April 8th, 2009
It’s funny, that after 3 days of watching all the moaning and groaning I apparently find myself in a minority position of, while not being overly excited, at least getting along with the new layout and software. Here are some tips for you to make your life easier and my views on some of things.
After you have logged in, check the Your Stuff thingy, especially the Preferences. Turn off the automatic notifications.
Bad: They are on by default.
Customize the Your View tab. Click the personalize link. On the page that comes up, drag&drop the Recent Discussions widget in the lower area. Click the Edit button to give it a useful name and pick, which forums you want listed and with what number of entries. Repeat these steps for each forum you want. You can have multiple identical widgets on the page. Once you’re happy, choose Publish Layout.
Bad: You cannot pick some top-level forums.
Bad: You cannot filter entries inside the widgets.
Bad: You still have the global tab as the default, not your personalized one.
Bad: Pretty much all the other widgets are useless or redundant.
Make good use of the History in your user menu. It lists your most active discussions and is actually pretty similar to the old forum lists, once it has been populated. Especially when you are around every day, it is invaluable.
Bad: The menu list is to short, only the full view reveals all details.
Check the Your Stuff – Discussions list. It helps you find your own posts, if you have been away for a few days. You also wil lsee your personal image, which can be your kids, your dog, your lover. I see a photo of myself and my, am I a sexy beast….
Bad: I didn’t wear my glasses shooting the photo.
Along the same lines, selectively enable RSS feeds and mail notifications for each thread or for your favorite forum.
Bad: It still clutters your mail account’s inbox or your browser pane.
You can view anything as PDF based on a server mechanism. It doesn’t look pretty, but helps you to archive posts for future reference, especially on forums on code-centric programs like Dreamweaver, Flex or Flash. it is also the only way to correctly “print” entire threads.
Bad: The JavaScript in the software prevents successful printing of PDFs with Acrobat
A big criticism is the performance, but I don’t find it that bad. The old forum was never particularly snappy, either, contrary to the myths some are proposing. Also do not forget that a lot of the perceived performance hinges on the local execution of the JavaScript code. Google Chrome and Safari have faster engines than other browsers, but Opera and Firefox will be getting a new one soon, also, so things may be considerably faster on your end.
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