New Forum GUI ...

Hi Fox: Those of us that have been rattling around Apple forums for ages have been busily feeding the "powers that be" suggestions for improvement. My expectation is that incremental improvements will be made on a fairly regular basis. I am not privy as to reasons behind the change. I do know that the process has been underway for quite sometime. It surely is different! Barry

Foxboy71 wrote:

why on earth did apple do this absolutely unnecessary change to the nice, clean and smooth forum interface which it had to date?

They are trying to stay fresh by giving the disucssions more of a "community" feel. Plus, the forum software is 3rd party (Jive). To get upgrades like image attachments and rich text editing, they have to take a lot of other things too.

The new interface is bubbly, clumsy, cluttery and uses much more of my desktop space. This ain't a technical support forum, but feels like a support disneyland to me by my first impression.

Worst are all the tooltip bubbles popping up. Yuck!

That is a well-known and disliked issue. My theory is that the ones at the top are Apple-designed. They don't rely on hover and act like popovers on iOS. The other ones are the annoying ones. It will take time to work out a change in behavior while still providing the information.

Keep in mind that Apple Support Communities now has lots of Windows users and people who use non-Apple browsers. I do some web development myself. Even the smallest change has to be tested 5 or 6 times. If it is broken, you have to try a fix, and then re test that 5 or 6 times. IE is the traditional culprit, but Firefox is starting to make a name for itself in this area too. Even a "small" change like fixing the "bubbles" is going to take a while.

Hi Foxboy71,

This is working as designed. A user can mark either own postings as helpful or correct since users sometimes discover the answer to their own questions. You'll notice that this does not award any points to yourself.

Hope that helps to clarify.

Thanks!

-Matt K.

English Communities Manager

Even the smallest change has to be tested 5 or 6 times. If it is broken, you have to try a fix, and then re test that 5 or 6 times. IE is the traditional culprit

I thought it was already established that the new discussion pages are broken on IE6, thus I don't think they consider IE6 anymore, they will at least require IE7.

I was wondering about that...decided to try it out and found that I didnt get any points. 😟... 😉

is it Apple's new web site interface?
http://pinterest.com/pin/174796029260547468/

You're responding to a thread that's over two years old. It's discussing a change made to these forums around that time.

I know this is an old post, but apart from it's extraordinary ugliness and sheer lack of interface continuity, it's much harder to use. There are loads of bugs in it. The latest being that when you type in the text area, then make a new paragraph, the cursor jumps back to the previous line and completes the sentence on the end of the last paragraph! I have never come across anything so silly – like this:

Here is my sentence demonstrating the bug in the text area of forum comments.new paragraph here.

I'll just start a

That doesn't happen here.

I use the forum in a variety of browsers.

And I've never seen it.

Chrome, Firefox, Safari.

Nathan

The cursor jumping around FOR ME is caused BY ME. I use a PB Pismo with my trackpad set so that a tap on it is the same aa a MouseDown/MouseUp CLICK. My thumb is constantly brushing the trackpad and wherever the cursor was last is where the actions begin to insert the keystrokes - it happens in almost every editor session I do. I am too lazy to retrain myself or use an external keyboard, so I just deal with it. It happens in every editable text field that I use - emails, TextEdit, Word, you name it.

If your cursor is jumping around "all by itself" here (or elsewhere), there MAY be some issue with your input device(s) - low battery on wireless devices has been known to do crazy things

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This will not help your cursor, but will help your general sanity.

How to improve your experience with Apple Support Communities ( ASC )

The current implementation is the pits. Apple is very slowly fixing the worst bugs.

Robert

RCCharles - I got your response via email, thank you. It shows you made the latest reply here, but I cannot actually see it to reply directly. Is this another bit of forum shonkiness?

How to improve your experience with Apple Support Communities ( ASC )

Great list of tricks, thanks. Another issue is that on first click from the response email, the link will fail and throw up an ASC error page. You have to click it twice…

We'll look back fondly at how shaky the forum was when they next overhaul it.Chitlins

Your trackpad issue is indeed a different issue. Your using a Pismo? Wow, a lovely classic machine. If I can offer a tip to you then, there is actually a setting in System Preferences to 'Ignore accidental input' - or something very similar - must be in Mouse, or Mouse & Trackpad. I can't remember exactly what the panel is called on… you must be running a Pre-Tiger OS?

I call the "shonkiness" "Phantom Posts" (there CAN be more than one) - well known - I'll bet as soon as you posted the Reply to which I reply, it magically appeared - that's the workaround = post anything (some post " . " ) as a reply to any message = voila!

Robert has compiled these from many folks' discoveries - I agree that condensing them was a much needed task.

I take it that your "Pismo" reference was directed at me, since I'm the one that said it!

• Tiger = TRUE
• "Ignore accidental input" IS ticked
• No joy because I am clumsy with my thumb

buenos tardes, amigo

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