Q: Please, Why this redesign? I thought Apple should make things better... not worse.

Try clicking the "All Content" tab in the "10.5 Leopard" community, and then click the large "Edit This List" link at the top of the page. Under there you will see a list of the sub-sections. It would be nice to have this more out in the open, but is is there.

I have made the new forum tolerable by turning off widgets in "your view". But how does one disable the popups?

Zebulun wrote:

 

I think this is awful.  Vastly more complicated than it needs be.  Safari 4.1.3 barely does a job of formatting the pages correctly and these pages load so slowly on my Powerbook on fast cable internet.  I won't even try this on my iPhone or iPad.

 

Navigation is PITA and perhaps this is a sign for me to move on.  Terrible forum "redesign."

I second that it's so very difficult on Safari 4.1.3  the like, more like this, similar people doesn't help.

Topher,

Thanks for the response.  I've done that and hit the "refine this list" button to find the subcategories.  This redesign takes a couple of extra mouse clicks to get there than it did with the old design....However, the real problem is that when I go to search, it goes off to other areas (ie iPhone and other communities).  What is even worse is when I try to go back to refine the search, I'm back at the OS 10.5 page and have to "refine the list" again and the search box is blanked out.  That is poor design causing the user to have to perform additional steps just to try and do something again. 

I do appreciate your effort to help me with this and if anyone else has some ideas that would help, I would be grateful....

I think a few of these issues will need to be ironed out by Apple. Much of the content is dynamic and will depend on the content and how users use the site. Even the "refine list" options are just canned searches based on post content. IMO this is a better idea than having separate sub-categories where people frequently duplicate or post in the wrong area, but it does have to be implemented correctly. I think for now the best is to wait and see, and let the new forums get populated with content that will allow the features to work better.

Hi Jimmy,

When you search, are you using the 'More Options' to filter by?

Best wishes

John M

Why the redesign? Perhaps because the old forum was a million years old in web years and Apple wants to make them more inviting and useful to new users.  With complaints like those on this thread, it's clear how needed these forums are.  Anytime Apple drops a new revamp or new methodology into a product, the first thing you hear are complaints from people who don't have the patience to learn a few new steps.  Software and hardware, and yes websites too, need to evolve, and users need to evolve with them. 

Of course there are bumps along the way, and as usual the best place to go, with constructive criticism, is http://www.apple.com/feedback/ or, in this case http://www.apple.com/support/feedback/ (Support Feedback) or http://www.apple.com/contact/feedback.html (website feedback) and please be nice.

Time will tell whether the new design is better, of course.

Many of the comments I have been reading could be taken verbatim from the discussions after the introduction of Mac OS X. Many (most??) people HATED it. Heh, heh.

charlie

That's what Skype said about 5.0 and look what a disaster that has turned out to be.

...Or perhaps someone needed something to justify a fat salary.  Public workers are getting pasted for earning a living wage doing something useful.  Here someone got paid a fat paycheck to just diddle.  The price ends up in our products.

Or the last big changeover in Apple Discussions

The content menu on the left seems to be partly inaccessible on my ipod touch -- I cannot scroll below
"desktop computer" to select the options lower down the list (and there are a lot of them). Is this an iframe layout?  If so, my mobile safari doesn't seem able to read it.  Very frustrating, as you get a very brief glimpse of the topic when the page loads, if you're really fast, and then it disappears.  We're accustomed to getting tech support 'on the go' so designing a page that wont display properly on your own mobile devices seems counterintuitive. Can you fix this please? Here's a screenshot to show you how much of the home page is missing. (PS. I know you could search for any topic, but how are you supposed to even know what the major categories are? Seems like an unfriendly introduction to the 'support community'   ...

I was thinking the same.

Guess we're just going to have to get used to it, suggest some improvements, or leave. The old version of Jive was on it's last legs.

They've worked really hard to get this new version in with very little down time, now it's up to us.

As with any text box in the iOS version of Safari, you scroll within the text box by using two fingers held together.