Every forum user needs to read and understand this

[Impulses]

Thanks for the heads up. Some thoughts from a UX professional...

Makes sense. Maintaining proprietary, 25-year-old software sounds like a total nightmare. XenFora are great, I've used them and been a mod on them for years, and it's easily my favorite forum software. Good choice. User-facing UX is very good, and the back end experience for moderators is great as well. Easy to access and address post issues, easy to track what other mods have been doing. Very nice.

• Notifications on replies to MY posts. I will now get a notification when someone likes or replies to my post. Much better experience, as right now I get a notification when anyone replies to any thread in which I've posted...which is useless, since all threads get more replies. The XenForo notification system increases engagement with far less poking around endless cascades of replies. Huge upgrade potential if it's enabled this way.
• Simple "New Posts" view. If this is enabled the way I've seen others, it's a really nice UI for one-click access to all the threads which have new replies since I last visited. Clicking on the thread title takes me DIRECTLY to the first unread post. Nice. Easy to follow threads I'm interested in, easy to ignore threads I'm not.
• Flat interface. Sure, people used to the threaded UI are going to dislike this. There was an argument above that "no one quotes posts" or something to that effect. That behavior will change, people will naturally quote posts when they understand how the notification system works, and how the software drops you into the first unread post from many entry points. Following conversations is easy and natural.
• You moved my cheese. Yep, this will be a major experience change for a lot of long-time users. Some percentage of users will dislike any change. There's work to learning a new system. You didn't ask for the change. All makes sense, but in reality, the XenForo experience is preferable to a larger number of users across the web. There will be some user attrition as folks who don't like the system will vent and/or leave. It happens. New users will fill in with a better UX.
• Give it a shot. A lot of folks complaining about the loss of the threaded view are doing so without having used XenForo's flat view + notification system. Lots of concern about following conversations. Give it a shot. It's really quite simple with the notifications, quoting, and how the flow will go. You may like it or not, but use it for two weeks before you decide. Probably not the horror show you may be imagining.

Overall I can't imagine how they've kept up with proprietary software as long as they have. Look forward to the upgrade!

Hi from the Shore, long time-ish no see!!!

If I had been involved in moderation of a certain platform I might also be biased towards the new platform. I have said this before and was regularly dismissed but whenever I look at flat platforms, like Fred Miranda, the threads CAN be enormously long, which makes it - or CAN make it - difficult to re-find a certain post.

You also think it is a bonus when you only get notifications for DIRECT posts, that is to YOUR one post whereas here you currently get one as soon as somebody posts something within a thread. You think this is progress? Maybe it is as you may not really like my response?? (I know that WE never ever had any issues! So only playing a little "hat if" game here, ok? ;-)

So, to give you an example: I had 2 notifications of the "bad" kind in your view as neither was a notification about how somebody had responded to me directly. So in the "old" system, (today!) I found your post and responded. Read posts here in mutd dark grey and new ones in yellow. Not hard to follow. On the new forum, favoured by you, I wouldn't have received any.

So in short: you advocate less traffic? Less interaction? More "me" time outside the forum? People have all sorts of motivations here so I wouldn't dismiss people thinking that less interaction with a website is a good thing.

Now, since I also work in IT, I have my personal views on how I prefer a forum. Fred Miranda, not sure what platform that runs on, but it is a flat view site and macrumors.com which was create and is maintained by your company. To be hones I find both platforms a nightmare to navigate through, try to re-find a thread you had participated in, but it was 6 months ago. You then have to read maybe 100+ posts on a variety of pages to see whether you were in fact participating. How often do you think you will dig deep to see whether you were part of a "Latest Galaxy vs iPhone Pro" thread? You may of course have lost any interest, which is cool, but it certainly doesn't help keeping the traffic up ...

You disagree?

Deed

Cheers Deeds!

Yes, I think it's much better when I get notifications about any interaction on my post (replies, likes, etc), versus having to click into a thread and scroll to find out if there are any replies, and then I can't read them until I click in...one by one. into it.

No, you would not receive a notification for responses which didn't address YOUR post. Yes, I see that as better. I don't need a notification that someone has replied to some comment I didn't make in a long and meandering thread. The current functionality makes me completely ignore notifications, because they're always present.

There's a new posts function...which basically shows me any active thread. There's a trending threads link, a link to any thread to which I've contributed...and a lot more. All easily available from a left-hand navigation. Much more powerful, many more options.

I see way MORE posts in a flat UI, I read way MORE content, very quickly. I scan responses for value without a page load every, single, time. In XenForo I also see way more posts per page than the flat view here. So yeah, I think that's better than waiting for a page to load on every click to read a response. This is friction in the experience, and to me, that kinda sucks. I'm not talking about LESS interaction or LESS traffic. I don't care if it's more or less, I care if it's more valuable and feels more enjoyable and more useful. That can be more or less. Not a metric I care about as an end user.

The mod stuff on the back end is a minor point of course. Just recognizing why site managers and mods might have further reason to want an upgrade, beyond the ease of maintenance of the platform.

Fred Miranda doesn't work like XenForo. It doesn't remember last unread post. There's no notification system of note, etc. It's old and quite static. It simply doesn't offer the user experience of XenForo, and the delta is significant and meaningful.

Like I said, I would say "just try it" before jumping to any conclusions about whether it sucks. I mean I get it, some people are gonna say it sucks and not come off that position no matter what. Happens with every change. And people have legitimately different preferences. Of course.

My main point was to offer an alternative view to all the griping. I feel like it's a very informed view based on a career with hundreds of software rollouts and long experience with XenForo. But it's just opinion. I'm 100% sure some won't agree. That's OK.

But please don't put words in my mouth about what I'm saying. I'm only saying...exactly what I'm saying. Assuming anything else just takes time to refute, and that's not really my goal here. Thanks!

Sorry if this came across like I was putting words into your mouth, but your unlimited enthusiasm, you understand that it's not compulsory as such to simply agree with you, right?

My take is that I will spend far less time on dpreview as, just by reading your lengthly response I must say that I have little appetite in exploring what you consider progress, I have highlightes the parts that simply make me shudder. macrumors.com is built on XenFoto, right? The 911 posts regarding a Pixel 10 over a multitude of pages, 38 pages the last time I looked:

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/google-pixel-10-series.2458330/

So what you are saying is that you really like this? Your post may be sitting on page 14 - or 25?? So, if nobody reacts directly to your post, it's soon to be forgotten? And how would this work if you start a comparison, like a couple of Pixel 10 photos you compared to some iPhone 14 Pro pix, if somebody replies to YOUR post, you get a notification, right? And if a second person then replies to this person, you are not getting anything? And that's a good thing as the only thing you are interested in is the first response? But no follow ups?

But what somehow bugs me is the ease at which fans of the new system are dismissing the fact that there simply isn't a choice. Only Coke, but no Fanta, which suits those who like Coke just fine.

Ah, well, I disagree and certainly don't share your enthusiasm!

Deed

"It's just an opinion", should have probably indicated I don't think it's compulsory to share my view, no? What a strange thing to say. No, of course I don't mind at all if you disagree.

Things change. Sometimes we get a say in it, sometimes not. It's just an online forum.

Cheers.

Sorry I guess I took your talking with some authority as a nudge towards the new system. Oddly, you appear to also either dismiss or ignored my comments regarding the "choice" ...

Now regarding our little debate here, I have replied to what I thought was a strong, north of just an opinion, piece in favour of the new system. I felt like it was legit to reply equally strong. Leaving out any personal touches, I never meant this to be anything BUT a debate (I thik you are one of the more pleasant characters here on dpreview, to be honest!), so I thought that, when somebody talks about a topic with some authority, there might also be some opposition to that view.

I thought you came across very strong, hence my strongish reply! I thought your tone didn't accept that the new system was anything, but just great Robust debate, nothing more which I appreciate!

The other item you didn't want to tackle was the 900+ threads how to navigate those?? Read those 38 pages in a blizzard?? Tesla-Speed?? ;-)

You keep bringing this up, but I really don't understand how a similarly long thread is any easier to navigate on DPR... If you're new to the thread it's still a beast because almost no one retitles sub threads so you're going thru the same amount of total content, only instead of being able to just scroll thru it you'd have to click repeatedly in threaded view.

If you're not new to a long thread and you've been participating then enhanced notice can make it very easy to keep up with it! In threaded view on DPR you have to hunt around for the different colored links and seek out those unread comments... Not terrible but it can be easiest. On a more modern system you still pick how to engage.

You'll get a notification when people interact directly with you and you can choose to prioritize those, but you'll also get a notification when new comments are made to a thread you follow and you can jump in right to that page. If MacRumors doesn't implement this (I wouldn't know) then they just have a poor XenForo configuration, there's better examples if so.

I actually kinda hate Head Fi btw (way too many people with way too many opinions and way too much sponsorship), the their UI is brilliant, much smaller boards (eg SBAF) are able to implement it just as well though so I hope DPR can manage.

Also: a website lives on traffic, so if people spend less time here, it means less exposure, but I have been wrong before so what do I know??

I don't think that UI actually has people spending less time on those boards TBH, extra clicks and scrolling for the heck of it isn't the way to achieve that anyway and the DPR threaded UI does force a lot of that.

I bet you or I can sorta recall the structure of a couple of threads here, but the vast majority of people aren't paying attention to that and almost no one is re-naming sub threads so I believe it's not very friendly at all to more casual users.

All the best in the meantime, will ask you on a different level what you have been up to ok??

Deed

Both you and surefoxy have very strong ideas about how fabulous the new forum is and you have now quoted a "strong" majority for flat view?? There was a little poll, I think on maybe the open forum?? Can't remember but last time I looked it wasn't as strong a majority for flat-view??

Not sure what you mean, all I said is most people aren't memorizing the threaded structure of threads as they frequent them. Dale (from DPR) has said that internally they can see about half the users here are using flat view, so half aren't even seeing the threaded structure and from the half that is I would think it's easy to assume they aren't all super obsessive/observant, that's all.

Truth is, I am losing interest. On the old forum you had a choice, on the new one, you won't - and I keep on hearing that's actually great?? ;-) (you know, what I mean?? The yeah-sayers are super vocal here!!!!!)

I think you've glosses over a few things in order to reinforce why a loss of choice will be for the worst, it often is but I'm not sure it'll be that bad in this instance.

Will see whether I can dig up the current poll.

Deed

 

[deednets]

Thanks for the heads up. Some thoughts from a UX professional...

Makes sense. Maintaining proprietary, 25-year-old software sounds like a total nightmare. XenFora are great, I've used them and been a mod on them for years, and it's easily my favorite forum software. Good choice. User-facing UX is very good, and the back end experience for moderators is great as well. Easy to access and address post issues, easy to track what other mods have been doing. Very nice.

• Notifications on replies to MY posts. I will now get a notification when someone likes or replies to my post. Much better experience, as right now I get a notification when anyone replies to any thread in which I've posted...which is useless, since all threads get more replies. The XenForo notification system increases engagement with far less poking around endless cascades of replies. Huge upgrade potential if it's enabled this way.
• Simple "New Posts" view. If this is enabled the way I've seen others, it's a really nice UI for one-click access to all the threads which have new replies since I last visited. Clicking on the thread title takes me DIRECTLY to the first unread post. Nice. Easy to follow threads I'm interested in, easy to ignore threads I'm not.
• Flat interface. Sure, people used to the threaded UI are going to dislike this. There was an argument above that "no one quotes posts" or something to that effect. That behavior will change, people will naturally quote posts when they understand how the notification system works, and how the software drops you into the first unread post from many entry points. Following conversations is easy and natural.
• You moved my cheese. Yep, this will be a major experience change for a lot of long-time users. Some percentage of users will dislike any change. There's work to learning a new system. You didn't ask for the change. All makes sense, but in reality, the XenForo experience is preferable to a larger number of users across the web. There will be some user attrition as folks who don't like the system will vent and/or leave. It happens. New users will fill in with a better UX.
• Give it a shot. A lot of folks complaining about the loss of the threaded view are doing so without having used XenForo's flat view + notification system. Lots of concern about following conversations. Give it a shot. It's really quite simple with the notifications, quoting, and how the flow will go. You may like it or not, but use it for two weeks before you decide. Probably not the horror show you may be imagining.

Overall I can't imagine how they've kept up with proprietary software as long as they have. Look forward to the upgrade!

Hi from the Shore, long time-ish no see!!!

If I had been involved in moderation of a certain platform I might also be biased towards the new platform. I have said this before and was regularly dismissed but whenever I look at flat platforms, like Fred Miranda, the threads CAN be enormously long, which makes it - or CAN make it - difficult to re-find a certain post.

You also think it is a bonus when you only get notifications for DIRECT posts, that is to YOUR one post whereas here you currently get one as soon as somebody posts something within a thread. You think this is progress? Maybe it is as you may not really like my response?? (I know that WE never ever had any issues! So only playing a little "hat if" game here, ok? ;-)

So, to give you an example: I had 2 notifications of the "bad" kind in your view as neither was a notification about how somebody had responded to me directly. So in the "old" system, (today!) I found your post and responded. Read posts here in mutd dark grey and new ones in yellow. Not hard to follow. On the new forum, favoured by you, I wouldn't have received any.

So in short: you advocate less traffic? Less interaction? More "me" time outside the forum? People have all sorts of motivations here so I wouldn't dismiss people thinking that less interaction with a website is a good thing.

Now, since I also work in IT, I have my personal views on how I prefer a forum. Fred Miranda, not sure what platform that runs on, but it is a flat view site and macrumors.com which was create and is maintained by your company. To be hones I find both platforms a nightmare to navigate through, try to re-find a thread you had participated in, but it was 6 months ago. You then have to read maybe 100+ posts on a variety of pages to see whether you were in fact participating. How often do you think you will dig deep to see whether you were part of a "Latest Galaxy vs iPhone Pro" thread? You may of course have lost any interest, which is cool, but it certainly doesn't help keeping the traffic up ...

You disagree?

Deed

Cheers Deeds!

Yes, I think it's much better when I get notifications about any interaction on my post (replies, likes, etc), versus having to click into a thread and scroll to find out if there are any replies, and then I can't read them until I click in...one by one. into it.

No, you would not receive a notification for responses which didn't address YOUR post. Yes, I see that as better. I don't need a notification that someone has replied to some comment I didn't make in a long and meandering thread. The current functionality makes me completely ignore notifications, because they're always present.

There's a new posts function...which basically shows me any active thread. There's a trending threads link, a link to any thread to which I've contributed...and a lot more. All easily available from a left-hand navigation. Much more powerful, many more options.

I see way MORE posts in a flat UI, I read way MORE content, very quickly. I scan responses for value without a page load every, single, time. In XenForo I also see way more posts per page than the flat view here. So yeah, I think that's better than waiting for a page to load on every click to read a response. This is friction in the experience, and to me, that kinda sucks. I'm not talking about LESS interaction or LESS traffic. I don't care if it's more or less, I care if it's more valuable and feels more enjoyable and more useful. That can be more or less. Not a metric I care about as an end user.

The mod stuff on the back end is a minor point of course. Just recognizing why site managers and mods might have further reason to want an upgrade, beyond the ease of maintenance of the platform.

Fred Miranda doesn't work like XenForo. It doesn't remember last unread post. There's no notification system of note, etc. It's old and quite static. It simply doesn't offer the user experience of XenForo, and the delta is significant and meaningful.

Like I said, I would say "just try it" before jumping to any conclusions about whether it sucks. I mean I get it, some people are gonna say it sucks and not come off that position no matter what. Happens with every change. And people have legitimately different preferences. Of course.

My main point was to offer an alternative view to all the griping. I feel like it's a very informed view based on a career with hundreds of software rollouts and long experience with XenForo. But it's just opinion. I'm 100% sure some won't agree. That's OK.

But please don't put words in my mouth about what I'm saying. I'm only saying...exactly what I'm saying. Assuming anything else just takes time to refute, and that's not really my goal here. Thanks!

Sorry if this came across like I was putting words into your mouth, but your unlimited enthusiasm, you understand that it's not compulsory as such to simply agree with you, right?

My take is that I will spend far less time on dpreview as, just by reading your lengthly response I must say that I have little appetite in exploring what you consider progress, I have highlightes the parts that simply make me shudder. macrumors.com is built on XenFoto, right? The 911 posts regarding a Pixel 10 over a multitude of pages, 38 pages the last time I looked:

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/google-pixel-10-series.2458330/

So what you are saying is that you really like this? Your post may be sitting on page 14 - or 25?? So, if nobody reacts directly to your post, it's soon to be forgotten? And how would this work if you start a comparison, like a couple of Pixel 10 photos you compared to some iPhone 14 Pro pix, if somebody replies to YOUR post, you get a notification, right? And if a second person then replies to this person, you are not getting anything? And that's a good thing as the only thing you are interested in is the first response? But no follow ups?

But what somehow bugs me is the ease at which fans of the new system are dismissing the fact that there simply isn't a choice. Only Coke, but no Fanta, which suits those who like Coke just fine.

Ah, well, I disagree and certainly don't share your enthusiasm!

Deed

"It's just an opinion", should have probably indicated I don't think it's compulsory to share my view, no? What a strange thing to say. No, of course I don't mind at all if you disagree.

Things change. Sometimes we get a say in it, sometimes not. It's just an online forum.

Cheers.

Sorry I guess I took your talking with some authority as a nudge towards the new system. Oddly, you appear to also either dismiss or ignored my comments regarding the "choice" ...

Now regarding our little debate here, I have replied to what I thought was a strong, north of just an opinion, piece in favour of the new system. I felt like it was legit to reply equally strong. Leaving out any personal touches, I never meant this to be anything BUT a debate (I thik you are one of the more pleasant characters here on dpreview, to be honest!), so I thought that, when somebody talks about a topic with some authority, there might also be some opposition to that view.

I thought you came across very strong, hence my strongish reply! I thought your tone didn't accept that the new system was anything, but just great Robust debate, nothing more which I appreciate!

The other item you didn't want to tackle was the 900+ threads how to navigate those?? Read those 38 pages in a blizzard?? Tesla-Speed?? ;-)

You keep bringing this up, but I really don't understand how a similarly long thread is any easier to navigate on DPR... If you're new to the thread it's still a beast because almost no one retitles sub threads so you're going thru the same amount of total content, only instead of being able to just scroll thru it you'd have to click repeatedly in threaded view.

If you're not new to a long thread and you've been participating then enhanced notice can make it very easy to keep up with it! In threaded view on DPR you have to hunt around for the different colored links and seek out those unread comments... Not terrible but it can be easiest. On a more modern system you still pick how to engage.

You'll get a notification when people interact directly with you and you can choose to prioritize those, but you'll also get a notification when new comments are made to a thread you follow and you can jump in right to that page. If MacRumors doesn't implement this (I wouldn't know) then they just have a poor XenForo configuration, there's better examples if so.

I actually kinda hate Head Fi btw (way too many people with way too many opinions and way too much sponsorship), the their UI is brilliant, much smaller boards (eg SBAF) are able to implement it just as well though so I hope DPR can manage.

Also: a website lives on traffic, so if people spend less time here, it means less exposure, but I have been wrong before so what do I know??

I don't think that UI actually has people spending less time on those boards TBH, extra clicks and scrolling for the heck of it isn't the way to achieve that anyway and the DPR threaded UI does force a lot of that.

I bet you or I can sorta recall the structure of a couple of threads here, but the vast majority of people aren't paying attention to that and almost no one is re-naming sub threads so I believe it's not very friendly at all to more casual users.

All the best in the meantime, will ask you on a different level what you have been up to ok??

Deed

Both you and surefoxy have very strong ideas about how fabulous the new forum is and you have now quoted a "strong" majority for flat view?? There was a little poll, I think on maybe the open forum?? Can't remember but last time I looked it wasn't as strong a majority for flat-view??

Not sure what you mean, all I said is most people aren't memorizing the threaded structure of threads as they frequent them. Dale (from DPR) has said that internally they can see about half the users here are using flat view, so half aren't even seeing the threaded structure and from the half that is I would think it's easy to assume they aren't all super obsessive/observant, that's all.

Truth is, I am losing interest. On the old forum you had a choice, on the new one, you won't - and I keep on hearing that's actually great?? ;-) (you know, what I mean?? The yeah-sayers are super vocal here!!!!!)

I think you've glosses over a few things in order to reinforce why a loss of choice will be for the worst, it often is but I'm not sure it'll be that bad in this instance.

Will see whether I can dig up the current poll.

Deed

Loss of choice a good thing then? ;-) I can see now that the majority here (numbers till too small to tell, but maybe an indication) want flat view:





Not sure whether this is an overwhelming majority for your personal preference though?

On a slightly off-site matter: you think this debate is bringing people together?? Or only those who favour flat view?? (was just reading about the latest US politics in today's paper, which certainly leaves an impression regarding division...). You know what I mean? 46.5% will get what they want, 42.9% won't. And those who get what they want tell those who don't that they should just relax and roll with it, not problem ;-)

A bit like this?

Take care, apart from this "issues" I don#t think we have any issues, right?? Just bought a Voigtländer 35/1.4 Nocton Classic, the controversial one, less than US$ 200.00 so I thought: yeah, I can do that!!

Deed

 

[Mike Fewster]

Thanks for the heads up. Some thoughts from a UX professional...

Makes sense. Maintaining proprietary, 25-year-old software sounds like a total nightmare. XenFora are great, I've used them and been a mod on them for years, and it's easily my favorite forum software. Good choice. User-facing UX is very good, and the back end experience for moderators is great as well. Easy to access and address post issues, easy to track what other mods have been doing. Very nice.

• Notifications on replies to MY posts. I will now get a notification when someone likes or replies to my post. Much better experience, as right now I get a notification when anyone replies to any thread in which I've posted...which is useless, since all threads get more replies. The XenForo notification system increases engagement with far less poking around endless cascades of replies. Huge upgrade potential if it's enabled this way.
• Simple "New Posts" view. If this is enabled the way I've seen others, it's a really nice UI for one-click access to all the threads which have new replies since I last visited. Clicking on the thread title takes me DIRECTLY to the first unread post. Nice. Easy to follow threads I'm interested in, easy to ignore threads I'm not.
• Flat interface. Sure, people used to the threaded UI are going to dislike this. There was an argument above that "no one quotes posts" or something to that effect. That behavior will change, people will naturally quote posts when they understand how the notification system works, and how the software drops you into the first unread post from many entry points. Following conversations is easy and natural.
• You moved my cheese. Yep, this will be a major experience change for a lot of long-time users. Some percentage of users will dislike any change. There's work to learning a new system. You didn't ask for the change. All makes sense, but in reality, the XenForo experience is preferable to a larger number of users across the web. There will be some user attrition as folks who don't like the system will vent and/or leave. It happens. New users will fill in with a better UX.
• Give it a shot. A lot of folks complaining about the loss of the threaded view are doing so without having used XenForo's flat view + notification system. Lots of concern about following conversations. Give it a shot. It's really quite simple with the notifications, quoting, and how the flow will go. You may like it or not, but use it for two weeks before you decide. Probably not the horror show you may be imagining.

Overall I can't imagine how they've kept up with proprietary software as long as they have. Look forward to the upgrade!

Hi from the Shore, long time-ish no see!!!

If I had been involved in moderation of a certain platform I might also be biased towards the new platform. I have said this before and was regularly dismissed but whenever I look at flat platforms, like Fred Miranda, the threads CAN be enormously long, which makes it - or CAN make it - difficult to re-find a certain post.

You also think it is a bonus when you only get notifications for DIRECT posts, that is to YOUR one post whereas here you currently get one as soon as somebody posts something within a thread. You think this is progress? Maybe it is as you may not really like my response?? (I know that WE never ever had any issues! So only playing a little "hat if" game here, ok? ;-)

So, to give you an example: I had 2 notifications of the "bad" kind in your view as neither was a notification about how somebody had responded to me directly. So in the "old" system, (today!) I found your post and responded. Read posts here in mutd dark grey and new ones in yellow. Not hard to follow. On the new forum, favoured by you, I wouldn't have received any.

So in short: you advocate less traffic? Less interaction? More "me" time outside the forum? People have all sorts of motivations here so I wouldn't dismiss people thinking that less interaction with a website is a good thing.

Now, since I also work in IT, I have my personal views on how I prefer a forum. Fred Miranda, not sure what platform that runs on, but it is a flat view site and macrumors.com which was create and is maintained by your company. To be hones I find both platforms a nightmare to navigate through, try to re-find a thread you had participated in, but it was 6 months ago. You then have to read maybe 100+ posts on a variety of pages to see whether you were in fact participating. How often do you think you will dig deep to see whether you were part of a "Latest Galaxy vs iPhone Pro" thread? You may of course have lost any interest, which is cool, but it certainly doesn't help keeping the traffic up ...

You disagree?

Deed

Cheers Deeds!

Yes, I think it's much better when I get notifications about any interaction on my post (replies, likes, etc), versus having to click into a thread and scroll to find out if there are any replies, and then I can't read them until I click in...one by one. into it.

No, you would not receive a notification for responses which didn't address YOUR post. Yes, I see that as better. I don't need a notification that someone has replied to some comment I didn't make in a long and meandering thread. The current functionality makes me completely ignore notifications, because they're always present.

AFAIK depending on the implementation you can actually get both or either...

There's a new posts function...which basically shows me any active thread. There's a trending threads link, a link to any thread to which I've contributed...and a lot more. All easily available from a left-hand navigation. Much more powerful, many more options.

I see way MORE posts in a flat UI, I read way MORE content, very quickly. I scan responses for value without a page load every, single, time. In XenForo I also see way more posts per page than the flat view here. So yeah, I think that's better than waiting for a page to load on every click to read a response. This is friction in the experience, and to me, that kinda sucks. I'm not talking about LESS interaction or LESS traffic. I don't care if it's more or less, I care if it's more valuable and feels more enjoyable and more useful. That can be more or less. Not a metric I care about as an end user.

I agree, threaded is much slower to work with. I use it to maintain the flow of these boards, but a quick read it isn't.

The mod stuff on the back end is a minor point of course. Just recognizing why site managers and mods might have further reason to want an upgrade, beyond the ease of maintenance of the platform.

Fred Miranda doesn't work like XenForo. It doesn't remember last unread post. There's no notification system of note, etc. It's old and quite static. It simply doesn't offer the user experience of XenForo, and the delta is significant and meaningful.

Like I said, I would say "just try it" before jumping to any conclusions about whether it sucks. I mean I get it, some people are gonna say it sucks and not come off that position no matter what. Happens with every change. And people have legitimately different preferences. Of course.

My main point was to offer an alternative view to all the griping. I feel like it's a very informed view based on a career with hundreds of software rollouts and long experience with XenForo. But it's just opinion. I'm 100% sure some won't agree. That's OK.

But please don't put words in my mouth about what I'm saying. I'm only saying...exactly what I'm saying. Assuming anything else just takes time to refute, and that's not really my goal here. Thanks!

As I keep saying, it all depends on what you want from a forum. Flat view seems fine to me if you want answers to specific questions. It doesn't seem to work if what you want is discussion where there will be shades of opinion - such as you have when you discusss images. The new DPR says they want more emphasis on images rather than gear. That suits me, images and the appreciation of images is why I do photography. Flat view doesn't seem to me to be a good way way to manage this kind of discussion. Have a look at how The weekly image posts from roger josem work in this forum with threaded view.

https://www.dpreview.com/forums/post/68436659

You can see the image being discussed and the various responses to it are grouped together so you can be aware of all of them before making your own post.

 

[Impulses]

Thanks for the heads up. Some thoughts from a UX professional...

Makes sense. Maintaining proprietary, 25-year-old software sounds like a total nightmare. XenFora are great, I've used them and been a mod on them for years, and it's easily my favorite forum software. Good choice. User-facing UX is very good, and the back end experience for moderators is great as well. Easy to access and address post issues, easy to track what other mods have been doing. Very nice.

• Notifications on replies to MY posts. I will now get a notification when someone likes or replies to my post. Much better experience, as right now I get a notification when anyone replies to any thread in which I've posted...which is useless, since all threads get more replies. The XenForo notification system increases engagement with far less poking around endless cascades of replies. Huge upgrade potential if it's enabled this way.
• Simple "New Posts" view. If this is enabled the way I've seen others, it's a really nice UI for one-click access to all the threads which have new replies since I last visited. Clicking on the thread title takes me DIRECTLY to the first unread post. Nice. Easy to follow threads I'm interested in, easy to ignore threads I'm not.
• Flat interface. Sure, people used to the threaded UI are going to dislike this. There was an argument above that "no one quotes posts" or something to that effect. That behavior will change, people will naturally quote posts when they understand how the notification system works, and how the software drops you into the first unread post from many entry points. Following conversations is easy and natural.
• You moved my cheese. Yep, this will be a major experience change for a lot of long-time users. Some percentage of users will dislike any change. There's work to learning a new system. You didn't ask for the change. All makes sense, but in reality, the XenForo experience is preferable to a larger number of users across the web. There will be some user attrition as folks who don't like the system will vent and/or leave. It happens. New users will fill in with a better UX.
• Give it a shot. A lot of folks complaining about the loss of the threaded view are doing so without having used XenForo's flat view + notification system. Lots of concern about following conversations. Give it a shot. It's really quite simple with the notifications, quoting, and how the flow will go. You may like it or not, but use it for two weeks before you decide. Probably not the horror show you may be imagining.

Overall I can't imagine how they've kept up with proprietary software as long as they have. Look forward to the upgrade!

Hi from the Shore, long time-ish no see!!!

If I had been involved in moderation of a certain platform I might also be biased towards the new platform. I have said this before and was regularly dismissed but whenever I look at flat platforms, like Fred Miranda, the threads CAN be enormously long, which makes it - or CAN make it - difficult to re-find a certain post.

You also think it is a bonus when you only get notifications for DIRECT posts, that is to YOUR one post whereas here you currently get one as soon as somebody posts something within a thread. You think this is progress? Maybe it is as you may not really like my response?? (I know that WE never ever had any issues! So only playing a little "hat if" game here, ok? ;-)

So, to give you an example: I had 2 notifications of the "bad" kind in your view as neither was a notification about how somebody had responded to me directly. So in the "old" system, (today!) I found your post and responded. Read posts here in mutd dark grey and new ones in yellow. Not hard to follow. On the new forum, favoured by you, I wouldn't have received any.

So in short: you advocate less traffic? Less interaction? More "me" time outside the forum? People have all sorts of motivations here so I wouldn't dismiss people thinking that less interaction with a website is a good thing.

Now, since I also work in IT, I have my personal views on how I prefer a forum. Fred Miranda, not sure what platform that runs on, but it is a flat view site and macrumors.com which was create and is maintained by your company. To be hones I find both platforms a nightmare to navigate through, try to re-find a thread you had participated in, but it was 6 months ago. You then have to read maybe 100+ posts on a variety of pages to see whether you were in fact participating. How often do you think you will dig deep to see whether you were part of a "Latest Galaxy vs iPhone Pro" thread? You may of course have lost any interest, which is cool, but it certainly doesn't help keeping the traffic up ...

You disagree?

Deed

Cheers Deeds!

Yes, I think it's much better when I get notifications about any interaction on my post (replies, likes, etc), versus having to click into a thread and scroll to find out if there are any replies, and then I can't read them until I click in...one by one. into it.

No, you would not receive a notification for responses which didn't address YOUR post. Yes, I see that as better. I don't need a notification that someone has replied to some comment I didn't make in a long and meandering thread. The current functionality makes me completely ignore notifications, because they're always present.

There's a new posts function...which basically shows me any active thread. There's a trending threads link, a link to any thread to which I've contributed...and a lot more. All easily available from a left-hand navigation. Much more powerful, many more options.

I see way MORE posts in a flat UI, I read way MORE content, very quickly. I scan responses for value without a page load every, single, time. In XenForo I also see way more posts per page than the flat view here. So yeah, I think that's better than waiting for a page to load on every click to read a response. This is friction in the experience, and to me, that kinda sucks. I'm not talking about LESS interaction or LESS traffic. I don't care if it's more or less, I care if it's more valuable and feels more enjoyable and more useful. That can be more or less. Not a metric I care about as an end user.

The mod stuff on the back end is a minor point of course. Just recognizing why site managers and mods might have further reason to want an upgrade, beyond the ease of maintenance of the platform.

Fred Miranda doesn't work like XenForo. It doesn't remember last unread post. There's no notification system of note, etc. It's old and quite static. It simply doesn't offer the user experience of XenForo, and the delta is significant and meaningful.

Like I said, I would say "just try it" before jumping to any conclusions about whether it sucks. I mean I get it, some people are gonna say it sucks and not come off that position no matter what. Happens with every change. And people have legitimately different preferences. Of course.

My main point was to offer an alternative view to all the griping. I feel like it's a very informed view based on a career with hundreds of software rollouts and long experience with XenForo. But it's just opinion. I'm 100% sure some won't agree. That's OK.

But please don't put words in my mouth about what I'm saying. I'm only saying...exactly what I'm saying. Assuming anything else just takes time to refute, and that's not really my goal here. Thanks!

Sorry if this came across like I was putting words into your mouth, but your unlimited enthusiasm, you understand that it's not compulsory as such to simply agree with you, right?

My take is that I will spend far less time on dpreview as, just by reading your lengthly response I must say that I have little appetite in exploring what you consider progress, I have highlightes the parts that simply make me shudder. macrumors.com is built on XenFoto, right? The 911 posts regarding a Pixel 10 over a multitude of pages, 38 pages the last time I looked:

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/google-pixel-10-series.2458330/

So what you are saying is that you really like this? Your post may be sitting on page 14 - or 25?? So, if nobody reacts directly to your post, it's soon to be forgotten? And how would this work if you start a comparison, like a couple of Pixel 10 photos you compared to some iPhone 14 Pro pix, if somebody replies to YOUR post, you get a notification, right? And if a second person then replies to this person, you are not getting anything? And that's a good thing as the only thing you are interested in is the first response? But no follow ups?

But what somehow bugs me is the ease at which fans of the new system are dismissing the fact that there simply isn't a choice. Only Coke, but no Fanta, which suits those who like Coke just fine.

Ah, well, I disagree and certainly don't share your enthusiasm!

Deed

"It's just an opinion", should have probably indicated I don't think it's compulsory to share my view, no? What a strange thing to say. No, of course I don't mind at all if you disagree.

Things change. Sometimes we get a say in it, sometimes not. It's just an online forum.

Cheers.

Sorry I guess I took your talking with some authority as a nudge towards the new system. Oddly, you appear to also either dismiss or ignored my comments regarding the "choice" ...

Now regarding our little debate here, I have replied to what I thought was a strong, north of just an opinion, piece in favour of the new system. I felt like it was legit to reply equally strong. Leaving out any personal touches, I never meant this to be anything BUT a debate (I thik you are one of the more pleasant characters here on dpreview, to be honest!), so I thought that, when somebody talks about a topic with some authority, there might also be some opposition to that view.

I thought you came across very strong, hence my strongish reply! I thought your tone didn't accept that the new system was anything, but just great Robust debate, nothing more which I appreciate!

The other item you didn't want to tackle was the 900+ threads how to navigate those?? Read those 38 pages in a blizzard?? Tesla-Speed?? ;-)

You keep bringing this up, but I really don't understand how a similarly long thread is any easier to navigate on DPR... If you're new to the thread it's still a beast because almost no one retitles sub threads so you're going thru the same amount of total content, only instead of being able to just scroll thru it you'd have to click repeatedly in threaded view.

If you're not new to a long thread and you've been participating then enhanced notice can make it very easy to keep up with it! In threaded view on DPR you have to hunt around for the different colored links and seek out those unread comments... Not terrible but it can be easiest. On a more modern system you still pick how to engage.

You'll get a notification when people interact directly with you and you can choose to prioritize those, but you'll also get a notification when new comments are made to a thread you follow and you can jump in right to that page. If MacRumors doesn't implement this (I wouldn't know) then they just have a poor XenForo configuration, there's better examples if so.

I actually kinda hate Head Fi btw (way too many people with way too many opinions and way too much sponsorship), the their UI is brilliant, much smaller boards (eg SBAF) are able to implement it just as well though so I hope DPR can manage.

Also: a website lives on traffic, so if people spend less time here, it means less exposure, but I have been wrong before so what do I know??

I don't think that UI actually has people spending less time on those boards TBH, extra clicks and scrolling for the heck of it isn't the way to achieve that anyway and the DPR threaded UI does force a lot of that.

I bet you or I can sorta recall the structure of a couple of threads here, but the vast majority of people aren't paying attention to that and almost no one is re-naming sub threads so I believe it's not very friendly at all to more casual users.

All the best in the meantime, will ask you on a different level what you have been up to ok??

Deed

Both you and surefoxy have very strong ideas about how fabulous the new forum is and you have now quoted a "strong" majority for flat view?? There was a little poll, I think on maybe the open forum?? Can't remember but last time I looked it wasn't as strong a majority for flat-view??

Not sure what you mean, all I said is most people aren't memorizing the threaded structure of threads as they frequent them. Dale (from DPR) has said that internally they can see about half the users here are using flat view, so half aren't even seeing the threaded structure and from the half that is I would think it's easy to assume they aren't all super obsessive/observant, that's all.

Truth is, I am losing interest. On the old forum you had a choice, on the new one, you won't - and I keep on hearing that's actually great?? ;-) (you know, what I mean?? The yeah-sayers are super vocal here!!!!!)

I think you've glosses over a few things in order to reinforce why a loss of choice will be for the worst, it often is but I'm not sure it'll be that bad in this instance.

Will see whether I can dig up the current poll.

Deed

Loss of choice a good thing then? ;-) I can see now that the majority here (numbers till too small to tell, but maybe an indication) want flat view:



Not sure whether this is an overwhelming majority for your personal preference though?

On a slightly off-site matter: you think this debate is bringing people together?? Or only those who favour flat view?? (was just reading about the latest US politics in today's paper, which certainly leaves an impression regarding division...). You know what I mean? 46.5% will get what they want, 42.9% won't. And those who get what they want tell those who don't that they should just relax and roll with it, not problem ;-)

A bit like this?

Hopefully just a bit, the US is in dire straits IMO, ironically I'm way more optimistic about DPR's prospects (forum and all...).

Take care, apart from this "issues" I don#t think we have any issues, right on??

Nah, I'd never take a debate over something like this personal!

Just bought a Voigtländer 35/1.4 Nocton Classic, the controversial one, less than US$ 200.00 so I thought: yeah, I can do that!!

Deed

Curious choice for you tbh, but for $200 why the heck not. I'd be interested to see what you think of it. I wish I had more time & $ and dedication to MF to get/try the F1.2 Noktons before they disappear (Cosina Voigtlander seems to operate on less than clear whims)... You gonna take the Classic on your upcoming trip or gonna evaluate it at home first?

Sometimes trial by fire tells us so much! (but then return windows tend to lapse, less of a concern at the price you got it tho)

 

[deednets]

Thanks for the heads up. Some thoughts from a UX professional...

Makes sense. Maintaining proprietary, 25-year-old software sounds like a total nightmare. XenFora are great, I've used them and been a mod on them for years, and it's easily my favorite forum software. Good choice. User-facing UX is very good, and the back end experience for moderators is great as well. Easy to access and address post issues, easy to track what other mods have been doing. Very nice.

• Notifications on replies to MY posts. I will now get a notification when someone likes or replies to my post. Much better experience, as right now I get a notification when anyone replies to any thread in which I've posted...which is useless, since all threads get more replies. The XenForo notification system increases engagement with far less poking around endless cascades of replies. Huge upgrade potential if it's enabled this way.
• Simple "New Posts" view. If this is enabled the way I've seen others, it's a really nice UI for one-click access to all the threads which have new replies since I last visited. Clicking on the thread title takes me DIRECTLY to the first unread post. Nice. Easy to follow threads I'm interested in, easy to ignore threads I'm not.
• Flat interface. Sure, people used to the threaded UI are going to dislike this. There was an argument above that "no one quotes posts" or something to that effect. That behavior will change, people will naturally quote posts when they understand how the notification system works, and how the software drops you into the first unread post from many entry points. Following conversations is easy and natural.
• You moved my cheese. Yep, this will be a major experience change for a lot of long-time users. Some percentage of users will dislike any change. There's work to learning a new system. You didn't ask for the change. All makes sense, but in reality, the XenForo experience is preferable to a larger number of users across the web. There will be some user attrition as folks who don't like the system will vent and/or leave. It happens. New users will fill in with a better UX.
• Give it a shot. A lot of folks complaining about the loss of the threaded view are doing so without having used XenForo's flat view + notification system. Lots of concern about following conversations. Give it a shot. It's really quite simple with the notifications, quoting, and how the flow will go. You may like it or not, but use it for two weeks before you decide. Probably not the horror show you may be imagining.

Overall I can't imagine how they've kept up with proprietary software as long as they have. Look forward to the upgrade!

Hi from the Shore, long time-ish no see!!!

If I had been involved in moderation of a certain platform I might also be biased towards the new platform. I have said this before and was regularly dismissed but whenever I look at flat platforms, like Fred Miranda, the threads CAN be enormously long, which makes it - or CAN make it - difficult to re-find a certain post.

You also think it is a bonus when you only get notifications for DIRECT posts, that is to YOUR one post whereas here you currently get one as soon as somebody posts something within a thread. You think this is progress? Maybe it is as you may not really like my response?? (I know that WE never ever had any issues! So only playing a little "hat if" game here, ok? ;-)

So, to give you an example: I had 2 notifications of the "bad" kind in your view as neither was a notification about how somebody had responded to me directly. So in the "old" system, (today!) I found your post and responded. Read posts here in mutd dark grey and new ones in yellow. Not hard to follow. On the new forum, favoured by you, I wouldn't have received any.

So in short: you advocate less traffic? Less interaction? More "me" time outside the forum? People have all sorts of motivations here so I wouldn't dismiss people thinking that less interaction with a website is a good thing.

Now, since I also work in IT, I have my personal views on how I prefer a forum. Fred Miranda, not sure what platform that runs on, but it is a flat view site and macrumors.com which was create and is maintained by your company. To be hones I find both platforms a nightmare to navigate through, try to re-find a thread you had participated in, but it was 6 months ago. You then have to read maybe 100+ posts on a variety of pages to see whether you were in fact participating. How often do you think you will dig deep to see whether you were part of a "Latest Galaxy vs iPhone Pro" thread? You may of course have lost any interest, which is cool, but it certainly doesn't help keeping the traffic up ...

You disagree?

Deed

Cheers Deeds!

Yes, I think it's much better when I get notifications about any interaction on my post (replies, likes, etc), versus having to click into a thread and scroll to find out if there are any replies, and then I can't read them until I click in...one by one. into it.

No, you would not receive a notification for responses which didn't address YOUR post. Yes, I see that as better. I don't need a notification that someone has replied to some comment I didn't make in a long and meandering thread. The current functionality makes me completely ignore notifications, because they're always present.

There's a new posts function...which basically shows me any active thread. There's a trending threads link, a link to any thread to which I've contributed...and a lot more. All easily available from a left-hand navigation. Much more powerful, many more options.

I see way MORE posts in a flat UI, I read way MORE content, very quickly. I scan responses for value without a page load every, single, time. In XenForo I also see way more posts per page than the flat view here. So yeah, I think that's better than waiting for a page to load on every click to read a response. This is friction in the experience, and to me, that kinda sucks. I'm not talking about LESS interaction or LESS traffic. I don't care if it's more or less, I care if it's more valuable and feels more enjoyable and more useful. That can be more or less. Not a metric I care about as an end user.

The mod stuff on the back end is a minor point of course. Just recognizing why site managers and mods might have further reason to want an upgrade, beyond the ease of maintenance of the platform.

Fred Miranda doesn't work like XenForo. It doesn't remember last unread post. There's no notification system of note, etc. It's old and quite static. It simply doesn't offer the user experience of XenForo, and the delta is significant and meaningful.

Like I said, I would say "just try it" before jumping to any conclusions about whether it sucks. I mean I get it, some people are gonna say it sucks and not come off that position no matter what. Happens with every change. And people have legitimately different preferences. Of course.

My main point was to offer an alternative view to all the griping. I feel like it's a very informed view based on a career with hundreds of software rollouts and long experience with XenForo. But it's just opinion. I'm 100% sure some won't agree. That's OK.

But please don't put words in my mouth about what I'm saying. I'm only saying...exactly what I'm saying. Assuming anything else just takes time to refute, and that's not really my goal here. Thanks!

Sorry if this came across like I was putting words into your mouth, but your unlimited enthusiasm, you understand that it's not compulsory as such to simply agree with you, right?

My take is that I will spend far less time on dpreview as, just by reading your lengthly response I must say that I have little appetite in exploring what you consider progress, I have highlightes the parts that simply make me shudder. macrumors.com is built on XenFoto, right? The 911 posts regarding a Pixel 10 over a multitude of pages, 38 pages the last time I looked:

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/google-pixel-10-series.2458330/

So what you are saying is that you really like this? Your post may be sitting on page 14 - or 25?? So, if nobody reacts directly to your post, it's soon to be forgotten? And how would this work if you start a comparison, like a couple of Pixel 10 photos you compared to some iPhone 14 Pro pix, if somebody replies to YOUR post, you get a notification, right? And if a second person then replies to this person, you are not getting anything? And that's a good thing as the only thing you are interested in is the first response? But no follow ups?

But what somehow bugs me is the ease at which fans of the new system are dismissing the fact that there simply isn't a choice. Only Coke, but no Fanta, which suits those who like Coke just fine.

Ah, well, I disagree and certainly don't share your enthusiasm!

Deed

"It's just an opinion", should have probably indicated I don't think it's compulsory to share my view, no? What a strange thing to say. No, of course I don't mind at all if you disagree.

Things change. Sometimes we get a say in it, sometimes not. It's just an online forum.

Cheers.

Sorry I guess I took your talking with some authority as a nudge towards the new system. Oddly, you appear to also either dismiss or ignored my comments regarding the "choice" ...

Now regarding our little debate here, I have replied to what I thought was a strong, north of just an opinion, piece in favour of the new system. I felt like it was legit to reply equally strong. Leaving out any personal touches, I never meant this to be anything BUT a debate (I thik you are one of the more pleasant characters here on dpreview, to be honest!), so I thought that, when somebody talks about a topic with some authority, there might also be some opposition to that view.

I thought you came across very strong, hence my strongish reply! I thought your tone didn't accept that the new system was anything, but just great Robust debate, nothing more which I appreciate!

The other item you didn't want to tackle was the 900+ threads how to navigate those?? Read those 38 pages in a blizzard?? Tesla-Speed?? ;-)

You keep bringing this up, but I really don't understand how a similarly long thread is any easier to navigate on DPR... If you're new to the thread it's still a beast because almost no one retitles sub threads so you're going thru the same amount of total content, only instead of being able to just scroll thru it you'd have to click repeatedly in threaded view.

If you're not new to a long thread and you've been participating then enhanced notice can make it very easy to keep up with it! In threaded view on DPR you have to hunt around for the different colored links and seek out those unread comments... Not terrible but it can be easiest. On a more modern system you still pick how to engage.

You'll get a notification when people interact directly with you and you can choose to prioritize those, but you'll also get a notification when new comments are made to a thread you follow and you can jump in right to that page. If MacRumors doesn't implement this (I wouldn't know) then they just have a poor XenForo configuration, there's better examples if so.

I actually kinda hate Head Fi btw (way too many people with way too many opinions and way too much sponsorship), the their UI is brilliant, much smaller boards (eg SBAF) are able to implement it just as well though so I hope DPR can manage.

Also: a website lives on traffic, so if people spend less time here, it means less exposure, but I have been wrong before so what do I know??

I don't think that UI actually has people spending less time on those boards TBH, extra clicks and scrolling for the heck of it isn't the way to achieve that anyway and the DPR threaded UI does force a lot of that.

I bet you or I can sorta recall the structure of a couple of threads here, but the vast majority of people aren't paying attention to that and almost no one is re-naming sub threads so I believe it's not very friendly at all to more casual users.

All the best in the meantime, will ask you on a different level what you have been up to ok??

Deed

Both you and surefoxy have very strong ideas about how fabulous the new forum is and you have now quoted a "strong" majority for flat view?? There was a little poll, I think on maybe the open forum?? Can't remember but last time I looked it wasn't as strong a majority for flat-view??

Not sure what you mean, all I said is most people aren't memorizing the threaded structure of threads as they frequent them. Dale (from DPR) has said that internally they can see about half the users here are using flat view, so half aren't even seeing the threaded structure and from the half that is I would think it's easy to assume they aren't all super obsessive/observant, that's all.

Truth is, I am losing interest. On the old forum you had a choice, on the new one, you won't - and I keep on hearing that's actually great?? ;-) (you know, what I mean?? The yeah-sayers are super vocal here!!!!!)

I think you've glosses over a few things in order to reinforce why a loss of choice will be for the worst, it often is but I'm not sure it'll be that bad in this instance.

Will see whether I can dig up the current poll.

Deed

Loss of choice a good thing then? ;-) I can see now that the majority here (numbers till too small to tell, but maybe an indication) want flat view:



Not sure whether this is an overwhelming majority for your personal preference though?

On a slightly off-site matter: you think this debate is bringing people together?? Or only those who favour flat view?? (was just reading about the latest US politics in today's paper, which certainly leaves an impression regarding division...). You know what I mean? 46.5% will get what they want, 42.9% won't. And those who get what they want tell those who don't that they should just relax and roll with it, not problem ;-)

A bit like this?

Hopefully just a bit, the US is in dire straits IMO, ironically I'm way more optimistic about DPR's prospects (forum and all...).

Take care, apart from this "issues" I don#t think we have any issues, right on??

Nah, I'd never take a debate over something like this personal!

Just bought a Voigtländer 35/1.4 Nocton Classic, the controversial one, less than US$ 200.00 so I thought: yeah, I can do that!!

Deed

Curious choice for you tbh, but for $200 why the heck not. I'd be interested to see what you think of it. I wish I had more time & $ and dedication to MF to get/try the F1.2 Noktons before they disappear (Cosina Voigtlander seems to operate on less than clear whims)... You gonna take the Classic on your upcoming trip or gonna evaluate it at home first?

Sometimes trial by fire tells us so much! (but then return windows tend to lapse, less of a concern at the price you got it tho)

Nah, will be trying her in India, see how it goes and then maybe list fir a smidgen more than US$ 200.00?? (cheating of course as I WILL use it at home first but really only testing ...

How's that 40/2 coming along?

Deed

 

[Thad E Ginathom]

Whilst I have been coming here on and off for years, and take a look most days, I am not such a regular user that I am going to get upset over an interface change, despite usually being a stick in the mud change hater, lol.

I'm not a social media man, where that means facebook, instagram (ok, sometimes), Twitter, etc. I am a Forums (fora to the hardliners, I suppose) guy. It's a wonderful format in which to interact and learn, and a good format to retain valuable learning and resources. Everybody says it is a dying format, but those with good membership and content are not only surviving but thriving. Currently, just one of the the forums I frequent uses XenForo. I think it is one of the nicest.

Oh... I hate change, but there is one thing I have always disliked on dpreview. The awful, endless, eternal, never-ending, forever, scroll-key-wearing, photograph including, mind-numbing nested comments. XenForo won't do it (I hope and pray).

The fact that almost nobody here ever bothers to edit them before replying suggests that they may even be popular. Sorry. I will clap and cheer their demise!

--
Carnatic Portraits. South Indian Classical Music in my South Indian home city. With occasional cat, flower, and holiday pics.

 

[Dhomas]

So happy with the threaded view. I Always use it.

Yeah, don't fix something that isn't broken.