h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

oh - I thought it was because I hadn't set the cookie at first. Once done, way back at the beginning, I haven't had trouble logging in since.

I never use the register button. It has been craftily moved, but "click here" is still down there somewhere on the intro page. Why is the default not "Always remember me?" Now I have to set the cookie every time.

And why can't I get back to the alabaster pages once I've logged in? I have to close right down, logout, and start again, if I want to "Ask H2G2" or follow a link that caught my eye on the way in and I earnotched for later. (new topic etc)

TC, if you go to your own home page and "edit my page", there's a new "Skin" option - just change that from Goo to Alabaster and you'll get Alabaster after you have logged in.

Thanks, but it wasn't exaclty the colour I meant, but the content.

You can add ?skin=Alabaster to a page url to see that page in the Alabaster skin without changing your preferences - doesn't work in forums though.

;^)#

Totally agree to all of the above - if it is above? It could be anywhere for all I know - I also open all my most recently replied to fora in new windows and then go offline for less painful phone bills - the new 'click for newer posts' layout does make things more tricky.

'Bye.

Mark/Peta/Jim, if you're still looking at this thread, I was just wondering...

If your logs give cumulative daily statistics, how did the number of postings to threads compare between one week before the change-over and one week after? If you feel this information is not so commercially sensitive that you could publish it here, it might serve as a reasonable indicator of how the "population at large" have taken to the change-over...

I don't see why it's sensitive. Counting forum postings made in those periods, immediately after the upgrade we've seen a 30% increase in forum postings.

Is that just in the complaint forums?

When you say "immediately after", how immediate? I was really asking about a week after, once things had settled down. My curiosity stems from the fact that I, personally, tend to get involved in long forums, and I've noticed a considerable decrease in activity. I was wondering if, after the novelty of the new system had worn off, people were still posting as heavily as ever...

It's been sustained for the two weeks since the upgrade, so far. The second week showed a slight fall-off, but still up over 30% on the pre-upgrade.

I'm impressed

It's nice to see you're getting a positive return after so much effort!

It will be even nicer if the next upgrade has the same effect. Better forum navigation should encourage more posting.

To be honest, it wouldn't surprise me if the thing that's caused the increase is the better performance we're getting. I'm sure plenty of people didn't bother posting when the threads were taking 5 minutes to download.

I agree. It puzzles me a little that activity on the long threads seems to have dropped off, though, because the people who posted to them were used to waiting 4 or 5 minutes. I suspect it's because "long-thread" posters like myself developed different habits - I would start the thread loading in a background window and get on with other things while it loaded, and this is no longer possible with the requirement to keep clicking "newer posts"... (I know the "&latest=1 trick, and dow use it regularly, but not everyone else does yet)

If you forgive the analogy, it's like using Microsoft products - you tell a Microsoft package to do something which will take several hours (say, a thorough Scandisk), then go out of the house till it's done. When you get back, you find it hasn't started because an "informational" pop-up has stopped it. The pop-up usually only has an "OK" button, so it serves no actual purpose except to prevent you from successfully running the software unattended. One rule of software interface design I feel to be important is that if something might take more time than you're prepared to sit and watch it, there should be a "get on with it" flag that turns off all the informational stuff.

Sorry, I'm rambling.

But that's how the new interface felt when it was introduced - something which could previously be left to its own devices was suddenly dependent on continual interaction...

Anyhow, when we eventually have the option to choose always to go to the latest posting we'll have the best of both worlds! Keep up the good work

I just saw the &skin=alabaster thing that allows pages to be viewed in Alabaster by Classic users who don't want to have to change their preferences settings every time... am I correct in assuming there's a &skin=classic attribute that will allow Alabaster users the same capability? So many people have put together pages in the old days that aren't in alabaster colors...

Yes, Colonel

the proper form, I believe, is:
?skin=alabaster
or
?skin=classic
added to the end of the page address. (works for home pages and entries, not forums)

This is a handy way to check how a page you've designed looks in the other skin, to quickly change skins for a page you're visiting when you realize that they designed it for the other skin, and you can also use it for a 'this page looks best in....' type of link, which allows visitors to click and see your page. (I have some examples at http://www.h2g2.com/A357437 )

Nice. I'll add a link to my own page that says "Click here if you're viewing this in Alabaster."

Of course, all your doing is changing the variable which the XML gives the perl script or whatever it is written in. Tell it to show more and it will since the number is not hard coded.

Please, in the next release space out the "Other Conversations" list. It is really hard to read without a line in between each one.

That's one thing we're definitely doing. We're playing with the forum layout, trying to make things more readable, and the 'other conversations' list will be more spaced out (not least because we need somewhere to fit the 'show latest' link )