New Forum Area & Slight Tidy Up

[Grant]

Hi all,

Under the 'science' section of the forum we have a new sub-forum - 'History of Astronomy'. This was suggested by jambouk and we thought it was a great idea

To tidy things up a little and reduce the amount of sections and scrolling we have combined the 'Microscopy' forums into one forum and moved it into the non-astro area.

If anybody has any other ideas for new sections or, combining and tidying up existing areas of the forum then please do post them in our suggestions area.

Cheers,

Grant

[Pig]

Hiya,

I have noticed all the mods now have green text to their names as apposed to some with red and some green..... what was the reason for the red and green ?

[Grant]

There was previously two tiers of mods - Global Moderators (green) and Moderators (red) however both groups had the same access permissions and essentially, do the same job of moderating so it didn't really make sense to differentiate anymore so all the Moderators (red) were upgraded to Global Moderators (green)  so now they are all green

The only change is the colour.

[Pig]

Cheers for the speedy reply Grant....   Green  is good

[Merlin66]

Grant,

I'm sorry to say that the new layout and format may be great on a phone or tablet, but seriously no good for me on the PC.

The spacing and lack of just a message heading means I'm lucky to get through the last few messages posted before I run out of patience....

All the other forums I subscribe to have a layout similar to the one you previously used - which seems to be acceptable and very usable.

It's been good while it lasted, I think SGL provides a great service to the astronomical community, but unfortunately I may not be one of the contributors.

 

[Sp@ce_d]

10 minutes ago, Merlin66 said:

Grant,

I'm sorry to say that the new layout and format may be great on a phone or tablet, but seriously no good for me on the PC.

The spacing and lack of just a message heading means I'm lucky to get through the last few messages posted before I run out of patience....

All the other forums I subscribe to have a layout similar to the one you previously used - which seems to be acceptable and very usable.

It's been good while it lasted, I think SGL provides a great service to the astronomical community, but unfortunately I may not be one of the contributors.

 

I have to admit I'm struggling a bit with all the extra real estate requirements & scrolling about too. It hasn't helped with the old RSI either.. sry to say too.

[Relpet]

7 minutes ago, Merlin66 said:

Grant,

I'm sorry to say that the new layout and format may be great on a phone or tablet, but seriously no good for me on the PC.

The spacing and lack of just a message heading means I'm lucky to get through the last few messages posted before I run out of patience....

All the other forums I subscribe to have a layout similar to the one you previously used - which seems to be acceptable and very usable.

It's been good while it lasted, I think SGL provides a great service to the astronomical community, but unfortunately I may not be one of the contributors.

 

I agree with Merlin66.  As a newcomer to astronomy and forums in general I found SGL in its previous incarnation to be intuitively easy to find my way around and thus a source of invaluable advice, information and inspiration.  If I came to it new today I would find it bewildering.  It wasn't broke: why did you have to fix it?

[Sp@ce_d]

3 minutes ago, Relpet said:

I agree with Merlin66.  As a newcomer to astronomy and forums in general I found SGL in its previous incarnation to be intuitively easy to find my way around and thus a source of invaluable advice, information and inspiration.  If I came to it new today I would find it bewildering.  It wasn't broke: why did you have to fix it?

I don't think it was a case of "If it wasn't broke". I believe the problem with the old forum software is that it wasn't supported any more. Therefore to remain secure (among other things) there's no choice..it had to be upgraded. However it seems the level of customisation doesn't stretch to formatting in the way we were previously used to. No doubt Admin are talking to the developers to improve things but for some it's changing from inconvenient to annoying... or even RSI inducing 

[brantuk]

To be honest folks I don't see what you're talking about. The forum is slightly different but the admins have done a great job of making it as near as possible to the original look and feel, and I'm doing no more scrolling about than I used to in the old format. Sure one or two things are a tad different but no real biggies. And it has loads of extra features that can be used or not - but overall it doesn't affect the usual way of working.

It may be that you just need to use it and get accustomed to it - it's basically the same as before with one or two very minor changes.

[Grant]

Guys this is an old announcement prior to the upgrade - if you are having issues with the forum since the upgrade please use the bugs forum and we will do our best to look into any problems you are having.