The New CoasterBuzz

OK, simple fix was just to ditch the accented characters in the URL. :)

I thoroughly enjoy the 404 page. :)

I tried to edit the description in one of my photos in the Day in Pictures forum, and I got an error message.

No big deal though. I thought you would like to know, Jeff.

Tattling on the broken stuff is fun.

The 500 page is good too. I got that one when I neglected to put a summary in a news contribution.

Travis: The edits were working, it was just throwing the error on redirect. That should be fixed now.

I'm not a fan of the "floating" posts. I think there should be more of a graphical boundry here. It's the same reason why I don't care for Google's social network.

Also, the use of so many scroll boxes on the main page makes it difficult on touch devices to easily navigate the page. It's not miceage bad, but there has to be a better way.

I do like the overall design of the home page though -- especially the gorgeous collapsing photo!

Thanks for putting in all of he work!

/mike

Jeff said:
That was a design choice, not a bug. :) I'm still pretty torn about it.

When I check out a coaster and it shows a + sign I think to myself, "oh I've ridden that, let me add it to my track record," which then removes it.

There is graphical division between posts... the tan bar with the user's name. The old forum had the same thing. The outline is gone for the whole box, but it seems pretty clear to me where a new post starts.

I shortened my three-line signature just because I thought it would help the look of the flow of the page better. I suspect a few others have done the same.

At first I had a hard time getting used to the floating posts, but I think I got used to it.

I love the new gray signatures. They might even be a little *too* light, but it's the right idea. Honestly, it makes the "floating" posts easier to differentiate. I realize there's the tan bar above posts, but there's no ending to the previous one... just white space.

Just an idea, but what if the line above the "vote up/link..." text were below it instead? (Or would that look weird for people who have signatures?) It could line up with the bottom of the vote count box rather than the top, and give the whole post a defined boundary.

Or... maybe that's the complete opposite of what you're going for, in which case I'll shut up. ;)

Jeff said:
There is graphical division between posts... the tan bar with the user's name. The old forum had the same thing. The outline is gone for the whole box, but it seems pretty clear to me where a new post starts.

It seems clear to you because it was your choice. Clearly, many don't like it, including myself. It should be more symetrical vertically if you insist on losing all the borders, IMO.

I think you need more white space vertically between posts if you insist on losing the border.

You asked for comments, afterall...

/m

I haven't read through the whole thread, but I'm having these 2 issues:

1. Smilies are not working. The wink is essential on Buzz forums! ;)

2. Everything I copy / paste is being pasted in reverse order. And I think this was an issue even in the past version of Coaster Buzz, but when I paste from Microsoft Word, it will paste in the text box, but when I hit submit, everything that was pasted disappears.

Oh, and touching on the person's post above me. I agree that the Point Buzz style of separating posts was so much cleaner / easier to read. I can make out the post separation by the brown bars, but it feels messy at times.

Select your pasted text, and click the eraser icon to ditch the formatting of other sites, or Word. Not sure why you'd type posts in Word, but that'll take care of it.

Thank you. I often copy / paste my posts to Word when they get long, in fear of losing what I typed from a page error / failed connection after submitting. I've lost many good posts this way, and when I try to page back, it's gone. Or, I'll accidentally close a tab where I had a lengthy post typed up and lose it.

As a result, I just save them to Word when they're getting long or I particularly like the thoughts. Also, this way I can always leave and continue my post later, without worrying about accidentally closing tabs or such the next day. But, my problem was that after copying / pasting that stuff back to Buzz, there'd be errors. But, hopefully the eraser takes care of everything. :)

The light gray text for signatures is an interesting idea. The reader in me likes it a lot, because it really does a lot to separate posts, but the rock star in me is worried about losing out on a potential fan. lol

You do realize that people can turn off signatures and avatars completely, right? Then what do you do? :)

I didn't know about the 'hide vanity' option. I just tried it, cool. But I like to see my peeps.

I think it can be hard to decipher what are real design issues and what are just issues with resistance to change or a need for time to adapt.

For me, the "floating" posts are not an issue. Visually, I see the tan bar to next tan bar as the border. Having an additional bottom border would be a bit redundant to me. But again, that's just what my eyes see and I'm just another person with an opinion.

What I said about my signature was just a joke, mostly. It is nice to see a little more about people who post here. It's important for me to know that people here are more than just coaster fans.

Hey Jeff,

There's a feature on KI Central forums that I really like, and I was wondering if you could incorporate, or if maybe it's already available somehow and I'm missing it.

When you type your responses in the box, it automatically saves them. So, if you accidentally close a tab where you have a response typed up, there's an Internet outage blip, etc., you can retrieve the auto-saved content when you open a new page back up.

Anyway, KI Central's system has saved me several times now. With Point Buzz / Coaster Buzz, I use Word as my back up as I discussed, which is fine. But, I was just curious if this feature could be added.