Help us test the PH Re-design!

Jonathan

Hello to all PH users,

We have been working hard over the past months to bring Programmer's Heaven a new look and some new features. Along the way, we have also worked to improve the navigation greatly: between forums, or to resource pages, will now be just a single click from anywhere on the site, for example!

We plan to launch the re-design in about a week, if all goes smoothly, but before we do that we wanted to let you - the Programmer's Heaven community - have a look over it and give us any comments about what you like and dislike. Bug reports are also very welcome; one can never do enough testing! You can check out a demo of the re-design at:

http://testing.communityheaven.com:90/

[b]Please note that the testing site is working on a copy of the live site's database, not the real data. This not only means that it will quickly lag behind the content here, but also that any forum posts, resource submissions, comments or blog entries you make on the testing site will not be reflected on the live site now or after we launch the re-design. Please just post testing data there.[/b]

Please use this forum to report bugs, provide feedback and have discussions on the re-design. The Programmer's Heaven team will be listening to what is said here and participate in the discussions. We are open to making changes, and of course doing bug fixes, as they are suggested here. Without you folks, we have no community, so we want to make a site that is useful and enjoyable for you.

Thanks for your time, and for being part of Programmer's Heaven!

Nicolai, Lars, Jonathan, Jakob and Brad
The Programmer's Heaven Team

zibadian

: Hello to all PH users,
:
: We have been working hard over the past months to bring Programmer's
: Heaven a new look and some new features. Along the way, we have also
: worked to improve the navigation greatly: between forums, or to
: resource pages, will now be just a single click from anywhere on the
: site, for example!
:
: We plan to launch the re-design in about a week, if all goes
: smoothly, but before we do that we wanted to let you - the
: Programmer's Heaven community - have a look over it and give us any
: comments about what you like and dislike. Bug reports are also very
: welcome; one can never do enough testing! You can check out a demo
: of the re-design at:
:
: http://testing.communityheaven.com:90/
:
: [b]Please note that the testing site is working on a copy of the
: live site's database, not the real data. This not only means that it
: will quickly lag behind the content here, but also that any forum
: posts, resource submissions, comments or blog entries you make on
: the testing site will not be reflected on the live site now or after
: we launch the re-design. Please just post testing data there.[/b]
:
: Please use this forum to report bugs, provide feedback and have
: discussions on the re-design. The Programmer's Heaven team will be
: listening to what is said here and participate in the discussions.
: We are open to making changes, and of course doing bug fixes, as
: they are suggested here. Without you folks, we have no community, so
: we want to make a site that is useful and enjoyable for you.
:
: Thanks for your time, and for being part of Programmer's Heaven!
:
: Nicolai, Lars, Jonathan, Jakob and Brad
: The Programmer's Heaven Team
:
Here are some suggestions for improvement:
- Perhaps it is best to show the thread above the message edit box instead of in it.
- I found the "Latest Posts"/"Latest Threads" a bit far off. It might be more logical to switch the individual boards and the "Latest Posts"/"Latest Threads" around in the menu. Along the same lines, perhaps it is also helpful to place a button for the "Latest Posts"/"Latest Threads" in the top of the forums (around the "How to create your first post!")

One of the features of the original board, which I found the best, was lost in the present incantation: Latest Posts for the Favorite Boards. Could that also be added in the new design?

Otherwise I like the new layout better than the current.

bilderbikkel

Dear Programmers Heaven and other top users,

I agree with Zibadian about the forums.

I really like the new file submission part!

Searching for a file does not go smoothtly. For example, I know there is a class that serves as an interface to the program Gnuplot. When I search for 'Gnuplot interface class' or 'C++ Gnuplot', I do not find this file. But when I search for 'Gnuplot C++' I do, which is only the search string before in another sequence. This seems to me something to be improved.

About 'Wiki articles': I also found that you can submit a 'Wiki article', but I could not find a 'Wiki articles' section. Next to this, I think that the CodePedia is a more suitable place to for wiki articles.

In one's profile, you can now see the 'Recent Events' about him/her. This is great! You can see what your favorite PH member is up to.

I hope my feedback helped you. I look forward for the new site to go online.

See ya, Bilderbikkel

Lundin

Looks nice. I still miss the feature where a user gets an automatic notification that their thread has been moved/removed though. Would make things smoother for moderators.

Sephiroth

The main page seems a little overwhelming, but is nice. I believe that the latest blogs and discussions should be in the middle however, and the articles and ads on the left. Generally speaking, menus are on the left, top, or right of a site, not the center.

The new forum layout seems much nicer and more standard. It just feels smoother. If it supports stickies and such now, it'll be great!

I like the site for the most part, but searching does yield some strange strange results. I also feel odd using the articles links in the middle of the main page, but overall the design seems great. I'll comb through it in more detail tomorrow when I have more time.

-[italic][b][red]S[/red][purple]e[/purple][blue]p[/blue][green]h[/green][red]i[/red][purple]r[/purple][blue]o[/blue][green]t[/green][red]h[/red][/b][/italic]

mattaseymour

Something that could look cool in the future would be the interactive element on the site. Something where the user can edit the page layout so the items that they use the most are in the position they want it. It could also lead to a further development where users of PH could design our own apps for it.

Obviously the work involved would be large and therefore may not be viable
but it would be a cool feature of the future.

Matt


: Hello to all PH users,
:
: We have been working hard over the past months to bring Programmer's
: Heaven a new look and some new features. Along the way, we have also
: worked to improve the navigation greatly: between forums, or to
: resource pages, will now be just a single click from anywhere on the
: site, for example!
:
: We plan to launch the re-design in about a week, if all goes
: smoothly, but before we do that we wanted to let you - the
: Programmer's Heaven community - have a look over it and give us any
: comments about what you like and dislike. Bug reports are also very
: welcome; one can never do enough testing! You can check out a demo
: of the re-design at:
:
: http://testing.communityheaven.com:90/
:
: [b]Please note that the testing site is working on a copy of the
: live site's database, not the real data. This not only means that it
: will quickly lag behind the content here, but also that any forum
: posts, resource submissions, comments or blog entries you make on
: the testing site will not be reflected on the live site now or after
: we launch the re-design. Please just post testing data there.[/b]
:
: Please use this forum to report bugs, provide feedback and have
: discussions on the re-design. The Programmer's Heaven team will be
: listening to what is said here and participate in the discussions.
: We are open to making changes, and of course doing bug fixes, as
: they are suggested here. Without you folks, we have no community, so
: we want to make a site that is useful and enjoyable for you.
:
: Thanks for your time, and for being part of Programmer's Heaven!
:
: Nicolai, Lars, Jonathan, Jakob and Brad
: The Programmer's Heaven Team
:

Jonathan

: Here are some suggestions for improvement:
: - Perhaps it is best to show the thread above the message edit box
: instead of in it.
I think if replying to parts of the message (like I am here) then it's useful to have it quoted. I think that's why we retained the behavior (well, the forum upgrades are really visual more than internals, since we re-did the internals not so long ago).

Maybe better would be to have it displayed separately, and then a "quote" button to put it into the box, quoted, if you want to write such a reply? That would seem to handle both cases, though would possibly complicate things a little...

: - I found the "Latest Posts"/"Latest Threads" a bit far off. It
: might be more logical to switch the individual boards and the
: "Latest Posts"/"Latest Threads" around in the menu.
Hmm, that's an interesting point; I'm inclined to do this. Good thought.

: Along the same lines, perhaps it is also helpful to place a button for
: the "Latest Posts"/"Latest Threads" in the top of the forums (around
: the "How to create your first post!")
Perhaps, yes. Though part of me wonders, now we have the drop-down to jump straight to a forum of interest, whether many people will use the forum start page at all...

: One of the features of the original board, which I found the best,
: was lost in the present incantation: Latest Posts for the Favorite
: Boards. Could that also be added in the new design?
It's kinda still here today (both on the live forum and in the re-design). Go to any forum, then there is a drop-down that reads "This Forum" (with the word On next to it, in the settings area). On that, you have a favorites option, to see posts from all your favorite forums. However, given how little it is used (I just discovered and fixed a bug where it crashed if you are not logged in, which nobody else had triggered yet), there's certainly a good argument for making something like this more visible. We'll take a look at doing something better.

Thanks for the feedback - I suspect we'll do the switch of the latest posts etc to the top of the list for the launch, then look into the other issues shortly afterwards.

Jonathan

Jonathan

: Looks nice. I still miss the feature where a user gets an automatic
: notification that their thread has been moved/removed though. Would
: make things smoother for moderators.
Yes, I know you've asked for this, and it hasn't been forgotten; we've just been a bit tied up getting the re-design in place. It's certainly in our list of tasks to do shortly after the re-design is launched (just checked this), so it's coming soon (I'd expect, late July/early August).

Thanks for all you do on the forums,

Jonathan


###
for(74,117,115,116){$::a.=chr};(($_.='qwertyui')&&
(tr/yuiqwert/her anot/))for($::b);for($::c){$_.=$^X;
/(p.{2}l)/;$_=$1}$::b=~/(..)$/;print("$::a$::b $::c hack$1.");

Jonathan

: Searching for a file does not go smoothtly. For example, I know
: there is a class that serves as an interface to the program Gnuplot.
: When I search for 'Gnuplot interface class' or 'C++ Gnuplot', I do
: not find this file. But when I search for 'Gnuplot C++' I do, which
: is only the search string before in another sequence. This seems to
: me something to be improved.
That is curious, because in theory the index generation and the way we interface with the search engine shouldn't have changed between the current site and the re-design, but they give different results. Note "Gnuplot interface class" doesn't give anything on the current site; maybe this is because the terms are ANDed together by default. The "C++ Gnuplot" vs "Gnuplot C++" is certainly broken, though (and works on the current site). Investigating - good catch.

: About 'Wiki articles': I also found that you can submit a 'Wiki
: article', but I could not find a 'Wiki articles' section. Next to
: this, I think that the CodePedia is a more suitable place to for
: wiki articles.
We've some final tweaks to go there, but basically they will end up listed in the same articles directory for browsing/searching purposes, once they are marked complete (the "saying it's complete" bit is what's left to get in place - we've some ongoing discussion about how much moderation is desirable here). I think we'll feature latest user written wiki articles on the homepage specially. But other than that, it's just another way to get something into the articles directory: the difference is that you host it here at PH, rather than putting it somewhere else and linking to it.

It is, under the hood, using the same engine as CodePedia, so all the syntax will be familiar to anyone who has used this. The big difference is that we added an articles layer on top of the page system. This means that you don't have to build the paging and section/series part navigation yourself, and allows us to provide a more consistent and usable interface to the article. You can think of it as a bunch of wiki pages (well, just one is fine if it's a one page article of course) in various relationships with each other.

Hopefully all of this makes sense? I guess we need to put more explanations in.

: In one's profile, you can now see the 'Recent Events' about him/her.
: This is great! You can see what your favorite PH member is up to.
Yes; I think in the future I think we're going to have a page to collect "what my friends are doing" together too, so if there's someone you realize regularly writes interesting forum posts, blog entries or submits useful articles/files etc, you can keep track of their New Stuff. Basically, we're just trying to make it easy to filter out the information that you want. We've also got "tag events" too, so if you go to some topic like C#, you can see the latest posts relating to it, or resources submitted and so on.

: I hope my feedback helped you. I look forward for the new site to go
: online.
Yes, thanks lots!

Jonathan

Jonathan

: The main page seems a little overwhelming, but is nice. I believe
: that the latest blogs and discussions should be in the middle
: however, and the articles and ads on the left. Generally speaking,
: menus are on the left, top, or right of a site, not the center.
I'll pass this comment up to the designer and see what he thinks; thanks for the input.

: The new forum layout seems much nicer and more standard. It just
: feels smoother. If it supports stickies and such now, it'll be
: great!
As with the forum today, moderators can make posts sticky.

: I like the site for the most part, but searching does yield some
: strange strange results.
Yes, we certainly seem to have some quirks in this; I'm working on getting to the bottom of what has changed/got broken at the moment.

Thanks,

Jonathan
###
for(74,117,115,116){$::a.=chr};(($_.='qwertyui')&&
(tr/yuiqwert/her anot/))for($::b);for($::c){$_.=$^X;
/(p.{2}l)/;$_=$1}$::b=~/(..)$/;print("$::a$::b $::c hack$1.");

Jonathan

: Something that could look cool in the future would be the
: interactive element on the site. Something where the user can edit
: the page layout so the items that they use the most are in the
: position they want it.
Are you thinking for the homepage, or something more general and widespread on the site? Certainly, doing things that allow the site to be more useful and let people get at the stuff they want/use regularly is of interest to us; how viable/complex this is depends on the scope of it. But it doesn't have to be all that complicated to make work...

: It could also lead to a further development where users of PH could
: design our own apps for it.
Sounds very Web 2.0. :-) We are quite open to the idea of some day having an API where people can build apps that interface with PH and so forth. However, it brings in a whole load of questions: what would people build with it, would anyone actually build anything useful, what are the privacy implications, what are the security implications and so forth.

A lot of the issues with trying to do Web 2.0-ish stuff is striking a balance between keeping the things that make PH good today and that people like about it now, while trying to extract the good and useful stuff from the current web trends and work them into PH. Or put another way, trying to move forward but making sure we don't make PH into something that many users don't want it to be.

I'm not saying at API would do this and it's an option on the table, but I don't want anyone to read this thinking we're about to turn PH into Yet Another Facebook either. Not that I dislike Facebook, and it's developer platform brought us such wonders as Superpoke (because we all love giving people virtual beers, or throwing virtual sheep at them ;-)). So it's an interesting idea, but hard to get right (it's as much working out how to do it well as implementing the stuff to do it), so I don't think we'll have this real soon. But yes, such ideas are certainly tossed around, when bits of the distributed-around-the-world PH team get to meet up and hang out together.

Thanks,

Jonathan
###
for(74,117,115,116){$::a.=chr};(($_.='qwertyui')&&
(tr/yuiqwert/her anot/))for($::b);for($::c){$_.=$^X;
/(p.{2}l)/;$_=$1}$::b=~/(..)$/;print("$::a$::b $::c hack$1.");

Jonathan

: : - I found the "Latest Posts"/"Latest Threads" a bit far off. It
: : might be more logical to switch the individual boards and the
: : "Latest Posts"/"Latest Threads" around in the menu.
: Hmm, that's an interesting point; I'm inclined to do this. Good
: thought.
There was general agreement here it was a good idea, so I just checked this change into our svn repo; it'll be in the next build we do.

Thanks!

Jonathan

###
for(74,117,115,116){$::a.=chr};(($_.='qwertyui')&&
(tr/yuiqwert/her anot/))for($::b);for($::c){$_.=$^X;
/(p.{2}l)/;$_=$1}$::b=~/(..)$/;print("$::a$::b $::c hack$1.");

zibadian

: : Here are some suggestions for improvement:
: : - Perhaps it is best to show the thread above the message edit box
: : instead of in it.
: I think if replying to parts of the message (like I am here) then
: it's useful to have it quoted. I think that's why we retained the
: behavior (well, the forum upgrades are really visual more than
: internals, since we re-did the internals not so long ago).
:
: Maybe better would be to have it displayed separately, and then a
: "quote" button to put it into the box, quoted, if you want to write
: such a reply? That would seem to handle both cases, though would
: possibly complicate things a little...
:
: : - I found the "Latest Posts"/"Latest Threads" a bit far off. It
: : might be more logical to switch the individual boards and the
: : "Latest Posts"/"Latest Threads" around in the menu.
: Hmm, that's an interesting point; I'm inclined to do this. Good
: thought.
:
: : Along the same lines, perhaps it is also helpful to place a button for
: : the "Latest Posts"/"Latest Threads" in the top of the forums (around
: : the "How to create your first post!")
: Perhaps, yes. Though part of me wonders, now we have the drop-down
: to jump straight to a forum of interest, whether many people will
: use the forum start page at all...
:
: : One of the features of the original board, which I found the best,
: : was lost in the present incantation: Latest Posts for the Favorite
: : Boards. Could that also be added in the new design?
: It's kinda still here today (both on the live forum and in the
: re-design). Go to any forum, then there is a drop-down that reads
: "This Forum" (with the word On next to it, in the settings area). On
: that, you have a favorites option, to see posts from all your
: favorite forums. However, given how little it is used (I just
: discovered and fixed a bug where it crashed if you are not logged
: in, which nobody else had triggered yet), there's certainly a good
: argument for making something like this more visible. We'll take a
: look at doing something better.
:
: Thanks for the feedback - I suspect we'll do the switch of the
: latest posts etc to the top of the list for the launch, then look
: into the other issues shortly afterwards.
:
: Jonathan
:
In regard to the latest posts on favorite boards: Is it possible to make it a direct link? I had Heaven bookmarked to that list. In this version it is not possible to bookmark the latest posts on favorite boards.
For moderators perhaps a bookmarkable page, which shows the latest posts on the moderated boards (similar to the fav. boards)?

ColacX

I like the new looks of the forums i always wondered why the programming forum had such a ugly and old webbpage. Good Job.

Bug #1 [color=Red]have[/color] you ever [color=Red]tried[/color] marking things red multiple times? [color=Red]its[/color] a [color=Red]pain[/color]. Make it so that after you've picked a color it returns to default "--Color--".

Bug #2 I get logged out after a couple of minits, make me stay logged in somehow?

Bug #3 On the latest poll you can actually mark all 4 options and press vote. Odd? But then again i might be using everything. But by standard they should rather be checkboxes instead.

#Bug 4 Its not such a big deal but the dates for posts are written in the format
mm/dd/yy
I feel it should be
dd/mm/yy
Because the later one changes less than the first one.

Suggestion #1
I feel like the "quoted text" should should have a smaller textfont rather than a : mark before every line. Also sometimes i feel like some users are over using the quoting function (mainly zibadian, but thanks for your help).

Suggestion #2
The "Post Thread" and "Preview Thread" and other buttons looks a bit blurry i prefer clearer buttons that doesnt hurt my eyes.

Suggestion #3
Indexing/give margin to every reply seems a bit unneccsary to me. Simpler to put the replys in a straight line?

Suggestion #4
Maybee give everything inside the "code tags" a syntax scheme and make tabbing tab a line 4 spaces.

zibadian

: I like the new looks of the forums i always wondered why the
: programming forum had such a ugly and old webbpage. Good Job.
:
: Bug #1 [color=Red]have[/color] you ever [color=Red]tried[/color]
: marking things red multiple times? [color=Red]its[/color] a
: [color=Red]pain[/color]. Make it so that after you've picked a color
: it returns to default "--Color--".
:
: Bug #2 I get logged out after a couple of minits, make me stay
: logged in somehow?
:
: Bug #3 On the latest poll you can actually mark all 4 options and
: press vote. Odd? But then again i might be using everything. But by
: standard they should rather be checkboxes instead.
:
: #Bug 4 Its not such a big deal but the dates for posts are written
: in the format
: mm/dd/yy
: I feel it should be
: dd/mm/yy
: Because the later one changes less than the first one.
:
: Suggestion #1
: I feel like the "quoted text" should should have a smaller textfont
: rather than a : mark before every line. Also sometimes i feel like
: some users are over using the quoting function (mainly zibadian, but
: thanks for your help).
:
: Suggestion #2
: The "Post Thread" and "Preview Thread" and other buttons looks a bit
: blurry i prefer clearer buttons that doesnt hurt my eyes.
:
: Suggestion #3
: Indexing/give margin to every reply seems a bit unneccsary to me.
: Simpler to put the replys in a straight line?
:
: Suggestion #4
: Maybee give everything inside the "code tags" a syntax scheme and
: make tabbing tab a line 4 spaces.

Bug#2: This seems to be a local problem, possibly with the cookie settings. I can stay logged in how long I want (even if the computer is down).

Bug#4: Dates are written in day-month as text-year. This also appears to be a local issue, possibly with the locale you're using.

Suggestion #1: I hardly ever remove the previously posted texts. I've also suggested this. Most other forums I use don't automatically quote the post in the reply.

The other bugs and suggestions are excellent.

Jonathan

: I like the new looks of the forums i always wondered why the
: programming forum had such a ugly and old webbpage. Good Job.
:
Well, to be fair it was fairly new looking once. But, the web moved on, the current ideas of good looks moved on, and we took a while to get caught up. I think we're starting to get there now.

: Bug #1 [color=Red]have[/color] you ever [color=Red]tried[/color]
: marking things red multiple times? [color=Red]its[/color] a
: [color=Red]pain[/color]. Make it so that after you've picked a color
: it returns to default "--Color--".
:
Fixed now.

: Bug #2 I get logged out after a couple of minits, make me stay
: logged in somehow?
:
That's odd; there was a stage when we were deploying new updates to the code quite often (putting in urgent fixes and profiling code to try and track down a couple of performance issues), but things should be more stable now. Are things any better now? I haven't seen so much in the way of issues like this; on the other hand, I'm using auto-login...

: Bug #3 On the latest poll you can actually mark all 4 options and
: press vote. Odd? But then again i might be using everything. But by
: standard they should rather be checkboxes instead.
:
You should only have been able to select one, and it's fixed now.

: #Bug 4 Its not such a big deal but the dates for posts are written
: in the format
: mm/dd/yy
: I feel it should be
: dd/mm/yy
: Because the later one changes less than the first one.
:
I also agree that is the sensible way. However, our servers are in the US and I guess are applying that localization. I agree the dd/mm/yy way is way more sensible - I don't know why anyone would come up with mm/dd/yy. :-S Am asking around what folks on the PH team think, anyway.

: Suggestion #1
: I feel like the "quoted text" should should have a smaller textfont
: rather than a : mark before every line. Also sometimes i feel like
: some users are over using the quoting function (mainly zibadian, but
: thanks for your help).
:
Yes, we have a couple of tickets filed in our tracker that will do changes along these lines (if I remember correctly, we settled on not auto-quoting any more, but instead providing a button to get the message quoted if you wanted that...it is useful, as in my use of quoting in this post, but from what I'm hearing from the PH user-base it should be on request rather than automatic). So that is upcoming. And there is a ticket to look into making quoting a bit more visually pleasing too - probably just pre-processing lines starting with : into something else.

: Suggestion #2
: The "Post Thread" and "Preview Thread" and other buttons looks a bit
: blurry i prefer clearer buttons that doesnt hurt my eyes.
:
Agree; mailed the graphics guy and asked him to send some replacements for some of the blurry ones.

: Suggestion #3
: Indexing/give margin to every reply seems a bit unneccsary to me.
: Simpler to put the replys in a straight line?
:
If that's what you want, just switch to linear view mode (see top of the page you're reading, or you can change it permanently for your account by going to "Edit My Profile" and seeing the Forum tabs). I dislike linear view personally, as you can't see the thread structure, but we do provide it as an option for those who prefer it.

: Suggestion #4
: Maybee give everything inside the "code tags" a syntax scheme and
: make tabbing tab a line 4 spaces.
I think we just send tabs to the browser as is now and let it handle how many spaces they actually are. I guess we could always transform a tab character into four spaces, but it's not really the way tabs are meant to work, and anyone pasting tabular data would get a mess. Doing anything more complex is, well, complex. So I'm tempted to leave this as it is rather than trying to change it and introducing odd issues...

Syntax scheme - are you thinking syntax highlighting? We certainly do have syntax highlighting of code on the forums on our wish list. We have part of the infrastructure in place now (that which we use to highlight code in ZIP files). Integrating that into the forums in a way that won't hurt performance loads is the harder part, but we sure would like to do it.

Thanks for the feedback!

Jonathan

###
for(74,117,115,116){$::a.=chr};(($_.='qwertyui')&&
(tr/yuiqwert/her anot/))for($::b);for($::c){$_.=$^X;
/(p.{2}l)/;$_=$1}$::b=~/(..)$/;print("$::a$::b $::c hack$1.");