Hey guys

As you may have gathered from my previous announcement, welcome to the all-new InsanelyMac - we'd really love to hear from you if you've got any feedback on the new site, any feature requests, bug reports, etc.

-Ed

The new website seems to be more organized I am loving it keep it up guys.

For one, i've just had to re-register my account so am a little peeved by that right now. Tried to use forgot my password mechanism and it claimed there was no such user! Oh well, back now.

About the new layout / theme. The skin looks nice but the typographical choices are abysmal to be perfectly honest. Small font sized emboldened is an usability nightmare imho. If you were to set the fonts to normal instead that would be an improvement for readability / usability issues. Other than that this theme in particular is nicely crafted. Maybe the ads could be more discreet.

Nice to have the choice

Quick edit:

Using FF 3.06 bold fonts = fugly.
In IE7 looks better.
Safari good but bold fonts noticeable again.
Opera 9.62 looks good.

Also didn't mean to sound harsh if it came over that way

This is an excellent upgrade, guys. Was totally worth the hard work. THANK YOU!!

Oh yeah, I agree about the fonts issue the user above me posted about.

EDIT: Yeah, the bugs and the wacky fonts ruin the experience.

I hate it.

Wow.. The new forum layout is pretty horrible. Sorry, but the old one was so much cleaner, so much tidyer, and frankly looked newer than this does. I'll be sticking to the Insanely Beautiful forum layout thanks.

Now to make a Greasemonkey script to revert to the old hompage.

complete failure as i said in the other thread

Here's some bugs I've noticed:

- Font is too small on the forum / topic listings.
- There's additional spacing in Safari around the topic names.
- There seems to be an additional space at the beginning of every post.
- When you are in full screen mode, the site seems to re-stretch every time the page loads.
- The EDIT button doesn't work on your existing posts. MAJOR PROBLEM!
- In-post ads should only show for guests, logged-in members shouldn't get them.
- I would personally prefer the blog comments to be oldest at the top / newest at the bottom (in line with the way the forum works)

I think I like it, great work.
Where is the egosearch function? A function to list the threads I posted.
Is search function fully working?

Another issue: The hardware DB doesn't seem to work with Javascript turned off - which is very un-friendly for search engines.

The design is Great ! A major improvement in astetics but you HAVE to do something about the font used in displayng the threads. Also please make the " show new posts " button more obvious.

- The forum link in the top menu needs a trailing slash in the url! e.g. /forum/ not /forum

Hmmmm... New design looks pretty slick in my opinion. Gonna take some getting used to, though. One thing: site theme is a lot darker than before, and with the light blue, it kinda hurts my eyes. Maybe it's just me. Again, overall, looks nice!

Also pressing the EDIT button for my posts displays a big white window with some html gibberish at the bottom. Also ... do we really need to know how the Apple stock market quotes are doing ? But all in all is a great looking update

I just noticed that... Plus, when I was posting, the box where you insert your reply is a little far down. Above it, is this big space of nothing.

Thanks for all the feedback guys, keep it coming

We're aware of the re-stretching issue when going to full-screen - we're already in the process of improving this so that both the fluid width and also selected background load up instantly rather than loading the default setting and then loading the user's settings.

Blog comments order - would be interested to hear what anyone else has to say about that - my argument is that newest at the top for the News section would be more in keeping with a blog, but I'm open to suggestions on this!

There's a link to fix all your problems here: http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/index.php...1&skinid=35

Anyone notice anything funny about the "Hardware Database"? Seems oddly similar to here, even the EXACT same hardware listed...

Welcome to the party, you're a little late, as usual:


http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/index.php...t&p=1069522

Well, at least there's cake.

Hate to say this but, the very first impression of "new look" is "yuck!"

Edit and Options buttons broken. Here's what I got clicking on one of them:

function () { var B = this[0], C = this[1], J = this[2]; var G, F, H; var I = Math.max(B, C, J), E = Math.min(B, C, J); var K = I - E; H = I / 255; F = I != 0 ? K / I : 0; if (F == 0) { G = 0; } else { var D = (I - / K; var A = (I - C) / K; var L = (I - J) / K; if (B == I) { G = L - A; } else { if (C == I) { G = 2 + D - L; } else { G = 4 + A - D; } } G /= 6; if (G < 0) { G++; } } return [Math.round(G * 360), Math.round(F * 100), Math.round(H * 100)]; }
function () { var C = Math.round(this[2] / 100 * 255); if (this[1] == 0) { return [C, C, C]; } else { var A = this[0] % 360; var E = A % 60; var F = Math.round(this[2] * (100 - this[1]) / 10000 * 255); var D = Math.round(this[2] * (6000 - this[1] * E) / 600000 * 255); var B = Math.round(this[2] * (6000 - this[1] * (60 - E)) / 600000 * 255); switch (Math.floor(A / 60)) { case 0: return [C, B, F]; case 1: return [D, C, F]; case 2: return [F, C, B]; case 3: return [F, D, C]; case 4: return [B, F, C]; case 5: return [C, F, D]; default:; } } return false; }


The ad-space at the top is way too dominant, and the icon images should be reduced because this is eating much screen real estate. Too much in my opinion.

I see there is now 2 addspaces, one above the InsanelyMac and one just above the forum pages? Luckily for me the second one doesn't show any adds, just a big grey box!! Another messup on the new look!
It kinda like reminds me off the first Smart Car(Mercedes) that came out, it was a great little car but overturned if one went around the corners at speed! This made it great for going in a straight line but hell to turn into the driveway!

@SticMAC, thanks for the feedback - we've moved that 2nd ad right down to the bottom so we're not taking up quite so much screen real estate up the top

@Master Chief, your queries have been addressed, please let me know if you've got any other feedback!

There seems to be a problem with the user info boxes next to each post now. They are varying in width for me:

Ed. you would probably be a lot better off by moving the ads from the top and bottom to the sides of the page. As it stands now, the ads at the top and bottom are barely visible and lost in the clutter.

I also think you should consider finding some tech forum websites which people generally agree do advertising right to use as models. Unfortunately, I do not have any good suggestions, but AppleInsider is not bad and I am sure the community has some favorites.

EDIT: I see the "edit" function is now working, great!

A few more points....

Safari Padding Issues

Also, there are still some issues with spacing of the topic / forum names in Safari.

Safari:


Firefox:


Firefox looks a lot better.

Alignment of Page numbers & Add Reply / New Topic Buttons

The page numbers and add reply / new topic buttons should be aligned to the middle of the space they occupy, and I also think they should be have some padding from the outer edge, so that they line up horizontally with the blue boxes above / below

Could you please take my IP out of the post (blur it)?

@Paul - sorted that first one, just working on the next 2...

@Hara Taiki, I removed your IP. Sorry about that
@MoC: We do what we must... because we can. But there's no sense crying over every mistake... You just keep on trying till you run out of cake. (I love Portal!)

Epic failure.

The result of amateur designers: this mess.


I'm still confused why this was released abruptly. Wasn't there cross-browser, cross-platform QA performed before the theme was hastily implemented?

(I already know the answer is most likely "no," but perhaps maybe "why" would be a better form of the question.)

There are some problems with the <print> thread option. I am working with this thread:
http://www.insanelymac.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=134515

Here are the details:

(1) The post background turns dark so that it makes most of the text very hard to read before actually printing.

(2) The end of thread is lost in the print version.

Here is some more feedback... (I am assuming the Google search field at the top of the site is now new, but I am not sure).

I was searching for a BadAxe1 RAID installatoin note thread I created months ago...

Compare what the Google search field at the top of the site returns for "bofors + badaxe + vanilla + raid":

- http://www.insanelymac.com/search.php?cx=0...anilla+%2B+raid

(2 results, neither is what I was looking for.)

With direct use of Google with "site:insanelymac.com bofors + badaxe + vanilla + raid"

- http://www.google.com/search?client=safari...-8&oe=UTF-8

(129 results, the first one is exactly what I was looking for.)

I suppose we could just blame Google here, but we are supposed on the cutting of edge of technology here.

Thanks. Here are two more/other nits:

1) there's no hover over effect in these menus.
2) see below for step to reproduce this bug:
- click on Options to open the menu
- move the mouse pointer to the left, away from/off the button (note the pointer shape)
- move the mouse pointer down a few pixels, until the mouse pointer changes again and note that menu, which opens at the left, as if I clicked on the user name "Ed").

Note: both reproduced with: Safari, Mozilla Firefox and SeaMonkey

p.s. You are using Drupal now?

I hope this helps you to improve things

@bofors - thanks for both of those reports, the Google issue appears to be that our search isn't returning results from the old forum subdomain

@Master Chief - I don't understand, nor can I reproduce the error re the mouse cursor - are you able to elaborate or even take screenshots at all please? And no, we're not using Drupal, the forum is still powered by Invision but the News is now run from WordPress

Since there is no chance of reverting back, here is some suggestions to at least make it civilized:

1) The white background on the ads is hideous, change it
2) You need a background, the plain black is depressing
3) Completely remove the OSx86 Database until its actual ready and once you've sorted it out with OSx86 Library
4) Completely take out the ads from people's posts, whether they are guests or not. I'm sure you could stick them somewhere else

And here is my #1 bugger of the year:

The WordPress news system. Problems?

1) Attached images and files DO NOT show up on the front page
2) There's a delay between posting and it appearing on the front page news
3) The WP CP does not work, going to www.insanelymac.com/wp-admin redirects me to the insanelymac home page
4) Suhail's twitter script does not work anymore

And probably more that I haven't found yet

I've fixed the steps to reproduce in my previous post - the problem is your JavaScript onmouseover handler which seem to trigger the menu at the left, the one that should open when you click on the username. The catch is to first open the Options menu, then to move to the left and down to trigger/open that other menu. Which shouldn't open.

Pretty spiffy, IMO.

I like.

There's something very odd about the way it reacts to right-clicks, but I haven't pinned down what yet.

In the meantime I managed to replicate the "desync" problem I had earlier: click "view new posts", click the second topic, either to read the first or last post therein. have a quick read, click "view new posts" again, and the topic will not be marked as read.

I just did that 3 times in a row, same each time.


Ok even odder: I clicked "view new posts" in quick succession & the posts came up in a different order each time, without any visible changes being made to them, literally seconds apart.

@bofors - fixed the Google search issue, try it now

@pcwiz - addressing all those issues, although I'm not sure why you can't login to WP - going to test that. As for the Twitter script, it was still working, but the URL was broken - Suhail fixed this pretty much straightaway

@Master Chief - thanks for that, I see the problem now! This is an issue with the Lucidity skin, we'll see what we can do to resolve it

@Hagar - just tried to recreate those issues with View New Posts but it's working fine for me - anyone else seeing those issues?

its a very nice setup? may i ask what type of script you used to construct it? for example did u use joomla or drupal or what type of blog system did you use ? and how on earth are you able to get it so information from the forums can be dragged into the homepage... ?

@user555 - thanks for the feedback, the forum is run by Invision Power Board and the blog system is powered by WordPress. We initially started using a plug-in called Invision Bridge but we found it wasn't really up to scratch for the volume of requests and data we get on our forum, so we've applied a lot of our code to get it to work - and all without touching the code within Invision so that we can easily upgrade the forum as and when updates and security patches are available.

Let me know if you want to know anything else in more detail

hey thanks alot i really apperciate that. . umm well it would be kind of nice if the forum skin would or could eventually match the homepage i relize you probably have that in mind in the future perhaps and well with forum skinning it really is almost a whole new world of coding ( truly is a bitch)....

as i look closer however i see that you have fixed width and wide width and i love the ability to change the colors. that is wicked cool. one thing i would change or rethink however is probably the slogan. "mental about macs" doesn't really get me, perhaps others like it ? overall its new its nice and looking forward to seeing advancement in the future

Thanks for bringing up this point too!

"mental about macs" surely, and this is if we were, we are "mental about hacks"!?

SticMAC

OK, so how about; "the home of OSx86." instead?

No.

that shot that one down any suggestions, Hara Taiki?

I'm not a big fan of the "Mental about Macs" slogan as well (Makes us sound like psychopathic apple users XD).

+1 for "Home of OSx86"...Short, Sweet, and to the point