Looks good....

[Budget_Player_Cadet]

@Rilchiam

(I do appreciate the multi-quote feature.)

That’s always been there.

@SenorBeef

The bars are too big, the distance between stuff is terrible, it just looks amatuerish.

This is probably my biggest critique as well. There’s a *lot *more dead space on almost any given page.

@Joey_P

I guessing/hoping something got reset. Was this an update/upgrade? It looks like we’re on 3.8, with 5 being the current version. I don’t remember what we were on before, but I would have guessed we would have upgraded to 4 if we made a move.

So, maybe they got it up and running and went home for the night?

I think we went from 3.6 to 3.8, and that would be my first thought for the source of all these graphical changes - maybe it’s just a change to the default skin? After all, the old boards were running pretty much just vanilla 3.6 skin with a banner on top. That said, there is one graphical change I really need to stress, as it is a matter of usability:

[Album] imgur.com

This lost two important functions:

1. You can no longer tell which pages of the thread you have previously visited. This was always a little broken because at times you didn’t visit the page URL, but rather the “latest post” URL and browsed from there*, but it was still really nice to have…

2. It’s no longer really easy to tell at a glance which page you’re on. Sure, it’s still there, on the left, but it’s no longer visible right where the action is, right where you want to move your mouse. This is a mildly annoying usability issue, but the good news is, it should be really easy to fix:

	<td class="alt1"><a class="smallfont" href="showthread.php?t=722058&page=37" title="Show results 1,801 to 1,850 of 2,341"><!---10-->37</a></td><td class="alt1"><a class="smallfont" href="showthread.php?t=722058&page=45" title="Show results 2,201 to 2,250 of 2,341">45</a></td><td class="alt1"><a class="smallfont" href="showthread.php?t=722058&page=46" title="Show results 2,251 to 2,300 of 2,341">46</a></td>	<td class="alt2"><span class="smallfont" title="Showing results 2,301 to 2,341 of 2,341"><strong>47</strong></span></td>

This is from the source code of the page links of page 47; notice how the currently active page has span class=“smallfont” instead of a class=“smallfont”, and also td class=“alt2” instead of td class=“alt1”? A little change to the CSS of either of those should do the trick. Doesn’t have to be much, maybe just making those links blue again instead of black would help.

These are very minor fixes but would be very nice to have.
*Difference:

http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=722058&page=47

vs

http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?p=20460561#post20460561

Both get you the same web page, but only one lets your browser know you visited the previous link. This is not a problem worth fixing, because doing so would probably require the use of an SEO engine and that’s just way way more hassle than it could possibly be worth.

@Joey_P

Unless they’re still making changes (since I never use it and didn’t look until I read this), I have it, it’s right there at the bottom.

Edit…yup, they’re still making changes, one of those ‘go to top’ arrows just showed up, I fucking hate those. Get rid of that, I really, really hate those go to top buttons. I never use them and they irrationally distract me.

Edit 2: You edited your post and the change was reflected in my post…I don’t like that either. Not in this case, it’s no big deal, just in general. That could have some nasty ramifications.

I’m curious what happens if people mess around with editing/changing/snipping quotes and then the author changes it, or the other way around. If they keep that feature, it’s something to play with.

Well, given this forum’s (still rather absurd) 5-minute edit window, I can’t see it causing that much trouble. Big honkin’ banana creme pies.

@eschereal

On my iPad, the Edit/Quote/MultiQuote/QuickReply buttons under the posts are sometimes just buttons, sometimes accompanied by text hyperlinks.

The big honking hyperlink doesn’t do anything on Firefox - I have to press the icon itself. This is not intuitive, and I think it’s probably a bug.

@Omniscient

The go to top arrow is nice, but will get rare use.

My biggest critique is this: Imgur: The magic of the Internet

Notice how it’s this semitransparent thing overlapping numerous other visually busy design elements? Nice feature, not aesthetically pleasing. If it were smaller and fit in the margin, it would look a lot better. This is really small potatoes on my part, though.

Ooo, no page refresh after submitting a quick reply, that’s nice. So is the inline edit box.

That’s always been there on Firefox and Chrome at least.

@SenorBeef

Oh good, the one feature I wanted - that the “go to last unread post” button would work properly, does not work. If you view from different browsers (say desktop vs phone) and click “go to last unread” it will take you to a more or less random post. Maybe if you’re lucky it’ll take you to the last unread post it took you to from the other browser, sometimes just random, but never actually works right.

Other message boards can get this feature right somehow.

That has both always been there and never quite worked right on StraightDope. And if I had to guess why, it would be a certain backend setting. It’s been quite a while since I used vBulletin, but IIRC, basically there are a couple of different ways vBulletin can track which posts and threads any given user has read or not read. There are three options I remember, each of which is a tradeoff between efficiency and functionality. The more accurate you want it, the more resources it takes.

For example, cookies are cheap, but they don’t track between browsers, so they kinda suck for anyone not stuck on one device. Saving view data in the database ensures that everyone knows exactly what they’ve seen, but it’s a huge amount of data, so only small boards and boards with impressive cash behind them can get away with it.

So unless someone pays the hamsters more, that’s probably not getting fixed - for a forum this size, improving that functionality could actually really hurt performance.

[Budget_Player_Cadet]

@Budget_Player_Cadet

Well, given this forum’s (still rather absurd) 5-minute edit window, I can’t see it causing that much trouble.

This is a test.
EDIT: no idea what you guys are talking about with editing quoted posts. Doesn’t seem to be a thing?

[cochrane]

Shit is missing. I can’t see who was the last person to post to a thread or how long ago. This update is a shitshow. It looks like crap. I set my browser to give me a desktop view, but the site overrides it. Goodbye, SDMB. You had me for 11 years, but not if I have to put up with this shittiness. You’ve finally done it. You’ve finally driven me away from here.

[AHunter3]

I think I would have preferred the “like” button after all.

[steatopygia]

@AHunter3

I think I would have preferred the “like” button after all.

<pushes like button>

[wolfpup]

I’m not going to quibble about small aesthetic changes. But the gigantic font size in normal posts makes me feel like I’m reading a child’s first grade reading primer, or that I accidentally turned on accessibility features for the handicapped. It takes up a needless amount of space and is ugly and annoying – and I’m looking at it on a high-resolution 1920 x 1200 IPS monitor – it will be even worse on low-res displays. What makes it even worse is that quoted text is the former normal size, and also, post previews look normal but then blow up into giant font size when actually posted, so they’re not really “previews” any more.

Do whatever you like with everything else, I won’t complain, but the gigantic fonts just so it might work better on phones is a silly tradeoff when it looks so much worse on real computers than it did before. When I read that the system was going to be down to make changes to improve the mobile experience, I would never have imagined that the changes would be global and affect real computers with real monitors.

[cmyk]

I’m mostly annoyed by losing the location and join date on the mobile version. And that requesting the desktop version doesn’t work.

Yeeesh.
ETA: oh, great. Signatures are on by default. Double yeeesh.

[Budget_Player_Cadet]

Another little CSS bug (warning: mild Hearthstone spoilers).

@cmyk

I’m mostly annoyed by losing the location and join date on the mobile version. And that requesting the desktop version doesn’t work.

Yeeesh.
ETA: oh, great. Signatures are on by default. Double yeeesh.

I… did not used to have a Signature. I thought those were only for charter members.

[Spoons]

@wolfpup

When I read that the system was going to be down to make changes to improve the mobile experience, I would never have imagined that the changes would be global and affect real computers with real monitors.

QFT. I’ve looked at the SDMB on my phone perhaps once. Every other time, it’s been on a real computer with a real monitor.

Since I made my last post, about how I don’t need my glasses, I’ve looked around a bit. It seems somewhat retro to me, like the SDMB was fifteen or so years ago. Not what I’d expect a forum of today to look like. I’ll get used to it, I suppose–I’ve seen many changes here since I signed up–but it just doesn’t look as polished and professional as it used to.

One thing I would suggest–get rid of the default “include the user’s sig.” Imagine my surprise when a sig popped up for me on preview–one I haven’t seen since at least 2001, and one which I had no choice but to include when I posted. Well, I could have not included it, if I went into User CP and deleted it entirely (which I eventually did), then reposted; but we had the option before to include by default or not. I selected “not,” so I was surprised when I could find no such option now–it was either “include your sig and post,” or “don’t post at all.” Can anything be done about this?

[wolfpup]

… and just as an extra added bonus, ads are now appearing interspersed between the ugly giant-font posts, despite the latest version of Adblock Plus being told to block everything!

[Budget_Player_Cadet]

Another little CSS bug:

[ul]
[li]This is a different size[/li][/ul]

than this

[Cugel]

Fixing the date format would’ve been more welcome

[orcenio]

I know, right? mm-dd-yyyy

What insanity.

[BigT]

Desktop thoughts:

It’s not just the blue bars. It’s that there is no space below them. It’s off center and doesn’t fit with the rest. There needs to be a bit of space below them.

The selection color is definitely wrong for this layout. I’m guessing that’s a default thing they need to fix. If it must be a different color, it should match the bluish theme.

The Reply button on top seems to be wasting space, since there’s nothing below it.

I think the go to top button is too big. It makes sense to be that big on mobile, but my zoom level is low enough that I’m clearly not on mobile. It’s also too far from the actual bottom right, if that’s what you’re going for.

And I see the same repeated ad multiple times. It seems to have a pretty normal name, and not to be some attempt make people shut off adblock (which a lot of us don’t want to do due to past issues, and Ed has given permission).

There are strange alignment differences with the info to the the right of the usernames. They should be just align: right.

Text size seems perfectly fine to me. I maybe had to bump it down 5% on the zoom I had it at before. So it what, went up one 1 pt? And since I can actually zoom out a bit more than before, it balances out.

Edit: Quoted text is back to being styled, which we got rid of, and is too small compared to the rest of the text.

And my sig should not default to being on. Nor should the advanced edit box not fill the entire width. It’s smaller than the Quick Reply!

[Crazyhorse]

I don’t think this was a vbulletin upgrade. It looks like it’s just a new pre-packaged theme purchased from here. https://www.sultantheme.com/product/st-vb3-responsive/

For those not using phones if you’re annoyed by the giant font you can always set your browser zoom level to something more readable (control and + or - keys to zoom up and down) I find a setting of about 70% brings it down to a reasonable size. Unfortunately there isn’t a button to correct the overall ugliness of this theme. I hope this is just an accidental leak of the beta version or something and there will be many changes still to come.

Some of our userscript authors may be able to write a script to use the old theme instead if it’s still on the server. The current theme is called ‘Sultantheme’s Responsive vB3-blue’ and the old one was called ‘Straight Dope v3.7.3’ I’m not sure a simple replacement of the theme name will work. But if you’re a userscript guru looking to improve the world, you know what to do.

[BigT]

@Crazyhorse

But if you’re a userscript guru looking to improve the world, you know what to do.

“Improve the world” makes me think you’re talking to me. But not the guru.

I’d need access to the source before this change. It’s not just a single file. Thought it does seem to mostly be CSS, which wouldn’t make it too hard to deal with.

Google’s cache already has the CSS changes, so that’s not helpful. I’ll keep looking, I guess.

I’m personally more interested in this one getting fixed up before I’d actually do stuff like that, anyways.

Plus it’s well past my bed time.

[Crazyhorse]

@BigT

Improve the world, yes. Guru? Not so much.

I’d need access to the source before this change. It’s not just a single file. Thought it does seem to mostly be CSS, which wouldn’t make it too hard to deal with.

Google’s cache already has the CSS changes, so that’s not helpful. I’ll keep looking, I guess.

You’re more of a guru than I - If it’s any help I found the original source on the web archive (internet wayback machine) and the different portions I could find were:

<!-- CSS Stylesheet -->
<style type="text/css" id="vbulletin_css">
/**
* vBulletin 3.8.7 CSS
* Style: 'Straight Dope v3.7.3'; Style ID: 12
*/

was changed to:

<!-- CSS Stylesheet -->
<style type="text/css" id="vbulletin_css">
/**
* vBulletin 3.8.7 CSS
* Style: 'Sultantheme's Responsive vB3-blue'; Style ID: 16
*/

[sweat209]

@BigT

There are strange alignment differences with the info to the the right of the usernames. They should be just align: right.

Can you post a screen shot. Nothing seems out of alignment on my browser.

[sweat209]

What is this Go box, up box and menu box thing floating over the text when reading the threads?

[Crazyhorse]

@sweat209

Can you post a screen shot. Nothing seems out of alignment on my browser.

Here’s an example of what I think he meant. The post count, join date, etc. are just free-floating around over there instead of being aligned to the right. If you resize your browser window bigger you’ll see it more prominently.

It just occurred to me those used to be only visible on paid member’s posts but now they are visible for all posts.