Comments on New Forum

Overall, I like its look: much easier on the eyes. And the sidebar of forum topics is a big plus. Two suggestions, though:

1. Could you add a toolbar that would allow posters to add italics, boldface, etc.? Or else give some guidelines on what mark-up is needed to do so? Will html be supported, for instance?

2. When a post is submitted, could the default be set to return to the end of the thread instead of the current default, which is to return to the begining. At present, one has to navigate to the end of the thread to check to see if one's message was successfully posted.

2a. Could there also be an option from the "Forum Updates" to go to the most recent post? In the current model, you can see the beginning of a recent post, but if you click on the head you go instead to the very start of the thread, and then have to navigate to the end. It would be simpler to click on the Forum Update and go to the most recent post, rather than the least recent one.

Saw the previous comment about old workstations. To this I say, "LOL."

Large blocks of white on black are not terribly readable. I was torn between going to a light color scheme on redesign or sticking with what we had. A large part had to do with the difficulty (usability-wise) of reading large blocks of reverse-color text. Humans don't do that well.

1. Yes, actual HTML support is coming. Previously, it was only the silly [b] and [i] fake-HTML stuff. It's a case of bringing the weakest link up to speed atm, which means market is going to get my attention for rest of week most likely.

2. It should. It should also tell you what just happened. A technical challenge was preventing me from passing messages to the forum on a successful submit (i.e. "tell user their message has been posted"), but that's fixed.

3. Oh yeah, definitely a good idea. It should go beyond thread-level granularity anyway and this would be a good place to use post-level granularity (jump to specific post).

Also, I do know that post-level browsing and post/reply/edit is not highlighting your current forum. Will fix.