Yo! What'd I miss?

Most noteable thing I can offer was a shocking dream I had.
http://www.applefritter.com/node/view/3370

--DDTM

Trust me, hardly anything has happened. Something seems to have died at applefritter, no one posts as much anymore. It seems as though a lot of people have left.

TOM

tomlevens wrote:

yeah it has been abit dead around here

I think the community matured.

Relax, it's a good thing. I'm gonna sit on the #applefritter channel of irc.rizon.net if anyone wants to come on and chat. The IRC channel's too quiet.

The biggest change I've seen is a surge in new members. Mostly wintel users, and mostly the type of wintel users who have no netiquette or Mac experience.

I believe it's due to the lack of previously unavoidable forum rules (which I welcomed in AF1.0. It kept most members from posting ridiculous questions and comments.)

Rev, you'll get a kick out of this...
http://www.applefritter.com/node/view/4006

Like the $150/hour kind...

Seriously, though, I had an interesting dream last week that had absolutely nothing to do with the 'fritter... but damn... that Regis can make one mean bowl of chili...

I remember once on the old forums that Dr Webster posted a link to a great image.

Whoa, random.

But that's definently an image I'll keep bookmarked, to throw up in threads instead of just repeating my mantra. "Google is your FRIEND. FRIEND. FRIEND!!!"

I quit my job at apple, and moved to Oregon. Then things took a turn for the worse in my personal life and I got a job back in CA and moved back.

I got a job offer in Portland today too just to pour some salt in my wounds.

I blame drupal.

. . . my condolences to anyone who's feelings this comment hurts, but this layout's far too disjointed and downright confusing the way whatever little information that's actually presented is displayed in any given window.

The old forums were wonderfully compact by comparison and the visual cues were far superior. This layout sucks up gobs of pixel space to display at most a couple of posts and that freakin' RIVER (it's a newspaper publishing term for a gawdaweful layout error that at least PRESENTS USEFUL INFORMATION! . . . can you clarify this, eeun?) on the left side has just GOT TO GO!

Nobody wants to waste so much screen real estate just to leave a 'fritter window open on their desktop to check in now and then any longer, I sure don't and I'm using a 21" monitor!

jt >

p.s. and this txt entry field is STILL ABSURDLY SMALL!

Couldn't agree more. I've been mostly off line for a couple months now (partially by choice, partially by location) and its been a royal pain to get adjusted to the site again. I did basically the same thing last summer but it was a whole hell of a lot easier checking AF on weekends and getting back to checking daily. I think it was because it was much more visual. The wheel, the graphical forums etc, much friendlier, much faster, MUCH easier to navigate. I can see the benefits of CMS, but for some reason is just doesn't seem to click.

... have I missed a coup? A mutiny? Has there been serious discussion about going back to the previous layout?

I'll initiate it if I need to...

you moved back!?!?!?

The problem was that while AF 2.0 was under development, folks who had real, valid feedback that contradicted the trend that AF 2.0's design was taking were basically told to shut up. Dissent was not allowed. Our way or the highway.

So a lot of people, myself included, were alienated during the transition. I can't speak for them, but I really couldn't care less anymore if AF dropped off the web altogether! Going back to AF 1.5 won't fix that - it's the people, not the design that turned me away.

I can't stand AF 2.0. It's awful. Drupal sucks. The methaphore for the fora is all wrong, too - we aren't posting comments on an article, we're having an active conversation! The metaphore might work (just barely) for commenting on hacks submitted to AF, but it's all wrong for the forum threads.

Frankly, I'm quite turned off by the whole thing. I think I average about 1 visit to AF every 2 weeks. Before AF 2.0, I was visiting 2 - 4 times a day and actively contributing to the community. Not anymore... And I really couldn't care less, either.

Peace,
Drew

>

[and the damn emoticons don't work right, either!]

Thank you for saying something. I honestly wasn't sure if I was the only one still being bugged by this. As far as I can see, the sidebar contains some useful info, but I know that a lot of that is visible to admins only, and it's pretty blank.

The old forums were beautiful in my ever so humble opinion. I don't know why we moved over to this layout, because we just lost the convience of the archive of useful info already there, and it just doesn't seem right here.

Tom, I know that the CMS makes it way easier to post stories on AF. And it standardized the layout. But realistically, the layout needs changes before it's usable by humanity again.

I've always wonderded why we feel forced to use the Drupal forums. Why can't we use the YaBB ones, linked to from the front page. Sure, it won't be consistent, but it'll be a lot easier to use. Or Doc Websters wheel layout. That actually made it easy to find stuff. I look at the lists on the front page, and I really dislike them.

It doesn't render properly accross all browsers, and this is a known issue. Last time I tried it in iCab it looked horrible. And...and...well, this deserves serious discussion.

I think we've hijacked this thread enough. If anyone wants to continue this discussion, lets set up a thread in AF Dough Punchers or whatever it's called.

I'm so happy to hear it's not just me.

Apparently . . . you've already done so!

jt

. . . GoogleTime® 'gain!

http://www.typography-1st.com/typo/typterm.shtml

. . . looks like I was wrong . . . picked up the term in the "Paste-Up" room of the college newspaper while delivering a stack of prints after the weekly darkroom marathon event.

I thought it meant a column of .txt running unbroken from top->bottom, which actually may have been how they used the word. It looks like it might have been a holdover term from non-proportional typesetting being applied to a newer UGLY@$$ error phenomenon.

jt

p.s. I have a feeling this thread may wind up transferred wholesale into the new BatterBashing® forum.

p.p.s. Actually, it might be a good idea to transport a lot of those old threads about the 1.5->2.0 transition into AfDP for reference. A listing of links there might be good enough for the review process, I wasn't as offended as alk over the mistreatment of detractors at the time, but I'd sure like to make sure there's NO CHANCE of a recurrance of that kind of thing.

My favorite forum style is kawf (http://sourceforge.net/projects/kawf/)

An example of it can be seen here:

http://forums.audiworld.com/a4/pages/1.phtml

Who me or the Rev?

Yes I moved back.

. . . that's PARTUCULARLY FUGLY! Are the features of kawf all that much better than the old forums?

I like what tomlevens has been doing over at the new barracks:

http://www.cinemafia.net/68kmla/index.php

He seems to have phpBB jumping thru hoops, that kid is very, VERY GOOD!

I don't know anything about forums code, but it seems obvious to me that if ANY change would be made here, it should either be back to the old forums, or to phpBB, with which our ACE BUGxTERMINATOR is quite familiar and for which we might already have a significant code-base assembled, with cinemafia's permission, of course.

A cooperative effort on forums coding, debugging and portable .txt formatting/emoticons/whatever would be VERY handy.

IMHO, of course.
jt

Those forums look awesome. They remind me of the old AF forums. [br]
BTW, you can find the old forums at http://applefritter.com/index2.html

My preference (for the time being) is phpbb.. an exaple of which can be seen at either phpbb.com or admitmac.com/forum/

Since I have no real experience with any type of programming language, wether it be for web or other, I'll just comment on which system flows the best and is easiest to use for the end user (me)

vBulletin and phpBB seem to be the best.

phpBB is the best for me. or Yabb.

Hey! You guys are in the wrong thread

kawf may not be all fancy and pretty, but it's FAST. Scanning down pages of info and only expanding the threads you want is incredibly easy. It does require using descriptive subject lines though.

. . . would be?

jt

It doesn't just happen... somebody would have to make it happen, even if that involves kicking a few butts.

(That smiley doesn't work from the menu, btw)