When will this forum site get a new modern design?

[deepakdeshp]

I find Ubuntu forums much more intuitive and with more features. I suspect that there are paid experts who answer some of the questions. Oldfred is one such user on that forum. He is extremely knowledgeable.

Yes he is, but definitely not a salaried worker for Ubuntuforums nor Canonical.
He's just another volunteer staff member who enjoys helping others, just like every other Ubuntuforums staff member, me included!

Not a paid person? It's incredible. I feel there are some who are paid employee on Ubuntu forum.

[Moem]

One thing i did notice in general when 'traditional' forums change to the trendy 'flat' design is you often see either a fall off in useful users and/or a general explosion of not that helpful threads (this is more to do with the way modern GUI add 'popularity' aspects like votes up/down etc).

It doesn't follow at all that a more modern or flat design also has to mean changes in the features of the forum. New looks and new features are very different things.

[deepakdeshp]

phpbb , the Mint forum software is listed right at the top here.
https://www.hostinger.in/tutorials/best-forum-software

[drkmttr]

Seems like the best approach would be to run two front-ends to the forum? Perhaps upon first visit the user is presented with two options, one for the current design and another option for a newer modern design. I'm all for a fresh coat of paint and new features as long as it doesn't involve megabytes of javascript and the layout is fairly intuitive. At the very least, there should be options for people since everyone has different preferences and change curves.

[AZgl1500]

HEY...im still using morse code with my ham radios...lol...DAMIEN

using an old real brass pounder from the telegraph days as well as an old WWII J38 key.

-.- .- .---- --- .-- .--.

me too, and my WWII era VibroPlex bug,

di dah dit.
de -.- ..... .- .-- ---

[dritzominous]

Any redesign must not include a performance degradation of significance. It's something that should be looked into, but keeping things roughly the same won't hurt anyone. I for one, would like the option for a darker forum theme.

It's kind of fun to still use these old-school forums, rather than Reddit for everything. It's nice to keep support forums off of large and centralized social platforms.

[oldgranola]

One thing i did notice in general when 'traditional' forums change to the trendy 'flat' design is you often see either a fall off in useful users and/or a general explosion of not that helpful threads (this is more to do with the way modern GUI add 'popularity' aspects like votes up/down etc).

It doesn't follow at all that a more modern or flat design also has to mean changes in the features of the forum. New looks and new features are very different things.

I think new useful features can be considered 'modernization'

Code: Select all

Feature Request: Upvote/downvote like in Reddit

Edit to add, there actually is a reddit/r/linuxmint

[Moem]

It doesn't follow at all that a more modern or flat design also has to mean changes in the features of the forum. New looks and new features are very different things.

I think new useful features can be considered 'modernization'

Sure. But that doesn't make it design. Which is what the thread is about.

[Inundated]

I do NOT want a new design.

New features? Sure, I'll look forward to them.

New logo? I would assume that'll be done at some point...

But don't tear the place up!

[AZgl1500]

I just kind of like the way it is, maybe a slightly darker theme... nah, it is just fine now.

RedShift takes care of me for night-time

[murray]

I just kind of like the way it is, maybe a slightly darker theme... nah, it is just fine now.

Themes! Maybe the forum should have different themes available to satisfy those that don't like the colours/fonts/etc, along with a "classic" theme for those of us that want to stick with the current design.

[deepakdeshp]

The phpbb extensions. i dont know which or if any have been installed.
https://www.phpbb.com/extensions/

[absque fenestris]

Functionality and so on. I like this cute little arrow ...

[ZakGordon]

One thing i did notice in general when 'traditional' forums change to the trendy 'flat' design is you often see either a fall off in useful users and/or a general explosion of not that helpful threads (this is more to do with the way modern GUI add 'popularity' aspects like votes up/down etc).

It doesn't follow at all that a more modern or flat design also has to mean changes in the features of the forum. New looks and new features are very different things.

You would think? The trouble is the whole 'new' (it's actually old pre-Windows 98 style) flat design comes directly from the design school of Windows 8. That is when it first appeared in the mainstream, and it seems was taught at MS to the latest generation of GUI designers and now they are out in the world spreading it around all over the place.

It seems part of whatever was behind this change at MS was intrinsically linked with terms like 'simplification', 'streamline' (or dumb-down as i call it) and attached to the new trends of social media platforms. Particularly in Windows, the changes in 8 made the OS much harder to manage in terms of doing complex stuff easily. It was behind some of the changes back to the previous Windows style in 8.1 and 10, but those OS still suffer horribly from the Windows 8 changes that got baked into the GUI.

You also get a lot of facebook/instagram integration in most modern flat design make-overs as part of their overall package, and when it is not directly to those specific types of platforms it often has it's own systems to use in place (stuff like being able to vote up or down a particular post/thread that often is tied into moving that thread/posts view-ability (up or down the stack) and often used to 'game' posters which interferes in getting helpful info out there, the meta-game of forum manipulation takes over etc). It's all very software-as-tool-of-narsicsm.

'Endless scroll' in place of 'page numbers' is also a problem when dealing with quick sorting of information. Where was that post i saw the other day to help with a problem i now have? I could search for it perhaps (and hope the search function works!). Or i could make a rough mental note of the page numbers i was at when i saw that thread to help me zone in quickly to it?

I could go on and on about all this stuff. The internet as a whole has become a much less informed place due to flat design (and all it's baggage), to the point you now have to rely on reddit for many things that traditional forums (like this place) did much better (impart information efficiently). I have yet to find a reddit that is actually super helpful, it mostly is total pot-luck on if you can find a helpful thread or not, mostly it's a 'cool club' for people to gossip about what the reddit is about, but functionality and organization of that info is nearly entirely absent.

It's all designed for busy people on their phones that have little time to spend either giving or receiving useful info, a quick diversion on the way to work etc. It's slowly killing off the internet as being a good source for information gathering.

Hah! as you can tell, i'm so not a fan of what Windows 8 gave the world here!

Discourse, Discord and all these new generation of Windows 8 GUI inspired forum software are just badly thought out in my experience of them. If it was JUST about the look i could live with flat design, but i have no actual examples of flat design just being about that, it changes so many other fundamental aspects, and nearly all to the worse.

[Moem]

i have no actual examples of flat design just being about that,

Flat themes being added to Mint comes to mind.

[Flemur]

I'm glad everyone agrees that it should remain the same...

[ugly]

You would think? The trouble is the whole 'new' (it's actually old pre-Windows 98 style) flat design comes directly from the design school of Windows 8. That is when it first appeared in the mainstream, and it seems was taught at MS to the latest generation of GUI designers and now they are out in the world spreading it around all over the place.

I thought the 'flat' design had more to do with mobile.

Since mobile devices are lower power and run on batteries, websites were starting to be designed to avoid using more power-consuming features, which meant things like gradients and border-radius was out. And then it was pushed as being 'modern' instead of 'awful-looking'.

'Endless scroll' in place of 'page numbers' is also a problem when dealing with quick sorting of information. Where was that post i saw the other day to help with a problem i now have? I could search for it perhaps (and hope the search function works!). Or i could make a rough mental note of the page numbers i was at when i saw that thread to help me zone in quickly to it?

Endless scrolling is a plague.

What we need to keep in mind is that a big portion of this forum is for users to provide support to each other. So functionality should be the primary focus. Hiding half the content on the page until the user scrolls down, doesn't help people quickly search the page and makes the 'find in page' feature in browsers useless.

[Flemur]

I thought the 'flat' design had more to do with mobile.

I thought it was from Apple/Mac "clean" design.

[murray]

I'm not sure I'd lump things like infinite scrolling, social media integration, etc in with flat design. Those things can be used with any type of design, they're certainly not unique to flat design. But I do agree that they can lower useability and are a pain.

[ugly]

I thought the 'flat' design had more to do with mobile.

I thought it was from Apple/Mac "clean" design.

Well, yeah, it was Apple. They were pushing the iPhone and the 'mobile web' to work with the iPhone. So we got 'clean' and 'flat' and 'modern' design, which was really just about not using particular features because the devices they were selling weren't capable of handling them yet. An impressive piece of propaganda.

I'm not sure I'd lump things like infinite scrolling, social media integration, etc in with flat design. Those things can be used with any type of design, they're certainly not unique to flat design. But I do agree that they can lower useability and are a pain.

The reason I'd lump it together, is again, it wasn't made for usability for the end user. With infinite scrolling the web host saves bandwidth by not loading something the end-user might not see. It's similar in that it's something being sold as modern for the purpose of saving costs.