crmarks

I always see it as a literal “evolutionary” process. I constantly try out new “mutations”, i.e. features. If they turn out to be beneficial, I might put more work into them and make them more prominent. If they do not work, I scale them back slowly (e.g. by first demoting them in the menus) and remove them eventually. There certainly is a danger in adding too much stuff. Not just in regards to the software conflicts you will get, but also in the way you confuse your users. I even have tons of “display:none” declarations in my theme to hide stock functionality. Often less is more. 

I am really in love with Invision. All things were so simple back in 2004 as I have started with my community. I could do everything from SEO to design myself. Today it is just impossible to keep up with all the changes out there. It became so complicated. Therefore I am so happy that I have you, boys  You make my life easier and my community were meanwhile dead without this platform. 

I need to come back to finish reading this, but good article.
First thing I do is remove the question asking for a member's gender which is for most a throwback to less enlightened times. It can be off-putting for new members, it is limited in responses, and for most communities very likely unjustified and unnecessary. Why not ask them for their sexuality and preferences too!

You can now do this while you're not logged in. I get you point, we might be able to sort this for 4.4.

Great news!
It would be nice to have built-in option to trim post content in notification emails. Firstly, it would be better for community, because if someone have to click link to read the content there is much bigger chance that he will reply in this topic (because he is reading post on forum not in mail). What's more, currently the mail with notification about really long post look awful (especially when there is some program listing in post content ex. on forum for programmers).

I'm gonna challenge you on this idea, because I think the real process begins and ends with making the post.  That's the ultimate aim, and users want to get through the intermediate steps as seamlessly as possible.  Registration is a barrier here, and reminding users of that barrier is not the best thing to do.  
When you redirect users to a whole new page, there are two problems:
Visual interruption -- It's a major interruption, visually and behaviorally, to be taken to a whole new screen.  It breaks the ease of trying to post.  You're dragging on the registration form as a process on its own, when it's really an intermediary step to accomplish something far more worthwhile.   Time delay -- Every new page load is multiple seconds of delay.  And in a world where we're trying to make interaction as seamless and fluid as possible, we need to shave off seconds anywhere we can.  

Would this work with spam services like Akismet?
If so, and Akismet kicks back a big fat no.....
 
...... can we make them fill out the most complex from ever devised?   
Or one that on submit perpetually erases a field, bounces them back to start over.....
 

Currently it is not included in the Topic Feed widget, maybe it will appear in version 4.4?

I didn't create this image, so it's probably not the exact color you're inquiring about, but this gives you an idea of how it works:

Here's an example of how the theme color may affect a device. Keep in mind that it is up to individual consumers (devices/user agents) how they will use these elements:
https://developers.google.com/web/updates/2015/08/using-manifest-to-set-sitewide-theme-color
The background color is generally used as the background/splash screen color when launching your site from a saved home screen icon.
https://developers.google.com/web/fundamentals/web-app-manifest/#splash-screen
Remember that each device can decide which elements it will read and support from the manifest, and how it will use those elements.
The Safari mask icon is a very specific element which requires an SVG. This image is not used anywhere else presently, except for the Safari mask icon. It's not so much about making it "Apple-only", but rather using an SVG here is a requirement of using the feature in general.
https://developer.apple.com/library/archive/documentation/AppleApplications/Reference/SafariWebContent/pinnedTabs/pinnedTabs.html
As the Blog notes, we create Microsoft's special "browserconfig.xml" file to better support Windows-based devices as well.
https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/dn320426(v=vs.60)
It's interesting to note that we can build off of this functionality to better support Windows Live Tiles (where you get live updates of a site right in your start menu, or on your home screen for devices with more enhanced live tile support (XBox for instance).

wow such forum how ajax very community much member  

@Matt On deletion of members: 
Could there be an option to define the name to attribute to on that page directly? So we could input for example "Member 3312" (where 3312 would be their memberId). This will keep the discussion still somewhat reader friendly, so it would still be possible to differentiate different accounts as having written in the discussion, for readers reading old content. 
Alternatively let the Anonymize attribution do a md5 hash on the (memberId+some community specific value that is unlikely to be changed) and grab the first 8 letters or something. 

Agree with Joel on those points there.
If the typing thing is hidden away as a tool tip, it seems a bit of a waste of the potential extra resource usage especially on a huge site. Hopefully it's a toggle option at least. I'm really not sure if that improvement is a hit or a miss. 
The review option being on top of the comments option really bugs me as people use reviews to comment not actually review, plus comments were around a lot longer than reviews and sites often seem to have more of them than reviews, so it often looks like is no responses if there are no reviews on an item.
In the calendar reviews being on top of comments often makes no sense for the majority of events, who reviews Acension Day or Christmas Day? Fortunately you can switch them off in the Calendar settings.
I recall a mod for that but I've always figured it should be an admins preference setting. I usually end up disabling reviews except on Downloads files.
Some really good ideas here though, but feeling particularly selfish righ now, I'm desperate to see member engagement increase by being able to automatically import RSS/XML feeds as Pages Articles built in, as well as be able to import and layout third party content via XML and JSON into blocks and widgets.
 

A couple of things for future consideration:
1. Highlight content in email - I want to second the concerns voiced above.  Some communities don't use Our Picks or social promotion.  They need to be given fallback options such as Popular Content or Leaderboard content.  
2. Review Response - something to consider for future enhancement is the ability for moderators or administrators to respond as well.  Usually the Mods and Admins are the most active users on the site and can interject sooner, can clarify site policies, or provide methods of recourse that regular users are not always aware.  
3. Typing - I love the idea behind this feature.  It's real time, immediate, and gets users hooked onto the activity of the website.  But the online user list (and hovering over a member) is not a common or noticeable place to look.  

This all looks fantastic! 
So, to be clear, the weekly digest only shows content from "Our Picks"? There is no algorithm to show popular topics?

Invision always teasing us with interesting features but no release date so we refresh the blog on a daily (sometimes more) basis

Hello guys,
i would suggest adding an automatic newsletter (digest) sent to the latest X month active members,
we have a big community with 80.000 and we cant send emails to all of them,
the best is to send digest to active members in latest 30 days for example (last login, post, comment, ..).
It will reengage them again and again.
we are doing that with an external service (acy mailing for joomla) and work pretty great.
 

Does the "Typing..." tooltip only appear when you mouse over the user name?
I would rather have it like facebook, somewhere above the editor. 

Hi @Matt!
A big issue now is that users signed up with Paypal and Stripe (and probably other methods) have different ways of canceling their subscription.
Paypal users have to go to (by default) Store -> My Details -> Billing Agreements -> View Details -> Cancel
While Stripe users go to Store -> Manage Purchases -> Manage -> Cancel Renewals
This inconsistency is causing a lot of confusion when you have thousands of users. I know they are technically different, but for the users there should be a uniform way of managing this.
Customizing the menus is an option, but it will never give you the end-user experience you'd like. There should be a very obvious option for the users where they either cancel or suspend (if possible) their subscription regardless of payment method.

Um. We might be able to do something. We haven’t done anything with 3.x for a while. I can take a look. 

Great, glad to see this is getting more attention!  
Will there be an upgrade path for those of us using IP.Nexus to manage subscriptions when we upgrade our 3.4.x forum to 4.3?  Which is something I plan on doing once 4.3 has been released. 
Thanks, 
 ..Al

I really like the fact that announcements get some attention. I think though that there is some room for improvements:
Whether or not an announcement is dismissable should be an option. More conditions would be nice, i.e. the ability to show announcements based on how many days have passed since registration or the last login, based on reputation points, based on whether or not the member has its birthday... (similar to the conditions you offer in the group promotions in the AdminCP).
I know that technically you can create group promotions first and then display announcements based on usergroups, but that seems to be a bit off. Other than that: Can't wait to see/test it!

I'd buy you dinner any time, Joel  
But it honours the "Maximum embedded content width" setting.
Yeah, we agree that would be a good feature. While 4.3 is feature locked, 4.4 isn't! If you have an idea, let us know in the feedback forum - we do read them. There's lots of reasons a feature may or may not make it in to any particular release (often to do with how much time it would take and how much testing it would require, which depends a lot on what other changes have been made in that area) - just because something isn't in a particular release, doesn't mean we have forgotten or it's been lost.

Nice.
Will something similar be implemented for audio files?  

Is there really any reason people still need to be shown the file name prominently with extension and everything?
It's really the only part of the lightbox I dislike. Mostly due to the fact people tend not to cleanly name photos in the galleries I visit, so it's just a long string of stuff (usually generated off facebook or some other tool which seemingly auto generates a name). I don't see a problem in showing it somewhere, but it just gets so much (and in my humble but totally subjective opinion, over weighted) prominence in that top left position. From a UX/UI perspective, I actually don't think file names have much relevance at all now that you've got drag and drop working for image ordering - there is very little (if any) additional info conveyed by the file name.
I'd prefer (speaking as a consumer of galleries) that the caption stay blank unless a user completes it vs filling it with the filename.