Bad Forum

1of750

This forum is so disjointed and hard to use that I think I will just leave it alone and wait to see if it evolves into anything I would like to use.
Regards
Michael

MikkoK

Hi Michael,

I'm sorry to hear that! Many things are certainly different now and we're working hard to get some of the best features of the old platform to this new one as well. Meanwhile, if you can tell me in more detail what you're having difficulties with I'd be happy to try and help you.

Cheers, Mikko

1of750

Not to worry: I'll determine it I want to stay and use it after a little more familiarity.
BTW: Where is spell check for posts? and the emotions "suck. Why would the button to post a reply say "save" I don't want to "save" it I want to "post it?

MikkoK

Hi Michael,

There's currently no spell check. We're looking into the need of having one on the forum as there are browser plugins for this as well.

There aren't indeed too many smileys. There's been a lot request for more so that's on the list

I don't quite understand your comment about the button. It should say Post comment. That's what I see. Of course, if you edit your post, then you'll be saving your edit.

Cheers, Mikko

1of750

Yes, you are right, it does say Post comment. Sorry about that.

MikkoK

No worries Please, let me know if you have any further questions/comments about the new forum.

Cheers, Mikko

Madboy

I agree. You can't drill down through the forum anymore! It's absolutely awful. MikkoK I know what you are going to say is that we will get used to it etc etc. But it's just plain awful, it really is. I had high hopes for the new forum and to be honest I shall be giving it a rest. You can no longer "go up a level". When I went to reply to the post I had to log in and then find this thread again.

There are many things that need doing. As 1of750 has said I shall also be "lying low" as well.

MikkoK

Hi Madboy,

As I said, we're working hard on improving this new forum and certainly won't settle with "getting used to it". We have long list of improvements/issues we're working with the InSided folks to implement/fix. You should be seeing results shortly

Cheers, Mikko

keithcurtis

I too am losing the will to live when using this forum. So much space it is like being in the middle of a field yet nothing much here. I really enjoyed using the old one as most things were at your finger tips. Now you only see a couple of posts at a time and when you click to enter a thread it takes you to the beginning and have to find a way your way to the last unread post. In the old one at least you could choose to open the thread at the end or "last" or if not to many pages you could choose an exact one.

I had high hopes for the new forum like maybe going straight to your last read post to save trawling through posts trying to figure out where you left off. Lots of options about layout and navigation and notification would have been good. It seems to be more about collecting badges etc which is not really the nuts and bolts of the forum

I also don't see why the replies could'nt be much further across the width of the screen without so much space and packing top and bottom so you can view more at a time and having each one in a boxed window with a scroll bar is definitely best. Info at the side like date posted and a change of colour if read would be luxury. The space between posts with the large icons at the side and the posters profile above rather than at the side is giving too much padding!

I am afraid I won't be spending so much time here which is good for me as I have been neglecting my work lately.

To be honest I have been on many many forums with photography and software etc and this is pretty much the worst I have seen

Sorry Mikko, I know it is not your fault, you just have to mediate with us the best you can .... good luck

Carminat

Well, Keithcurtis has it absolutely right (and I suspect he hasn't bothered going through a whole load of other adverse comments!). Badges? - should we start wearing anoraks now? I've got more badges than you? A forum where we can't call up the latest unread post is a foolishness only someone who doesn't spend time here could have conceived.

Whilst this is NOT a comment about MikkoK, who is a Staffer, I guess we are going to continue with the ridiculous self-promoting signature blocks taking up huge inches of the page (actually, I don't know if this is so - I find the forum so unfriendly to use nowadays that I haven't had time to look at any of the worst offenders).

YamFazMan

Hi

I have agree with all the above comments, the old site was a pleasure to use, this one is so difficult
The search engine is useless, I've searched with unique phases from my previous posts with mainly with zero finds
None of the previous forums (Lithium) Modified Hyper links work, so even if I find a post I can't use the links in that post to find others

ATB YFM

1of750

To quote a MAJOR forum Contributor: "The forum is so bad that even the Trolls don't use it":D;):P

Carminat

I think what must have happened is they handed the new forum design to whoever has been designing the "new" "Improved" satnav devices.;)

YamFazMan

I'm not bothered so much about the way the forum looks, That being said I can't understand why the latest post is at the bottom of the list instead being at the top (It just doesn't feel right) Edit.... I've just found the "Newest first" option (But you don't appear to be able to save the setting as a default)
The main problem I have is, It's awkward to use. I started to reply to a post this afternoon and gave up
I can see from Ditte and Mikko's posts there's a huge effort going on behind the scene's to put this right
There's loads of things on the "To Do" list, and I think given time most of the features that made the old forum a pleasure to use will return in some form or other

ATB YFM

Carminat

YamFazMan wrote:

I can see from Ditte and Mikko's posts there's a huge effort going on behind the scenes to put this right

That simply will not do. The forum used to work quite well before they spent a weekend/several days installing this new stuff. I'm afraid it is just typical of TomTom performance these days - I presume they would define this as an improved forum, so why isn't it? Why is it so much worse?

You have at present over 5,000 posts to your credit, other non-staff members have even more. Why didn't TomTom ask you and a dozen or more other high users to go with a beta version for a while? I suppose the answer to that question is simply that TomTom either don't bother with beta, or doesn't pay attention to beta testers. It's a shocking state of affairs. When I got my first TomTom ten years ago, I couldn't get over how brilliant it was. I've just been out and bought an ancient secondhand GO700 to get that performance back again - what sort of commentary is that?

And apologies to all for that blob at the bottom - it's supposed to be a picture! But I can find no way of deleting it because it's rubbish.

1of750

@carminat: Tom Tom does allow beta testers to test components of software, but you have to remember Beta testers aren't designers. I think it's fair to wait a time to see where this forum is going. I think the staff has plenty of information to process and turn into something we can all like.

Carminat

I'm no expert at this business, but my understanding of the beta thing is you give stuff to ordinary Joes and ask them to try it and give you feedback. Designers live in some strange universe where nothing ever breaks, the colours are marvelous and the goods/software are the best thing since sliced bread. So they sell it and first thing is they discover it isn't - just like we are now telling them about this forum. The wise designers put their stuff out to ordinary experienced Joes and challenge them to do their worst - if they (designers) are lucky, they get not only criticism, but also suggestions. And they take on board as much of the feedback as they possibly can.

BUT, BUT, BUT. They do all that before they release the whatever to the public - the idea is that the public gets a finished product that doesn't break, looks terrific, works like a dream for a helluva lotta people. TomTom for the last several years have been pushing new stuff out to us in pretty raw format and letting us then give them BAD feedback instead of going about the beta stuff first. That's the way this new forum has come to us and I firmly believe that's bad. They should NOT be asking us to give them feedback and patience, they should have done all that long before we even got a hint that the forum was to change.

1of750

@Carminat: I cannot disagree with your logic; However, regardless of how or why this new forum was put on the air in its current state is not
the issue. The issue now is for this forum to evolve into something we will like and use since it is a valuable tool for information.

MikkoK

Hi all,

Thanks for all your feedback!

Changing to this new forum was a big step and important one going forward. We knew that all the features of the old forum won't be available at Go live as the new vendor hasn't implemented them. As mentioned, we have a long backlog list of stuff for them to work on and you'll see much happening in the coming weeks and months.

Unfortunately, there were also some things we didn't realise were not there and those are definitely on top of the list to be implemented. Fortunately, these are - to my understanding - not big features so we should be seeing them back soon

I'd also recommend you to check the Known issue post. It also mentions why search might not give results. That being said, please post here any links you find that don't work so I can forward them to InSided.

For organising the comments of a topic, please use the menu on top of the first comment:


Also, the layout in terms of screen width has been improved.

Cheers, Mikko

1of750

MikkoK

Hi Michael,

Thanks for reporting your issue here as well!

As discussed elsewhere, you case has been reported to InSided for investigation. So far I haven't heard anyone else having a similar issue so let's hope it's an isolated one. I'll get back to you as soon as I learn more about this issue.

By the way, have you tried adding the quotation manually as in

[quote=username]quotation[/quote]

Cheers, Mikko

Carminat

MikkoK wrote:

we have a long backlog list of stuff for them to work on and you'll see much happening in the coming weeks and months.........

Unfortunately, there were also some things we didn't realise were not there and those are definitely on top of the list to be implemented.......

Would you say this is an admission that you didn't offer it to beta testers?

Isn't it daft that the ID refers to the poster's number of "replies", when "replies" means "posts"?

MikkoK

Carminat wrote:

MikkoK wrote:

we have a long backlog list of stuff for them to work on and you'll see much happening in the coming weeks and months.........

Unfortunately, there were also some things we didn't realise were not there and those are definitely on top of the list to be implemented.......

Would you say this is an admission that you didn't offer it to beta testers?

We did have a user test for the new forum and many issues were reported and fixed already during it and/or before launch. As I said, unfortunately some issues still came as a surprise. However, we have since carefully prioritised these issues and you should see the most important stuff working as they used to pretty soon.

Carminat wrote:

Isn't it daft that the ID refers to the poster's number of "replies", when "replies" means "posts"?

Thanks for bringing that up! That's some forum terminology I've learned quite recent myself as well Replies and posts are not entirely the same thing. Reply is technically only a reply to a post whereas post is a more inclusive term and can refer to a post starting a topic or to a reply. On InSided forums replies are also referred to as comments. A bit of hair splitting, really. I personally don't care much what it's called as long as everyone knows what is meant by it.

Cheers, Mikko

keithcurtis

MikkoK wrote:

Carminat wrote:

MikkoK wrote:

we have a long backlog list of stuff for them to work on and you'll see much happening in the coming weeks and months.........

Unfortunately, there were also some things we didn't realise were not there and those are definitely on top of the list to be implemented.......

Would you say this is an admission that you didn't offer it to beta testers?

Not helped by the invitation to "Reply To This Post" followed by "Post comment here"
Which means the forum is inviting a "Reply" and a "Comment" to the previous persons "Post" which in itself is covering all bases?
All as clear as mud lol
We did have a user test for the new forum and many issues were reported and fixed already during it and/or before launch. As I said, unfortunately some issues still came as a surprise. However, we have since carefully prioritised these issues and you should see the most important stuff working as they used to pretty soon.

Carminat wrote:

Isn't it daft that the ID refers to the poster's number of "replies", when "replies" means "posts"?

Thanks for bringing that up! That's some forum terminology I've learned quite recent myself as well Replies and posts are not entirely the same thing. Reply is technically only a reply to a post whereas post is a more inclusive term and can refer to a post starting a topic or to a reply. On InSided forums replies are also referred to as comments. A bit of hair splitting, really. I personally don't care much what it's called as long as everyone knows what is meant by it.

Cheers, Mikko

keithcurtis

Really cocked up trying to quote Mikko's post lol hehe

keithcurtis

Without the quote this time, this is what I was trying to say about Mikko's answer about what the little boxes that we write in are called

It is not helped by the invitation to "Reply To This Post" followed by "Post comment here"
Which means the forum is inviting a "Reply" and a "Comment" to the previous persons "Post" which in itself is covering all bases?
All as clear as mud lol