Layout Changes

James Hultquist-Todd

The format of TD has been the same since its inception. I don’t really like showing every thread and relegating the subforums to the side. Every other forum I’ve ever been part of has used the traditional layout wherein the user has to select the subforum they want to read. 

If the forum does expand to include sections for other writing systems, or typography, or whatever may happen, I think a layout change would be inevitable to navigate the threads. If anyone has any insights, I’d love to hear it.

Eris Alar

I support this proposal. Would it still be possible to have global list of most recently updated threads for those who want that?

James Hultquist-Todd

Eris Alar said:

... Would it still be possible to have global list of most recently updated threads for those who want that?

I suppose it could be. I’d love to hear ideas like this—or example from other forums (fora?)—so a master list of improvements can be put together.

Hrant Հրանդ Փափազեան Papazian

I think promoting subforums is necessary in proportion to the rate of thread creation; it's not automatically better, because it curtails the broadening of horizons. So to me the question becomes: is the average number of new threads overwhelming to most people?

Specifically when it comes to writing systems, if you have a separate forum for each one you'd essentially be creating ghettos... And what about multi-script issues? Noting here that virtually every non-Latin design has a Latin component too...

Would it still be possible to have global list of most recently updated threads for those who want that?

Yes, at least that. In fact I would make that the default, and let people switch to a subforum view if they prefer. That way at least they're kept aware of the broader world.

Eris Alar

The only other forums I frequent are https://boardgamegeek.com and https://www.pentaxforums.com - both I use only for specific things, I'm not even yet a member of Pentax Forums, I just use the user gear reviews to help me understand my gear or gear I want. 

BoardGameGeek has a host of issues, but is the de-facto industry hub for board games, so as a game designer I need to use it for my games (make sure they have listing etc) and I also use it to look up games. I personally don't interact with the forums there either if I can help it as I generally don't need to. One thing they have been getting tougher on is banning people and removing hateful comments. There are a lot of people who have a deef with women in the industry and will leave disgusting comments about them and their work. 

So TL:DR I don't have any forums to look to as 'best practice', but I do use a few when I need to so have some opinions about what works for me. 

For TD, I mostly come here as I care about type and like learning some of the technical issues, even if I'm not a type designer myself. I tend to gravitate to philosophical threads more than technical ones. Honestly, I miss the type-id forums from Typophile, but that could be nostalgia as it was that section I used the most and what helped me really get into type. 

Drawcard

I am loving the new Glyphs forum layout & functionality: https://forum.glyphsapp.com and they even have a dark mode for tired eyes at night

But I think they're using Discourse which has that layout for its default skin. Vanilla may have a similar clone though. 

Eris Alar

Ooh I second dark mode, I use that everywhere if possible :-)

Craig Eliason

FWIW even if the layout changes I would seek out a "newest posts in all fora" link as my way into TypeDrawers (and would be super frustrated if one didn't exist). 

Cristóbal Alarcón

As a kid I always liked how https://www.kongregate.com/forums displayed them in different categories. Maybe showing the first 3 or 4 posts would be reasonable, so they don't expand too much.

But I do agree with @Craig Eliason that there should be some way of filtering all posts in one page.

Franz Gratzer

I can't contribute to how the forum overview is organised yet but I want to make a tiny suggestion concerning the design:

Ever since I know TD (which isn't so long) I wondered why the blue bar at the top has an (uneven) border and doesn't go all the way to the window edges. I suspect this is just an oversight. It could be easily fixed in the CSS document used by just setting the body padding to "0" instead of "3px 9px". To my eye that would look cleaner. (Of course then the page title would need a little love in the form of a left margin too.)

I just realised now that the the whole page would need adaptations for making it mobile friendly. The main problem to solve is probably the fixed width menu in the top.

I do understand if you don't prioritise this because you probably figure that most users won't need the mobile view. But extending the blue bar at the top would still be nice and probably very easy to do.