I've opened MATLAB Answers this morning and found the new design.
The field for typing the "Body" does not consider the font settings of my browser anymore, such that my preference of sans-serif fonts is ignored. In addition the text color is a medium gray, which is hard to read for me due to the too light contrast.
Blank lines in the code let two separate code boxes appear. This makes almost all code, I've posted in the forum, invalid. It has been discussed repeatedly, that blank lines in the code confuse the indentation of the display in the forum and that this is a really bad idea. But instead of improving this, it is made severely worse now.
The new design contains even more white space, such that standard questions cannot be answered without extensive vertical scrolling. It is a very bad drawback, that I cannot see the question while I type the answer.
There is still no suggestion to use a proper code formatting, such that I have to spend 20% of my forum time typing corresponding comments as before.
But I'm coming back to the most important problem for me: It is a physical problem for me to read the low contrast grey on white text. Does anybody know a tweak or CSS trick to increase the readability?
TMW, please take into account that this new design is physically hard to read for people without young and 100% perfect eyes. This is very annoying for me.
Splitting code blocks at white lines is simply a bug. I cannot imagine why this error has not been detected before the new design has been published. The argument, that TMW is extremely conservative with changes in the forum to ensure a stability does not convince me anymore.
[EDITED] The box around the thread, the preview box, the boxes for preformatted text and code have a grey background now. So some text is even medium grey on light grey.
I'd be glad if the designers refocus on the purpose of the forum. Whatever this purpose might be, the optical reception of the characters is fundamental.
118 Comments
For easy navigation and for the historians,
Anyone with edit privileges should feel free to update this whenever needed.
I don't see that w/ Firefox 41.xy (and haven't previously prior to updating). The backgrounds are all white; wonder if there's a preferences setting causing local color instead....
The design of this forum just keeps getting worse. Seems to be slower than ever, harder to navigate, harder to see new questions, still impossible to know why some days your reputation points go up, still plagued with superfluous boxes within boxes within boxes, still incredibly low density of information. There's a difference between updating and upgrading.
Thanks for all the great feedback. I’m the new Community Product Marketing Manager, and appreciate your insight into new features and designs. We have a similar discussion about new landing page at Wishlist-4, where I shed more light on the “why” behind the new landing page.. Thanks again for your thoughts.
@Kelly - I've made my own Answers home page link (a Chrome bookmark), http://se.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/answers/?term=, which takes me directly to the old home page.
Now I need to hide the Home tab of Answers so that I don't click it by mistake.
@Kelly — In the banner at the top of the ‘MATLAB Answers’ frame (such as in the current frame you’re reading here), click on ‘My MATLAB Answers’, right-click on ‘My Answers’, then ‘Open Link in New Tab’ to create a new tab in the ‘correct’ format.
@Kelly--yeah, it's useless, indeed. I never go there, I only navigate the site by recalling previous urls from the browser's history--if type in 'sort', I get by the completion-bot the old questions list sorted on Unanswered which is where to look for those who nobody's taken a stab at yet.
I then type in my initials/username and two other choices are presented--the ones I've answered or commented on; so can see if any action there. Other than that, the whole forum is just too user-interaction-intensive to waste the time imo--I then go to the usenet group with a real newsreader.
Yikes, the new Answers Home page is horrendous; there isn't a single bit of useful information there. It took me several minutes just to figure out how to find the main list of questions that used to be accessible via Home. Is there a better way than the Answer a Question, unrefine by source method I used?
To add to dpb's comment, that unnecessary Refine by column takes up so much real estate that I find the site unreadable on my tablet in portrait mode. I've reported that to the Answers designers, but despite their reply that they intend the site to be useable on all screens, they seem to have made no move to improve the extremely wasteful design. The new homepage is certainly move in the opposite direction.
Just noted one positive development--it appears that the multiple boxes around code segments containing a blank line has been fixed--that's at least a minor bit of help in the denseness (or lack thereof) battle.
Still don't see the point/need particularly, but if would remove the ad from the top RH portion that kills the whole right third of the page for use or if can't make themselves give up that tout, at least put it across the top or bottom of the page so can flow questions/answers to the RH margin then the box margins L&R wouldn't be so wasteful (albeit top/bottom are still a fair fraction of the viewable space).
+42
I am also not a fan of the new format (changed 13 October 2015) for the personal profile page. I liked it the way it was. ( EDIT — It seems to have recovered much of its previous format by 15-Oct-2015 afternoon. )
The pages load too much stuff, from google ads to eloquia (whatever that is), that seem to hang and take forever. The list goes on.
Your Reputation increases because either you are getting votes on Answers you posted long ago, or OPs are just now checking back, to Accept your Answers. Some Answer Acceptances can appear weeks later, when the OP checks on them. I believe my most distant one was six weeks after I’d posted the Answer, but most are within a week. Unless they post a Comment or you search, you won’t know.
I edited the link last night to point it to www.mathworks.com
You should be able to locate the posting by doing a search on tag:wishlist
Yeah, I don't know what happened either. Now Walter's link is answerable/commentable whereas yesterday it wasn't. Maybe the Mathworks saw our posts and fixed it.
@IA - not sure what happened between now and then; yesterday even if I went back to main page and used link to the main question to navigate to the new thread I got the "no answer" version; I had already tried that before posting the complaint. Today that direction succeeds while this link above from Walter is still to a broken page. Who knows what's going on???
Unlike Walter who describes various workarounds he takes, I just quit and go on...
Ah yes. I am routinely logged into both. I switched to the UK server years ago during a time when the UK server was stable but the USA one was not. A couple of months ago when I tried the US server again I found it slower than the UK server.
Actually if you use this link instead of the one Walter gave, it works and you can add comments or answers. http://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/answers/233928-matlab-answers-wish-list-4-and-bug-reports#answer_189368?
I agree with dpb. There's no way to add an answer or a comment on that page. I don't know why. Thinking it might be because it's the UK server, I brought up the question on the US server and it has the same issue - no way to respond. Walter might have to post a new question with that information since that one is all fubar.
It shows up on this page but not on the new question page any longer...I've no idea why but they changed to some format Firefox apparently doesn't understand any longer...
There's the original question, the two answers and an empty (wasted) comment box since there's no comments for each but no way whatsoever to respond on that page.
If you scroll down to the bottom, there should be a big "Answer this question" field rather than there being a specific button to trigger answering mode.
If I go to the above link I can no longer find any way to add an Answer or a Comment...there's no button available and if go to the menu "Answer a Question" at the top, that filters by "Unanswered" which filters out the specific question.
I've been phasing out as noted before owing to the increasingly difficult interface that never was good; this appears the end; I'm not fighting any longer. I'll continue at cs-sm...
@Jan-- which browser/version are you using? While still on an old 32-bit box, have Firefox 37.0.x and it seems to pass over the color issues. It flashes a sold gray box first, then ends up w/ white background and black text.
I mentioned earlier that owing to issues w/ mex and Fortran w/ my old compiler TMW provided a R14 release--that install reverted my IE to IE6 and it can't do diddly w/ the TMW site; not letting me at the user login page but the main Answers page seems to have similar coloration issues but it's far worse than that owing to age, I suppose.
Anyway, just a note that maybe there's a way to get FIrefox to skip over the coloring; I'm not fluent enough w/ web pages to know what precisely is going on differently here.
If I scroll down to a topic I have to scroll up all the way to go to the top part of the menu of the website (file exchange, link exchange etc.), maybe make it appear again when you start scrolling up instead of having to scroll all the way up. Very annoying...
<---
Also, there is no way to start a new line wihout having a white line in beween as shown above.
Let's try: neither nor works (both are embedded in this line, and the strings are written using &amp; to hide the escape character.
Let me test, what's working instead: ☺ ?
All you can do is inserting one space
before the first character. Then the text
is "preformatted", but put in a fancy grey box now.
A, only noticed the arrow just now :). Empty looking lines was not what I meant though, I meant just continuing your current sentence on the next line. Is there a way to do that aswell? Right now you have to fill the box to go to the next line.
@Thomas: You can hit the smart up-arrow in the grey box on the right bottom to scroll to the top immediately.
If an empty looking line contains a "& nbsp ;" (without spaces) it does not vanish. Example:
This is a large white vertical space created by two empty lines and the non-breaking space HTML code in between. But think twice if you really want some. Reader might think, that there is enough white space already outside the text.
Now the code boxes have a grey background - which reduces the contrast again. Is it an old-fashioned opinion that reading text in black on white is easy?
When a response is edited the link to that answer or comment is broken.
You have an active link under *Latest Activity" if the text is Edited By instead of either Answered by or Commented on by?
I see only the text "Edited by"; which is not a link any longer to that Answer/Comment directly; have to navigate to the thread itself and then try to find the section that was modified. I'm using Firefox only a cycle or two behind at most (I tend to wait a week or so after first nag screen before updating in case something nasty is discovered on first roll out. I've been putting of the very latest a few days now but not way out of date as IE--I think some of that is that TMW/Matlab I think maybe rolled back IE w/o asking if wanted to when I recently installed R14 to work out some issues w/ mex.)
Ewww....the version of IE here (old; never use) can't seem to even load a displayable page; just a bunch of various shades of gray boxes show up with a list of subsections and numbers down the LHS of screen but it's total gibberish otherwise.
I didn't test broken link. But I know about the display window not being scrolled to the correct position, like Walter mentioned at the end. I also know that the Mathworks already knows about that issue.
I just tested that and I do not find it happening.
The closest to that I have found is that if you request to navigate to a link to an Answer or Response, then at least on Firefox, the display is positioned so that the top two lines of material are not visible, hidden behind the "Home | My MATLAB Answers | Ask a Question" toolbar.
The basic problem is still twofold --
a) The refusal to use a newsreader format with threaded entries as any reasonable serial-discussion forum should whether it's physically stored as a database or not, and
b) The idiotic choice of wordprocessor "Wordwrap On" as a default setting for code. Hence, unless one knows the trick of typing two blanks as no new user/poster is going to, the code formatting is guar-on-teed to be fouled up.
Others have touched on the issues of the boxes and all...it's just a_bad_idea (tm) from the git-go as is.
I never use the TMW newsgroup portal, either, I agree it, too, is an awful interface.
I use a traditional newsreader (Thunderbird mostly) and a feed from another news server in the manner newsgroups were intended :)
When their feed isn't broken (most of the time altho it does seem to break fairly often and may, when does, be gone for a couple of days until somebody finally notices), those posts that are made there show up and (I presume, anyway), that replies show over there altho I have to admit I've not checked that recently, it seems like I did "once't upon a time".
Personally I never go near the Matlab Newsgroup as I find it a horrible format, but I guess I had just got used to Matlab Answers whereas previously I never contributed to any forums/newsgroups of this kind. The only time I go to the Newsgroup is if a Google search lands me in a thread there.
One search-related thing I do find annoying though is the options in 'Refine by status' (to the extent I rarely use it). The 'Unanswered' category is fine, but a 'No answer accepted' (or some better phrase) would seem more use than 'Answer Accepted', or even better in addition to it. I never want to search for all questions with an accepted answer, but maybe that is just because I am usually looking more to answer question than to find answers myself.
It's routine w/ newsreaders -- this all goes back to why I was so strongly against the proposal of doing it as a forum on such a design as this to begin with...
Unfortunately, after they've invested all the effort in this ill-advised direction, the chances of actually realizing it was the wrong choice and fixing it are probably nil. At best we might see some minimal improvement in the interface but I'm afraid the base design has doomed the result to something not much better than current.
I've made the suggestion to them that all responses since you last opened a particular thread should be color coded, like red for new ones and black for old ones or something. But I don't know how easy it would be for them to store (perhaps in a cookie or something) all the responses that you've seen so far, and then not only for that one thread but for dozens or hundreds of threads that we've looked at over the past months or years.
I often search the string "hours ago", which confirms your point.
@dpb, completely agree. This answer and the 'What frustrates you about matlab' answer being two perfect examples of where it's very difficult to find new comments.
@Image Analyst: Specifically you mentioned the threading altho i think it's a general fault in the display format/logic--while there is the link "LatestActivity" (albeit once an answer or comment is edited that link breaks) it ONLY takes one to one particular new comment since one last visited--there may be multiple other comments or answers besides that one but there's no navigation tool to move from one unread response to the next--the advantage in a newsreader is that one can do that directly, including across from the end of one thread's activity to the next without the wasted navigation back to the main page. Again, the issue is one that one misses activity unless faithfully read the entire thread every time something changes as well as it just takes way more effort/time to scan thru newer activity than otherwise could be.
@Kelly: The strange "107862Answered" disappeared in my Firefox after a Ctrl-F5.
On a side note about the line-wrapping, the appearance varies based on browser for me. In Firefox, long lines show up with the horizontal scrollbar. In Chrome, it's simply wrapped to fit the box (it is a soft wrap, so I can cut and paste fine, but it looks messy on the screen). But the Firefox version is offending my OCD sensibilities with the badly-formatted sidebar (which is still listing entries as 107862Answered, 61152Answer Accepted, etc.).
Agreed; I, too, have tried to find previous responses in order to link to them and had no success; even if search for own answer one can't always find something one knows should be there.
I still think that despite how good the search might be, that it'll be of little real benefit for the intended purpose of making Answers somehow different from a newsgroup which is a continual rehash of the same question disguised over and over by mostly immaterial trappings with the occasional different or unique topic or, in the case of Matlab in particular, with new features introduced so rapidly these new topics.
It would probably be more likely to help if it could self-organize and present topics more like a smart FAQ or give a self-directed decision tree of topics to new posters. But, again, the problem I believe in making any of these features really useful is that owing to the typical inexperience level of the poster in such a high percentage of cases, unless the response is couched directly in terms down to the use of their specific variable names and identical problem they just rarely have the background to see how the underlying general truth the previous answers provide actually does solve their specific problem. Each problem looks new and unique to them even though most often it actually is just an application of a basic concept.
@dpb: As you I assume that TMW wanted to create a searchable database. But the search function in the forum is still too weak to support this idea efficiently. I'm still lost when I'm looking for a comment I've posted about 4 months ago, which contains the terms "linear" and "approximation", while the question was something with "interpolation" or "splines". I will find this using Google, but not with the builtin search function.
And specifically that since newbies don't know how the interface is supposed to work (and rightly so, that's why they're newbies), it's inevitable that by the choice that the default is wordwrap that they're going to just start typing code and it's going to be fouled up (and a bunch of us spend gazoodles of time either fixing it up (or just ignore postings as I've begun doing more and more as I'm time-limited these days.
Also, even if I paste from somewhere else a code snippet that has spacing associated with it, that isn't honored unless I do something special. Leading blanks appear to be eaten so a selection from a former comment or even the question when copied for a small amount of context has to be reformatted. It's just such a waste of effort.
ISToM that if you're going to control the interface as TMW has decided they're going to do, you can control the threading as is presently but cleanup the display to conserve space and make it a much more productive environment for both poster and responder.
The idea TMW had was that the database would be searchable and eliminate redundancy and all--a noble idea but very much Quixote-like in its inevitability that despite the wealth of previous answers that solve a large fraction of the questions posed on, of, formatted file input, say, the newbie just isn't going to recognize that the answer to a question posted three years ago has the exact information in there to solve his problem because it just won't look like it to him. The same goes for the kinds of things you do as a specialty, too, I'm sure.
dpb is referring to the fact that if you put in code without taking the time to indent each line, that the forum does not automatically detect that it is code and format it appropriately; that instead it flows the content as if it was text. He would prefer that the default was to treat everything as pre-formatted, with the option of marking a section to be treated as text to be flowed.
I think the tree structured reply format is fine, as long as people respond where there's supposed to. I hate the newsgroup style especially when there's tons of old quoted stuff prepended to the answer.
I don't know what you mean by word wrapping for code. I'm not seeing that. What I see below in the single line that I've formatted as code is a single line of code in the code box with a horizontal scroll bar
x = 10; % This is a line coded that is really really, really really long and we'll see if it wraps or has a scroll bar.
Are you saying that you see it as wrapped into two lines with no scroll bar? I'm using Firefox by the way.
@Adam - just a hint, I never use the links in the page but simply use the history retrieval feature of the browser--I type my user ID (dpb) and it brings the history up in alpha order which gives my answers link first, with comments generally just one line below. If I type "sort" I get the link to the "Unanswered" directly. Those are the only three views I use, ever.
When I open mathworks.com in the browser, the message "Read fonts.mathworks.com" appears in the status line and nothing happens for about 3 to 15 seconds. This feels rubbery and it reduces the usability. I do not observe such delays on other web pages, but opening the documentation on mathworks.com let the browser pause for 3 seconds.
If I am a newcomer on this pages, I'd possibly decide after 10 seconds, that the web site is not working and stop the loading.
(Firefox, Win7/64, 8GBit internet connection)
[EDITED] This time opening the forum took 22 seconds while "Read fonts.mathworks.com" was displayed.
The current layout of list of questions displays 6 questions on my 19'' monitor. In another Matlab forum I see 17 questions, or in a specific category 22 questions. When the discussion of questions is the purpose of a forum, a high density of information is essential and much more important than a fluffy and light-weight visual impression.
Now take a look on a very short question:
The area of interest is marked in green and fills 13% of the full screen window. Of course a longer question would fill more of the page. But even for a tiny question the distance between the information and teh area for answers is as big as possible. But there so many other details on this page, which are not needed while I type an answer: A link to trial software, a counter for the number of given answers, "opportunities for recent engineering grads" and a link to apply immediately, and a huge white block on the right. The space for Tags and Products is larger than the initial size of the input field for answers. As soon as comments are added or the question exceeds 5 rows I have to scroll vertically to control the question and my answer. You cannot avoid vertical scrolling for large questions, but it is important to reduce this to the minimum.
The field for searching has the potential to be useful, but during writing an answer it is a killer, because it closes the current window. Therefore it cannot be used directly to search e.g. a FEX submission during answering.
While these points mean a bad functionality, the reduced contrast of the text attacts my eyes physically. There have been so many good suggestions to improve the usability of the forum, which are waiting for years now. But TMW decides to reduce the readability of the text instead. What's wrong with clear and sharp characters in black on white?!
@Jan: ): I've a dual-monitor setup w/ 24" and a 23". There's less than half the width containing anything other than whitespace so the number lines used vertically is way too many and then when add the interminable number of boxen and big buttons/toolbar/etc./etc./... it's absurdly a waste of real estate.
@Kelly: I try to make a pass by once or twice't in a morning and afternoon (altho if I'm doing bookwork or often some of the recent pro bono work I have a hard time making myself really do what I'm supposed to be doing it may be far more frequent escape! :) ).
Anyway, I check my Answers/Comments threads as you say and then have a sorted view of "Unanswered" that I access directly via the browser recall by typing "sort" which brings that url up and gets me there directly. I scan first page for interesting topics and respond or not depending...
Meanwhile, as noted above, I can otherwise go to the cs-sm newsfeed via Thunderbird or another newsreader, see a list of the threads in an upper pane and just pace down thru unread to get the questions plus any responses to my previous answers in the lower pane with a single keystroke. I can do at least cs-sm and comp.lang.fortran plus check OpenWatcom ng for any action in the time it takes to just look at my own answers/comments at the forum.
For the same reason, the number is falling off and will continue to do so unless TMW can find a way to improve the interface significantly. Just letting us at it w/ a newsreader would be major start, even if they don't want to propogate it over nntp public gateway.
Exactly. I usually answer questions in this forum while waiting for code to run... I find it's a useful way to fill the 2-10 minutes while keeping my Matlab skills in shape. I'll usually open the page, check if any followup needs to be added to previous answers, then scan the front page to see if any new questions jump out at me. If not, I move on to something else.
With this new format, there's so much junk and whitespace around the questions that nothing jumps out at all... don't think I'll be answering much if this format persists.
@dpb: And if we buy 40" monitors? There is a nice 3840x2160 pixels 40" display from LG for only 420€. This would allow to see 12 questions. Not impressive.
Perhaps TMW and the forum users have different opinions about the purpose of this forum. But I cannot imagine a purpose which is conform with a reduced perceptibility of the text on one hand and the low density of information on the other hand.
"...list of questions displays 6 questions on my 19" monitor. In another Matlab forum I see 17..."
BINGO!!!! W/ my normal window sizing (about 3/4 of the screen) I get 3 or 4 w/o scrolling. Meanwhile in Thunderbird for cs-sm at the same resolution/windows size I see ...count,count... 19 thread titles in a split screen with the text in the other pane directly below. Which, I ask, is more efficient in time and effort to monitor and respond to? It is important and a prime reason I tend to limit the time at Answers; it's just too labor-intensive as is.
Thank you Jan, and everyone else, for the constructive feedback and ongoing conversation about the new design for MATLAB Answers. We (the MathWorks community team) are listening to your comments and intend to continue to address issues in an ongoing attempt to improve the design and usefulness of MATLAB Answers. This recent update, as you noticed, was a significant overhaul and we are working to identify and resolve issues as quickly as possible.
One other annoyance. I've zoomed in my Firefox browser to make the text larger and easier to see. But if I click on 'Commented on' to go to the latest posting in the thread, it doesn't put the top of the comment at the top of the browser viewing window. The comment is actually above the viewing window so I have to scroll up a bit (text moves down on the screen) to see it.
[FOLLOW UP] Actually it doesn't depend on zoom. When I reset the zoom (View->Zoom->Reset) it still places the comment above the viewing window.
Yes, I see that as well...seems like Jan or somebody else noted that quite some time ago, too. They've simply got the wrong point being brought to focus.
Why are there so many frames within frames? A comment lies inside the frame of my monitor, inside the frame of the browser, inside the discussion thread frame, below an answer frame, inside a comment frame, inside a text frame. The result is a bunch of cluttered boxes that inhibit natural flow of a discussion.
In particular, boxes around comments make the text box look active, as if the user can edit their own or anyone else's text:
Good points about new style:
- make-over for mobile phones to concentrate more on content
- I kind of like the boxing of code in postings
Bad points about new style:
- mobile phone format hides the log-in further down. Which is fine if you are already logged in, but people who don't use the forum as often are not going to be as inspired to log in because it is buried in menus
- the boxing of code needs to extend to the entire code section when there are empty lines
- the boxing of code has a horizontal scroll bar for wider content instead of wrapping it. As a lot of code gets posted and wider code is common, that requires more mousing than it should for the common action of reading postings
- semantically, sections might be indented to represent quoting material (such as from documentation or an assignment), or might be indented because it is code that should not be flowed. Flowing of quoted material can be acceptable in situations where monospaced is not important. But it is not clear that it is desirable for there to be automatic boxing of quotes or force-monospace material. I have seen some places where the boxing of quoted material looked okay, and other places where the boxing of quoted material looked intrusive.