personal view on new forum design

[Ralph Grothe]

Hello forumers,

I just felt urged to post this silly statement here.

For the last couple of days I've been trying in vain to gain access to this forum.
Either I had been timed out or received the ubiquitous, loathed HTTP 500 return code from this webserver.
Sometimes it told me that a certain server side include couldn't be executed.
Above all, the performance now has become dead slow to me. Is it due to the heavy usage of JS, or has the load increased that much?

Just wanted to hear from others whether they have experienced similar problems, and what they think about the new design.
I was much more pleased with the situation before the website's refurbishment.

BTW, what do the red stars indicate?
Is it some sort of black list stigma for counter-responsive behaviour or point assigning reluctance?

Regards
Ralph

[Albert E. Whale, CISSP]

Personally I thought that the previous design was significantly Better. In fact, it worked!

This design is however, growing on me. Albiet it does have a sluggish response, I appreciate the speed and ease of use for the previous design.

However, If changes are evident (as a Consultant I always introduce Changes), then let me recommend that HP add a Spell Checker for us.

Please reduce the amount of graphics required to load the pages (which should also improve the performance on their servers as well), and allow us to monitor the Overall entires into the forum in a manner that we can see all New Entries in a single page (instead of having to flip through all of the pages to get into a different section).

I would recommend making the forums less resouce intensive, and more Flexible.

Hope that helps, all of us.

[Paula J Frazer-Campbell]

Hi Ralph
The red stars show a users declared expertise in certain areas, edit you profile and declare you skills there.
Yes the site is very slow and many have complained about that and also many other problems.
The changes that they have implimented are at first impressions for the better (provided that they work).

Paula

[Ralph Grothe]

Albert,

you're absolutely right about the spell checker (sorry, for my bad *behavior* in this respect;-)
But please be clement with us non-native English speakers.

[Albert E. Whale, CISSP]

Ralph,

The Spell checker was for ME! I am a terrible typist. I meant nothing in regards to anyone else, but at times the fingers don't want to co-operate with what I am trying to say.

If this is a good suggestion, then please provide a few points. It will insure that HP looks over the suggestion, rather than passing over it.

Thanks in advance!

[Victor BERRIDGE]

I agree, trouble we are facing now to answer/submit can drive you nuts, if this is to be accepted for the new design, then it's still time to return to the previous...
Im quite bothered by phone calls, people entering my office..., having to wait for display is something I cant deal with: the Faster, the better!

All the best

Victor

[Kevin Ernst]

Well, I for one wish they would add some more characters to the gallery that you could use for your profile. I mean, jeez, there's only *one* female character even! (I guess two, but I can't really tell about that second one.)

I mean, let's quit crying about performance and ease-of-use and concentrate on the really *important* things here. ;-)

[Dan Hetzel]

Hi all,

I'm wondering what an expert in 'general' can be ??

Any idea, Albert ??

Don't take offence, I'm just kidding and deeply respect your magician hat.


Dan

[Ralph Grothe]

To all responders,

thank you for your thoughts.

It took me well over 10 minutes to simply assign you some points. :-(
The reponse time to HTTP GET requests has terribly deteriorated.
When I'm at last provided with the requested form it now always lacks the submit
buttons (and other icons).
Actually, this reminds me of a PC adventure game, where you are expected to hover over certain hot spots to detect the input fields.
Then after having clicked the concealed submit spots I get the HTTP 404 return code from the webserver.
Taking all this awful strain into account I fear people will be even more deterred to assign points or give feedback.

[federico_3]

hi to all!

Only one thing i would like to tell:
A part from the design that clearly is worse ( by far ..) than the previous one, the problems are connected to its speed in submitting the replies, in giving points, in searching something, in opening a window , and so on ..
In addition to that , i receive always an error when reply to a message ...

hi again to all

regards,
federico