Yamamura

I don't have a problem with calling this aspect of the design "terrible" because it is.
The previous version had the follow button on the same level as the Forum title.
Somebody made the "terrible" decision to move this button into acres of precious vertical space, all on its own. What was wrong with leaving it where it was? Why is this necessary? If it had to be moved below the title as an essential button then why not place it beside the start topic button?
Or if a follow button is of such paramount importance to be a leading feature for the landing page, why not go full width?
You've probably all heard of the "hero image" ... welcome to its successor, the "hero button"

Yes, that's exactly what I'm talking about 👍🏻
I wrote about this and showed it on screenshots many times before the release of 4.5. I hope that at least after this discussion, the developers will pay attention to the problem of huge empty space, which worries not only me.

I can take a screenshot of forum 4.4 where everything was fine.
Lol!

Why did they move the follow button to a separate line, which takes up a HUGE white space??? Previously, this button was in the title bar and did not take up extra space. Read "Web Design For Dummies" before commenting here.

Takohashi, even sadder I have been doing this for over 25 years 😂
Whatever the reasons, I do not appreciate having the topic list on my forum home page relegated to the bottom of the page so close to the fold.
I contacted Invision support before I discovered this topic but they said it's not something they can help me with.
Which is a shame because I think if you are going to reserve so much space at the top of a page you should at least have some kind of control over it, such as repositioning or disabling.
Is there a converter for Ikonboard? I might go back to using that if this is the way things are going.
 

Once again. It is enough to compare screenshot 4.4 and 4.5. The main content (list of topics / posts) should be displayed as high as possible on the page. This was the case in 4.4. Now, I open a forum and half of the screen is taken up by useless elements and empty space.
20 years wasted. So sad... 😭

I can take a screenshot of forum 4.4 where everything was fine.
Lol!

Why did they move the follow button to a separate line, which takes up a HUGE white space??? Previously, this button was in the title bar and did not take up extra space. Read "Web Design For Dummies" before commenting here.

I totally agree. The default skin in 4.5 is absolutely terrible. Huge elements, padding, empty space, thin and faded text, low contrast, and more. It's no surprise why more and more people are choosing to use XenForo, Discord, etc., over IPB. I don't know who made the new skin, but it feels like a beginner freelancer from Dribble made it.
But why did they need to move the follow button one line down? If the follow button was positioned on the same line as the title, as before, there would be no useless empty space.
One more example:

It takes up a lot of space, but none of it is needed there.
You just entered a topic and want to reply right away? Not! You just entered a topic and want to create a new topic right away? Of course not!  Who cares who is the author of the topic and when it was created? Nobody! For example, I have active topics on my forum that are already 12 years old. Why should I constantly show who is the author of these topics if they have not visited the forum for 10 years and everyone has already forgotten about them?? Nobody cares who is the author of the topic. This information is completely meaningless and useless. One more example:

Am I exactly in a place for people to communicate? Because on my screen I see only a white space and a couple of lines of text. 🤦🏻‍♂️

Go check out how many apps Slack supports today, hundreds. Come back in 5 years from now and tell me how many of those same companies that are so "modern" are still in business. I'll bet you at least 30% or more go out of business. It takes a lot more than being modern to sustain and keep customers.

[oh, and let me spell it out. No, I did not say that in some attempt to have you put back some old feature, my point is please try to be respectful to your customers as well as build good software]
I really wasn't even going to reply again because it's like beating a dead horse...
 
 
 
 
 

I totally agree. The default skin in 4.5 is absolutely terrible. Huge elements, padding, empty space, thin and faded text, low contrast, and more. It's no surprise why more and more people are choosing to use XenForo, Discord, etc., over IPB. I don't know who made the new skin, but it feels like a beginner freelancer from Dribble made it.
But why did they need to move the follow button one line down? If the follow button was positioned on the same line as the title, as before, there would be no useless empty space.
One more example:

It takes up a lot of space, but none of it is needed there.
You just entered a topic and want to reply right away? Not! You just entered a topic and want to create a new topic right away? Of course not!  Who cares who is the author of the topic and when it was created? Nobody! For example, I have active topics on my forum that are already 12 years old. Why should I constantly show who is the author of these topics if they have not visited the forum for 10 years and everyone has already forgotten about them?? Nobody cares who is the author of the topic. This information is completely meaningless and useless. One more example:

Am I exactly in a place for people to communicate? Because on my screen I see only a white space and a couple of lines of text. 🤦🏻‍♂️

After converting our community to 4.5, we received almost unanimous feedback that the moving of these links was a crime against humanity. I'll be posting a free plugin on the Marketplace that restores all that is right in the world.

I totally agree. The default skin in 4.5 is absolutely terrible. Huge elements, padding, empty space, thin and faded text, low contrast, and more. It's no surprise why more and more people are choosing to use XenForo, Discord, etc., over IPB. I don't know who made the new skin, but it feels like a beginner freelancer from Dribble made it.
But why did they need to move the follow button one line down? If the follow button was positioned on the same line as the title, as before, there would be no useless empty space.
One more example:

It takes up a lot of space, but none of it is needed there.
You just entered a topic and want to reply right away? Not! You just entered a topic and want to create a new topic right away? Of course not!  Who cares who is the author of the topic and when it was created? Nobody! For example, I have active topics on my forum that are already 12 years old. Why should I constantly show who is the author of these topics if they have not visited the forum for 10 years and everyone has already forgotten about them?? Nobody cares who is the author of the topic. This information is completely meaningless and useless. One more example:

Am I exactly in a place for people to communicate? Because on my screen I see only a white space and a couple of lines of text. 🤦🏻‍♂️

I totally agree. The default skin in 4.5 is absolutely terrible. Huge elements, padding, empty space, thin and faded text, low contrast, and more. It's no surprise why more and more people are choosing to use XenForo, Discord, etc., over IPB. I don't know who made the new skin, but it feels like a beginner freelancer from Dribble made it.
But why did they need to move the follow button one line down? If the follow button was positioned on the same line as the title, as before, there would be no useless empty space.
One more example:

It takes up a lot of space, but none of it is needed there.
You just entered a topic and want to reply right away? Not! You just entered a topic and want to create a new topic right away? Of course not!  Who cares who is the author of the topic and when it was created? Nobody! For example, I have active topics on my forum that are already 12 years old. Why should I constantly show who is the author of these topics if they have not visited the forum for 10 years and everyone has already forgotten about them?? Nobody cares who is the author of the topic. This information is completely meaningless and useless. One more example:

Am I exactly in a place for people to communicate? Because on my screen I see only a white space and a couple of lines of text. 🤦🏻‍♂️

I understand the design is made up of rows, and some of the stuff like "follow this content" is probably a global row that gets added across all types of content. And then you have to have a "responsive" design thanks to Google's mandates, which makes it more complicated. So I understand it can never be "perfect".
Still, I think for the most commonly viewed parts of the forum, having three inches of white space below the forum title, something needs to be done about that.
The only reason I am pointing this out is because we are moving away from our heavily customized skin in order to make updates easier, and because the default IPB skin is now good enough that I feel it's okay to use. (We just replaced the header and footer with out own.)
Ideally, this is what it should look like:

I totally agree. The default skin in 4.5 is absolutely terrible. Huge elements, padding, empty space, thin and faded text, low contrast, and more. It's no surprise why more and more people are choosing to use XenForo, Discord, etc., over IPB. I don't know who made the new skin, but it feels like a beginner freelancer from Dribble made it.
But why did they need to move the follow button one line down? If the follow button was positioned on the same line as the title, as before, there would be no useless empty space.
One more example:

It takes up a lot of space, but none of it is needed there.
You just entered a topic and want to reply right away? Not! You just entered a topic and want to create a new topic right away? Of course not!  Who cares who is the author of the topic and when it was created? Nobody! For example, I have active topics on my forum that are already 12 years old. Why should I constantly show who is the author of these topics if they have not visited the forum for 10 years and everyone has already forgotten about them?? Nobody cares who is the author of the topic. This information is completely meaningless and useless. One more example:

Am I exactly in a place for people to communicate? Because on my screen I see only a white space and a couple of lines of text. 🤦🏻‍♂️

@Takohashi I completely agree with you that there is indeed a lot of free space. The articles also contain a lot

I totally agree. The default skin in 4.5 is absolutely terrible. Huge elements, padding, empty space, thin and faded text, low contrast, and more. It's no surprise why more and more people are choosing to use XenForo, Discord, etc., over IPB. I don't know who made the new skin, but it feels like a beginner freelancer from Dribble made it.
But why did they need to move the follow button one line down? If the follow button was positioned on the same line as the title, as before, there would be no useless empty space.
One more example:

It takes up a lot of space, but none of it is needed there.
You just entered a topic and want to reply right away? Not! You just entered a topic and want to create a new topic right away? Of course not!  Who cares who is the author of the topic and when it was created? Nobody! For example, I have active topics on my forum that are already 12 years old. Why should I constantly show who is the author of these topics if they have not visited the forum for 10 years and everyone has already forgotten about them?? Nobody cares who is the author of the topic. This information is completely meaningless and useless. One more example:

Am I exactly in a place for people to communicate? Because on my screen I see only a white space and a couple of lines of text. 🤦🏻‍♂️

I totally agree. The default skin in 4.5 is absolutely terrible. Huge elements, padding, empty space, thin and faded text, low contrast, and more. It's no surprise why more and more people are choosing to use XenForo, Discord, etc., over IPB. I don't know who made the new skin, but it feels like a beginner freelancer from Dribble made it.
But why did they need to move the follow button one line down? If the follow button was positioned on the same line as the title, as before, there would be no useless empty space.
One more example:

It takes up a lot of space, but none of it is needed there.
You just entered a topic and want to reply right away? Not! You just entered a topic and want to create a new topic right away? Of course not!  Who cares who is the author of the topic and when it was created? Nobody! For example, I have active topics on my forum that are already 12 years old. Why should I constantly show who is the author of these topics if they have not visited the forum for 10 years and everyone has already forgotten about them?? Nobody cares who is the author of the topic. This information is completely meaningless and useless. One more example:

Am I exactly in a place for people to communicate? Because on my screen I see only a white space and a couple of lines of text. 🤦🏻‍♂️

No one said or tried to say it was a legal requirement (though it really is for Federal institutions, they cannot use software that does not follow certain ADA requirements by a Federally mandated law) that is not and was not the point. I have a handicapped adult child so I'm aware of how difficult many software applications are. Not trying to say the program needs massive changes to support ADA.
My point is/was that the ID tag number being shown @Mr 13 does in fact (in my opinion) provide the exact same purpose of a visual cue that post # have/had in the past. I've manually edited our forums to show it. All I'm providing is FEEDBACK which is the purpose of this forum. It would be very nice if allowing this to be shown by some setting within the ACP so that users did not need to manually edit their code.
As for the date in every post providing a permalink I'm sorry you just don't seem to understand what people are talking about. VISUAL cue just like I created all uppercase. You don't have to copy anything, you don't have to click a special button. You easily see there is something. Telling someone go find post where the date says Posted August 13 does nothing for anyone as there could be several posts made on that date. Why people are complaining it is a PITA to have to now copy and paste a special link to refer to. 
In my example here

I can tell the user to check out post ID 393 and most people can very easily find that number in the topic thread. I didn't have to copy, quote, or paste anything. 
If you don't wish to add such a feature that is your choice but to tell people they don't need it is YOUR personal opinion which may or may not be shared by others.
 
 

This is really excessive.

It looks even worse if your forum background is set to white.

I noticed this is being brought up a lot since 4.5 and its all because of that white background. It was never a problem when that info wasn't in a white box, and in my opinion looked much better previously. No need for the title area to be bigger and taking up more space than before.
Previously it was just the title, then the creator and date on one line below it. Now we've got the title, a divider line and two lines for the creator and date and with a white background to highlight it further.

+1
I actually used css to hide the author name and date that would appear underneath the title because it was redundant 😊
 

The interface has unnecessary duplicate elements in some places. It would be great to get rid of this duplication and thereby simplify the interface and make it more clean and readable.
Here is some examples:

For my communities, I fixed this issue showing the unique ID of the post. You can see it in action here.

Will Invision Community 4.4 include CKEditor 5? If not, then I would like the font size button and text alignment button to be like in CKEditor 5.
1. Font size:

This button looks better on the toolbar. The list of options is simple, concise and convenient. In addition, it will not allow users to make the font size too small or too large.
2. Text alignment:

This button takes up less space on the toolbar, and it is more convenient to use it in the editor on a smartphone, for example.

Will Invision Community 4.4 include CKEditor 5? If not, then I would like the font size button and text alignment button to be like in CKEditor 5.
1. Font size:

This button looks better on the toolbar. The list of options is simple, concise and convenient. In addition, it will not allow users to make the font size too small or too large.
2. Text alignment:

This button takes up less space on the toolbar, and it is more convenient to use it in the editor on a smartphone, for example.