steeb Wrote:Martin. what I would like to see is a more dynamic forum, taking on the changes that are happening outside of the box that I sit in.

What do you mean exactly?

sub Wrote:What do you mean exactly?

All down to individual interpretration of course.
I actually berate myself in some ways for even suggesting it.....
I am not a fond user of 'clubs' or 'branding' BUT...
ONE webpage, ONE forum, ONE wiki with a unified approach. All have the same look and feel. I am NOT trying to say the forum is wrong. Just one looky approach to everything?
Dang it. I am so fed up saying this. And am so fed up wasting your time when your genius is going to waste talking to me.

cheers

steeb

Am I dinosaur? Yes & I totally accept it

Am I against change? Not in the least (as long as after the change it is as "user friendly" as it was before the change)

Is the Main web page better than it was before?? Most definitely yes

Is the wiki better than it was before? Yes & no.
Looks better? Yes
As usable? Not really
Could it look better (with the current styling) & also be as usable?? Yes with a small amount of graphics editing to shrink some things down so there isn't a big blank space at the top & the grey sidebars were thinner (it would still look in keeping with the main webpage)

Could this (modified) background work as a forum background without screwing up the useability? Yes
Is it is possible to display a background image?? I have no idea.

steeb Wrote:ONE webpage, ONE forum, ONE wiki with a unified approach. All have the same look and feel. I am NOT trying to say the forum is wrong. Just one looky approach to everything?

I don't think it's needed, for several reasons:
- The forum in the current setup is working well, and I think it looks good.
- Vbulletin updates become a big hassle if you modify the templates and skins
- There doesn't seem to be any support for the idea that these types of changes are needed. If 'change is needed' was the popular opinion, I'd certainly look into what we could do. I'm not getting any sense that is what people want though.

I'm not opposed to change itself. What I'm opposed to is:

1) Change for the sake of change.
2) Change that sacrifices functionality for looks (not saying that will happen but it's been my experience with other forums).
3) Burdening sub with other duties (keeping the changes lined up with vBulletin releases) instead of allowing him to continue to focus on NextPVR development (which is the only reason the forum exists in the first place).

If the forum was broken or difficult to navigate, I would be the first one in line to recommend changes, but that is simply not the case.

+1 for whurlston

I'd say the forum could look like it's running on an Apple ][ if NextPVR got all of Subs time in thought and development.

The only thing on the board that seems to not work well for me is the search function. But Google is the answer for that. It finds relevant topics for me quite quickly.

I like how the topics are broken down into many sections. For example, I'm not a coder, so I never visit the Developers section. I don't even know what they're talking about. :o

I use the net to find information that I want or need. I don't want or need the fluff that many sites foist on visitors these days. IMO it's just a waste of bandwidth.

The only thing that I'd suggest is also a problem I have with this and other sites that speak to steeb's "unified site" comment. On the main page in the upper right, there are tabs for "Wiki" and "Forum". That tab matches on the Wiki page (but no way to go back to the main page.) The forum has neither that I can see.

All three sections should have those "tabs" to let users bounce between the areas with relative ease e.g. Main, Forum, Wiki. Even though not pretty in a back-end sense, you could do it here with "old school" html frames with the top frame just containing the tabs so you wouldn't have to modify anything about vBulletin when it updates.

2 cents,
-smajor

One thing that is very useful in the forum, is that it is easy to speed read.
I like the web page and wiki's look. but they are not so easy to speed read, but it is not so important as you are usually looking for something specific and with detail.
To make a page speed readable it has to be close to the printed page in appearance (ie boring) - its what we usually learnt to read on.
At the moment the forum lives up to this specification and any thing that reduced my - and more importantly Sub's - ability to speed read would be a step in the wrong direction.
That's what I think anyway

ill jump in here. i'm a web/windows developer by trade, my primary program i work on is a very large web app, using lots of html, css, jquery type stuff.

personally i think this forum is absolutely fine, its a forum, its quick, does its job, has nice features (like auto save, which just popped up).

the main nextpvr page is fine, its not stunning, but its perfectly fine, looks nice enough. nice how it matches the default theme of the gui.

the wiki is nice, a lot nicer than the original gbpvr wiki.

so err, not sure what your bitching about... i rather sub spend his time working on features for nextpvr than trying to make the forums website super pretty when its not needed.