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

Hi guys

Just some quick feedback on the upgrades to the sight.

Just checked out my home page, and followed a link to view some forums that I had replys on, and what did I see? Rather than jumping me to the latest messages that were waiting for me, it zaps me to the begining of the thread.
"Fair enough" says me, I'll scroll down and pick up the messages at the bottom.
"Not anymore" says you, "We have changed the layout, puny mortal, you must keep pressing the 'Newer messages' button until we take you where you want to go. No more zooming around for you weakling, you must take the long route!"
"Bugger!" says me, while secretly hoping they can change this back to the way it was........

I am sorry guys, but this is just not working for me. After posting a few more messages, I am seeing that you have lost all continuty, and any idea of conversation "threads" in the new look forums.

Replies are no longer attached to the message they are replying to, instead we just have this chronological thing which is doing nobody any favours.

Bring back the old look for navigating through discussions please, it was so much easier.

"Bugger" says me too. I know it's early days and I'm sure there are improvements that I haven't seen, but without a 'Most Recent Posts' button this is pretty horrible. ATM I have a nice network connection, God knows what I'll find when I try my little modem at home .

This is the first version of the new release. I believe this problem has already been identified, and has been covered in the second version, which will be released shortly, hard on the heels of this one...

And I thought that's why there was a beta test, to iron out these problems and fix them before a release is made.

Silly boy/girl/other (delete as appropriate).

Beta testing creates employment and uses up excess budget for the given project. It doesn't actually mean they get rid of bugs and things.
Or am I getting cynical in my old age?

>Beta testing creates employment

Gee, no one mentioned payment to me

;^)#
with $s in his eyes

I think you're getting cynical as peta has said somewhere else that it's only a select few who get employment from h2g2 and it certainly wasn't a useability team...

Ignoring my last message, which it is probably better if everyone does, perhaps you can answer a question or lots?

Why is there a next release following hard on the heals of this one?
Why not get everything right and bundle it up in the one release?
If you knew the navigation was going to be a pain, and have already fixed it, why release it in the first place?

Obviously my mind travels in different directions from that of you guys, and I aint saying any particular one is right....


Shade
(Is this guy getting cheeky or what?)

I was tallking about IT in general with the employment thing, not about H2G2 specifically. So tell all those guys to go back to their tea and biscuits.

There is a next release following on the heels of this one because we are using iterated project management. With a fixed release product it is easier to specify a definite Gantt-chart environment from which to run a project, but with a website the target is always moving, so you have to release regularly, which always means leaving out features until the next release. (Our 'to-do' list is so big it's obscene.)

If we'd decided to get everything right in this release, you'd never have seen it, because the whole point is that *this is never going to be finished*.

In all honesty, unless you've worked on a website this complex and ground-breaking (XML, XSLT etc), the answer to all your questions is 'Because'. And that's not me being facetious... this really is complicated stuff.

You were trying to confuse me with techno babble weren't you? Admit it!!

Well, your puny efforts will not work, I have the dictionary of Zalador at my right hand, and Arkanus' Thesaurus of Destiny at my left.


iterated?.....itineray....item....

So what changes to the system have been made (if any) between the beta test system on ripley to the now in production model on www.h2g2.com?
I haven't seen Ripley as I wasn't allowed in when I tried, so I don't know what it was like.

Curious from Manchester

The knee bones connected the thigh bone, the thigh bones connected to the hip bone, the hip bones connected to the parallel port servers megabite inducing scuzi board binary overloader.

Out of interest Mark (and I'll take your comments as they were meant, in good faith), can you answer the one question that is puzzling me?

Why release the new look navigation, when you know it is quirky and would be unpopular, and have already planned to fix it in the next release? Why not leave it as it was until the next release?

Mark's a bit busy right now. So I'll reply. The new version of h2g2 is much faster, which seems a good enough reason to go ahead with the release as soon as possible, particularly from the point of view of the USA and Australia Researchers.

If you don't like the new look, you can always go back to the old one, and wait for the next update.

I am not talking about skins Peta, I am talking about the navigation of fora, which I cannot go back to.

What I want to know is, why was this particular piece of the upgrade included, when it was already known it would require fixing in the next release? Could you not have upgraded the rest of the site but left the navigation as it was previously?

It is already being spoken about in the forums other than here, and it is agreed that it is a bad thing.

I will be driving home now, so you can get a breather from me for an hour, but when I come back I want the coders to have written out "Do not mess with a working navigation" 1000 times, without using any for loops or similar.

It appears that if you type (By hand! Yuck!) "&show=X", where X is a large number, into the URL, then you can get more messages at once.

"&skip=X" will skip the first X messages.

I suspect there will be a user option for number of messages to show at some point. As well as a skip to last button within fora. However, in the meantime I second the option for the programmers to be ritually whipped with spaghetti

[A T-16 Skyhopper floats in with the words "Back Home" spraypainted on the wings flies in and lands. YK gets out]

'Scuse me ... just gotta say:

DAMN THIS NEW FORUM LAYOUT! AND THE SWITCHING OF THE LOCATION OF THE BUTTONS! PUT IT BACK NOW! Thank you.

[gets back in the Skyhopper and takes off]

Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear. No no no, this just won't do at all.

Somebody at h2g2 really ought to take a usability course, or read a book or something. If Jakob Neilsen visited this site, the poor man may implode on the spot with the gaping inadequacies of the new site.

Here's a few *minor* improvements that you really ought to consider:
-- 'Jump to Last Post' button. Already pointed out by a lot of people. An absolute *must* (I can't stress that enough, people)
-- Even better, default to the end of the forum on clicking the link from the homepage/wherever else, and give people the option of going back up if they want to.
-- Instead of having the first 20 posts being displayed in the LHS pane, why not try the windows explorer-type tree navigation system, with each thread a collapsable list.
-- I like the new 'Alabaster' skin's usability, but is there no way to incorporate this into Classic GOO? I much prefer the the look of the old skin - the new one reminds me of being on a work-related forum (such as in Deja or Sun's sites). Hopefully you can understand my concern

These are a few of my initial impressions. Don't be surprised if you hear from me again, mind