Patient's new look: Feedback

after a bit of thought:-

in summary. Issues with theme (colour scheme and contrast), navigation/scrolling to posts and "mark as read", edit, search

1:- I understand most (all?) of the changes are cosmetic. I'm wondering why change. It does give people an opportunity to comment on what is a rather unusual forum design.

2:- I understand the graphic artistry implications of primary colours for the buttons but unfortunately I feel glared at rather than rejuvenated. The important part is the text in the post. And the colour scheme for the topics and posts area seems a bit inconsistent with the colour scheme for the right hand panel (as if different pallettes) - for me it presents as unprofessional.

Wrap and Line Breaks

3:- The lack of wrap on the mobiles, requiring addition of line break, becomes too many line breaks when I read the posts.

Theme

4:- The line down left hand edge of posts to indicate indent/level doesn't quite work for me. I tend to see the background colour of the second level ... unfortunately for me there is insufficient contrast between the very very light blue and the white of the first level and surrounds. The light blue background used in the right hand panel for discussion and user stuff has sufficient contrast for me.

5:- The pale colour and small size of the posters names means they fade into the background against the graphic to their left, the envelope icon for pms, the normal text and the big coloured buttons.

5A:- it feels to me like the ratio of white space to content is quite high. I scroll a lot. I'm sure there's a happy medium.

Topic Title

6:- I'm of an age where short term memory is a bit suspect. With higher doses of prednisone even worse. By the time I've scrolled to the post(s) I haven't read I've forgotten what the subject was. A reminder of the subject in the heading for each post may be useful.

Notifications / Unread Management / Navigation

7:- The notification approach is odd to me. I used to click on email notifications and the page displayed a thread at the post I was notified about. Similarly clicking on "last post ..." used to take me to the last post. I understand there is no memory within Patient of the site ever working like that. Must have been just my computer (its special). Notifications from the list similarly go to the top of the page not the post referred to in the notification.

8:- As in 6, I think in terms of the subject, and think of a conversation rather than individual posts. Posts within the context of a conversation/thread. Notifications that refer to the posters (original, from and to) don't quite work for me - the question in my head is "which topic was that?". Subject in the notifications may be useful.

9:- In a similar vein. The topics page shows all topics and it is appropriate to list notifications for all topics on the page (or beyond). On the posts page the context is one topic, it may help if the notification list is restricted to that context.

10:- Having said that I don't understand why multiple notifications are necessary for the same topic. Maybe change the meaning of notification to be "there is at least one new post in that topic". First unread if you like. Thus, it would navigate to the post (as discussed in 7) and all subsequent posts would be after that. Not quite that easy of course due to potentially multiple branches but I'm sure you'll find a way - if there's only one notification then its a notification about the topic not an individual post and the computer can work out which unread post (first one after last visit) appears first in the sorted order.

10A:- probably not explaining it well. It would be technically possible to have the topic "last post ..." indicate if there are unread posts for the topic and click to navigate to the first unread post. A transition would be required to introduce such a change while leaving existing navigation in place.  

11:- Regardless of how one navigates to a post in a topic it may be easiest to assume that when that has happeded all the unread posts in that topic have been read. Just another way of addressing Eileen's and others "click the notification to say its read". I hate mouse clicks. Allow for pages! 

Edit

12:- edit facility would be useful (as others have suggested). 10-15 minutes seems to be an accepted norm.

divs and blocks

13:- as the window size is reduced parts of the page disappear so that the interesting content, the topic and post text, is retained. All the "unwanted" bits disappear at the same time. Thus, if the window is narrowed the right panel (with notifications and navigation etc) disappears, along with the bold/italic/emoticon/image buttons, and the sub-menu (site map). The width at which the sub-menu and the edit buttons disappear could be less than for the right side panel.

drop down menu

14:- thanks for replacing it. On my small screen it was a bit noisy.

Search

15:- an example .... I searched for "fatigue" and was given a list of 11,672. I am unlikely to page through such a long list.

       so I made it "fatigue wall staring", as I knew the post I was searching for included those words. The list grew to 18,807.

       I was particularly interested in fatigue mentioned in the pmr forum. But such a filter isn't available.

      Technically the search uses "or" logic when several words are entered. Thus, find fatigue or wall or staring.

      An alternative approach is "and" logic. Thus, find fatigue and wall and staring.

      Some search functions have "advanced search".

Thanks

16:- Finally, despite all the above the posts are extremely helpful to me. A worthwhile service. And thanks for the opportunity to comment.

Hi Patient - any change takes some adjustment by users. I think it looks fresh and clean. We'll get used to it.

As with any chnages, we get used to them.  I am not a fan of green, so I like the new colour scheme, however the report & reply buttons do rather hit you in the face.

Regarding notifications, if you scroll to the bottom of the list in the box, to 'see all notifications' & click on that, you get the whole page of notifications.  I save thhis page to my desktop & go there in the morning.  I can see what I want to read.  I mark the page as 'mark all as read' then I am not constantly reminded to read all the replies in a post such as this one.

I tried Les's program that he mentioned f.lux but didn't like it.  It put a very strange yellow/orange glow over everything.  However, the white has too much glare on it, so whether Patient can tone that down?  I have a chronic eye condition & am photophobic much of the time