Old forum posts that I relied on for learning that I previously had in a bookmarks folder are almost all broken. Links for downloading files are gone and images are broken in the forum posts… This is making learning exceedingly difficult. Is there any way to revert to an older version of the forum so those older posts are useful again?
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Just noticed that Youtube videos inserted within a Bulleted List don’t show any previews now. On the other hand, switching back to non-bulleted version makes the video preview occupy the entire width of the post.
It would be great if we could have an option to reduce the preview thumbnail size to 50% like we have with images.
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You can use the thumbnail of the video and link it to the video; not ideal since it doesn’t play the video, but it allows you to resize the thumbnails:
Also works with bulleted list:
They just need to fix it.
Currently on mobile hitting play on a video just locks everything up.
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Just came across another minor usability issue. If you apply the Bold property to some words and then decide to remove it, Undo stops working.
And not just for reverting the Bold back to Normal, but all operations done prior to that become non-reversible as well. So it’s like no going back once you make something Bold.
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Need to get used to but overall look fine to me. However, for some reason I can’t access forums or get my free games 
unless I use VPN or Firefox private tab. Cleared browser cache, flushed dns, waited a few days. Currently using VPN to write this. Didn’t happen before forum change. But haven’t been around for some time, so not sure when it started happening.
I find the master scroll bar disorienting, it feels overwhelming, I liked the separate pages much better.
It’s like having to scroll through an entire PDF without having a page outline to hop to and from.
Separate pages make it faster reading-wise on BIG long threads.
You know what it’s like, it’s like a function in a Blueprint. The way we have it now with one gigantic scroll bar it’s like having a lot of nodes all over the place in one screen. With pages, you have all the nodes grouped into functions with everything feeling more neat and organized.
Also - Wish we could customizably change the font itself.
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https://streamable.com/4n6sjt
Can you explain in detail as to why? You would think that not having to click a “next page” button every 10 or so posts would make reading faster (in fact, for page-based forums, there are settings for loading more than 10 posts per page; now why would you need something like that? 
).
Plus, an entire thread can be scrolled with the mouse wheel from start to finish without ever having to click a button.
But see, you’re just jumping around the page in that video; you’re not actually trying to read it. While I could go into the usability reasons why this isn’t preferred (expected eye movement across a page, ability to remember approximate location of information on a page, load hitching etc.), in general people just don’t like infinite scrolling pages compared to traditional paginated threads.
When you’re reading a long thread, and you’re not reading each post, but rather skimming, you’re going to be doing a lot of jumping; this was showing how quickly that can be done. Also, you don’t have the ability to do this with pages, which is another thing I was trying to show.
I’ve actually done this a lot while reading threads (though, not out of order, lol).
- Right to left, top-to-bottom? The same as the old forum (and just about anything else)?
This has nothing to do with pages or infinite scroll. - True. Having pages makes it easier to remember where something was in a thread rather than having to remember the exact (or approximate) post number.
- No different than waiting for the next page to load (except hitches are not guaranteed to happen, whereas page load times are).
Have you ever used Microsoft Word, PowerPoint, or Excel? Google Docs, Slides, or Sheets? Or simply Windows Explorer? All of those have infinite scroll. Did it ever bug you?
Just think about infinite scroll as a pages that load automatically; as in, when you get to the bottom of one page, the next page loads up automatically, without you having to do anything. This seems to be how it’s implemented internally.
Except you’re doing the exact same thing with pages, and you can tell where you are more easily without a website overriding browser functionality. Websites breaking usage conventions are not fun to deal with. If the older forums had any issues it was that page jumping was different at the top and bottom of the page.
Hitching is guaranteed if it’s a new part of the thread. Meanwhile after that page is loaded, there’s nothing going on. What bearing do page load times have on any of this?
Several of your examples have paging or already function by pages like slides. Looking through my 164k line D&D log is not comparable to a forum thread. Neither is explorer given you usually know exactly what you’re looking for and have several methods of getting to it, also folders.
Page load times have bearing to thread read times (i.e. you can’t read the thread until after the page has loaded).
The time it takes to load the next set of posts (i.e. a page) is faster now than on the old forums (at least on my computer). This logically makes sense: since only new posts need to be loaded, the amount of data that needs to be loaded is minimal (literally only need to load posts) and we only need to draw new posts. This contrasts with the old forum, where the entire page needs to be both reloaded and redrawn. This is a more efficient usage of resources as it puts the focus directly on what really matters: the posts.
If you can scroll an entire document without clicking a “next page” button, then it’s infinite scroll; all of my examples have that. Another example is a PDF viewer (Adobe, Chrome, etc.): PDFs have “pages”, but you can scroll an entire PDF from start to finish without ever clicking a “next page” button. You can even compare it to the current forums, where each page in a PDF or Word document is a post in the forum.
The point of Explorer is to browse files, hence, why it’s called “Explorer”: you are “exploring” your computer for files. When you browse a forum, you are “exploring” the forum for posts.
You make the assumption that everyone works the same way that you do and that every piece of software is the same. Neither are true. You obviously like or are at least indifferent to the change; others do not like the change. Truth is, nothing is going to change and we’re all stuck with what is considered one of the least liked forum software packages out there.
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That’s a bunch of BS.
Page load times are way higher.
At a base level each post load is a database query. At a minimum, on a well optimized and indexed system that’s ~ .005 s per query.
Loading a page with 10 post is only 1 query.
Ergo, on this claptrap of a software it take .005x10 to load the same content the other forum would load in .005
To top it off, the database has been lagging more and more over time, causing the website not to even function right on mobile when we get to weekends.
That’s why scrolling a page fast hitches.
If the software did things properly, maybe then, you’d have no issues.
By doing things properly I mean that you batch your queries up instead of loading 1 by 1 and wasting DB calls.
If the forum was using AzureDB the current data cost may be somewhere above 10k a month, instead of the maybe $100 it should actually cost.
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None of my responses (other than point 2 in this post) were subjective; they were all objective, so I’m not assuming anything. I’ve purposely been responding in an objective point of view, and after the next paragraph, will continue to do so.
If you want to know my opinion: at first, I didn’t like the infinite scrolling feature, either; in fact, I was pretty aggravated by it. But after actually using the new forums, I don’t even notice it, which I think is the point of why it exists in the first place: it doesn’t get in your way, unlike pages, which do.
Put simply: the contents of a forum are not pages, but posts, and you do not read a forum for the pages, but for the posts. Since everything revolves around posts, the goal is to allow users to read as many posts as possible in as little time as possible (maximize read time, minimize wait time). Removing the “next page” helps achieve this goal. If you think clicking “next page” and waiting for the next page to load is better than just reading posts uninterrupted… idk, you do you, but it’s an unnecessary extra step considering you likely want to read more.
As for organization: If you need to save a post, just bookmark it. If you’re trying to find a post, just search the thread for keywords (works with CTRL+F).
I was mentioning other widely used programs with similar functionality to the new forums to illustrate that we have already worked with infinite scrolling before, so it’s no different here.
Also, while a forum and, say, a Word document are different, they are similar, as both are meant for reading and writing, so it would make sense if they had similar features.
Even if that was true (which, by simple logic, is not), you still have to reload & redraw everything else. For pages, the entire page needs to be reloaded (granted, cache) & redrawn on each new page. With infinite scroll, you only need to load & draw new posts.
This would only be a problem if you’re not reading the post (like you’re 
speedrunning:man_running: the thread). You would only need to scroll a page fast if you’re trying to get to a certain post deep in the thread, and, in that case, you would just use the post scrollbar:man_shrugging:. When you’re actually reading the posts (which is what you do in a forum), the hitch goes unnoticed.
This is because, by the time you’re done reading what’s currently on screen, the next set of posts are already loaded (so it basically “preloads” the next “page”). This contrasts with pages, where you only load the next page after everything on the current page has been read, which causes downtime as you are not reading anything while the next page loads.
It doesn’t load 1 post at a time; proof: the loading icon & hitch only happens after every 20 (or so) posts, meaning it loads multiple posts in one query. Once again, equivalent to loading pages automatically.
How bout this: there is a setting on deviant art where you can choose whether to use infinite scrolling or pages. Would you like that?
I take it you haven’t tried mobile.
It does.
Proof? The actual code that you can load and play with in your own custom environment.
Without any silly speculation.
Again. IF this piece of 
forum software was written properly in the first pace at least 3/4 of the issues wouldn’t exist.
You (and epic) could probably just go and ask Blender how much time and effort they put into fixing the software and layout up so it wouldn’t totally suck and cost them users…
I have, and I’ve made multiple posts from mobile. Click the progress bar to access the post scrollbar.
I’m using the site right now. It loads multiple posts quickly in one go. You can also watch my video. Same thing.
I’m assuming you mean “copy the code from the site and run it yourself”. What I meant is presentation (what we see), not internal (what we can’t see). I couldn’t care less how it’s implemented internally as long as it does it fast (which it does; faster than a page load would take).
maybe you don’t understand so let me put it in all caps for you.
THE PAGE LOAD IS NOT ANY FASTER, IT’S ACTUALLY EXPONENTIALLY SLOWER
I really don’t care about “what you think” there is absolutely NO WAY that loading things separately is actually faster than a single query.
EVER. PERIOD.
end of discussion.
OR go argue with W3C specs and Database Architects about it - possibly on the Discourse website so maybe they learn something…
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Then stop making it your arguing point about page vs post loading times. Neither forums are running on the same server configuration, location or provider. I asked what relevancy your page loading time had to do with anything. Objectivity went out the window.
This is bordering on forum fanboyism. I don’t like Discourses format in the slightest. It’s trying to be a long form chat room.
There’s a misunderstanding here. You’re referring to the under-the-hood stuff (stuff the user doesn’t see or is even aware of). I’m referring to what the user actually sees & interacts with.
Here’s what I mean by faster (from the perspective of the user):
- The next set of posts are automatically added to the page before the user has finished reading the current set of posts (i.e. user does not have to click anything to load more posts).
- Posts all exist on one page, so the user doesn’t have to switch between pages to read posts (i.e. the user can jump straight to them).
- Posts that are made as the user is reading the thread are added to the page without requiring a refresh (i.e. the page updates itself rather than the user having to manually refresh to see updates).
Hopefully you get what I mean, now.
None of these are my opinions. They’re all literally how the site works, independent of what I (or anybody) “thinks” of it.
The faster you can load posts (as in, put them on screen), the faster you can read posts. That’s why that’s relevant.
Also, when you say “objectivity went out the window,” please explain in why. Saying “objectivity went out the window” and not explaining why is useless to me.
Now, I don’t hate it, nor do I like it; I’m indifferent. If I had to pick one, it would be like. Why? Because (1) posts automatically load themselves, and (2) I can jump to specific posts in a thread without switching between pages. Simple as that.
If they switched back to the old forums tomorrow, I wouldn’t care the slightest. I’d miss not being able to scroll & jump a thread without having to click through pages, but it’s not a big deal. 
Also, I never knew Discourse was a thing until after Epic updated the forums (I literally learned about it in this thread). I had been on forums that used Discourse before (and didn’t like them, either), but I had never had heard of it until now.