I agree. My stuff was verified without issue but once I logged in and looked around I was like…eh?
Resisting change is part of the human condition. I get that. I don’t like all the white space (or teal, since I’m using Vincent) because I’m SO used to words taking up most of the screen. I’ve never been a fan of the block o’ paragraphs dangling like a fishing line. It’s almost like it was an aesthetic rather than a practical choice?
I’m not going to expand on the infinite scrolling. It’s too hot , LOL.
I’m liking the new setup. I haven’t tried to make a link yet but everything else I got used to pretty fast. Thanks people that made this happen! Working fast for me and no time outs.
I’m not seeing all the white space everyone hates. The font is large, so there aren’t a lot of posts on a page. And there’s more vertical white space than I want, between posts and stuff. On the other hand, there aren’t ads all over the place, so that’s nice.
Do other people set their browser window much wider than mine? Mine feels like a nice size (and the size I use for most other stuff) and the words go all the way across the window.
I don’t get all the whining about lack of pagination and infinite-scroll, given that we have so many ways of navigating long threads:
Scrolling through them, as we did with our original pages
“Paging” through them with PgUp and PgDn or going to the first post or last post via Home and End keys.
Navigating up and down with the up-arrow and down-arrow keys
Most usefully, if looking for an old post, moving the slider on the scrollbar
The pagination of our old software was an implementation artifact; it had no semantic meaning – that is, there was no difference between one page and another page in terms of content, it was just how the software was implemented for its own convenience.
It’s possible that the 10,000 post limit is also an implementation artifact, such as maybe it tries to cache the entire thread at once. But I can’t think of a single benefit that pagination offered that can’t be done at least as well, or better, with the new scrolling model.
I understand your (and others’) frustration at the change in software. I was super not in love with it before, but I’ve adjusted over the interim. I’ve learned how to do most of what I could do before already by just clicking around. It’s not bad, really. I wish I hadn’t become a “dark mode” lover so quickly, but that was a lot of white in the other themes I tried. I have most of an art degree, but I wouldn’t have expected removing the blue bars between posts and narrowing the text area to be so jarring.
I’d like to chime in here. @Dinsdale, I didn’t mean to shame you. I’ve been training “new” people at work for well over a year now, and my frustration boileth over, and that was wrong. I’m a person who noodles around with stuff until I figure it out, but that doesn’t mean everyone else is, or needs to be. Cheers to your new proficiency!
Don’t mean to get on you personally, but this sorta gets at one thing I personally disfavor. I really don’t care for infinite ways to tailor my experience. Instead, all I want is one bulletproof obvious interface.
I remember way back in the early 90s, when we all got PCs at work, and did more and more of our own word processing. Any number of people felt the need to fuck around with fonts, margins and such, which did not make the work any more useful or effective (legal pleadings), but instead, made it more difficult to share, cut, and paste. (At least back then WP gave us clear “reveal codes” and such! ;)) And I quickly got out of the habit of creating personal macros, after the umpteenth upgrade erased them.
In the old SDMB system, navigating w/in a thread was obvious - click to the page number you want. (For all I know, folk could use all manner of shortcuts, notices, etc, of which I chose to remain ignorant. Going to “Last Page” ALWAYS worked.) This new system was quite different - tho, IMO, neither clearly better nor worse. Now that I see that sliding scroller, I’m able to quickly get to the end of a thread. As is usual with such tech changes, I’m already at the point where I don’t even really recall that it was different in a way I preferred.
I wish I did not perceive the momentary changeover period as being as unpleasant as I do. I recall discussing in the past the relative merits of being an early adopter vs being dragged kicking and screaming when forced. My approach - the latter - makes the transition more “traumatic.” But I really dislike the ongoing process of noodling around trying to figure out how to do things differently. Those of you who enjoy “exploring” new tech and changes may not appreciate the fatigue experienced by those of us who simply want to use the tech in a limited manner as necessary tools. I don’t need to fuck around with a hammer to make sure I’ll know how to drive a nail the next time I need to.
I’m glad others encouraged and enabled me to stick with it enough to “get over the hump.” Thanks.
I might compare the change in the board to the difference between Windows and Mac. Both operating systems are perfectly capable and do pretty much the same things. Each operating system will have certain unique features that aren’t in the other. But the interface and interaction methods are very different. Some people will have strong preferences for one way or the other, and that’s often based on these subjective differences. If a Mac workplace switched to Windows or vice-versa, there would be lots of griping. The fact that everything can be done in the other operating system would rarely soothe the unhappiness. But in the workplace, you deal with it because your livelihood depends on it. That’s not always the case with a message board. Even if everything can be done the same way in Discourse, someone may not like the Discourse interface in the same way that someone may not like the Windows or Mac interface.
