Symphony.

Alistair and I spent some time today restructuring the forum. We were never really happy with Vanilla's default format so we wanted to try a new structure. The design is heavily influenced by Beast, an awesome Ruby on Rails forum.

It may not be immediately clear why we're spending time restructuring the forum but it's partly due to a couple of features we will be rolling out later down the track and I want to get the design right before that happens.

The design is still very much experimental so some things will look funny at this stage.

Hm ...

At first glance it does not really look "symphonically" to me because of the new icons and all the visible table borders. A bit too dark and in contrast to the rest of the site.

Sorry for not to writing something more positive. I'll give it a second try later and post some more detailed thoughts.

The design is heavily influenced by Beast, an awesome Ruby on Rails forum.

I checked the logs. You guys need to get your aspiration somewhere else. Poor Rottweiler :-(

We were never really happy with Vanilla's default format so we wanted to try a new structure.

I grew tired of it as well.

I like contrast. And I like the new path your are striking (or rather treading? Or else? Hm..)

Sadly I have to admit that I have not tested 2.0 beta version yet = currently I am no help finding bugs. :(

But I like the new Overture style. Really like it. :)

I'm a fan of Beast (which happens to have been built by the same crew that made Mephisto and Lighthouse—both solid offerings as well), so a move in that direction sounds like a good idea. Keep up the good work, guys.

I am having a hard time seeing the threads with new posts. I really liked the different color background for the new posts, and just using the text "# New" seems too difficult to scan.

beast? make sure it's not the beast forums...

edit. ha, didn't see lewis' comments earlier. i second that one.

It might grow on me, but the Discussion list, icons and not to mention this comment form is a bit too messy for my taste.

I quite enjoyed how it was the other day before this. But that is because i really liked how simple and clean it was. But I do not mind the way it looks when reading a discussion.

Ah.... the most recent update is looking great.

using this a little more, i think it's a little easier to see the relevant information for each thread.

reply to #6

Dave, it's meant to highlight the rows, at least on the local copy it does. I've yet to figure out what the discrepancy is yet.

Fixed. The CSS was targeting unread threads which meant old threads with new comments weren't highlighted.

Allen's refined the style a bit more and we've added the Who's Online panel back.

IMO, FWIW, the forum layout is looking extremely awesome! Kudos! This just keeps getter better and better, doesn't it? :)

Btw -- if you start your subject line with a word in square brackets, will that automatically get the black-box-tag treatment? or are those predetermined categories?

David. Edit - 9 hrs later This just keeps getting funkier, doesn't it?

Allen -- I've been on the fence about the new forum layout the last few days, but the latest revision looks amazing. Thank you!

The post submission form needs some help, the grey is looking pretty odd compared to the rest of Overture. Otherwise, I think it looks great.

Wow, I love the forum index page! The thread page seems to waste a lot of space in between posts and to the left, though.

Great job guys :D

I've made some changes to the style and more importantly fixed some style bugs on Win FF (hopefully). Can you guys please help me identify any browser specific style bugs?

Hi Allen -- Looks like you've caught all the Win FF weirdness that I had noticed. Also, great to see the thread anchor's title giving thread creator correctly.

Two quick things I'm noticing now. (1) The user info screen is a bit wonky. Screen grab is here.

(2) Would it be possible to have one of the columns (perhaps the # of posts?) link to the last comment in the thread? Sometimes when revisiting a thread without any "new" content, you want to get to the last bit, not the first bit, especially in a long thread. Just a thought.

David.

Looks like you've caught all the Win FF weirdness that I had noticed. Also, great to see the thread anchor's title giving thread creator correctly.

I concur.

The user info screen is a bit wonky.

I get a different result in Firefox 2 Windows XP. I have attached a screenshot.

Sometimes when revisiting a thread without any "new" content, you want to get to the last bit, not the first bit, especially in a long thread. Just a thought.

I agree, but to keep from cluttering up the interface, it would be nice to have a jump to end link in place of the "new" link when there is no new content.