So much empty space...

[sound]

 

yep the 'follow' button is a concern for me

but only on certain pages

it does fit in well on topics and provides useful info/function imo on these

but on the forum indexes its value I would say is limited 

myself make it members only on such pages and move it down

[bearback]

got to admit even with all available options showing and enabled there is still a lot of white space and does not look good. needs reducing or options moving to reduce the space.  Apart from that the theme seems a lot brighter than the previous one. 

[13.]

Some related problems:
 

 

 

[kmk]

There a little exceed and duplicated of AUTHOR AND TOPIC INFORM, occupied so many space and visibility... As the  community say, content is most important, maybe add ability in the accross design choose if want to show author and topic inform. There some widget already applied. 

[SC36DC]

On 9/15/2020 at 8:58 PM, breatheheavy said:

I wish there was an "easier" way to reply

In a past post, didn't someone from the IPB team mentioned they were thinking of adding a floating "Reply" button? I don't recall who this was.

 

 

On 9/15/2020 at 8:58 PM, breatheheavy said:

Also, would love to see nested replies

I also would LOVE to see this added as an option, which can be activated in specific sections of the forum. I would most likely only use it in a 'Roll Call', 'Introduce Yourself' type of thread.

[Jordan Miller]

9 hours ago, SC36DC said:

In a past post, didn't someone from the IPB team mentioned they were thinking of adding a floating "Reply" button? I don't recall who this was.

Yes! 

 

[whitetigergrowl]

This is a complaint I made about IPB before the release of IPB 4.5.  It's really unacceptable in this day and age to have so much wasted space. Things really need to be pulled together tighter with more purpose served to those blank areas. So if there is no description then the white area for example shouldn't be there. 

I hate how the postbit also can make empty signatures into a ton of white space if there is a short response. Again, there's no reason for that to happen. Personally I would prefer a more uniform postbit. 

4.5 is an improvement, but I think more attention really needs to be paid to the things that stick out. Like how useless profiles have generally become, and all of that white space. As well as the removal of space below a post that is made with too much empty space. 

[kmk]

On 9/19/2020 at 1:27 PM, whitetigergrowl said:

So if there is no description then the white area for example shouldn't be there. 

+111

[Jordan Miller]

I didn't realize how much space was being utilized until I switched to 4.5. This is kind of a lot I agree 😂 

I would love to somehow simplify this so it's about 75% shorter in length. For instance, it says the author and time stamp twice.

 

[kmk]

At least as user, I say IPS need a little more innovative investment in UI, CONTENT VS SPACE, maybe Flarum can be an example, not have to do same, but learn the good of others and improve mine is part of a success... 

[Yamamura]

16 minutes ago, kmk said:

maybe Flarum can be an example, not have to do same, but learn the good of others and improve mine is part of a success...

Wow, I love this minimalistic quoting that doesn't take up space:

Invision is so dated 😞

[christopher-w]

On 9/22/2020 at 4:10 PM, breatheheavy said:

I didn't realize how much space was being utilized until I switched to 4.5. This is kind of a lot I agree 😂 

I would love to somehow simplify this so it's about 75% shorter in length. For instance, it says the author and time stamp twice.

 

Love these colours

[Jordan Miller]

2 hours ago, christopher-w said:

Love these colours

Thank you!! 🙏 

[kmk]

This is other example, hope ips staff take note... 

[Time Travel Institute]

I agree with most of the criticisms here; way too much whitespace. I understand some of the design choices were to allow other applications to insert bits of UI, but there should be better ways to approach it than "placeholders just in case".

Discourse is a good example; I wish I had their UX but this backend .

[christopher-w]

7 hours ago, rainstone.digital said:

I agree with most of the criticisms here; way too much whitespace. I understand some of the design choices were to allow other applications to insert bits of UI, but there should be better ways to approach it than "placeholders just in case".

Discourse is a good example; I wish I had their UX but this backend .

We run Discourse servers for a couple of our projects and there's a lot you can do with it once you understand the CSOM.  It's a very well thought through platform, although default policies are a little over zealous in places.  Some really nice plugins too, including Google powered sentiment analysis for identifying toxic elements. There's a big team working on it now, with two of the original founders behind Stack Overflow. But Discourse is a very different animal to Invision Community. Both have pros and cons.

[kmk]

You can see the space marked in the screenshot, need adjustment? 

[FZ]

Have to chip in here in agreement with the OP. 

I've been using IPS since 2011 if memory serves me well and this update from an aesthetic stance is horrible. I don't even use the default theme but I can tell from 2 days of trying to get Taman's Behemoth back to where I had it at 4.4 that the changes that have been made to layout are not an improvement over 4.4. My opinion of course.

I have had to use a coloured variation of the default theme while I get Behemoth working and so far user feedback hasn't been positive. 

I'm not seeing anything I like about 4.5 aesthetically to be honest. 

[Matt]

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.

[FZ]

19 minutes 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.

It's good to know that people are listening, but this doesn't save those of us who don't follow every development move that IPS makes from wasting literal days when we update in good faith only to find that regression has occurred instead of progression. 

I'm fighting with aesthetics now for 2 full days and it seems I'll be doing so for days to come still because tweaking custom CSS now seems to involve an entirely different approach to what I am used to (inspect element in Safari is not showing me things I am familiar with). 

Honestly, this isn't good looking and I truly regret doing this upgrade, but those front end upgrade notices were really starting to annoy me. 😞 

[Matt]

9 minutes ago, FZ said:

It's good to know that people are listening, but this doesn't save those of us who don't follow every development move that IPS makes from wasting literal days when we update in good faith only to find that regression has occurred instead of progression. 

I'm fighting with aesthetics now for 2 full days and it seems I'll be doing so for days to come still because tweaking custom CSS now seems to involve an entirely different approach to what I am used to (inspect element in Safari is not showing me things I am familiar with). 

Honestly, this isn't good looking and I truly regret doing this upgrade, but those front end upgrade notices were really starting to annoy me. 😞 

We were in beta for months, alpha for about a month before that. We've been talking about 4.5 since last year, and announced the new front end theme in April. We've been running a beta version on our own community here for months.

I understand your point that you can't be expected to obsessively follow every bit of news we release, but with a major upgrade you should take a short time to investigate the changes before pressing the button.

I appreciate the feedback but I think it's a little unfair to state that you didn't know what was coming and now regret it.

We also have to design for a wide variety of screen sizes, so the layout has to be consistent and modular.

It's easy to see a lot of whitespace on a single screen with a short topic title and few logged in actions at full screen on a 24" monitor, but when you consider this:

I don't feel that there's much space to save here without cramming it into two lines and accepting some buttons will overflow.

[FZ]

4 minutes ago, Matt said:

I think it's a little unfair to state that you didn't know what was coming and now regret it.

I'm coming to this discussion from the viewpoint of a webmaster who is used to making minor tweaks in Custom CSS. I truly wasn't expecting the entire framework of the CSS to change from 4.4 to 4.5 to the point where I am now quite seriously contemplating alternative options as far as the platform I run my community on is concerned. 

Anyway, I don't want to argue. I have said what I want to say and I can only hope that IPS management will understand that not every customer of theirs is a develop or wants to be one. That's why we buy expensive software; to make our lives easier, not harder. 

 

Edited September 28, 2020 by FZ

[Matt]

1 minute ago, FZ said:

I'm coming to this discussion from the viewpoint of a webmaster who is used to making minor tweaks in Custom CSS. I truly wasn't expecting the entire framework of the CSS to change from 4.4 to 4.5 to the point where I am now quite seriously contemplating alternative options as far as the platform I run my community on is concerned. 

Anyway, I don't want to argue. I have said what I want to say and I can only hope that IPS management will understand that not every customer of theirs is a develop or wants to be one. That's why we buy expensive software; to make our lives easier, not harder. 

 

I understand that.

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

We also push this to our social media channels and do a monthly newsletter.

I'm not sure how else to get this information out.

[FZ]

I do receive the newsletters (I avoid corporate social media as far as possible). Nothing I had read thus far indicated such dramatic under the hood changes to me. 

Bottom line for me right now is that I am stuck here on 4.5 and having to use a default theme that I personally think looks awful and I can't find an easy way to change it. Even my premium theme doesn't let me easily make the changes I was used to making. 

Just really disappointed in the design aesthetic and the fact that it's so hard to change now. 

I suggest that in future it might be advisable to split your communications into categories that deal with the aesthetics changes as well as the functional changes. But then again, we're being forced to upgrade, so even if we don't like what we see in new versions there's not much we can do about it if we want to keep support current. 

[Yamamura]

6 hours ago, Matt said:

We also have to design for a wide variety of screen sizes, so the layout has to be consistent and modular.

But this is precisely why there is a responsive layout - so that the page looks equally good on different devices and different screen sizes.

6 hours ago, Matt said:

I don't feel that there's much space to save here without cramming it into two lines and accepting some buttons will overflow.

But I feel there is a lot of space here that can be saved.

1. Why are all the elements so huge? This is not a touch screen.
2. Why do you pay so much attention to secondary elements there (highlighted in red), dropping the main content to the bottom of the page?
   • Author / date creation. I wrote about the author and the date of creation here.
   • Follow. Forums with thousands of members and millions of posts, but several people subscribe to topics. It looks something like this:
   • Promote. Who sees this button? Only admins and moderators? So it only looks good to a few people on the forum, but thousands of other members see a huge empty space?
   • Share. Do you have statistics on the use of this button? This button is almost never used by anyone, but you have given it a central place on the page. Seriously?
   • Moderation Actions. Again — so it only looks good to a few people on the forum, but thousands of other members see a huge empty space?
   • Start new topic / Reply. I wrote about it here.

One more example on a smartphone:

It looks ugly, it duplicates the same action, it interferes with clicking the "Submit" button.