Old RFF home page vs New home page

[MP Guy]

People are complaining that the old home page was way different and photos, stats and other details were not there.

here is the OLD look

https://web.archive.org/web/20210508225229/https://www.rangefinderforum.com/

The new look mimics its pretty well but I have removed the random pics since people thought it wasnt there before and not needed.

Having said that we are trying to get things as good as possible.

 

[Mlehrman]

It's all a learning process, and all for the best. I will personally miss the random gallery, as it gave me (especially during photographic dry spots) an opportunity to browse through the history of my favorite site, and discover new talent I might have misswd, or venerable talent I most likely forgot. It was a treasure. Everything changes.

 

[olakiril]

The new look mimics its pretty well but I have removed the random pics since people thought it wasnt there before and not needed.

Having said that we are trying to get things as good as possible.

Hi Mp Guy, I think it looks better. The Most Recent tab is perfect now.

I think most people wanted random pics JUST in the first page and not in every thread. My personal opinion is that once pictures are a bit smaller they can fit on the side of the Most Recent tab (above the most popular) as I have previously pointed. This way you can see many more of them at first glance without interference with the Most Recent tab that the majority of the people care about. I looked at the HTML code and it even supports scrolling which would be great (modern) as well.

Thanks for all the effort.

 

[Bmoze]

I like the latest changes you’ve made. It’s improving, day by day. I usually use an iPad to browse. The home page works very well on an iPad held in horizontal, landscape mode, but not as well in vertical, portrait mode. In portrait, the spacing is too wide and the layout is too linear. Do you see that, too?

I’m not digging the Gallery layout, yet, but I want spend more time with it before I offer suggestions.

 

[raydm6]

People are complaining that the old home page was way different and photos, stats and other details were not there.

here is the OLD look

https://web.archive.org/web/20210508...nderforum.com/

The new look mimics its pretty well but I have removed the random pics since people thought it wasnt there before and not needed.

Having said that we are trying to get things as good as possible.

Thank you. You've done an excellent job responding to comments/feedback. I'm seeing improvements everyday; heck, every time I login. I'm looking at this as a sort of live beta/usability testing and rapid response to comments. Look froward to more improvements. Thanks again!

 

[Sonnar Brian]

Much better! "Most Recent" shows activity by thread. To me- that was the most useful feature of the old software.

 

[Ko.Fe.]

Get rid of tags cloud part in main page.

 

[Particular]

The front page has been improving over the last few days. Compared to the old layout, where the left sidebar was only menu links, the new "Most Popular" segment is a lot wider. It is competing for my attention with the main segment. If you feel it is necessary to have both (there is always a bit of duplication there), I would put it on the right side of the page. The "Most Recent" segment is the heart of RFF, and it should really be the most prominent thing on the page.
I like how the "Forums" went into a tab because in there are so many that you could never easily find them in the menu on the side in the old page anyway. They need the space of a page of their own.
I agree the tag cloud serves no purpose, and I'm not sure what the difference is between "What's going on" and "Statistics". I'd keep one or the other or merge them somehow.

When clicking on an item in the classifieds it opens the whole page inside the frame as opposed to opening a new tab/window with the classified page. I assume this is a bug, because it does not work for me.

 

[keytarjunkie]

MP Guy fantastic work with the forum list on the home page! I love it, and it makes the site feel a lot closer to how things used to be. I think it is great. The improvements you have been making every day are very noticed and appreciated.

 

[plummerl]

So far, the RFF appearance/usability trend seems pretty good. I do have a few (or more) questions.

I've only been a SW engineer for 46 years, so I may still need to get educated in the UI. One annoyance to me is the presentation of post threads. For some reason, if I'm reading a thread of conversation, I expect to be reading down a page. So far, I've found almost everything the reverse. Oldest pages of multi-page threads are the last (highest number) and the thread reads (to me) backwards.

From the landing page, instead of the icon link to the First Unread Post, I'm sent to the First New Post. This is a rather impactful change, if I've been following a post thread, I definitely want to resume reading the thread from I left off, not start with the newest post, and then search backwards for I want to resume reading!

One other change, that seems like it results in more actions is on how multi-page posts are handled. Before (if memory serves me) the multi-page format had page 1, a few intermediate pages and "Last". Now it seems that if you want to go to the last, you have to manually type it into the page # box.

So, am I missing some fundamental mechanics of the site? Sorting order seems like something that could be stored with the member profile, much like the Style.

Thanks!

 

[splitimageview]

Yes, I posted about this a few days ago. I don't understand the reason for the POSTS tab and the LATEST ACTIVITY tab, in a thread.

Everytime I go to a thread in which I've participated, I have to click POSTS, and then move to the last page (if it's a multiple page thread) and only then do the posts appear in traditional chrono order.

As I showed in this video, I am being presented with a post from 46 minutes ago, by poster Aquilasfx, and when I click the link, the first post that appears is from 3 days ago, by poster Deardorff38!

Then I have to click on POSTS and then move to page 2 to get the actual latest post from Aquilasfx.

This is counter intuitive and time wasting.

https://vimeo.com/627460444

 

[Speedy]

Yes, I posted about this a few days ago. I don't understand the reason for the POSTS tab and the LATEST ACTIVITY tab, in a thread.

Everytime I go to a thread in which I've participated, I have to click POSTS, and then move to the last page (if it's a multiple page thread) and only then do the posts appear in traditional chrono order.

As I showed in this video, I am being presented with a post from 46 minutes ago, by poster Aquilasfx, and when I click the link, the first post that appears is from 3 days ago, by poster Deardorff38!

Then I have to click on POSTS and then move to page 2 to get the actual latest post from Aquilasfx.

This is counter intuitive and time wasting.

https://vimeo.com/627460444

i dont know if this suits you but maybe you can you use home tab which has a 'most recent' activity page with the fast forward(last page) button for each topic, bad thing about it at the bottom there was a 'more' tab previously, now it is 'View all' which directs you to a search page that is quite complicated to use for me, hope that 'more' tab comes with the continuing pages...