RiotACT v3.0

I like the tweak you made to recent comments – much better 🙂

Yay – I can see where to type again !

(For the record I am far more tactful with feedback when I’m realworld currency paid to it)

I know I know… Project work (with minimal staff) where I was paid to provide usability feedback review versus the unpaid one I wanted to do…

On the rating system (Bayesian weightings would let you prevent a one-vote article with five-star vote getting top billing, while the one with 100 votes an an average of 4.5 gets bumped to second), can it be made clearer if its a 1-star is Piss Poor, 2 is Slightly Bad, 3 is neutral, 4 is “I like it”, and 5 is “I Love it!”, or if its a matter of 5 Being “This is fabulous” and 1 is “This is close to neurtal but is okay”.
If it’s the latter, how the hell do we negative rate something?

Astrojax, not at the moment but you’ll note from my comment above that its on the to do list to sort out. If you want to browse older posts you can do so by category, or by searching.

The rating thing is the number of stars against each post. You can only vote on stories and give them a rating if you a premium member otherwise all your clicks will indeed do nada 🙂

Skidbladnir, thanks for your feedback however you should have raised them during the beta test when you volunteered for that. As it is, our limited budget and resources meant that a lot of the things that we would have loved to have put in, didn’t make it. Too bad eh? something for next time 🙂

“Look for in the recent posts listing on the front page of the site”

yebbut, that way still doesn’t get the threads older than the bottom of that list… does it? where’d they go and how do i find them? sometimes i remember an issue cause iu can trawl back through the list [previous page] and get somewhere i recognise and go ‘oh yeah..’ and post away

also, am i missing something? where is this rating thing? i don’t see no rating thing – apart from stars in the list of stories… and clicking them does nada… wha’??

After a couple of days of getting used to it, I’ve decided I LOVE the new site – much better than the old one. Of course, there are a few things that could be improved, but it’s a vast improvement. The best feature is the grey/yellow squares at the side of the comments. Now I can easily find where I was up to last time I was reading.

Okay, I am still needing to type this blind into a grey field with grey text on a grey background, and not knowing where the Post button is.
Fixing this specific bug would be a Great Leap Sideways.
Until its fixed, expect typos.

Problems:

Layout:

1) The “Highest Rated Posts” box has an information ocntent, but of lesser information content than either the Recent comments box, or even the Categories box. I suggest moving\replacing of Recent Comments with Highest Rateds.

2) “Recent Comments”: You’re replicating information a great many times within the one field, and its doesn’t scan to a glance easily.
IE: Maelinar on ZZZZ, Maelinar on YYYY, Thumper on ZZZZ, Maelinar on YYYY, Jazz on YYYY.

Possibly go back to the old ThreadName: Poster:Comment Poster:Comment Poster:Comment format, or go with ThreadName: Poster at Timestamp, Poster at Timestamp, Poster at Timestamp…
eg: RiotACTv3.0: Jazz at 1503hrs, Maelinar at 1502hrs, Thumper at 1430hrs, Local Man Immolates on Assembly Steps, Stanhope Applauds A Good Show: Stanhope’s Lawyer at 1500hrs, Maelinar at 1445hrs, Skidbladnir at 1442hrs

3) Your Recent Comments box is larger but less informative, than your Recent Posts box, which is located below and distractingly inside the confines of Recent comments. This makes getting information you want harder to find as they are similar (but not identical) in layout. The fact here’s a minor style clash is a bit of a problem to scan across in a hurry.

4) Your font size in RAv3.0 is huge compared to your previous v1.0 and v2.0 layout. Decreasing it from Arial@12point to Arial at 8 would allow you to see more content faster, and still sort through it and allow us with reasonable eyesight to read it, those with more mature vision probably have their text sizes set to Larger \ Largest or use text-to-voice anyway.

Rating system:
1) Highest Rating seems to only be using numbers from the 1-5 scale and an averaging of those values, to compare not an average of votes\post relative to an average or otherwise. Why not go for a Bayesian weighted system?
See http://www.thebroth.com/blog/118/bayesian-rating for an entry level guide to what they do.

Locating Content:
1) I have no idea how to find what I want anymore.

Submitting content:
1) Can we have the Manage button brought back so we can remove from the Review Queue if needed?
The submit for Review step is damn fine, but it cannot be reversed, and nor can we re-edit things that have been submitted (which we could do for our own posts before).

Chris, your post could potentially have identified another problem – rankings. You say you’re a newbie, and I have no reason to doubt, but it’s showing you as an Anarchist when you should be a newbie? Not sure.

PS I lurked for many years before I joined about a month ago too. It becomes a wittle addictive. Hehe.

My only request is that you make sure that the font’s different! from both ABC and AFP websites.

Well, every thing’s probably been said… but for what its worth…

I’ve been a lurker on RA for several years – never signed up to join in the riot. Now I have.

So I’ll reiterate a few of the comments:
# need some color guys. The Age and Australian pull off the all white because they have so many regular images and color headings etc… just something for the eyeballs to notice as clearer boundaries…
# The comments are very spaced out. I always like the side block of info spread out across the top of the post – provides a visual marker etc, plus condenses the page
# comments pages could have pages – ie, 1, 2, 3, 4, after about 10 or 20 comments, or as a preference setting
# RiotGear is a great idea that should be followed up.

Other than that, damn you guys must have spent yonks getting this puppy put together. Well done;)

But alas, when you change to a new username you become a…..’Newbie’!

Ari: Usernames can be edited by clicking on ‘Edit My Profile’ which brings up a page very similar to the pre-3.0 profile editing page.

Overall, it looks cleaner and I don’t want to be overly negative until I get past the shock of the new but one thing that seems a little unnecessary is the “highest rated posts” section.

Two right columns seems a little OTT and pushes the stories (which could possibly be reduced to single pars with a “read more…” link) down a little too much, meaning that we only get one or two stories per screen now. I’d suggest that recent comments is probably a better indicator of post popularity anyway. (Of course, that diminishes the value of your money spinning mechanism)

Bugs aside (which will inevitably be fixed), nice work over all.

I would also suppot the auto-delete “$25 is too much for a whole cask of wine! and Those government freaks want me TO PAY for a whole day of parking close to a major shopping centre! variety of post

But I do support the free prizes for the months best post.

Do we get anything substantial, or is it RiotAct dollars, to be spent on RiotAdvertising or RiotGear?
(If you chose to name your merchanidse section “RiotGear”, I claim the credit here and now.
I am beginning to get quite good at finding this invisible submit button…

Crapspackle.

Where does onfind the e link to old articles?
The main page clicks through the Bottom of page linsesy, I can only go back a few days before the pages run out.

I too am typing random phrases into an all grey area, and do not know where the submit button is.

I can provide a screenshot of this if Jazz or anyone else requires, but am forced to use IE6 under WindowsXPSP2====crap I don’t know where my typing went,.

Dear Jazz, do so plase fix this thing.

Now to play Clickfest until I find the submit button.

Given that there is no editing of usernames any more, does that mean regulars such as el who had occasionally varied their usernames are stuck for ever more with whimisical additions such as “… turbo V8 recumbent bicycle” ‘cos that’s what they had when the music stopped?

I had the same problem earlier, but only in IE. Refresh button wouldn’t fix it, and entire screen was grey with no Comment box or anything. I changed to Firefox and problem solved. I’m sure they’re looking into all the little hiccups.

I thought I was the only one who had an entirely grey screen..

This is a test of writing in a blank grey box…

And then guessing where the bubmit key is…

Ah! Got it, thank you Jazz. No problem, understood, oh … and don’t forget you’ve got a family and probably some kids too, oh … and you’ve probably got a normal paying job too, oh … and it’s nearly Easter, so TAKE A FRIGGIN’ BREAK!

Ah yes, next/previous on main page is what i was after. Sweet.

CR/realityskin, pretty much the same way as you used to find old posts (not that i’m pretending that was particularly efficient either)

your options are :
search – If you’re looking for something in particular to see if we’ve had something on it.
Use the next and previous story navigation at the bottom of this page (it has the story name rather than ‘next’ and ‘previous’)
Look for in the recent posts listing on the front page of the site (which gives just title and authors name/date
Or, Browse by category which also has a next/previous page links.

As noted above we’ll include next/previous on the front page when we can get to it. We are also looking into a feature for premium members to be able to ‘bookmark’ articles of interest to come back to later.

Geez, much quicker using this site with Firefox than Internet Shatsplorer.

Someone, please tell me how to find old threads, and please don’t tell me to use the search function, because that would be like telling me to “pick a word, any word”, and hope for the best.

Vague.

Jazz – I think the splitting topics with large numbers of comments is definitely in order. This one is 150+ and is sluggish as all hell. Yeah, there aren’t many topics that’ll do 150, but a lot go 50+. 50 comments per page? Not essential though.

i just wanna know how to navigate main pages … !?!??

Ahhhh…the age old techos nightmare… “The more time I’m on the phone/email/in a meeting talking to you about the issues, the less time I’m able to spend actually FIXING the issues!”. Sadly, clients never seem to get it. 🙂

Skidbladnir, It shouldn’t be any different as we didn’t change any of the underlying code base. All of what you see is just a fancy skin over the top.

However , we’ll add that to the to do list and come up with some instructions. Of course while i am replying to you guys all the time i’m not getting to do that 😉

Okay, posting links is now behaving a bit different…

If I put in html of (a href = http://www.the-riotact.com)Take me to the RiotACT(/a) I get sent to “http://the-riotact.com/www.the-riotact.com” (without the “”).
This matches how old posts worked.

If I put in (a href = “www.the-riotact.com”)Take me to the RiotACT(/a), which is how we used to forcibly link text, I also get sent to “http://the-riotact.com/www.the-riotact.com” (again, without the “”).
The only links that seem to work as expected are when I just put in the entire link and don’t both a href-ing, for example: http://www.the-riotact.com

This isn’t the same as how it used to work pre RA 3.0, so do all the links in old pre 3.0 stories now point to the wrong urls?

Also, the Link highlighting in Posts is hard to recognise as a link when using vanilla IE6…
No idea about comments though, so will test.

Link to The-RiotACT as an a href

Standard cut and paste:
http://www.the-riotact.com

Skidbladnir, reply to the email i sent you about your membership and i will sort it out.

Lilli, thanks for the feedback. always nice to get some as most of our fan mail comes from aggrieved people and/or their lawyers 🙂

Astrojax – Ranks aren’t supposed to mean anything in particular other than a way of recognizing your contributions to the site. The list on the about page is the first few and we’ve used words that are somewhat riotous. Early ranks imply rebellious nature in an individual and higher ones are more in keeping with inspiring rebellion in others. Oh, the nav buttons below the ads will stay where they are. They’re there for a reason

Canberra Resident/Johnathon – we’re working on a few site tweaks and may get to some of those you’ve suggested.

Stonedwookie – its likely to stay up for a little while longer as the featured post. We have an awful lot of readers who only read the site once a week/fortnight who might be interested in this post

As a general comment we’ve already noted the bugs raised in the comments above in addition to a few others and we’re working on over the coming weeks to sort out. We appreciate your patience while we sort them out.

just to let you know I am currently looking into the following

Lag when trying to type comments on IE
Text at top of comments block noting that comments are closed on this post – when they aren’t
Excessive spacing between comments
Navigation bars to find older posts at bottom of front page
Default font size (& font on polls)
dodgy post count in your profile
Terms and conditions link on registration doesn’t quite work yet.

Is there an alternative article you’d rather see in the featured spot?

um yeh everyone knows riotact 3.0 has been released now stop hogging the top post thats gotta be the worst feature post hoggers!!!!

Minor point: This thread also says that comments are disallowed for this post. I suyspect this is a bug.

After getting over the initial shock of the new layout (have been moving all weekend and hadn’t had a chance to check RA), I think I’m still a firm fence sitter.

There are definitely some positive aspects about the change (quite an impressive layout – makes you think there might actually be some thought provoking discussions going on!) but I agree with most of Jonathon Reynolds observations, particularly regarding the ‘minimum post length’ of around 7-8 lines with the info block (for a one-line comment). I think his suggestion regarding clearing the blank lines at the top and bottom of comments would definitely ease up on the scrolling required to get through all of the comments. The use of graphics to represent some of the info as well as concatenating the date would help greatly too.

All in all I think this is a great step forward for RA – well done admins, it’s nice to know that you guys care about moving RA into the future and acting on user feedback to improve the usability of the site. Admins that actually care about the site they are administrating – whodda thunk it!

Meh, it’s not for me. I liked the Yellow and Blue. It’s too fancy now.

And there used to be an “Older posts” link at the bottom of the frontpage, so you could scroll back to find an article.

Where is that functionality now?

It could also be that I was a lazy bum in the testing phase.

Also, comments take forever to post, and the pages take a while to display.
As has been mentioned earlier, the differentiation between a Post and the discussion needs to be a bit clearer.

I received the “You’re a premium member” email, but I don’t appear to be so.
Is this because I received that email to my hotmail, whereas my Riot profile uses work email?
*has had a really tiring week so isn’t feeling up to investigating*

Also, there’s quite a noticable delay in between my typing of letters and them appearing in the Comment box…

so what’s the heirachy of ranks, then? ‘newbie’ is obvious. ‘rioter’ also seems to be a generic, therefore lower caste.

but ‘agitator’ and ‘picketer’ and ‘rabble rouser’ seem indifferentiatable (i think i might have made that word up)

Jazz, the Poll looks crook – all jaggy.
Posting an article was easy, but there’s a lot of other “stuff” there that wasn’t clear as to the purpose of so I just ignored.

Have had an hour or two playing, but I’m not sure I’m in love with the new.

If you are going to establish a ratings/pecking order, please make it comprehensive and easy to understand. The incomplete list given in ‘about us’ is useless!

I don’t like the new site. It’s far too serious, and not so easy to navigate around. Bring back the old, it was more fun.

For those of you who don’t like the ads in amongst the comments, remember that advertising brings in the mula, which helps keep this site up and running.

Thanks for the feedback all, rest assured that we will be looking into some of hte issues that have been raised. Particularly issues such as the lag when writing comments, default font size, the dodgy count on the number of posts you’ve all made, and the ‘comments closed’ notice. We may take on other suggestions if/when we get around to them. Fonts are always hard to do because they call whatever you have loaded on your local computer. We’re not likely to change the layout radically (again)

51modelBloke – older posts are still all there, recent ones you;ll find in the recent posts listing but can also be found by using the search function at the tope of this page, the next/previous story links at the bottom, or browsing by category.

Justbands, the seeminly random pictures between comments are ads (or in some cases placeholders til we get some ads). they are mostly there to annoy people who frivilously want to get a story to 200+ comments without adding any value.

There is also a home button at the bottom of every set of comments.

Whoever was asking for the home button: The RA logo is the home button.

I mainly use firefox and the category text looks blocky?
Looks legible on Safari (not good, safari makes me angry)

Forgive me if I have missed the bleeding obvious, but how does one access ealier posts? or are they gone with the new version. Apart from that, I welcome the change, like it even.

It’s called style. Style as in coolness, man.

What’s with the seemingly random banner images in between posts/comments?

Just a few tips you may be interested in:

1. The longer each thread gets (ie 125 posts), the longer it takes to download. Surely you can add the Page 1, 2, 3, 4 feature?

2. Not obvious how to get to page two of the topic list.

3. The site http://www.proboards.com have some wonderful templates which you could use or take ideas from.

4. You need to COMPACT the visual aspects of site and make use of the white space.

5. I have a super-fast computer, but backspacing is delayed – massive nuisance – wasn’t happening before.

6. Where is the HOME button – it’s important to have a HOME button where everyone can see it a glance – preferably at the top.

This delayed backspace and typing reaction problem is annoying the poopsies out of me …

All the best

Random, it’s got the same tally of posts (157) for everyone, but the number of comments varies so that figure may well be accurate.

Possible bug – In MyRiotact I see the following:
RandomGit has written 157 posts and 1212 comments for The RiotACT

Not sure about the comments tally, but I sure a shite haven’t written 157 posts.

@ Jazz

Jazz said :

will someone elaborate on what they mean by too white? its the same colour white as it was previously. granted there is a little more space between comments when you only respond with a one line comment.

Too white as in too much “white” visible from the page itself.

* the default font size too small. Yes you can manually adjust it but you can’t set a default preference (cookie, login parameter). With a larger font the background white will not be as obvious as the text will not appear to be as sparse.
* the comment info block on the side of each comment takes up 6-7 lines (text). (ie. #xxx posted by etc) Add in the extra “blank” lines before and after this block you end up with a minimum of 8 lines “space” utilised per comment. With a single line comment you could have up to 7-8 lines of whitespace = lots of white

My suggestions:
* use a larger default font for comments (or allow it to be set persistently)
* cut down on white space above and below the comments (you still have a seperator line between comments)
* reformat the comment info block, use a smaller font, or make it slightly wider so text uses less lines…
* remove (useless) the user ratings – that information is available on clicking the username in their profile anyway – you could always go down the ebay route and use a graphic to represent status/seniority
* and finally perhaps reformat the date time to something more (one line) space efficient (dd Mth YY, HH:mm)
* instead of the word “Quote” taking up a whole line, look at a more efficient way of providing that facility – perhaps a single character graphic?

Thats my 2cents worth…. next time I’ll charge my full consulting rates 😉

Since Thumper is the highest posting person I know, is Protagonist the highest ?

Jazz – two things: just noticed I can rate my own post – is that something you want people to be able to do?

Also – check out the motorcycle accident thread for this one: When you click on the post and view the main entry with the photos, the photos are floating left leaving the text (specifically the ED comments) squished up on the right.

Suggest you set the CSS to clear left within that container after photos are displayed.

Just checked again…still doesn’t work. One thing I noticed is that the URL to the internal reference is to “Reference”, if I change that manually to “reference” then it works fine. Perhaps your browser doesn’t care about case & mine does. All the other internal links are lower case by the looks…& they work fine.

[Ed. all fixed.]

justbands said :

Jazz: It’s only the “Registration and User levels” link on the About page that doesn’t work for me (tried via IE & Firefox), the others are fine…so maybe that one’s been missed.

Have checked it and it looks ok. certainly clicking on that link works for me.

I still don’t get the “white” comments. If anything this is less spaced out, and less white.

I hear everyone on the lack of definition between articles, that could possibly be changed.

Jazz: It’s only the “Registration and User levels” link on the About page that doesn’t work for me (tried via IE & Firefox), the others are fine…so maybe that one’s been missed.

why do you want to get rid of those. so much fun to play with!

What am I talking about, Courier? lol @ meI need a lie down.

Mr Evil said :

Will the new and improved RiotACT automatically delete post that contain anything like, “I paid $5 too much for a pizza…”, “I thought $26 could buy a whole case of wine”, or the like? 🙂

ahh, no. but if you were a premium member you could show your disapproval by scoring it really low.

justbands is right. Far too spaced out, no borders making it harder to follow specific areas. There are no other background colours but white.

I have also noticed that the font I am writing in has changed to something like Courier. *strange*.

Oh no, they are all qualified to comment, it’s just that anyone who disagrees with me is wrong 😉 and needs enlightening, even if i have to beat them until they see it my way!

And is there a list of the ranks somewhere? How do i know if my rioter trumps AD’s agitator?? (opps just read Jazz’s comment above. So now I know)

Will the new and improved RiotACT automatically delete post that contain anything like, “I paid $5 too much for a pizza…”, “I thought $26 could buy a whole case of wine”, or the like? 🙂

By the way, I quite like the new look.

dont know why the internal reference links on the FAQ dont work foryou justbands. they work for me and i’ve tried them on 6 different computers so far with different browsers.

User ranks are calculated using an incredibly complex algorithm that works out how much you contribute to the site and assigns your rank accordingly. I suspect it is something that we will evolve as we go so that better contributions score better, and crap doesnt.

Noted on the white space – we’ll have a play around with that and see if we can come up with a compromise. Interesting that during our beta test nobody noted that as a big problem.

just because you have an opinion it doesn’t make it valid!!

It’s RIOTACT! Everyones qualified to comment! 😉

Personally I like it but it still needs a few tweeks (the text boxes on the posting pages overlap, “comments disabled” when they obviously aren’t, and a few other little things).

At least it hasn’t seemed to have slowed down the arguments, um sorry I mean discussions.

S4anta, read the about. or click on the link to Current rank under My RiotACT in the story above.

In a nutshell they dont mean much but it was our way of acknowledging those readers that get more involved. Submit more stuff and your rank goes up. We just picked out a few appropriately themed names for each rank.

> will someone elaborate on what they mean by too white? its the same colour white as it was previously.

Same colour white yes…but so much of it. The whole look is very sparse & there’s no clear definition between posts on the front page & the post itself & comments within posts. It all just kinda blends in together & makes it difficult to follow.

Not whinging Absent Dianne…just commenting.

Also, what determines the rankings (Rabble Rouser, Anarchist, etc) & is there a list of what they all are? I tried the FAQ, but it didn’t really explain it (oh…& the internal referencing links on the FAQ didn’t work for me either).

I hate change 🙁

Where does one find out about the detail in these brackets? (Agitator) and what not.

Jazz – looks good to me – neat and functional. I think people are just whingers nor qualified to comment.

Oh, there it is. Heh.

will someone elaborate on what they mean by too white? its the same colour white as it was previously. granted there is a little more space between comments when you only respond with a one line comment.

IE does appear to have some lag in the comments box that isnt in safari or firefox. no idea why but will look into it.

Fnaah, the poll is on the front page. just scroll down a bit.

Font size can be varied on an individual basis. if you have a scroll mouse hold down the ctrl key and scroll up or down clicks til you get something you can read. either that or get your eyes checked.

and i’m sure i’m not too dumb, but how the duck do i navigate back pages !?>

Ok i gave it some time, but i don’t like it. Too white, and the comment boxes, some meld into one another and it looks half finished. Oh well.

I like it. 🙂

So where’s the poll about whether you like or dislike the new look?

Sorry lads..it’s awful. SO much white space, very difficult to follow/read.

P.S. Just remember everyone, anyone who pulls rank to win an argument is officially a lamer.

If you doubt this rule, just remember I am a veteran Rioter (it says so on the left see) and I automatically know better than you about these sorts of things.

……oopps.

I was going to comment on the amount of article space (width) on the front page being the same as what is available in the specific article pages. ie. one column of blocks on the right and not two.

But I see you now have a wider ad format at the top right on the front page, so you need to fill it with two columns underneath.

Good job all round.

How soon till custom themes? 😛

Looks good ladies. Hope all goes well.

Where is this mysterious page 2 you speak of?

And is *was* white before, remember? 🙂

Actually, the font isn’t feint and jaggy on the front page but is on article pages. But it is too small everywhere…

Yeah – pretty much as relayed when on beta Jazz – the font is really hard to read – especially on a notebook screen. Looks very Courier New in the edit window, faint and jaggy everywhere, and maybe only 8pt size. Really adds to the overall Apple-has-something-to-answer-for whiteness. Like that scene in the new Willy Wonker movie where they have to get the sunnies out…
And the editing seems really slow to respond.
(IE7 on XP here)
How do you get to Page 2?

at the bottom of the page after you post a comment you get ‘home’ ‘top of page’ etc… but hidden under the ads. any chance of these being shifted up toimmediately below the ‘preview’ ‘post’ buttons of the now blank comment box??

Looks great guys and gals, well done.

hk0reduck said :

I’ve found that in general, people hate change and will whine a lot when it’s first revealed. You should probably hold another feedback session in about 3 weeks when everyone has settled into it 🙂

I’m with Hk0reduck on this one – no one (particularly Canberra!) likes change.

Good work you guys, I’m sure it will take :o)

Excellent, the white background is now white for all pages 🙂

PS – Nice work guys!

hmmm is it bright but looks good well done guys

That annoying typing delay was gone in a previous topic I commented in, but now it’s back here?! There’s a distinct delay between striking a key and having the letter appear. Yet in another topic, it wasn’t there.

More FYI, article fonts are also sharp now too. Many thanks admins! Looking good.

Oh well, Just goes to show you cant please everyone. Those that still have a foggy image do a hard refresh (ctrl + f5 on a windows machine) and it should be fixed up

It feels a little.. washed out to me. Quite anemic.

The look and feel is a bit less unique, it is alot closer to other forums. More importantly functionality is vastly improved, I get the impression a significant amount of work went into this, from the end user perspective this is greatly appreciated, thanks! A win for RiotAct overall.

The RiotACT logo doesn’t appear on the search results page.

Arial Rs are a crime against humanity! In fact, all of Arial is a crime against humanity. 🙁

Just FYI, the front page font is crystal sharp now, but articles’ font is still fuzzy in my browser, so whatever you did to the style sheet on the front worked really well.

With the transparency, remove the bolded parts of the following CSS to remove the transparency.


#arch_content, #post_content { margin: 1.5em 0;
background-color:#ffffff;
-moz-opacity: 0.70;
opacity: 0.7;
filter: alpha(opacity=70);
filter: progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.Alpha(opacity=70);

}

This will work on basically the whole page.

Really? It’s still dull grey here. I have a blank window open next to this one, which is white.

Much crisper now

Reloads do seem a bit slower – but once it all gets cached again, I expect it will be just fine.

For those that are finding it too white – perhaps you could help Jazz out by pointing at an appropriate less white forum.

Just a thought

There we go. less like looking through the fog on an early canberra morning now. hmm, but only on the front page it would seem.

er, what ads? Argh, that slow-type thing means I can’t watch my words while I’m typing them, there’s this weird stuttery delay.

It took me 1/2 a day to get use to the site change.

It’s “growing” on me but there is too much white/grey.

Also, the white background appears to be, well….quite grey compared to a blank browser tab, making it difficult to read (makes it look like my monitor is on it’s way out).

Perrrty!

Me too on the over-supply of white space – not too much though. I’d suggest tightening up the info re the poster – perhaps a smaller darker font, so it takes up less room.

This layout might be a total bugger on a 12″ lappy but its pretty good from this view.

Thanks for all the hard work – now we get our Canberra news, gossip and traffic comments in a clean interface.

Now if we can just edit our own typos….

adeptacheese said :

each comment takes up way too much room

Inclined to agree, and it does seem to look very ‘pale’ for want of a better term. Scrolling through comments seems to take forever, too (Firefox 3.0b4). It’s looks and behaves better in Safari.

For those who dislike Google ads I suggest you use Firefox with the AdBlock Plus plugin installed.

Overall the front page looks much better though.

together, together – oops

Looks nice to me, functions well, and I can see everything at a glance. Whingers will never be satisfied, because they are searching for the perfect world, of which they will never find. I know how difficult it is to put together a functioning website together; it’s not just pretty designs and colours; there’s a lot of technical stuff that needs to be considered. To all the Riot Masters, job well done; love it!

each comment takes up way too much room and theres some stupid grey filter over the pictures posted in the motorcycle accident post a few posts down the page. whats up with that?

@AD – I think that may be a rank reserved for you buddy 🙂

Is there some story behind the nomeclature, or was it just a byline for giving yourselves ‘overlord’ status ?

I’m not sure if my system is running slow today, but it’s taking much longer than usual to download the photos.

Like the new look though.

I think the new format looks fantastic – well done guys (and gals) 🙂

Astro, according to my dictionary there are several meanings.

My favourite is the one which indicates a form of military punishment: a ‘picketer’ was made to ‘stand on a stake with a pointed top’.

-Presumably life was a little uncomfortable if he lost his balance….

I guess the powers that be, at RA, would like to see you and I in a similar situation.

my rank is ‘picketer’… what does this mean?

an’ what else is there – apart from the list on the update page?

The fonts under Internet Explorer 7 appear weird (as Ant said, though I do turn cleartype off as a general rule). Under Safari 3 (PC) fonts appear fine.You may want to check your CSS code and see what the font substitution is to clean this one up in IE.

i’m not going to comment just yet.

oops; aww fark it… 😉

All the images look washed out. In fact, the whole site looks washed out. Has the text been set to grey rather than black?

Agitator? lol

Thanks Ant, we will be going back to the previous recent comments listing, just needs some additional configuration

I’ve been trying out the various things… hard to get used to the new layout as one tends to memorise a familiar layout, now have to actually read everything…. and when I click on the info/about thing, it just reloads the main page.

As others have said, it’s very pale. The writing on posts looks thin, small and spidery.
And typing out a comment, there’s a weird delay between pressing the key and the letter appearing.

Only suggestion I’d make, is to expand the thing on the right so more recently-replied-to topics are listed. And this is probably too hard to do, but, just have a fragment of the last reply, rather than the same topic getting 10 listings scattered through the list. ie One mention of the topic, rather than lots (this topic being a good example). Kind of like the “hot topics/todays topics” that you get on other forums. This would stop some topics getting lost before everyone’s finished with them.

I like it 🙂 There is definately more money making potential with the google ads and they’re pretty unobtrusive.

I’ve found that in general, people hate change and will whine a lot when it’s first revealed. You should probably hold another feedback session in about 3 weeks when everyone has settled into it 🙂

I see you changed the font – now we can all claim ‘the font’s different’ !

ok,

in response to some of the issues raised – Yes i agree the pics look a bit washed out, I’m sure there is something in the code that is doing it but will take a bit of investigation to sort out.

Barney – neon green flashing text – umm probably not in my lifetime but you never know, i could be swayed with a compelling argument.

Ari, The stars under each header post is the rating of the story, no stars means none of our premium members have voted on it yet. Those that volunteered for the beta test a while back I’ve given a freebie upgrade for a few months.

Terms and Conditions – yep already noted that one and we’ll fix it up shortly. The link for those is broken on the registration page too. For reference our new terms and conditions of use are here.

Kenneth, thanks for spotting that on about single post view. we missed it when we were doing a few prod tweaks on release.

Snarkey/B2 – noted about the margin, thats the same setup as mine and hadn’t notice cause i do have a a 24″ monitor – great for development and gaming, not so for what everyone else might see. The Banner pics were provided by Danman & he’s already noted its not his best work. there are a few missing and we’re happy to use any contributions if you;ll let us. they need to be 970×68 pixels.

Berraboy, You havent been moderated that i know of, will look into why its doing that.

Jemmy, not sure why yours is doing that, must be a peculiarity in rendering that particular text in opera (opera is less than 1% of our total users).

Shauno, noted about the links at the bottom, will add them back in.

…but is it just me or is there some code to make pics look semi transparent to the white background – the pics on the main page look kinda washed out all of a sudden?

Very nice work ditching the generic wordpress look. Site looks good.

Some of the styles do not translate accurately when using the Firefox browser (primarily under the Categories section on the right side of the screen).

On the main page it needs a link down the bottom to go to the next
page of older story’s.

I get similar to Primal, no anti-alias or cooltype on the fonts and they are hard to read. As well, the daily quote seems to be a truncated image that I can’t read.

Opera 9.26, Win Xp

Screen shot:
http://img143.imageshack.us/img143/2786/riotactkd9.jpg

it’s not bad, but there is no left margin on a few things, like this form for example or the main stories.

Nice 🙂 I think the features are the most pertinent change – cosmetic changes will never please everyone.

Yay turns out i am a veteran 🙂

No one would be stepping on my feet if they improved the lake panorama banners.
I went to the same spot several times whilst on this project and got only cloudy / overcast days.

New website looks good to finally come to fruition, Jazz, email me about the missing pictures, I emailed you a few weeks back, but I guess we both been very busy.

D’oh! Just noticed after loading a few different pages that the banner pic DOES change! (I still think you should be soliciting more pics from regulars though).

But why are images in the story body and comments so pale, as if they’re semi-transparent? (see a couple of the “Images of Canberra” threads, or the story about the motorbike demolition on the FP at the moment and compare them to the banner pic). Even the ads look pale and wishy-washy.

Hang on a Sec…. I just updated my profile (didn’t even know I had one!) and then it said my ‘comment’ was being moderated prior to posting. Did ‘Scumdorg’ get his way after this week commotion with the legal action or am I just being paranoidical after a few Friday night chardy’s?

Wouldn’t mind if the colours were a little more saturated – it’s very pastelly now.

Also (and this may be peculiar to my Mac OS X / Firefox 2 setup) the main story text has no margin on the left hand edge – the letters are right on the white border, which is annoying to read – it looks like there’s a bit cut off. Comments have a 5 pixel margin, which is fine.

The font’s too small, but that’s more my problem than yours (and get those young punks off my lawn!)

Finally, I agree with Barney (#2) – not rapt in the banner pic, but do have a suggestion – I’m sure there’s code there to swap different banner pics in and out. Why not exploit the talents of some of RA’s photographers and see if you can’t get them to offer up some nice shots? Some of Danman’s pics have been awesome, and he’s far from alone here. It’d be tops to see a few of the great pics that have been posted again 🙂

I’m guessing that images have had the transparency CSS turned on (eg. http://the-riotact.com/?p=7013 has lighter images).

Also, the above mentioned post brakes once it’s in single post view.

WTF!!! It’s bad enough running VISTA, now I have to get used to a new, improved RIOTACT too?!

At least its great to know you guys actually care about this wonderful sight. Whatever it looks like, well Done people!

A whiter shade of pale.

When updating one’s profile

“By ticking this box, I agree to the terms and conditions.”

except the terms & conditions link 404s – we have to buy a Pug?

… I don’t want to be a double poster (with all the lunacy that implies), but all the pix seem to have the contrast/balance f*cked up. E.g. the pix of the crushed bikes looked heaps better and crisper in the “old” site rather than totally washed out with too much white now.

What do the stars mean underneath each post’s header details? They’re all blanked out at the moment.

So if look a bit more, the recent column is just where it should be. I should not post.

I go out to see the Brumbies lose comprehensively, and find this when I get home.

Nice improvement. And like a good red, I am sure it will improve with time.

Is there a plan for the “recent” column to make a comeback?

Cheers

Ari said :

It needs more neon green 32pt flashing text … just like the good old ABC site.

lol

From my POV I still reserve judgement on whether I’m in favour of the new look … but I haven’t spewed … yet … and I don’t feel particularly uncomfortable about it … so I guess it’s all good.

Number of posts would be my gez.

I can’t find page 2.

It needs more neon green 32pt flashing text … just like the good old ABC site.

Can we post any HTML in posts/comments??

Let me see:

bold
italic
:::
link
h4

nah, just counting it up wrong. told you there would be a few bugs

Ari said :

How come when you click on usernames everybody seems to have written 157 posts?

Perhaps that was a testing thing.

A visual comparison of the fonts (RA v3 above, RA v2 below) here.

Anyone else seeing the same difference I am?

(Firefox 2.0.0.12 and Win XP, for what it’s worth)

I think it’s a vast improvement. Bravo!!

How come when you click on usernames everybody seems to have written 157 posts?

depends on what size screen you are using barney. It was much easier to go with the fixed width once we started adding in all the extra variables. Not everyone has a 24″ monitor.

It’s like, margin-bottom:500px;margin-left:500px; 😉
I’ll get used to it.

lol, you know it was white before too??

*puts sun glasses on*

I like the padding. It evens things out. But now that I have looked at the page for a few minutes I am thinking maybe the white is a little too bright on the eyes.

yep, thats a pretty good guess AussieGal83 & exactly how it works

Barney, no you can not be supercooldude. you should have thought about that when picking your username. Feel free to click on the googleads between the comments if you see something interesting, or ignore them as you choose.

The comments will be slightly more ‘padded’ as you call them as a result of the change of layout. you’ll get used to it in no time

Strange rankings 🙂

Okay (puts on his CC hat on again), the other thing that is kind of, shall we say ‘weird’, is the Google Ad’s in between the comments. That and the comments are extremely padded.

Barney, I suspect it is a ranking system like with most forums. The more you post the higher up you go in the rankings.

Well I don’t really care. I’ll just post more. All good.
Another thing is, how does a user get tagged “troublemaker”, “anarchist”, etc etc …???
Can’t I change that to something like “supercooldude”?

I like it.

main font? its actually the same as it used to be. noted about the ‘whiteness’ will see if we can sort that out over the weekend

The main font needs to be changed. The little box up in top right where you mention ‘right of reply’ is much easier to read than the body of the site at the moment. Glaring white background is no help either.

god you lot are quick. I only switched the theme over about 2 minutes ago. It will undoubtedly have a few bugs that we need to iron out. At roughly 8000 unique visitors a week, 1 Day of exposure constitutes more testing than we’ve been able to accomplish over the past few weeks.

No, we are not introducing the ability to edit your own comments. Get used to it, and use the comment preview if you are unsure.

It would also be cool if you could edit your previous comments. Just because I want to say another thing here, but don’t wanna spam it up.

On my profile page. It says I have made 150 odd posts, and 238 comments. Uh…

Anyway. Enough out of me.

I think you can get rid of the ‘New’ RiotACT coming soon too. 🙂

Some nice features though. I like the features 🙂 🙂
I think I just don’t like the style. Each section doesn’t seem to be defined enough. It’s all white :S arghh…

PS: “Comments are disallowed for this post.” – Well, I posted.

soooooo white! arghhh!

Ah. I can’t see shit. The banner sux.

Woah.
Different.