The New Forum

Is the new ASN too fussy?

  • Yes.

    Votes: 7 46.7%

  • No.

    Votes: 7 46.7%

  • I don't care.

    Votes: 1 6.7%
  • Total voters
    15
16Klappe

16Klappe

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I know this has been discussed before, but I really feel it needs to be re-visited.

I also know I'm a bit of a troll and yada yada yada. But the new forum is truly and honestly the most un user friendly web page I have EVER visited.

To the point that I now log in less than half as much as I used to. And don't even bother replying to lots of threads where I could be helping others because it is such an effort to navigate the site.

And when I do log in I am constantly having to battle my way through the screen loading yet more images and jumping about meaning I click the wrong topic or box.

It gives me a headache just reading a thread.

Adverts popping up mid way through a thread, literally the most annoying thing known to man. I don't have a clue how much money the forum makes off those, but I will personally double it to never have to see one again.

I know forums aren't free to run, I understand this. But about a year ago there was the option to support the forum, help with the running costs and give a bit back. I'm not getting on my high horse here, but I clicked that button because I really liked the forum and wanted it to stay as it was but run more reliably. I'm sure many others clicked for the same reason.

If I was presented with that option today I would not click it again. Because it is truly terrible. I'd click it 100 times to go back to the simplified older lay out.

The response last time this was questioned was, "don't like it, tough. It's progress, deal with it." As far as I saw anyway.

I know a lot of effort has gone into this new site, and I know it's not easy.

But I (and lots and lots of other users) REALLY dislike it.

It's stopping people visiting the site, and raping my data allowances.

Tapatalk is about as user friendly as a tooth brush made out of razor blades as well.

I don't want to seem like I am moaning (but I am haha) so to be constructive, I think the entire site would flow a lot easier if it was just simpler. Less flashy images which take ages to load, less boarders colours to needlessly take my data allowance. All that jazz.

Sorry to be a grump, it's just in my nature.
 
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I feel the same. It works ok for me in the mobile version. Except you can't see things like who posted last which is annoying.

But the full web version is a complete disaster. Right now I'm at work and our internet is limited to 1mb. I click on a post, and I have to do some work for ten minutes before its open and readable.
Its also bright red and white, so sticks out like a sore thumb when it freezes on my screen
 
I like the new layout personally, however the updated forum doesn't work with Tapatalk for Windows Phone 8.1.

What I dislike are the adverts which I have only just noticed that now punctuate the threads. If I could donate a small amount in order to see an add free version of the forum then I would
 
there have been massive improvements since the new site first went live, so a big thanks to all the admin people for sorting out so many of the niggly little problems.

There are still quite a few things that arn't great though.

I'll be honest, the ads don't bother me at all. They are a fact of life. Either pay up, or deal with Ads. I'll take the ads thanks very much!

It's annoying not being able to see who's posted last in a thread - is there anything that can be done to change that?

The big one for me, that really annoys me, is that the post dates appear at the bottom of the posts, and not at the top.

That might sound silly, but when you're looking through posts with long and detailed replies containing multiple pictures, it's a real pain not being able to see when it was posted until the end.

Also - why is it that when you choose to link a picture from somewhere like photo bucket, when that pic goes live on the forum, the site has changed the URL making it unusable elsewhere? if you were confined to ASN only then i guess you'd never know, but I tried linking some of jardo's pics elsewhere in interweb world, only to find ASN had 'stolen' the basic link and made it ASN specific.

I appreciate that change is sometimes required, and we are all adverse to change by nature, but I do feel this is more than just a case of adversity to change, and the current forum is certainly lacking in some basic functionality and ease of use.

Those wanting to sack it off and go back to the old forum are obviously not going to get heard, as that's not going to be an option.

the best thing we can do is to try and be constructive about what we don't like, and how best to go about fixing it within the current format ' software.
 
its ok on a desktop or laptop, its clean and neat, but not easy to navigate. The ads are stupid. Ads used to be present when you weren't logged in. Log in as a member and they'd disappear.

On my windows phone its total total toss. I have to log in alllll the fkn time, it takes an era to load, the ads take up too much space. its impossible to see page numbers, you have to click the last post time e.g. '18 minutes ago' and then you jump to the very end when their might be loads more to catch up on.

signatures don't work for whatever reason
 
Viewing the sit using Safari is work in progress ATM, I'm giving some feedback, and there has been small improvements here and there
 
Constructive we are interested in; despite the impression you may previously have got/we might've given.

I'm not asking for violins, but please take into account that we have to sort between rantings of luddites who think the sky is falling, and people with tangible technical problems - threads pop-up all over the site, nobody [in general] brings them to our attention, and there tend to be more deconstructive than constructive messages in them. It's not easy being red.

Anyway... Getting on to what may and may not be issues, which may or may not be adjustable...

@ Princess Clap

We've had a few (and it is only a few) reports of the page jumping about while things load and stuff; but without much detail with which to daignose/go about fixing it. There are two lines I'm examining at the moment, the first relates to the banner system (particularly its behaviour with 'special' banners - i.e. the large ones promoting 'things-in-particular' (events, and at the moment the servicing offers)); and the way the new software works with anchors in pages.

I imagine the issue is probably at its worst when you're opening threads?

If you click to the home page (i.e. the main forum index), does it jump about? Does it settle, or does it continue to jump around for as long as you're on the page? Similarly, when you open a thread, does that settle eventually?

If you were to open a thread (preferably one not cached in your browser), then touch nothing else until it settles (if indeed it does), how long are you looking at, and what do you end up looking at?

@Prawn

I can see how the image proxying thing might be a pain in the ***. I should probably say: "Well link the ASN thread in the other site!" - but I know that doesn't fly, and since you asked so very nicely, I'll have a poke around to see if I can just kibosh that.

I agree with you on the location of the post timestamp - I suppose it doesn't really do much harm at the bottom, but I've been caught out looking for it at the top of a post, so I think for continuity and to keep the information on a post/poster together, we'll look at moving it to the top.

---

On the general issue of not being able to see last poster/date/time on mobile devices, we're looking into that - we're in complete agreement that it's useful, and will hopefully have it restored for all devices/resolutions ASAP.

On the advertisements front - apologies for the second-post ads appearing to logged-in users, we've disabled this now - setting this stuff is vastly different in the new software, and we are human (honestly!). When logged-in you should only see a banner ad in the header, one in the footer, and on the index page there are a couple between some of the sections as you scroll down the list. If you're seeing more than that, please let us know.

@ Windows phone users: Hahaha oh boy did they see you coming. Was the free Xbox worth it? :p

Seriously though, your phones are pants, but we'll do what we can to help - but without going into the technical details why, I can only say (honestly) that we'll do what we can but promising things for that platform is beyond brave.

If you keep having to log-in, check that you don't have any "Do Not Track" nonsense enabled. Very often these options just shut the door on everything, including the most innocent of cookies which are simply for user authentication. (We don't do any snooping - you get a session/authentication cookie from us, one to log your visit on our statistics (for site functionality/performance monitoring), and one or two for things like Google Ads.

@superkarl Signatures work, it's just that they're not displayed on narrow resolutions...

Which brings me neatly around to some proper voodoo shiznit...

[Pending changes we will try to make] Sideways is the way forward...

Forum p


Forum l

Signatures and stuff also become visible on mobiles in landscape orientation...

Thread p vs Thread l

Obviously this isn't a solution; and we'll work on the things we can, but landscape browsing might be a functional workaround for some of you in the interim...

Rob.
 
FactionOne said:
@ Windows phone users: Hahaha oh boy did they see you coming. Was the free Xbox worth it? :p
Seriously though, your phones are pants, but we'll do what we can to help - but without going into the technical details why
Click to expand...

go on
 
Alex C said:
go on
Click to expand...
Briefly then; it's built with the Microsoft mindset; essentially for browsing, it's desktop Internet Exploder, but worse.

Microsoft hate the web. They hate it because they don't own it; which means they have to get involved with allsorts of open standards, and free licences to make it work like everyone else; but they continuously rail against that. The 'compatibility' options which MS products offer are 1) apocryphal 2) kinda cheeky.

Their proprietray code (versions of open standards spun enough that they meet their licensing requirements) often cannot render a page as it's intended, because their standard is not the standard; so they have compatibility options which essentially re-code the page as it's loaded, in the (often vain) hope that it'll convert 'the internet' into 'microsoft net'. The issue is made worse on mobiles since they're trying to do all this with mobile resolutions, so naturally their interpretation of CSS also has to deal with responsive elements - which it's equally bad at.

It's a mindset which if they don't pull their finger out is only going to accelerate the rate at which they fail in emerging markets.

Rob.
 
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Alex C said:
however the updated forum doesn't work with Tapatalk for Windows Phone 8.1.
Click to expand...

scrap that - deleted the Audi-sport subscription from tapatalk and added it again and now it works fine

superkarl said:
On my windows phone its total total toss. I have to log in alllll the fkn time
Click to expand...

What phone do you have?

Mine (L925) logs in fine both with Tapatalk and IE11 for Windows Phone 8.1 using both the mobile and desktop versions in the browser settings. Is it the web browser your having trouble with? Check you IE11 advanced settings

I have "Send a Do Not Track request to websites you visit" checked
Cookies from websites set to "block some"
Remember website passwords was "ask each time" and it was actually remembering each time but I have now changed this to "remember"
 
Last edited:
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I'll tell you what I do like: the new alerts system - it's really useful being alerted that someone has responded and quoted you in a thread
 
I've just done a screen-record on my phone which I'm thinking might serve as a datum; you can see I clear the cache before coming to ASN to make sure on first load it's nice and clunky while everything comes down fresh. I was even fairly impatient and tapping to clear things before it'd fully loaded; it seems alright to me. Maybe it's working better on my handset, or maybe I'm just too laid back about it.

Anyway, I figured it might be useful for people to describe how their experience differs. Let me know.

[And yes, I only realised the screen recorder had the mic enabled by default after I did it]

Rob.

Video: http://www.audi-sport.net/asnmobile/
 
Wooooohoooooooo!!!!!!!!

Time stamps now at the top of posts. Sad as it sounds, it instantly makes my viewing better!

Thanks Rob :) - the system works!

I'm sure soon enough we'll have all the bugs ironed out and it'll be business as usual :)
 
Prawn said:
Wooooohoooooooo!!!!!!!!
Time stamps now at the top of posts. Sad as it sounds, it instantly makes my viewing better!
Click to expand...

could the post timestamps be aligned to the upper right? :undwech:
 
Last edited:
Ask Prawn(!) ...You see the problem with this ;)

If the consensus is that right-aligned is better, cool; which one, the upper or lower timestamp?

R
 
some good changes already!

Alex, its an old htc 8s, serves my needs, well, until this new layout. Il check all my settings in a min.

signatures don't appear in landscape for me, this has to be my handset, i accept its old tech. But im not a technology gimp and don't know the ins and outs of these things, so i probably cant provide constructive criticism.

why didn't my sig transfer from the old layout to the new? Its only a picture hosted by photobucket i think.

i wish i could zoom out more and view things in their entirity, instead in left with a narrow field of view of just one post, not even the whole post.

Il play around with my gay phone anyway and see what i can do
 
It's not just me that gets annoyed by the bad things about the website I see, understandable that the page jumps around and the answer is to just "wait a few more seconds" however, technology is getting faster and faster so why have to wait for the whole page to load so I can tap something accurately.

However, I'm not interested in a "vigilant full audi service" so why does the advert have to take that extra second and make my page jump around all over the place.

On the plus side, notifications, smileys, text entry, quote system, avatar for replied thread, colour scheme, like system is all great and tbh, mods are doing a good job taking into consideration many peoples different views.

I often think less is more though, some things are made over complicated.
 
Hi to solve the large banner at the top problem I have created a way of making if dismissible... Please let me know if this helps with your page loading. We are working on all suggestions and problems all the time. Please keep letting us know what you are finding so that we can fix them.

Many thanks for all the input.

A
 
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Administrators said:
Hi to solve the large banner at the top problem I have created a way of making if dismissible... Please let me know if this helps with your page loading. We are working on all suggestions and problems all the time. Please keep letting us know what you are finding so that we can fix them.

Many thanks for all the input.

A
Click to expand...

Dismissing that ad is good!

However it's the ad under the audisport logo that also causes the jumping around.

Image
 
Was a hater but uninstalled and reinstalled tapatalk and it's all cool here.
 
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what i dont understand is...new posts. you see one, and click on it and post.... Then when you want to revisit it a few minutes later to see if another comment has been put on...its disappeared off the face of the earth completely ***. this annoys me.
 
Av4nt said:
what i dont understand is...new posts. you see one, and click on it and post.... Then when you want to revisit it a few minutes later to see if another comment has been put on...its disappeared off the face of the earth completely ***. this annoys me.
Click to expand...

if you go back to new posts, there is a button on the right hand side at the top that says recent posts, if you click this you then have posts you visited previously listed amongst the new posts. :) x
 
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Sandra said:
if you go back to new posts, there is a button on the right hand side at the top that says recent posts, if you click this you then have posts you visited previously listed amongst the new posts. :) x
Click to expand...

Amagawd this is confusing hahaha
 
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I think the new forum is great, such an improvement - nice modern responsive design with great features. Well done. Works and looks great on my mobile now without the need for tapatalk. Ads? AdBlock deals with them.
 
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Chrismawa said:
I think the new forum is great, such an improvement - nice modern responsive design with great features. Well done. Works and looks great on my mobile now without the need for tapatalk. Ads? AdBlock deals with them.
Click to expand...
Thanks for the feedback. Much appreciated. :) x
 
I only had a few months to get used to the old layout, as I graced you lot with my appearance in March of this year or there abouts.

Yes the old forum was more user friendly, but the site has to move with the times and the new layout is cleaner and more contempary

Had a few issues with tapatalk on my iPhone but seem to have resolved them
 
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Thank you Aaron. Glad you enjoying the new site. :) x
 
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