I agree, however I use an 11" Chromebook as my primary computer. (300 bucks!!:D)
The floating forum banner (and arrow) seems redundant as the top header shows you what forum you are reading or posting in already.
Font improvements in sizing etc are much better.
Thank you to Straight Dope for working on these issues.
edit: wow I have a post count!! I read here 2-3 hrs every night, Elections and Debates but rarely post.
It would be nice if there were a drop-down field at the bottom of the screen from which one could pick a skin: the new one or the classic one.
This has been suggested about 26 times in various threads, and it’s incredibly easy to implement. It boggles my mind that they haven’t adopted this solution.
OK, this is weird. The width of the column seems to vary with the forum. I wrote the above while looking at the forum page for Cafe Society. But then I checked out the forum pages for Elections and the Game Room, and they’re both noticeably narrower, with way more white space on the page on account of that.
Another last post column issue. This column needs to be WAAAAY wider.
Or, you could,take the 30 seconds needed to turn on the ability for your customers to choose which theme they prefer* and make the current theme the default so that Google will think you’re mobile-device compatible.
Any reason this hasn’t been done? Is there a problem with letting the users choose which style best suits them?
*Log onto the admin control panel.
Styles&Templates->Style Manager
Choose “Add new style”. Add the old style back in.
Then about 3 to 4 mouse clicks to make the current one the default and you’re done.
Ed Zotti, please respond:
Is there any reason why you’re not implementing this, at least in the mean time while you work these issues out?
This is a question that deserves an answer.
On my phone, each line of text still breaks mid word. It makes it a bit harder to read.
And here I thought the redesign was supposed to be “an upgrade for mobile devices.” If it’s not working out all that great for those of you who access the Dope by phone or tablet, then the redesign doesn’t seem to have much point, given how much it sucks for us desktop/laptop folks.
I use a bog-standard iPhone/iOS Safari when viewing on mobile, and it’s not really functional there at all. Aside from the already itemized formatting problems, information has been removed from the forum view making it impossible to judge what threads I want to click on. So, the mobile upgrades have made me not able to browse on mobile.
In my ‘about me’ page, there’s no longer an edit button next to signature (like there is for occupation, hobbies, etc.).
On a more general note, I’m in favor of making the SDMB more mobile friendly. Tapatalk just doesn’t work well with a threaded and categorized message board (or at least it didn’t when I used it ~3 years ago).
This is much better already (for me at least), no more eyestrain so far and I can read for longer periods of time. Also i really like that floating arrow that goes to top of page - very handy! Thanks! 
Users might choose a theme that makes it difficult to show ads.
Much of the complicated code in this redesign seems to be designed to defeat ad-blocker software that many of us use.
Sigh, I really hope that isn’t part of the rationale. I paid up my membership partly not to see ads. (I use an ad-blocker anyway whenever browsing.) Seems members would be paying twice - once with money and secondly with a significantly reduced experience.
I have found the forums much harder to use on my iPhone, so so far the exercise has been a negative effort with no upside at all. And I notice I am not participating as much as I did. No idea what others have found, but it al seems a bit less lively than before. As if it was more of a struggle to participate than before. That is potentially a really bad thing. It tends to cascade.
I’m part of this. While I’m not the most prolific poster, a usual “workflow” for me is to read the latest on my phone when I get a chance (e.g. waiting for a meeting, getting lunch, …), and if there is a thread I want to post to, I pull the site up on my computer when I next have a sufficient chunk of time.
But since I can’t usefully read the board on my iPhone, my workflow is stopped before it gets started. I have no idea what’s being discussed in GQ (my usual haunt) right now.
I’m not confident this is as easy as people think. I’ve asked my contractor; he doesn’t know and is inquiring. Don’t misunderstand - you can certainly add themes, and possibly the site administrator (i.e., me) can easily toggle between them (I’ve asked about this also), but I’m not about to take a flyer and have the whole board go south. I see nothing to suggest that individual users can be given the ability to toggle between themes, but have asked the theme developer. If it’s as easy as some say, fine, but - meaning no disrespect - I want authoritative reassurance on this point.
Meanwhile, we’ve got a beta site ready to go, so at minimum we can check out fixes there before loading them to the production site. I’d give out the URL and credentials but the latest changes don’t appear to have been implemented so there’s nothing of interest to look at now.
I don’t know how easy it is, but it is a feature that I see on nearly every vBulletin board that has any theme other than slight variations on the default. It appears to be a built in feature.
Fenris is mod on another board, so it is very likely that he knows how easy it actually is. I know that said board has added a bunch of different themes.
Just looking it up, it appears it just a built-in setting:
Settings> Style and Language settings>Allow users to change styles > “YES”
Of course, both themes would have to still be installed for this to work.
This sounds very reasonable, including the need for caution. I think if it were possible and relatively easy, having a user being able to toggle between the old and new themes and having it stick based on a cookie on each device, would be absolutely awesome. May I suggest that maybe this should be one of the priority investigations on the beta site.
Not as far as I can tell. There are just ad placeholders that the contractor did not remove. Perhaps they are there and then are supposed to replaced by real ads.
But all they are are images hosted on the site itself, and they are easy to block. In fact, as I said, I blocked them in my script. I took care to not block any real ads, but just hide any placeholders.