Layout Forums

Toad for Oracle
1

Please, when can the layout of the forums be changed to something more normal? I’m typing this on the underside of the screen. What do I see?

A logo with Toad world: acceptable. A little bit smaller may be?

A menu bar: DISCUSS LEARN FOCUS EXPLORE. Too big, too high, not intuitive. Explore is active while i’m in the forum, but I would expect Discuss, or Focus, whatever. No need for that bar, and uses too much screen.

Toad for Oracle Community It is a little smaller then the menu bar? But way to big!

Unjoin Favorite RSS Feed Subscribe to group activites. Hey another menu bar could be placed somewhere else, so less space is used. Unjoin, is that English?

Overvie Forum Blogs Wiki Viedos Beta Member: Sorry, way too big.TOO BIG!!! I could read that on the other side of the room, Make this smaller. I need my screen space. I don’t use Windows 8 where only one window is active. Why must I make this window big to see something else. There is no information in this way. One small line with buttons as they were a year ago is more then enough. I don’t need tiles. I hate tiles.

Forums - create/edit post. Yes! Yes. Big font, Lots of white. Otherwise I forget what I was doing here

Compose Options Preview: Sounds sensible. not too big, a little too much white. Are those buttons or options I can press? The don’t look like them. Ok, I’m old fashioned maybe, but I can live with that new layout and options. But the consistency is not good with other clickable objects. Colors, pictures, every part on the screen is different?

My post is a: Question Discussion: pardon? what is the difference?

Editing area. Rather small. I cannot see much of my own text. Wonder what happens if I reply to a big message… Hmm.

Tags. Good, GMail has tags too. But how are they used here? Not very clear. Remove them, nobody would miss them. Hey a button? “Select Tags” So they are allowed in this new design.

And finally the most important one. POST. Oh, that one is standard not visible. All room on my screen was taken by … You get the idea.

Sorry, that I bring this up again. Every time I use the site, I get again the feeling that someone is not getting his priorities right. This site is not about being modern and run with the crowd. It is about giving and sharing information and presenting it in a good way.

2

Hey Wim,

I agree with your comments. I’m currently working on redesigning the forums and many other areas of the website to be way more conducive to work. Here are small subset of what I’m currently working on to make the site more usable:

  • Widening the entire website (depending on resolution) so content is more visible

  • Redesigning the header. The new one is 75% smaller than what is currently there.

  • Redesigning many smaller elements like buttons to be consistent throughout the website

These changes (and more) will be rolled out as soon as they are ready and tested, hopefully in the next month or two. Thanks for the feedback.

3

Thank you for the feedback on the redesign. Sounds good.

Groetjes,
Wim

2013/8/8 Lars Astrom bounce-Lars_Astrom@toadworld.com

RE: Layout Forums

Reply by Lars Astrom
Hey Wim,

I agree with your comments. I'm currently working on redesigning the forums and many other areas of the website to be way more conducive to work. Here are small subset of what I'm currently working on to make the site more usable:

  • Widening the entire website (depending on resolution) so content is more visible
  • Redesigning the header. The new one is 75% smaller than what is currently there.
  • Redesigning many smaller elements like buttons to be consistent throughout the website

These changes (and more) will be rolled out as soon as they are ready and tested, hopefully in the next month or two. Thanks for the feedback.

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4

I think the main issue I have with the forum is how non-obvious it is to get into and make a new post.

Say I have a query to raise about Toad. I’ve heard they have a support forum at www.toadworld.com, so I go there.

There’s a big link at the top saying “Discuss in the community” - sounds good. On mouseover it says “Join the discussion now” - sounds great! So I click on it.

So now I’m on the forum page, I can see a load of existing threads labelled “Community Discussion”. There’s some checkboxes on the right that lets me filter out subjects I’m not interested in (and some instructions at the top on how to do it).

What there isn’t is a “post new thread” button. How the blinking flip am I supposed to start a new discussion?

Maybe I’m particularly dense, but it took me ages to realise that what appear to be subject tags used to “filter out the noise” of subjects you’re not interested in are actually links to sub-forums in which you can make new posts.

Fortunately, the post I wanted to make concerned Toad for Oracle, which had plenty of threads in the community discussion list - so there were plenty of links I could click that would take me to the Toad for Oracle forum.

If I wanted to make a new post in a more obscure forum, how on earth would I get to it? Short of filtering out all other products with the checkboxes and hoping there’s some existing posts to produce a link to the forum.

If the “Discuss in the community” page is supposed to be the hub of all the discussion fora, it should (at least) have links to them.

Frankly, you could lose the instructions on how to filter out the posts with the checkboxes - which is pretty bloody obvious - and replace it with instructions on how to get to the actual forums and start a discussion - which really, really isn’t.

5

I agree with all previous stated. This site is really really good for getting information or feedback from the Toad community but actually finding this stuff can be a pain.

Looking forward to the redesign.

6

One other point.

It would good to be able to see all the questions/discussions I have started in one place when I go into my account details or someplace like that?

7

well we spent big huge barrels of money paying for all that world-class design. Now in typical Toad fashion we will now listen to the users actually tell the
local guy how it should be done so that it’s truly useable, and he’ll do it quickly and you’ll get something worthwhile. The ‘pros’ do things by the book: discuss ‘personas’ in committees of lots of people for months, then reference books and ‘best practices’
and spend a year or three seeing how many other people they can hire with the barrels of money they’re given. Then they go off and do it somewhere else. What’s missing? They aren’t the ones sitting inside what they’ve built day in and day out, all day every
day. The best they can do is read magazines about how personas and best practices and agile scrum methodologies are how things are now done in the world’s software industry and therefore “thou shall do it that way.”

From: chris_4134 [mailto:bounce-chris_4134@toadworld.com]

Sent: Wednesday, August 14, 2013 5:38 AM

To: toadoracle@toadworld.com

Subject: RE: [Toad for Oracle - Discussion Forum] Layout Forums

RE: Layout Forums

Reply by chris_4134

I think the main issue I have with the forum is how non-obvious it is to get into and make a new post.

Say I have a query to raise about Toad. I’ve heard they have a support forum at www.toadworld.com, so I go there.

There’s a big link at the top saying “Discuss in the community” - sounds good. On mouseover it says “Join the discussion now” - sounds great! So I click on it.

So now I’m on the forum page, I can see a load of existing threads labelled “Community Discussion”. There’s some checkboxes on the right that lets me filter out subjects I’m not interested in
(and some instructions at the top on how to do it).

What there isn’t is a “post new thread” button. How the blinking flip am I supposed to start a new discussion?

Maybe I’m particularly dense, but it took me ages to realise that what appear to be subject tags used to “filter out the noise” of subjects you’re not interested in are actually links to sub-forums
in which you can make new posts.

Fortunately, the post I wanted to make concerned Toad for Oracle, which had plenty of threads in the community discussion list - so there were plenty of links I could click that would take me
to the Toad for Oracle forum.

If I wanted to make a new post in a more obscure forum, how on earth would I get to it? Short of filtering out all other products with the checkboxes and hoping there’s some existing posts to
produce a link to the forum.

If the “Discuss in the community” page is supposed to be the hub of all the discussion fora, it should (at least) have links to them.

Frankly, you could lose the instructions on how to filter out the posts with the checkboxes - which is pretty bloody obvious - and replace it with instructions on how to get to the actual forums
and start a discussion - which really, really isn’t.

To reply, please reply-all to this email.

Stop receiving emails on this subject.

Or
Unsubscribe from Toad for Oracle - General notifications altogether.

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Flag
this post as spam/abuse.

8

Thanks for the feedback, these are all good points. I’m definitely working these ideas into the upcoming redesign. In the meantime, I’ve added a direct link to each forum instead of the description on the discuss in the community page.

9

Thanks, Lars, that’s much better.