The new forums bring a lot of new functionality and a more fluid and communal structure. These things are good. However, they take quite some getting used to. After a couple of days of using them, these are my first reactions to them.
What are your likes and dislikes?
LIKE
I like the fact that the new forums might encourage more interaction and
cross-promotion between the marketplaces.
I like the way that you sort by category tags. This is likely to
overcome my old forum behaviour of only ever hanging out in a couple
of threads and one forum.
I like the notifications icon a lot. (the little speech bubble top
right) I can see myself using that a lot.
I like the new moderation tools.
I like the fact that you can see and click on your unread topics in
the forum overview and jump straight to them. This provides much more
easy continuity with the threads you have contributed to.
DISLIKE
It is too detached from the marketplaces, both visually and in terms
of navigation.
It feels like there’s too many features and too much detail up at the
top level. Lots of visual noise. That makes it a bit unintuitive and
it sort of feels more like a programmer’s forum than a designer’s
forum.
The forums are less visual than they were. Envato sells (often
visual) creative media. The forums need to reflect that more and be a
more visually tasty experience.
The users are designers. They design really nice avatars to fit into
an 80x80 square box. The forums squish this into a circle with a
48pixel diameter. What!??
Now that a user’s overall post count and badges are no longer
immediately visible, I realise how much I was subconsciously relying
on these as an immediate insight into a user’s forum and marketplace
experience.
Yeah…very good point. Easily linking from the forum user to the marketplace profile is a pretty important thing. Another way in which the two feel very detached.
To make reply to topic (not to some message in topic) you need to scroll down ALL answers and wait for every ajax loading for pages to see REPLY button. If topic have 500+ messages this is big problem, you need to scroll 30+ seconds to make a reply…
All badges from Themeforest auto added to forum and there is not any way to hide some badge! For example some people hided Country on Themeforest for privacy/security reasons, but everyone can see this Country on forum!
Envato Community top black line have nothing (just sign out link) but take around 7% of page height! Move this logout link to profile menu and remove black bar:
1.THE WHOLE FORUM IS TOO SYSTEMATIC, the artsy feel, the creative atmosphere is just gone, its like some coding page with small letters. and I feel like coding html when posting in forums.
2. The marketplace feel is gone, not even tempted to press FORUM button anymore because I know what kind of confusion it will bring me into.
3. Unintuitive, there is no logic in navigating it now. You need to separate the forums for marketplaces. I dont care anything about themeforest or audiojungle or codecanyon. and I need to filter it out everytime…
4. All the profile pages and work that has been done crafting avatars is just gone. All those icons visually unatractive.
5. VERY VERY mobile unfriendly. Responsiveness ZERO.
do not enjoy reading forums anymore, I used to spend alot of time reading posts and posting, now its just all-cranked-up-stuffed-finances-forums-alike forum.
I really like the new system, a lot of useful functions like the ability to bookmark you favourite threads, we can modify or delete our posts, live notifications and thread updates are really great, it feels more like a realtime environment making user experience a lot easier (thousands of clicks saved compared to the old “F5 refresh” model)…
My overall feeling is very positive. I guess this is a default installation, I’m sure the devs will fine-tune the layout and add more links soon to better integrate the new forum with the marketplaces and user profiles.
This is not true, you can click on the thread navigation system and easily reach the top/bottom in 0.5 seconds…
I also know who @graphic4444 is… I saw his real avatar yesterday!
Yes, but not 0.5 sec if you have bad connection or GPRS and if theme have 500-1000 topics. Also this is another 2 clicks, and this is bad usability. Why I need to made 3 additional clicks for reply?
I found fast way, you can reply with Shift+R shortkey this is fastest way, but new users does not know this.