Further followup on John B's thoughts....* Keep it simple. Plain text loads quickly and 3D and texture effects are just eye candy.
Ah, but at least eye candy doesn't cause cavities. :)
I hope the new look will have a bit of eye appeal while being tidy, compact, and tasteful. A modest background texture can aid emphasis and clarity to functional parts of a page when used carefully, as I hope to do. I'm very picky regarding loading speeds and graphics resources; example: the parchment effect on this page is a not exactly whopping 2 KB, and the 3D badge on the index page is entirely implemented in text as a CSS stylesheet entry, only around 200 bytes.
* Please make image inclusion a straightforward process.
Wait...I thought you said "keep it simple"? ;)
Right now, any kind of image uploading is not any kind of simple here in the "back office," so it may take a while to get it working again. But I know what you mean. It really needs to be moe straightforward on the user's end.
* Make Searches Great Again! There's a lot of good legacy info here. Anything you can do to enable finding it will be great.
Agreed! The search engine will lag behind the other software development, possibly by some months, but it is definitely an essential part of the to-do list.
* Keep legacy posts as long as possible.
Absolutely. The past 27+ years of posts will be archived up to the closing date and then remain as long as i have any say in the matter--probably much longer.
* Make a "return" to the index page a part of every screen. I've often grumbled at not being able to return from a "dead end" to the index while reading posts.
Actually, that's sort of already built into the current Board, though it may not be clear enough. Since each post opens in a new tab, using the Close This Message link above should eventually return you to the page that sent you here. However, I think the new process, outlined briefly below, will greatly improve page navigation.
* Make it easy to find new activity.
This is the very reason for emphasizing threads over individual posts, as is currently the case, and moving threads receiving new posts to the top of the list in each category that's on-screen in the index page.
It is recommended that everyone bookmark the Index Page to open at each visit. There will be a Newest Posts summary box available for each of the three, four, or five categories that the forum will be divided into. Only the latest three or four most recent posts will show in each box. If one or more are different from the last time you visited, click View Full Category to see the entire thread list for that Category. Newest will again be atop the list.
Clicking any one thread in Category View takes you directly to the latest post in what we'll term Thread View. Depending how you use it, this may be one more step to read a new message than we have now, but it'll actually prove a great time-saver as folks get used to it. You can not only read the newest post, but easily scroll down the Thread View all the way to Post 0, one page at a time, 10 or 16 posts per page; or jump directly to the first one if desired; or jump back to Category View or Full Index at any time; or click Reply within any particular post to which you wish to respond, and get a Post Reply editing window.
Again, it may initially sound like an extra step here or there, but trust me...it's so intuitive that it'll be faster almost immediately, especially if you're already familiar with typical forums.
* Create a "files' section that compact uploads could be sent and linked to? This could be schematics, data, regs, etc.
A good idea too, on which we will be seeking further feedback once the key features are implemented and stable.
THANKS for so may great ideas, John! Keep 'em coming, everyone.
John D