What sort of enhancements would you like to see?

[Jason Dunn]

I received some great responses to my request for php programmers the other day, so much so that I have more helpers than projects! I already have quote a few enhancements planned for the site, including a completely new template, but I'd like to open it up to you - what would you like to see on the site? What sorts of things would you like to see on the front page or in the forums that would make your experience a better one? Don't worry about your suggestions being realistic - brainstorm any and all ideas.

[JasonA]

uh oh. :wink:

[Jeff_Baker]

I stop by Thoughts a lot but not always the same frequency, some times once a day, some times many times a day. It would be kinda cool to call out on the home page posts that I haven't seen yet. Hiding things I've already seen probably isn't the best solution (because I may want read them again), but how about having the home page generate a big horizontal bar between the last unread and first read posts? Or maybe read posts have a shaded background or something.

This wouldn't have to be as complicated as a newsreader because you'd only have to keep the last read posting identifier as a cookie (because you essentially 'read' all the posts every time to see the home page).

Just a thought.

[Tierran]

You may want to check out vBulletin...they have a really nice front end that looks like it integrates news and forums very nicely. Getting the chat working would be nice too :)

[Paragon]

Jason, you made a slight mention of guest columnists recently. Perhaps that is something you should seriously consider. Many PPC sites link to articles, and opinions of others in the community, maybe you could get some of them to right a guest column for you. There are many very good people out there to draw from. It could act as a real 'binding agent' for the PPC community as well.

Dave

[Jason Dunn]

You may want to check out vBulletin...they have a really nice front end that looks like it integrates news and forums very nicely. Getting the chat working would be nice too :)

We're pretty much committed to phpBB. It's free, we have numerous hacks and custom modifications set up for it already, and it's much faster than vBulletin. Other than the fact that some people are "used" to it, I don't see any advantages to using it. :wink:

Regarding the chat, you mean the Java based chat? It got nearly zero use, so I didn't think it was worth keeping - it's not included in the new design.

[Robert Levy]

I'd like to be able to specify in my profile how many days worth of posts to show on the front page.

[PJE]

Here (in no particular order) are some of the improvements I'd like to see:

1. Configurable number of days on main screen.

2. Option to show older posts without graphic.
ie. Last two days - full posts, next 3 days - no images, next 7 days - Topics only.

3. Multi column display option.

4. Items which are still being posted to (but not on main screen) shown at bottom of page as 'title with xx replies'

5. Increased use of tables

6. Option to split main page into sections as www.geek.com for software, hardware, etc...

7. User reviews section - I'd be prepared to post some tech reviews (not only PDA) if a nice section were prepared.

8. Software directory - with links to were it can be obtained (linked to sponsors ;-)

9. Option to not show all the item on main screen... just an overview.

10. Item names as links at top of page (split into sections) to allow a quick jump to items of interest.

11. Add text to right of images to make page shorter, and create a PDA spoecific page from the same data.

12. Enhanced use of color - maybe to specify topic catagory.

13. Overview page similar to www.theregister.co.uk (people may disagree with their views but the front page allows quick access to a large number of items).

14. Option of selecting the font style used for the main text - the current one looks very poor on my Win2K laptop... :-(

15. Option to configure text size - Current text displays larger than other sites...

That's about it....for now!

PJE

[dhpss]

Jason,
Could you open another topic for Hardware suggestion or point me to one if it already exists. Thx!

[Jason Dunn]

Could you open another topic for Hardware suggestion or point me to one if it already exists. Thx!

Hardware suggestions? 8O This is about my web site, not Pocket PCs, so unless you want me to add more RAM to the server, I'm totally confused... :? :D

[PJE]

More thoughts...

16. When viewed on IE6 the detail response pages only display after most of the page has been loaded, while the front page loads the text and then fills in the graphics which is **MUCH** better on a slow (Modem) link. Possibly this is due to the tables....

17. Anything that keeps the site loading quickly.

18. Split screen - Load top level at left and detail at right...

19. Add latest topic list at top of Message list, sorted by last response (or configurable sort) to allow topic jumping without revisiting the main page.

20. Overview page(s) - designed to fit on different screen sizes, show latest 'news' all at one time with no scrolling.

21. Automatic addition of... at end of each line as I use it so much! ;-)

More thoughts later - If you're not too bored already.

PJE

[bbarker]

Optimize forums for mobile users.
Optimize forums for mobile users.
Optimize forums for mobile users.
Optimize forums for mobile users.
Optimize forums for mobile users.

[Dave Beauvais]

Optimize forums for mobile users.
I second that! I see in the forum preferences that there's an option for a "PPC1" style. I tried that once and it looked pretty nice on my Pocket PC, but it was a major pain to switch back to the standard style. (Because the PPC1 style has no link to go to your user Profile or some of the other links that are typically in the upper-right corner of the page!)

If there's a way to automatically use that style when reading the forums on a Pocket PC and the standard style when using a desktop browser, that would be great!

Similarly, if the Pocket PC version of the main Thoughts page could be more like the Archive page, that might be nice, too. Maybe put the current day's news and thoughts on the page in full, but the previous day's would just be links to the full version. Does that make sense?

...16. When viewed on IE6 the detail response pages only display after most of the page has been loaded ... Possibly this is due to the tables...
The main reason for this is that none of the images on the pages contain "height" or "width" properties in their HTML tags. Because of this, the browser must load the entire image before determining how big it is, where it can be placed in the browser window, and how other page elements will flow around it. Tables complicate this further, since they can also change many times as page content loads based on what is in the various cells of the table.

Adding dimension properties to the HTML tags for all images would greatly improve page load time since the browser would already know how much space to reserve for an image before it's even downloaded!

Dave

[Jonathan1]

Lets focus on the news page for a second.

Any chance of push news? Specifically PPC news in our e-mail.

How about news alerts? So we know when you post something new.

If either or both of those could be tied to your subscription service I wouldn't mind paying.

[Dave Beauvais]

Another feature I'd like to see is an option in my user profile to turn on ClearType. Jason, you said a few weeks ago that when you turned on ClearType before, people who used landscape software on their PPC complained. What if you gave us an option so those of us who want it can turn it on and those who don't can leave it off?

Just a "thought."

Dave

[Pony99CA]

How about getting the archive working. :-)

Along with that, allowing the user to specify how many days the main page shows would be useful.

I also like one user's suggestion of flagging the last item read.

Steve

[Jason Dunn]

How about getting the archive working.

What, 7 days isn't good enough for you? :wink: I thought that would appease 80%+ of people, since the complaints I got only related to people reading on Monday and wanting to go back a few days.