Website redesign – Update

Seems to be working alright for me, w10 chrome, moto g4 chrome. The mobile site seems better, can’t zoom, but the text is larger and more readable, so don’t really miss it.

Those in thread ads would do my head in though!

Ooh the blank ad frame at the right has gone on my iPad. Jolly good.

perhaps Cougar however on PC/Mac scrolling back to the top to do anything else is antiquated – especially when pages here can run to the number of posts they do.
either put the forum headers there too or a “back to the top” link.

That was my point. Why go back to the top of the page at all, just have the links you need at the bottom. (You seriously scroll to the top of a page on a PC? Is your Home button broken?)

edit – oh look – there’s now a puce green “skip to top” button….

Puce is a sort of red-purple. HTH.

Zoom seems fine on my iPad (ie finger zoom in/out)

Thanks for update, best of luck with updates (Christmas timing ambitious, no rest for the wicked 🙂 )

Puce is a sort of red-purple. HTH.

More of a snot green really.
Dunno what all the fuss is about, all seems to work fine for me 😀
Although I don’t bother trying to use it on my phone – aging eyes and all that, can’t be doing with all the squinting.

It’ snot. Possibly that’s puke green you’re thinking of.

Cougar – I’m british not american! See!

And no – my home button isn’t borked but whether scrolling back up or hitting the home button – its movement that isn’t necessary if the links and/or skip to top is at the bottom.
Where just about every other site/forum manage to put them 🙄

Comment on that link,

It’s interesting, because I can find a lot of people claiming that puce green is a colour that exists, but I can’t find many usage examples

I’ve only ever known it to be purple, even in pre-web days.

EDIT: Wikipedia –

Puce is the French word for flea. The color is said to be the color of bloodstains on linen or bedsheets, even after being laundered—or from a flea’s droppings, or after a flea has been crushed.

The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) dates the first English use of “puce” as a color to 1778. The name comes from the French word puce, or flea
…
Puce green dates back to at least 1810, when green tea was described as “puce green” in color. This phrase is still found today in the UK and the US, where it means a “pea soup” color. Hypotheses that this usage comes from misappropriation or derivation from “puke green” or “pus green” are purely speculative.

So it’s purple according to the OED, can also be green but either way it’s not a US/UK thing. (Like in your link, my gran used to use it to describe someone red with anger.)

Puce has always been green (well a sickly snt shade of it) to me.

oh look – there’s now a puce green “skip to top” button.

Wasn’t that there last night?

And we now have a Forum Overview link at the bottom.

Other than the varying font size thing it seems pretty much sorted.

Fine on Chrome and Android 6.0.
Moto G3.

I like it.

Can zoom fine with 2 fingers, if that’s the issue people are having?

Any chance we could get rid of the banner, or at least make it transparent?
It seems to make everything look cramped.

The window for posting responses could be a bit wider too, again, just feels cramped.

I can switch between mobile and desktop options, but this didn’t always work yesterday.
Will have a play.

Ta!

Overall, I like it. Making a change like this to a well established website is hard and there will be issues, it’s just life. I know – I’m trying to work on something similar.

A couple of tools might help your dev/test people though:

Bugherd.com – make a really easy way for people to report issues with the update, whilst you automatically capture things like their OS/Browser. Provides a nice little kanban board for progressing the issues.

Browserstack.com – allows you to test the site in many browsers and devices, all at once. Including being able to get a whole zip file of many generated screenshots of a url on demand.

I’d be lost without these.

Rachel

Browserstack is already in the armoury and used extensively.

Oh and the ‘Skip to top’ button has always been there Hammy.

Ads are still covering the right hand side of the page on an iPad mini and no pinch and zoom

It’s fine on the iPad mini here in the office. Have you refreshed the page?

Also, as far as zoom goes I’d like to manage expectations here.
We are looking at ways to make the content clearer but the reason we are not just simply throwing the switch on the zoom function in the website design is because our SEO standings with Google stand to be compromised if we do that. Google doesn’t like zoom designed into websites – it prefers that to be left to the accessibilty options within the browser. The theory, which I tend to agree with, is that zoo is an accessibility featured designed to aid the visually impaired. If a site requires it’s non visually impaired users to zoom in order to access the content then it is the design of the site that is the problem. Google impresses on designers that a site should be accessible to the masses without having to resort to accessibility features designed for the visually impaired and as such it handicaps the search rankings for sites that need to use zoom in much the same way it handicaps the rankings of sites that don’t adapt to mobile devices.

Our line of attack on this issue is to first make the content as clear as possible for as many people as possible without the need to use the zoom function. We are looking to fix the ability to force zoom via all browser settings for those that really do want to use it.

Small bug.
On iPhone 5S latest OS
A member’s Forum History Page horizontally-scrolls slightly, making it awkward to vertically scroll.

Mark, would a user setting work? Allow the readers to select small / medium / large maybe? Some folks have said it’s too small; for me it’s too big. Or does that hit the same issue?

for me it’s too big

+1 – in landscape in the iphone, Stevie Wonder could read it.

(My enormous digits are too clumsy to type in portrait mode with any precision)

I want to zoom…. but out, not in

Like it better on my windows phone (the banner makes returning to main forum page easier for me).

I still want zoom though as I use it, well, to zoom in. Things like pictures and videos. Its what drew me to the iPad in the first place. **** google!

Have you changed the colour of the font, or the font itself? I am finding it hard to read as the size is too small but when I pinch zoom I am still finding lots of text difficult on a larger scale.
Using a iPad Pro 12.9 on landscape if that helps.
Also all of the adds in between posts seems a bit much.

I want to zoom…. but out, not in

+another, it’s far too big. Safari on iPhone.

Found the accessibility settings, I was looking at the phone settings not the browser, oopsie 😳

This does mean that it’s all good again, yay! Well apart from some odd sized text after quotes but I can live with that 😀

Just had an odd one – went to comment on a thread and got the slow down, your going to fast error

Had to refresh the page 3 times to be able to add the comment

Other than that it looks good, but any news on the Trail Guides section as it looks like this hasn’t been touched in a year or so – As I am sitting here with my leg in a brace can I offer to help with it ?

Not much has changed for me.
1.The Singletrack word at the top flickers as I scroll.
2.The text is bigger.
3.Top left of the page has a row of short lines that’s new.
4.On my tablet there’s an annoying CRC ad in the middle of the thread and
2 is good, 4 is annoying but hey adverts pay and I don’t, 1 and 3 just irritate mildly but see 4.
My old complaint that the reply box couldn’t keep up with my one fingered typing has been resolved. Its the same as every other forum now. 😀

Oh yeah.
Its very bleak, just grey or black. Add some colour!

I don’t mind the monochrome look – makes it easy to read (4.7″ screen)

Looks good, I prefer the simplicity of it now, easy to read quickly.

Don’t like that you can’t see full thread title or who started the thread on forum overview. (Chrome on Android phone).

IPad user here.
Right-hand ad has gone, which means you can actually read posts in full – yay!
CRC ad still in the middle of the thread
GIANT font
Nice mushy-pea-green buttons

but the text is larger and more readable, so don’t really miss

Noooooooo, the text is way too big, need to be able to zoom out to make it more readable. It’s like reading a children’s book.

Is it possible to have user selectable text size in message bodies?

the reason we are not just simply throwing the switch on the zoom function in the website design is because our SEO standings with Google stand to be compromised if we do that. Google doesn’t like zoom designed into websites – it prefers that to be left to the accessibilty options within the browser. The theory, which I tend to agree with, is that zoo is an accessibility featured designed to aid the visually impaired. If a site requires it’s non visually impaired users to zoom in order to access the content then it is the design of the site that is the problem. Google impresses on designers that a site should be accessible to the masses without having to resort to accessibility features designed for the visually impaired and as such it handicaps the search rankings for sites that need to use zoom in much the same way it handicaps the rankings of sites that don’t adapt to mobile devices.

I don’t believe that’s true. For example https://productforums.google.com/forum/m/#!forum/chrome has zoom enabled. You’ve done what SEO requires you to do by making the site work on a mobile without having to resort to zoom. You don’t need then to disable zoom. See http://adrianroselli.com/2015/10/dont-disable-zoom.html for why you shouldn’t.

Mostly OK, but a quick way of reaching the last post in a thread would be nice – maybe just a first or last post option from the front page, for instance I’d think it’s pretty rare anyone wants to open up page 3 of the eu thread

but a quick way of reaching the last post in a thread would be nice

Good idea

That’ll be the “Latest reply” link at the top of each page then?

Shame you have to open the thread first to get to it.

And then it puts the post under the banner 😀

Yep like that but from the front page, on a nice obvious button that’s big enough to push with stumpy fingers on a small screen (the page buttons are hit and miss for me). How about a version of

The basis of adaptive design seems to be that optimum display characteristics depend on device/OS – I find this is incorrect. For example, a longsighted user with a narrow screen will need different adaptation to a shortsighted user with a wider screen. Or, some people want to see the name of the thread starter, others don’t care. I want to be able to tell the site which version I want, not have it decided for me.

Zoom for the “post/edit” text area please, when on an iPad.
Or a bigger font size in there. It’s minuscule on this device.
Or tell me where I left my specs…

Disappointed we’ve not gone back to the old maroon/cream colour scheme.

Maybe a 10th anniversary edition?

Dev is done for Christmas now. But further tweaks will surface next week and in the coming weeks. Thanks for the constructive feedback and have a great Christmas if you are having one 🙂