Q: Could This (new discussion format) Be Any Worse?

Scott Newman wrote:

 

...it's now impossible to see, at a glance, how many people have both viewed and replied to individual threads.

Scott ~ To the end of the URL of a discussions page, add:

/content

...In the resulting page, click on the big Discussions tab and then bookmark that URL. Here's a screenshot:

Alancito (who's answers I have respected for some time now).

But that means we have to go typing in / content, whatever.  Why.   Why not a simple click. The more difficult Jive makes it for questions to be answered, the less questions that will be answered and the less happy campers we shall have.   It is all about simplicity.

"Could this be any worse?"

Oh, please don't ask. They might just comply.

For the present time, I have bookmarked this link (in my Safari bookmarks):

https://discussions.apple.com/content?filterID=participated~objecttype~objecttyp e%5Bthread%5D

It seems to help me; maybe it will help you, too.

Scott Newman wrote:

 

Alancito,

 

Thanks very much. I'll do that if or until Apple gives me something better.

 

It still feels like one has to work a great deal harder to get good information...but that's another story.

Yes, it is extremely hard to help people now.    Alas.

The Kindle help forum uses the same setup & that too makes it impossible to see which are new questions or which have new replies, this & the new Apple forum setup seems more of a step backwards rather than an advance.

I've noticed that since the change on the Kindle help forum many of the users who helped people no longer post due to the change.

On a personal note the problems for me are as follows: can't see which are new posts or which have been updated, now the pages have a 'more' button while this seems a positive step if you read a post & then go back to the discussions list it doesn't go back to the page/post you were viewing so you have to click on 'more' again which gives you a new set of posts rather than the ones you were originally looking at.

The only positive is that now there's no delay when typing a message.

I Can barely find anything. Do you know how to find my own posts now?

i Just figured it out.

Tap on content at upper right of window.

Then on left side it will say content.

Below that are some tabs. Pick all.

Then on left side there is authored, participated, all, etc. I forget the rest. Authored are those discussions I've started.

Since I wrote on the 21st of June (a few posts above this one) I have to say I am slowly coming to terms with it all.   It still takes ages to reply to some posts and there are a few odd ball changes; no one has yet explained why Safari provides over-sized pages for my 20" iMac that need zooming out in Safari > View menu, while Firefox is the right size without attention.   Then there is the strange squared off message that tells me that an error has occurred in processing my request ... then promptly disappears leaving no sign of a problem at all.

But in the main I like the cleaner, uncluttered look, the Communities page and its' alternate features and the Content page, from which I can review past posts.   Yes, we shall get used to it and with some refinements we may even grow to like it.

Yes, we shall get used to it and with some refinements we may even grow to like it.

Unless some of the lost/missing functionalities are reinstated, I will not. I do not want to spend most of the time I have allotted here trying to find stuff. I'd like a homepage which clearly shows the last poster, what time, new content, signature/profile (mandatory, please), less scrolling/waste of space, more than 10 topics on one page, etc, etc. And no, I will not install anything to make it look different - it shouldn't be necessary. And, most of all, I don't care for social networking sites. I have cut my participation (browsing/answering questions) by 99% and am currently in a waiting pattern to see if changes will be made to help the helpers rather than be greeted by an iOS look starting page and "meet new people and get answers" while searching for something.

Why get used to a bad design? 

Ronda

Seems like BrowserBookmarks (I still use MacSpeak all the time) is the only solution for now.

BookmarkFoldering is also helpful to me.

Once one finds the right pages...

I prefer Firefox, which has the feature of hot key access to a SideBar that can show Bookmarks(shown below) or History

A bit tidier than the ShowBookmarks button on ToolBar in Safari and neater than pulling down menus in both

best regards

CCC <= turning over a new leaf

Good morning, Babowa.

I'm not actually supporting this system, just trying to allow myself some flexibility.   For people like your good self, it must be totally inefficient (and I just found another nuisance replying to you; clicking the reply on your post returned me to your post but with your post at the top of the page.   I could not read the previous posts without going off page.)   I shall certainly pay far less attention to the boards until it has been modified.

Doctor9fan,

You said (formatting is mine for comments in context):

On a personal note the problems for me are as follows:can't see which are new posts or which have been updated,

This frustrated me as well.My workaround, oddly enough, is eMail Client, eMail Foldering, eMail Rules and eMail Notifications from here.

WorkFlow goes like this:

1. Turn on eMail notifications (duh)
2. Follow posts (ditto duh)
3. To organize latest replies, In eMail Client,
   1. create Inbox folders to taste
   2. create rules to sort incoming mail into tasty folders
   3. sort views to taste
   4. read the post
   5. if I wanna reply, click link that jumps to the post on the page ( do my replying)
   6. I choose to delete the email, which
   7. selects the next email automatically
   8. repeat 3.1 - 3.7 until
   9. el finito

You continued:

now the pages have a 'more' button while this seems a positive step if you read a post & then go back to the discussions list it doesn't go back to the page/post you were viewing so you have to click on 'more' again which gives you a new set of posts rather than the ones you were originally looking at.

Command + Click & Command + W are my best friends

From Ian's User Tip - https://discussions.apple.com/docs/DOC-7311

- From  https://discussions.apple.com/thread/6414838

(This my workaround - CCC)

PROBLEM: When I use the 'View More' button, then the browser 'Back' button, then 'View More' again, I do not get the next oldest page but an older one. This makes viewing older posts very cumbersome.

Click the 'View More' as many times as you want, yielding a really long list.

Use that page as kind of a Base Camp.

Instead of a plain Click on a link and BrowserBack to navigate, try command Click to open a new tab with the target link.

When done, close the Tab - and you are back where you started.

The link you command Clicked will likely be Underlined to remind which you clicked.

You may even find that you like this better. I like the idea of a Base Camp. We can go 'Home'.

Also, you continued:

The only positive is that now there's no delay when typing a message.

I find just the opposite is often true for me. There are times when the previous sentence I just keyed may take 30 seconds to draw!

I think, it has to do with AutoSave feature, but can't prove it. I VERY often get this alert - I mean VERY OFTEN

Aside: The thing lasts 5 seconds. By the time I attend to it and start to read, it disappears. The link is DEAD. Nuthin. Nada. [Close] is DEAD. Ditto.

It is only after these start, that only sometimes the slow draw of keystrokes follows.

A handful of times, the [Save Reply] does nothing. Actual Post of Reply is hit and miss. I first copied my post before trying reload => Reply again, but AutoSave appears to actually work often enough to Restore when doing so. I have been rolling the dice since Restore has been working and not copying. so far so good I guess

[Restore] and [Delete] anomalies are for a post I will start later, after I can make some sense of them.

Hope the Tip(workaround, actually) and workarounds help.

Ian's whole User Tip has some neat tricks

CCC