[Closed] Website redesign - Update

Thanks for the update. The mobile version seems great on the iPhone.

Oh! Hadn't noticed on my android phone

It's great on an Android phone here, and last night on a Windows 10 desktop was flawless.
Great work!

Thanks for the update, all good on my Android phone.

Looks really good - much more usable on the iPhone than before. Looks better on desktop too.

Loving it on windows phone. Much easier to read

Chrome on Android phone. No zoom.

Overall I love it, including the new green buttons. Only thing I miss is the pinch zoom on my android phone, it helps when looking at pic's and stuff.

It looks great on most devices now but not all yet. We are working to fix that.

There's some design changes that will need to be made too. The fact the Forum overview button/link is not displayed when you are in a forum thread will be sorted soon. I know that makes navigation on a mobile easier. Plus we have a few ideas for improving the forum page layout on mobiles so you can get directly to the last page on the post, even when the forum thread title is truncated.

So, sorry for the glitches but please bear with us 🙂

Pinch-zoom on Android-Chrome...

Settings
Accessibility
Force Enable Zoom

And the zoom... 🙂

Which still works in some browsers but not others. Safari works. Chrome doesn't. Definitely on the list.

Well it's not working so well on my IPad. Those adds in the middle of the thread are very irritating. The zoom in n out does not seem to be working.

Happy Christmas.

Thanks for the update.

In chrome I'd previously set the default text size in accessibility, so the forum text is now the same as all other web content without needing to pinch zoom as with the old style forum code

Is this the default issue reporting thread? Anyway, only thing I've noticed font sizes not being consistent in quote text on the mobile version, (which is what I'm getting when reducing the window size at work to be a bit discrete)

As someone smarter than me posted on the other thread, in android chrome, go to settings, accessibility and select force pinch zoom to override the website settings.

Is this the default issue reporting thread?

I have no idea. TBH, I think I'm going to say "yes" and close the other one. If nothing else the URL is a bit more obvious as to what it means (either that or the redesign has broken people's bloody eyes as well).

there's always bugs that only surface once you are live

Poly's post on this thread is in a smaller font size than the rest...?

Also.. all the text is really quite big, with no option to make it smaller? It is larger than the default I have set in chrome (android)

Contrary to some comments we have been testing it [b]quietly[/b] behind the scenes prior to yesterday's launch

Testing it thoroughly would have been more useful.

there's always bugs that only surface once you are live

This is true, but many of the bugs that you've gone live with are the type that should be caught by testing.

Working well on windows 7 + chrome, my Lollypop android device (vodafone smart ultra 6) and also my marshmellow device (vodafone smart ultra 7).

Good update.

Zoom not working in safari on my iPad today .

molgrips - Member
Poly's post on this thread is in a smaller font size than the rest...?

FWIW I love the button colour. Is there a RAL colour for that?

[i]Too busy skipping to the top to post[/i]

[quote=molgrips ]Poly's post on this thread is in a smaller font size than the rest...?
Also.. all the text is really quite big, with no option to make it smaller? It is larger than the default I have set in chrome (android)

thisTHIS on a chrome book

also quoted text is the size it used to be and any other comment MASSIVE again
Not great to look at

PS why did you o something like this at Xmas? everyone in work should be freewheeling today....you should be more like your users and less dedicated 😉

[quote=Stoner ]As someone smarter than me posted on the other thread, in android chrome, go to settings, accessibility and select force pinch zoom to override the website settings.

not a fix on a chromebook as no setting in chrome to do this- may be my ineptness

Just realised, the redesign has seen the end of Times New Roman on my browser... 🙁

You need a "back to top" link Mark on the pages regardless of device.

You don't need a "back to top" button, you need whatever's so important at the top putting at the bottom as well. (Which TBF was always a bugbear of mine with the 'classic' site design.)

Ok.. So if iPad/tablet users could hit refresh now....

Way better on mobile devices. Top work...

Now bearable on android if you request desktop site.

You don't need a "back to top" button on iPad you just tap the top of the screen, it's an inbuilt feature to Safari on iOS

Thanks Mark and Team, but you really ought to out riding bikes rather than being brow beaten by MAWCBs, just sayin.

Settings
Accessibility
Force Enable Zoom

No such option on my Galaxy S6 😕

No such option on my Galaxy S6

What browser?

If we report a bug can we get 6 months free subscription or something?

Free coffee tamper of course

Cougar - Moderator
You don't need a "back to top" button, you need whatever's so important at the top putting at the bottom as well. (Which TBF was always a bugbear of mine with the 'classic' site design.)

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.

edit - oh look - there's now a puce green "skip to top" button....

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! [url= http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/68872/why-does-puce-mean-two-different-colors-depending-on-where-you-live ]See![/url]

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,

[i]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]

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

EDIT: Wikipedia -

[i]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.[/i]

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.

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 [url= https://productforums.google.com/forum/m/#!forum/chrome ]https://productforums.google.com/forum/m/#!forum/chrome[/url] 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 [url= http://adrianroselli.com/2015/10/dont-disable-zoom.html ]http://adrianroselli.com/2015/10/dont-disable-zoom.html[/url] 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

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

[img] http://t2.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcSOqWWjXZyJf_LrRb-NyfCpLSwwVagMwpUsFqn3OMBdLkadawQWawveRj_6qg [/img]

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 🙂