Forum Feedback

Mark Dunkley — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 20:05:00 +0000

We recently changed the look and feel of the forums and would like to hear any constructive feedback you have.

HunkyBill commented

HunkyBill — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 15:24:08 +0000

After a few weeks I have a new opinion of the forums. It is the same issue I have/had with the administration of themes. On a decent screen (1440x900) the Web 2.0 design look is ALL fluff at a glance. I see nothing but some HUGE menu options about the forums and it is only when I scroll down a fair bit that actual information comes into view.

In the admin console, it was like when you were advertising themes with big pretty pictures, but the working man who need to upload something had to always scroll past that to bring the actual working form elements into view. A true pain...

In a nutshell, while it is nice the forums offer different categories for posting... do they have to occupy 100% and more of the home screen? Could they not be moved so we can see actual information at a glance without scrolling? Or at least, can we minimize them ourselves... it would be a nice update to the home page of the forums.

Thanks

Jamie commented

Jamie — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 16:17:04 +0000

Since this got bumped I'll chime in again for enabling sppelll check if we have to live with tinyMCE and no textile, which I will reitterate sort of (well no, REALLY) stinks. The kludge to add inline links with href'ing the whole thing is lame, as is the lack of anything short of a hack to have inline images. I want my textile back please :) with sugar and spice and everything nice.

My biggest argument that I think we all have here is it's not like textile is hard or a mystery, everyone in this forum will have used it already in their Shopify store for their pages, blogs, and product descriptions. So I am not sure where the call to bring in the horrible wysiwyg came from. I have never ever seen *anyone* *ever* complain about having to use textile, *ever*. A forum is not a word document, nor a spreadsheet, or a term paper, it's here for a quick exchange of ideas and information, and anything that slows that process down is not following the KISS principal.

/tinyMCE thrashing. :)

Caroline Schnapp commented

Caroline Schnapp — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 16:22:45 +0000

In a nutshell, while it is nice the forums offer different categories for posting... do they have to occupy 100% and more of the home screen? Could they not be moved so we can see actual information at a glance without scrolling? Or at least, can we minimize them ourselves... it would be a nice update to the home page of the forums.

I concur (is that a word?).

The problem has worstened, it was already present with the old design. It was such a pain that I was using the Firefox plugin Stylish to hide the categories from the Forums home page.

Also, I need to re-iterate... line length in posts is too long. There's a reason most forum software (all that I know of) move the user info to a box on the left that makes the post on the right narrower. In the old design, the formatting guide was helpful that way.

See Line Length: http://webstyleguide.com/wsg3/8-typography/3-legibility.html

Text on the computer screen is hard to read not only because of the low resolution of computer screens but also because the layout of most web pages violates a fundamental rule of book and magazine typography: the lines of text on most web pages are far too long for ideal reading.

Irionically the web style guide violates its own rules. But. Whatevah.

Caroline Schnapp commented

Caroline Schnapp — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 16:28:50 +0000

Since this got bumped I'll chime in again for enabling sppelll check if we have to live with tinyMCE and no textile, which I will reitterate sort of (well no, REALLY) stinks. The kludge to add inline links with href'ing the whole thing is lame, as is the lack of anything short of a hack to have inline images. I want my textile back please :) with sugar and spice and everything nice.

I concur. If you paste an URL in here, the URL will turn into a link yeah, but very often I want the content of my anchor tag to be something different than the URL.

Click <a href="http://wiki.shopify.com/Main_Page">here</a> to find our wiki. Test.

Fail.

Also, my dear Firefox underlines my spelling errors pretty much everywhere... any text area. I wonder why it's not working here, even if TinyMCE is used. Isn't this thing a textarea? :-)

I miss you, Textile.

Mark Dunkley commented

Mark Dunkley — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 19:04:19 +0000

@hunkybill

the Web 2.0 design look is ALL fluff at a glance. I see nothing but some HUGE menu options about the forums and it is only when I scroll down a fair bit that actual information comes into view.

I am assuming you are talking about the header (grey bar + "Community Forums" text + login area)? I would be open to suggestions, but I am concerned about hiding/minimizing important information like "Register/Login" the breadcrumbs, and the grey bar so the user can go browse shopify.com easily.

In the admin console, it was like when you were advertising themes with big pretty pictures

I am not sure I remember this. I have been using Shopify since late 2008. Do you you have a screenshot?

do they have to occupy 100% and more of the home screen? Could they not be moved so we can see actual information at a glance without scrolling?

When you say "actual information" do you mean the Recent Posts? The categories are the most important part of the homepage, the user will be able to find which section they want to post in quickly.

@Jamie

Spell check is on my list. I understand your position and I will clarify the reasons I selected a WYSIWYG editor:

Less tech-savvy users are more familiar with Microsoft word style editing and have never coded anything in their life.
While most Shopify store owners are familiar with textile right now, we may have a WYSIWYG editor in the future.
The majority of forums use a wysiwyg editor, I can't think of any popular forums that use bbcode/textile. Users are already familiar with a wysiwyg.

I will look at giving users an option to using textile over a wysiwyg editor.

@Caroline Schnapp

It was such a pain that I was using the Firefox plugin Stylish to hide the categories from the Forums home page.

You are hiding the categories to see the "Recent Posts"?

line length in posts is too long

I agree and our original designs were much thinner, but since users frequently post code in the forums there would be really tiny horizontal scroll bars in the code windows.

Hrefs are an issue. Let me see what I can do in the next revision.

Caroline Schnapp commented

Caroline Schnapp — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 19:27:07 +0000

Hi Mark,

It was such a pain that I was using the Firefox plugin Stylish to hide the categories from the Forums home page.

You are hiding the categories to see the "Recent Posts"?

Yes. Hunkybill had a great suggestion: make the categories section collapsible, using a 'hide this' link. Preferably keeping it hidden between sessions using a web cookie.

You can also use a 'skip to content' link on all pages, and a 'skip to Recent Posts' on the home page, with a (fast!) scroll down to relevant content for nice effect.

Also the header is really too big -- and it seems big for the sake of prettiness, no offense.

There are 2 headers actually...

The first one with the dark backround... the tabbed links are too big. The style of that 1st header might follow exactly the design style of Shopify's home page preferably: http://www.shopify.com/ From a design point of view, it would look better too.

{EDIT} I had some zoom 'in effect' so... scratch that. I was zooming in text to reduce length of lines. Sincere apologies.

Now, re: the 2nd header...

The heading 'Community Forums' in 2nd header is [edit: a bit] too big. The breadcrumbs is what the user needs to see. It's there and quite obvious.

Just my 2 cents. No easy answer.

I will look at giving users an option to using textile over a wysiwyg editor.

That would be great.

Caroline Schnapp commented

Caroline Schnapp — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 19:36:23 +0000

Without zoom, attached is the line length for me.

Jamie commented

Jamie — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 20:20:55 +0000

I will look at giving users an option to using textile over a wysiwyg editor.

That would be magnifique! I was told that even if a WSIWYG was used for Shopify backend that it would still support textile? I see both points here, but the nice thing about textile is I never have to reach for the goofy mouse to add a "link":, or a bq. or to make something *bold* or _italic_ or to make a

** list

* list

Or drop !an image inline!

Also if you're in there editing could you put a link back to the root & the top of the post at the bottom of each thread? Without paginataion on long posts it sure would be a nice extra to just hit a buttton at the last post to get back to the root.

BBG commented

BBG — Sat, 17 Oct 2009 14:50:38 +0000

I agree with all the above, particularly textile support and inline linking.

Thanks for listening!

Kerri commented

Kerri — Sun, 18 Oct 2009 01:30:43 +0000

When you say "actual information" do you mean the Recent Posts? The categories are the most important part of the homepage, the user will be able to find which section they want to post in quickly.

My 2 cents: For me, the forums are about learning from other peoples questions and answers. And if I have a problem I go through the recent posts first to see if others have already raised it, or use the search feature. Rarely do I jump straight into a specific forum to ask a question.

The first time I visited the new-look forum, I thought the Recent Posts list had been abandoned it was so far down the page.

Thus I'd also like to see less real estate used to list the catagories so to bring the Recent Posts higher up the page. Actually I'd like the Recent Posts to be Recent Threads instead so the post list isn't taken up by stacatto posts on the same topic. Each line referencing an entire thread would suit me.

Jamie commented

Jamie — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 14:55:25 +0000

I think the list looks ok, but it's too short on the recent activity. I don't want to have to sift through my rss feed or each cat to see if I missed someone.... thoughts?

Oh, I see you're playing still... OK I like this.... a lot!-

Jamie commented

Jamie — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 14:56:45 +0000

Just lovely! Now for some textile and spell check goodness! :-)

Caroline Schnapp commented

Caroline Schnapp — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 15:20:03 +0000

I would go as far as swapping Recent Activity with Categories. LOL...

Just lovely! Now for some textile and spell check goodness! :-)

Oh I can't place my cursor after this quote now.

Caroline Schnapp commented

Caroline Schnapp — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 15:24:03 +0000

Hello Jamie, love what you posted here. Test.

New bug: If you select text and turn it into a quote, you can't place cursor after it.

Recent activity list, for the sake of design (prettiness), has gotten too short.

Mark Dunkley commented

Mark Dunkley — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 15:25:25 +0000

haha, you way too fast for me Jamie. I didn't even time to tell anyone that I actually pushed a new version of the forums.

I am just clearing up some bug fixes now:

recent posts (actual page) table is really wide
increased blockquote contrast
fixing the height of the reply box
I need to fix the block quote bug

Caroline Schnapp commented

Caroline Schnapp — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 15:29:11 +0000

Hello

Caroline Schnapp commented

Caroline Schnapp — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 15:31:57 +0000

recent posts (actual page) table is really wide

There is an actual page for this, now?

Maybe there was always one and I missed it.

Bookmarked: http://forums.shopify.com/recent_activity

Mark Dunkley commented

Mark Dunkley — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 15:32:47 +0000

Caroline, this is a porblem with TinyMCE. I had a fix implemented last version, but it would add an extra <br> to anyone that posted code (not a blockquote) for anyone running IE7

You can always select your text and click the quote button again to remove formatting (then make a new line, then add a new line, then reapply). I am working on a fix.

Caroline Schnapp commented

Caroline Schnapp — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 15:42:05 +0000

Caroline, this is a porblem with TinyMCE.

No doubt in my mind that it was.

Jamie commented

Jamie — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 15:48:59 +0000

Can we get a link in the Recent Activity heading on the index page too while you're in there :-)

Caroline Schnapp commented

Caroline Schnapp — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 16:38:56 +0000

Can we get a link in the Recent Activity heading on the index page too while you're in there :-)

Oh ya please

Mark Dunkley commented

Mark Dunkley — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 15:31:18 +0000

New version is about to be pushed and fixes:

recent posts table fixed
increased blockquote contrast
the height of the reply box
fix blockquote bug

Jamie commented

Jamie — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 14:40:47 +0000

The timestamps are screwy for some reason Mark. odd....

see this thread:

http://forums.shopify.com/categories/1/posts/24368#comment-30726

atlas100 commented

atlas100 — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 16:02:53 +0000

I am confused on what is the difference between this forum and the support.myshopify.com/discussions/questions?

This seems like a big usability issue. I don't know where I am supposed to seek help and when I want to find one I find the other.

Is there a clear reason that both areas need to exist?

Jamie commented

Jamie — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 16:44:06 +0000

You are in the user forum here. support.shopify.com is on a ticketing system, and is mainly for service related issues, bug reporting etc. If you are having trouble with a custom theme or non service issue this is where you seek help.

atlas100 commented

atlas100 — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 17:41:26 +0000

If I want to search to see if my question has been answered before, do I need to search both areas seperately?

There should to be a way to have all the help/support/ideas in one searchable place.

BBG commented

BBG — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 18:09:12 +0000

There are some more thoughts on when to use Support versus the Forums here: http://www.shopifyconcierge.com/blogs/news/1105412-shopify-support-vs-shopify-forums

I agree it can be confusing, but as a rule of thumb:

If it is about something not working right with Shopify you should go to support so they can investigate and fix it.
If it is about changing your theme, marketing advice (e.g. SEO), how to set up collections for your products, looking for designers/developers or announcing a new store this is the place to be.

Mark Dunkley commented

Mark Dunkley — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 20:02:33 +0000

BBG has got it. The forums is a place where Shopify store owners, designers, developers can all communicate under one roof.

I might try to make this more obvious in the future, any ideas are welcome.

Thanks for your bug report Jamie :)

Jamie commented

Jamie — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 20:18:20 +0000

Welcome ;)

jonathanbriggs commented

jonathanbriggs — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 19:47:57 +0000

Could we have posting dates in forum search results please?