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It works for me.

6 (31.6%)

It does not work for me.

1 (5.3%)

I'd be willing to help test it.

6 (31.6%)

I'm not interested in testing it.

1 (5.3%)

I might be willing to help test it.

5 (26.3%)

Total Members Voted: 14

[dorf]

I switched the forum to use a static layout. It should eliminate the problems people have been having clicking on posts and such. What do you think, people? Is it an improvement?

Yeah, I like it!
I've had a bug where I've opened connecting posts of the 'Forum Games' and they've appeared parentless at the bottom-right side of the graph. Unfortunately I cannot reproduce the bug.

Tooltips are helpful, although jarring. You might wanna try using the browser built-in tooltip by manipulating the title attribute of #posts-graph.

My insane paranoia is that it'll all be "but the music sucks! D+ try again"

It's hard putting yourself out there to be potentially criticized but what's the alternative? Being creative and not showing your work to anyone?

[Angle]

I'm working on changing the new posts interface right now, and I hope to consult with somebody about changing the display in a day or two. What kind of advice would you guys put forth, in terms of looks? Any suggestions as to color scheme, size of various buttons, layout, etc? I know it was suggested that I change how things look when zoomed in or out, I.E. only showing titles when zoomed out, keeping the buttons large when zoomed out, etc. Is there anything else along those lines that anyone would like to suggest?

Oh, and what all would be necessary for you to start using it now? I kinda want to start testing it out ASAP so I can get a good feeling for how it works and how it could be made better.

[dorf]

LEGEND:
 - category: the top posts (Forum, Creative Forums...)
 - thread: user-created post (OP) that is directly under a category

- The main categories should probably always display in the same order. If you open the application a bunch of times and click the "load connected posts" button, the order of categories will be different almost every time. Since you allow users to manipulate the graph ad-hoc, maybe have a "remember last state" option?
- Make threads and categories visually different. Make user-created threads and mod-created categories visually different.
- Loading icons/animations will keep users from leaving the site.
- I feel the starting view should be more zoomed-in maybe. The font is quite small by default. The buttons are too tiny for mobile-use and uncomfortable for mouse-use.
- The current layout makes me want to create twitter-like posts instead of large posts such as this one.
- Disabled buttons when they are not applicable. When a post doesn't have children the button should be grey'd-out.
- Maybe add some numbers. E.g. posts could have total number of unread/hidden children posts.
- Streamline! Make the most frequently used actions as fluid and simple as possible for the user. Use more recognizable icons for creating posts and loading connecting posts.
- Feature-wise I'm unsure. I guess that's dictated by Agora's use-cases. So, if you're going for an social argument platform, implement features that will go toward that goal.

[Angle]

Oh! How do you think I should encourage people to use the forum? I'm currently thinking that having lots of small posts could be desirable. The idea being that instead of posting gigantic walls of text, people post long chains and webs of smaller posts. This breaks arguments into smaller, more digestible pieces, and allows people to single out individual pieces without making things too difficult to follow.

What do the rest of you think? Sound good, or would you suggest something else?

[Angle]

I updated it so that new posts can be added from the same page. Still need to rework links, though. I'm gonna do a vsiual rework once I tackle links.

[Angle]

So what do people think of the new posts feature that adds them to the graph and lets you type in them before submitting them? Would it be better to have them be separate, like in a pop-up attached to the bottom of the page, and not part of the graph? The idea with having them be part of the graph is that you can drag them around and link them to stuff the same way you would other stuff that's already been posted on the graph, but that might not be necessary.

I ask cause me and a friend are going over the code and he wants to make some major changes. I agree that the project needs some major changes, but I'm not sure that these are the right ones.

[Angle]

Been working on getting posts to display nicely. Took a bit of rewriting, but here's where we're at right now:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

[dorf]

Looks very nice. The UI has a more familiar feel now.
Nice work.

[Angle]

That was a friend of mine who did all that work, actually. But I do think it's turning out quite well.

[Angle]

Finally have a live test of the new UI put together. It's still a bit buggy, but it should at least let people take a look and see how it works.

You will likely need to refresh your browser after navigating to the forum page in order to get the forum to work. We're gonna try and catch that mod soon, but for the moment it persists.

Anyway, what do you think? Look good? Right now you can load posts by clicking the 'Show Connecting posts' button in the lower left of a post, you can close it by clicking the red X, you can drag it around by clicking on the titlebar (But not the title), you can drag the entire forum around by clicking on the back ground and dragging, and you can add new replies by click the reply buttons. Clickint\g reply to multiple posts will connect your reply to those multiple posts. Replies are fairly self-explanatory - they have a title and a body, and you can write whatever you like in them and then click submit to add them to the graph.

You can view it here: http://forum-demo-88817.onmodulus.net/forum

[Antsan]

The number in parens behind the "Show connecting posts" is confusing. I thought it would be the number of subnodes, but as it is it seems to be the height of the tree the button belongs to. I'm not sure what purpose that measure has – I think number of subnodes is more relevant for the function of that button, since it predicts what strain the user will put on his system by clicking on that node, abstractly speaking.

[MoonyTheHuman]

Intresting. i would like to help ^_^ what languages are used? (i know js and html, but what else?)

[Angle]

The number in parens behind the "Show connecting posts" is confusing. I thought it would be the number of subnodes, but as it is it seems to be the height of the tree the button belongs to. I'm not sure what purpose that measure has – I think number of subnodes is more relevant for the function of that button, since it predicts what strain the user will put on his system by clicking on that node, abstractly speaking.

That shows the number of subnodes and of supernodes. I'm eventually gonna make it show that number, minus the ones that already present on the graph.

Intresting. i would like to help ^_^ what languages are used? (i know js and html, but what else?)

CSS and a thing called Meteor, which isn't a language per se, but requires learning a lot like one. You can view the source for the project here (forum code) and here (Test website).

If you need any help figuring things out don't hesitate to ask!

[dorf]

Once I've opened the whole tree, two posts in the tree were shaking their right border while I was moving the mouse.
Their right border moved like 1px in then out, etc.

[Angle]

Once I've opened the whole tree, two posts in the tree were shaking their right border while I was moving the mouse.
Their right border moved like 1px in then out, etc.

I'm not seeing that bug, but I'll keep an eye out for it. It's probably a schrodinger bug, it'll show up eventually.

On another note, does anyone have any advice for what order I should start implementing other things? I have a lot of features left to implement and I'm not sure how to prioritize them. These include allowing posts to be expanded so you can read a large post easily, zooming, proper user profiles, SAA, replying to posts and web pages outside the forum, moderation, BBCode, reworking the graph layout, etc.

What all do you guys think should be prioritized, and in what order?