apart, and within minutes I've had complaints about changing this.

I understand some of it is necessary, but has anyone found any CSS changes that can make the spacing more similar to how it was in 4.4? It was pretty perfect there.

[Interferon]

After using this for a while and seeing the same header with various parts shown and hidden in different parts of the website, I feel less strongly about this than I did when I originally wrote this.

[Noble~]

15 hours ago, theipsguy said:

After upgrading to 4.5 from 4.4 the first thing that really stands out is how much excessive empty space there is

I think it makes the site very neat and clean, going to a site all jammed up with ads and a crammed side bar is an instant (leave the site) for me.

[Fast Lane!]

10 hours ago, Noble~ said:

I think it makes the site very neat and clean, going to a site all jammed up with ads and a crammed side bar is an instant (leave the site) for me.

How do you monetize your site without ads?

[xdrox]

On 10/22/2020 at 1:26 PM, Takohashi said:

 

OMG 😱🤣😭

Ridiculously large indeed. Narcissists and spammers must be having a field day on that board.

Edited February 8, 2021 by xdrox