Relaunch Screenshots, Videos, and Feedback

[Teapot]

I've started this thread as a central place for minor showcases regarding the upcoming relaunch that aren't major enough to deserve their own news entry. This is also a great place for people to share their feedback on what's been shown so far, and offer suggestions as to what they'd like to see on the new site - even if it's something completely unrelated to what has been shown

First up, a partial look at a forum listing - this is half a shot from the General Writings forum:

You can see a few new things here - firstly, and most interestingly, there's something we call thread prefixes: they're a way for users to categorise threads. Right now we're mostly using them for the RP and writing boards.

Essentially, we're removing the Writing Archive forum and moving completed writings back into the main forum. When a writing is considered "finished", a user can add the [Finished] prefix themselves to mark it as such, instead of needing to ask the staff to move it. You can click on the prefixes to find all threads with that prefix - so if you just wanted to read finished fiction, you could click on the Finished tag and it would filter the list down to only finished works.

The other thing worth noting is the thread icons aren't there anymore - they've been replaced with a small, square version of the original poster's avatar. What's particularly useful is that threads you have posted in are marked in the bottom corner of the icon by your avatar - you can see from the screenshot that I have posted in Writing Tips and the ChaWriMo thread.

I'll be showing more as time goes on - what do you all think of what you've seen so far? I'm curious to hear opinions on both the thread prefixes listed here and the stuff I've already shown at http://chr.ms/comingsoon.

 

[Chadwyck]

I must say Petey, and to the rest of the staff as well (even though Petey's the one who's building it >>), that I'm really excited to see the new 'Charms up and running.

To do what you asked, I'll let you know what I think - it looks phenomenal. In this post in particular, I'm really excited about the prefixes for the threads (if I ever manage to finish more fics, I'll definitely be using them ;D) and I like the way it shows the profile picture of the original poster. If there were any way to keep it from showing your profile picture in the corner if you are the original poster, that'd be neat, but not essential. It's just a personal preference since it looks a little odd to have a big picture and then a small picture, but it's nothing major.

As far as the linku that you've posted there, I'm really excited to see the new 'Charms go live, I like the combination of Pokecharms and social networking, I think it's an attractive feature that could get a lot more people to visit the site. For better or for worse ;D but in all seriousness, I like the idea of being able to keep up with the goings on in the newsfeed, and keeping track of everything in one convenient place. And Trophies, oh gods as if I wasn't already addicted to them from PS3 and Xbox 360, now I've got another place to try and collect them xD

Likes go without saying, I'll still probably prefer posting/commenting my thoughts on things I "like" but I am still excited nonetheless.

Last, but certainly not least, I love the addition of the mobile support. I've not been about on the chat lately, but mostly due to browsing from my phone and not from the trusty lappy; and now that the site will be supported on my phone, it'll be all the better :'D

All in all, great job guys, I'm super excited about the new site.

 

[Teapot]

Thank you Chadwyck ♥ I'll look into the double-icon thing and see if I can do anything about it. Also: I might be building some of the code for the site, but the rest of the staff have been instrumental in helping to make this relaunch the best it can be in so many other ways it's impossible to define them.

However, I have a new screenshot today~ This time it's a thread listing screenshot - and I'm revealing one of the more exciting new features we've got. Click on the thumbnail to see the full image~



Firstly, you'll now notice there's a green arrow on quotes. This is a small feature, but very useful - clicking that arrow will send you back to the quote in question so you can read the whole post.

Secondly, you'll notice all of the avatars are much bigger now: avatars displayed on the forum and your profiles can now be as large as 192x192px. They are scaled down for other parts of the site, however: we can use whatever size works best for the place in question by resizing your large avatar on the server.

Thirdly, and most excitingly: We now have a WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) editor - that means that typed text can be formatted on the fly, like in Word, without having to deal with tags. Similarly, you can use keyboard shortcuts for some of the features - Ctrl-B for bold, Ctrl-I for italic, etcetera. The posts are still written with BBCode - and some BBCodes (like spoilers) still show up in the editor. You can also, using the button on the far right of the editor, flip over to the old-style BBCode mode if you want to have more control.

Lastly, clicking the number on the bottom-right of a post (in this case, #316 brings up a box that lets you link directly to an individual post, or share it:

We've still got so much more to share, so keep an eye on this thread~

 

[Chadwyck]

Thank you Chadwyck ♥ I'll look into the double-icon thing and see if I can do anything about it. Also: I might be building some of the code for the site, but the rest of the staff have been instrumental in helping to make this relaunch the best it can be in so many other ways it's impossible to define them.

I know, the whole staff is doing a great job, I was talking about the coding aspect giving my wifey some attention ♥ but the whole staff deserves a round of applause

I like the new quoting arrow, I think it's nifty, and I'm looking forward to using it. But I'm most excited about the what you see is what you get posting. I feel like it'll make things much smoother