A little positive feedback. I did get my favorite boards listed on the left side. Took several tries because the “save” icon was hidden under the list of added boards. Not sure what random cosmic pairing made the icon finally appear. I still need to play with the tags.
LC
The desktop version shows a preview of what your reply will look like once posted off to the right of the reply window. Is there a way to preview replies created on handheld devices (I use android if this matters) before sending? This would be an important function to add to decrease edits by those who predominantly use their handheld device.
In mobile view, when you are in the composer board, there is a button that looks like a TV screen at the bottom - that toggles you to the preview screen. When you are in it, you’ll see a pencil that toggles you back to the edit box. Here’s a picture from my iPhone but I have to believe it functions the same on an android. (oh, and note the button next to it is the one that will let you upload a picture to your post)
I tried doing what you recommended and now I can’t get back to the previous layout. Please help. IPad here.
By previous, do you mean the home page? If you have a keyboard for the iPad, I find using the desktop version easier.
You can collapse the writing panel anytime by clicking the down arrow in the top left. You can go back to the message by clicking its link at the top of the message. And in any screen where you see the jester cap, you can click that to get back to the home page.
My suggestion…immediately migrate back to the old software (if that’s possible), then focus on creating a logical and functional system to move to. If it’s not possible to migrate back temporarily, then focus in double-time on creating a logical, functional system to replace this debacle.
=sheila
Yes, the simplicity of the previous boards made for an easy-to-navigate seamless experience.
Sheila, I’m not TMF, but I can give you my answer. I’m just trying to set your expectations. TMF isn’t going back.
In 2022, no one writes a bespoke messaging board. It just costs way too much time and money. The wise thing to do is to pick one of the off-the-shelf products, make minor modifications to it, and go with it. This is what TMF did. Nothing they could have picked would have been exactly like what we had before. There were always going to be significant differences in the UI.
I’m not privy to the specific reasons Discourse was picked. But the new software is a “logical and functional system”. It’s just different that what we had before. Before, you had a Favorite Board view. Now you view your favorite boards in the sidebar, you just have to link them first. Other features also have a different way to access.
The biggest missing feature is the ability to view individual posts. This is a design decision by Discourse, and unlikely to ever have that kind of feature.
My advice is to ask for help, one step at a time. Explain how you did something on the old boards, and someone here can give you the steps to do the same here. In a week, you’ll be nearly as functional as the old boards. Then you can start taking advantages of some of the new features offered.
Printing is unfortunately broken. Besides not being able to print out individual posts any more (since we can’t even view individual posts any more), the interface hijacks printing on Chrome, and has a limit of 10-20 articles a day. After that? Tough luck - you can’t print or save to PDF any more. The limit can be adjusted, but the print hijacking and inability to print individual comments/articles is a loss.
The lack of individual posts is also a ‘big deal’ in the sense that while we may always want our posts to be part of a discussion, we may not want them always shown directly alongside the words of every other person in that discussion. The thing I enjoyed about the previous TMF system was the fact all posts were read in isolation; and if interesting, you could zoom out to the whole thread. This is a significant loss, for me.
(Possible that the printing limit is a bug related to ‘print popups’ not automatically closing? Will investigate)
Is the difference maybe the mobile view vs desktop view?
I configured it on my desktop.
And now on mobile i click the 3 lines on upper right and it shows my left-side dashboard of favorite boards aka categories i am following.
Hth,
Dreamer
Print limit seems to be triggered after a few printed articles regardless of whether I close the popups. Seems to be an (unnecessary) rate limit on that module.
Agreed - more frustration than it may be worth, at least for me so far……I don’t usually give up easily but getting awfully close. Sure miss the old boards, my cyber friends and the good info and opinions posted there. always interesting, often amusing and thought provoking.
Of course it’s going to be different. We’re all used to significant software updates by now, with substantial changes and new programs. They are primarily useful
improvements, with occasionally some less significant features we find less than agreeable. But this is the first ever experience of moving to a disaster. The only plus I find is that the visual aspects of typing posts is better. And I’m tired of the indication that I have unread posts, when I don’t. And that every time I come to the boards, the feature item in front of me is a post of mine from what has been one of my most active boards that dates back to January. Makes no sense. None. In line with this entire new messaging board setup.
=sheila
It is so horrible, I can’t believe that it was approved. I’m about ready to leave too. TMF has migrated from a unique and specially valued community to a place that has almost no positive value and basically grates against all of my senses.
Sheila
I worked in IT-related areas for about 30 years and this is just new GUI is so totally incomprehensible as to be beyond incompetence. It is as if some folks are purposefully on a mission to sink the audience and site by totally ignoring any elements of usability testing. This would be a great case study on what NOT to do.
Your deeply informed, highly accurate observations deserve many many recs, but unfortunately I can add only one. Which I’ve done.
=sheila
And now apparently they have implemented the paywall, as I’m now blocked form the PC Premium Community side… That’s fine, other that I had some comments there…
Also now the old TMF site, clicking any of the old Favorites takes you directly to the Freemium Discussion tagged board… So, might as well kill that old link…
Update: That last bit has changed, now it shows the Moved header and the old posts are still there…
Me to.
I’ve been working on getting used to the new system since it was released last week. It took a while but I’m getting along alright now. There are a lot of posts around about working with it, so here are just a couple of points you might want to explore, if you are interested of course.
First, Tracked (under Community at the top of the left side-bar) filter down to whatever you had as Favorites on the old system. That is what I use for most of my reading. Just above that is Everything. Everything includes Tracked (your old favorites) AND everything else (everything that wasn’t a favorite, or is new here).
It’s all threads here, called Topics. The old system kept track of your last read message on a board. This keeps track of your last read message within a topic/thread.
Categories on the left sidebar is useful. Hover over it and a pencil appears to the right. Click on it and you get to choose which Categories get listed under that on the left side-bar. I added all the ones that have things I follow.
Companies boards you are interested in fall within the Stocks A to Z Category.
There is far, far more, but maybe that will help you find your way around a bit.
Something I have found helpful moving around is the keyboard short cuts revealed by clicking the little keyboard icon bottm right of the sidebar underneath categories. After using it for a while I think it makes life a bit easier here.
