well,

 

I would say that the problem is that IBM seem to have decided that everything must use the oneUI CSS framework. if you look in openNTF everything build with xPAges is having the same UI.

I can understand the reason, as developers are mainly focused on functionality.

 

Most of the functionality in this forum works, but as you say the ui sucks, and it is not very user friendly.

I think we might need a greasemonkey script here.

 

 

Thomas

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

greasemonkey script added :)

 

http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/97922

 

it should highlight in red the current response

 

I know that it will have a short life till the forum will do it, but will help me at least in reading thru the topics/responses.

My main pain points are regarding the usability:

• No unread marks to tell the read and unread posts apart. Somehow, now I see unread marks. But the articles I read some minutes ago, are still unread?! It's my fault (logging in after reading).
  
• Lack of "Go to Previous"/"Go to Next". When going through all posts, I've always to go back to the view, find the article, I just read, one line up or down and open the next post.
• Even worse: When I had expanded the view, going back to the view, it's collapsed again.
• Even worse: When I expand all, go to the second page, open an reply and go back to the view, I'm on the first page of the collapsed view. How should I read new replys (say, I read all existing replys at one point in time) to articles some days old when coming back after some days?
  
• Forwarding articles: I'm using the Notes client to access this forum. I just wanted to forward a link to an article to my colleage, but how? No context menu (right click), no toolbar action, no menu action, even no address bar to copy the notes url from.
• Possibility to open articles in a new tab (in the Notes client).
• In the Topic Map at the bottom of the page, there is no indicator, which reply I'm currently in. Since most reply have the same subject (Re: Original Subject) and the Topic Maps "jumps up or down" on the page (depending on the lenght of the post or reply), you have to move the mouse a lot and find the right line to click on just to go through the replies of one post.
• Replying: When you reply to a main post or reply, you can't see the original text anymore. Answering questions gets hard this way.
  

Well, this is now part of openntf. It's been released as an unfinished forum for updating by the community. Another copout by IBM

 

The unread marks by the way only seem to work when you're logged in, which is a pain because I tend to browse before I log in so then all the posts appear as unread again once I've logged in

The topic thread is what you need to use to browse through replies, although that needs improving a lot (there's already been a post about this)

 

Agreed that you need to be able to expand a single post in the main view

I access this on a wide screen so hadn't seen the all documents problem you described, just reduced the size of the browser and that is truly terrible. Can't believe that hasn't been sorted quickly, the whole thing goes out of line

Unread marks: this is probably the explanation. So it's my fault.  ;-)

 

I use a screen resolution of 1920x1200. This should be good enough, shouldn't it?

 

Dan,

This was NOT a cop out from IBM at all.   Several XPages - myself included - wanted to see a forum specific to XPages Talk.  The 85 forum was to noisy with admin stuff, and other topics for use to adequately read, monitor and try and help out.

 

We wanted a forum. We demanded a forum. IBM had built this template late last year but had not published it.  So no one was using it.  Maybe I'll blog more of the details later but the short of it is that several community members ASKED for this template to go onto openNTF so we could IMPROVE it.
 
We ASKED IBM to do this.  We want a place for XPages talk and we're WILLING to spend our time making it better.

 

We're just waiting for it to hit openNTF and a procedure established for giving the code back.  This is UNPRECEDENTED by IBM.  they're a big company. Things move slow.  We got the creation of the forum done quickly!  Maybe too quick.  We didn't know all the issues with it because NO ONE was using it.  Chicken and the egg thing.

 

But IBM listened to us.  They did for the most part what we asked them to do, and we'll get to the point we're the code in the template will be improved.

Volunteers to help are always welcome.

 

 

 

 

 

David

 

Sorry for being negative, I'm happy that it's been taken on by the community (as I've posted elsewhere)

The reason for the copout comment is that, as you say, they published the forum a year ago as a beta and asked for feedback. That feedback was given, but a lot of the bugs that were reported then weren't fixed at all, even a year later, and they didn't continue to promote it. It's taken people from the community to ask/force/whatever exactly happened - so that this can now be moved on and turned into what I'm sure will be an excellent forum.

 

It just surprises me that IBM, who are talking up xPages as the next big thing, can't put some effort into providing an xPages forum that works perfectly to showcase the possibilities - in fact they've done the opposite by starting something but then appearing to not have the inclination/skills to complete the job. Obviously I don't know the exact circumstances, but this is just my take on it.

JP,

This forum is a WORK IN PROGRESS.  We all know it has issues.  There is a plan in the works to fix them.  Once that is finalized I expect to see a lot of improvements.  If you'd like to help out with that just let us know.

 

There was a choice to wait for the perfect "forum" or get started with what we had.  The decision was made to go with it as is, get some more eyes on it to better find the issues and maybe try and answer some questions on the way.

Personally I liked IQJam. I wanted to see that here for over a year. But it didn't take off as there were still tons of questions on the 85 forum.  So people were finding devworks but not IQJam.

 

This forum will improve in time. 

All, I understand the frustration you are having with some of the layout and functionality of the forum.  But please put this in context of what this forum achieves.

 

First, I do want to say that IBM has done this in response to the community asking for it. We specifically asked that it be release sooner rather than later know there were some usability and functionality issues, and some of us in the community have committed to helping fix that, and are working towards that end. Things will get better. We are committed to it. Please do not bash IBM for actually listening and responding to the community. They have been very helpful and deserve credit.

 

This forum already has great improvements over the old forums. For example, you actually have unread marks! 

 

If you haven't had the chance. here are the reasons why we've asked for this forum to exist, please take a read. http://xmage.gbs.com/blog.nsf/d6plinks/TTRY-8EAAVZ

 

Beyond that, if you take a moment to look past the temporary design issues the forum has, and look to the content, the amount and type of responses getting returned for XPages feedback is far greater and better than what was happening in the LN/D 8.5  forum, which is the real win.

 

I encourage you to help make the forum better. As soon as the project and template hit OpenNTF (if it hasn't already), please contribute bug reports, download the code, and ask to help and participate in making this better.  We'll all benefit.

 

Thanks again for your patience, please participate, and please, be constructive! We'll all get more done that way.

If you haven't yet, here's a pretty good description of how the forum came to be.

 

http://hermes.intec.co.uk/intec/blog.nsf/dx/24022011133052HERHUU.htm

David - I am in full support of a XPages forum on LDD, but you need to split the need for this database and the database design. Those are two seperate discussions. Most of us support the need for stand-alone forum/db.

 

But the design is holding people back from participating. Just look at the post I am replying too ... you typed in a URL and it didn't auto-convert to a hotspot. The core functionality is not ready for production. It would have been better to use the standard forum template and work on this one on the side until it was ready. For me, the lack of unread marks on the thread main topic when a new reply is there and the lack of seeing your place in the thread when navigating from a document. Now - I only used the Notes client to access the LDD forums - so the transition from Notes discussion db to the XPages discussion template is very jarring. 

 

So understand the frustration. It's not that people don't want a XPages forum. They just hate the design. And the decision to use this design it was premature IMO. So my suggestion is everyone needs to stop being so defensive about the reaction. It's the internet, people bitch about change. Look at the recent changes to the UI's on Gawker, Engadget, and just yesterday Shacknews.com - people want something to complain about on the internet. They are going to complain about this. Accept that and just address the major issues as fast as possible. I am sure you guys can get a copy of the template before it goes up on OpenNTF.org - and be ready with a new release quickly. I also hope someone is working with the LDD team for a process to update this forum with new designs as well - because there will be a process.

IBM didn't allow the site to go live. A group of community members including myself felt it was too important NOT to go live, and we accepted its limitations.

 

Could you please clarify in your title whether it's the quality of material or the design that's awful? I hope it's the latter. We're actively working to resolve that, but it will take a little bit of time.

 

If it's the former, sorry ;-) 

Sorry, yes, the quality of entry is, as ever with XPages development, pretty spot on. It's the "awful" design I object to. I'd get laughed out of my clients if I gave them this to go live with. 

 

I shall be patient and look forward with bated breath for the OpenNTF project.

 

Thanks. Jerry (aka JP).

 

This. This is my main gripe with the forums. Why are we still having to browse through nested threads!

That is at the TOP of the list of some of the people who are looking to contribute code back to the template for IBM to use.

 

We're just waiting on the details to be worked out.  I'm hopeful that it's just a matter of a little patience right now since this is a rather unique undertaking.

I agree, and we don't need more than two level

 

and please send me a mail when someone repllied to my topics or replies

Thomas