Does anyone else find the threads in the forums really hard to read? I struggle to differentiate between people's comments and their signatures. Just wondering if there is a facelift coming any time soon?
While the NPN forum and galleries might seem outdated relative to current forums and blogs, I personally don't see an issue reading comments. Comments are surrounded by a gray box, all the signature information has a white background. It is a light gray color, but still plenty distinguishable.
Don't know of any face lift plans. I know Jim takes pride in that he's kept this advertisement-free and I haven't heard of any face lifts in the near future.
Could be that I'm accustomed to it, but this is one of the best that I've seen for ease. That may have a lot to do with the gray box for text, as Lon points out.
I think the format is great and easy to read - especially compared to the more standard and generic forum where it's basically lines of text. As for the grey box, I'ts extremely faint on my monitor - it would help me out if it was darker.
One of the issues all webmasters deal with is the large variation in monitor color and contrast. The LCD we use has high contrast, to the point that we must compensate somewhat when preparing photos. It sounds like the OP has the opposite issue - a monitor with very low contrast.
In terms of keeping track of therads, here are a few pointers;
1. Use the Flag Topic feature. This will place the selected topic in your Flagged folder.
2. You can sort the topics listing page by either date of last reply or by date of orignal posting. This is a toggle function found in the upper right side of the topics listing page (Sort by Post or Reply).
3. Any thread that you start can be found in your My Topics folder.
4. On your Preferences page, you can set the default action for number 2 above for both the discussion forums and IC galleries. You can also select email notification when ever a new comment is posted on a Flagged topic, and select email notification for each discussion forum when ever a new topic is posted.
Years ago the forum software here was very much like all the others out there, and it was really not conducive to the purpose of NPN.. Jim then asked what we wanted. There were at least a few threads regarding the look and feel of NPN, which Jim reviewed and distilled into a great plan for our community.
Jim then hired Dave The Programmer (DTP, for short) to build the site. It was obviously a herculean effort that resulted in not only one of the best performing formus I have seen, but retained and enhanced the spiirt of NPN. The current site went live November 1, 2003, and it has certainly withstood the test of time.
So, here's a big "Cheers" to Jim and DTP for our home on the Web!
I like the clean look of the galleries and forums on NPN. However, I do wish that we didn't have a white background, which results in making the entire browser page overly bright in my opinion.
Being vision impaired, it means a lot when I say that this is the easiest forum to use that I have ever found. I've looked at a few of the other "social network" type of sites where people have invited me to view their photos, and I can't tell who has commented, when the original post was, or how to comment myself. Usually I have to register, which I don't like to do.
So A++, hat's off and 3 cheers for everything that has thoughtfully gone into the development of the NPN forums! Please don't change a thing.
Posted by Mia McPherson on July 24, 2010 at 11:25 AM
Chris
I think NPN's format is one of the best formatted photo critique sites available. Everything we post, whether in the critique forums, our member photo portfolios or the duscussion forum is available for everyone to view.
There currently is another critique forum where you can see only some of the photo's posted unless you register as a member and what is worse I believe is that you can not view their portfolios if you are not a member. If someone is looking for a photo for publication it seems counter productive that an editor/publisher would have to become a member just to view the images in a person's portfolio or in some of the critique galleries, especially if you goal is get your images "out there".
I like the ease of access we have here in viewing the member galleries, it is a simple click, ditto if you want to view their portfolio. If you want to see what comments someone made on other images that too is easy to do. It is not that easy on some of the other nature photo critique sites.
On my phone I have difficulty with the dropdowns at the top of the page if I want to switch from the Avian critique gallery to the discussion forums and have discovered that I can go to the site map at the top right side of the pages and from there select the forum I want.
Discussion
13 repliesDon't know of any face lift plans. I know Jim takes pride in that he's kept this advertisement-free and I haven't heard of any face lifts in the near future.
Lon
In terms of keeping track of therads, here are a few pointers;
1. Use the Flag Topic feature. This will place the selected topic in your Flagged folder.
2. You can sort the topics listing page by either date of last reply or by date of orignal posting. This is a toggle function found in the upper right side of the topics listing page (Sort by Post or Reply).
3. Any thread that you start can be found in your My Topics folder.
4. On your Preferences page, you can set the default action for number 2 above for both the discussion forums and IC galleries. You can also select email notification when ever a new comment is posted on a Flagged topic, and select email notification for each discussion forum when ever a new topic is posted.
Jim then hired Dave The Programmer (DTP, for short) to build the site. It was obviously a herculean effort that resulted in not only one of the best performing formus I have seen, but retained and enhanced the spiirt of NPN. The current site went live November 1, 2003, and it has certainly withstood the test of time.
So, here's a big "Cheers"
--P
So A++, hat's off and 3 cheers for everything that has thoughtfully gone into the development of the NPN forums! Please don't change a thing.
I think NPN's format is one of the best formatted photo critique sites available. Everything we post, whether in the critique forums, our member photo portfolios or the duscussion forum is available for everyone to view.
There currently is another critique forum where you can see only some of the photo's posted unless you register as a member and what is worse I believe is that you can not view their portfolios if you are not a member. If someone is looking for a photo for publication it seems counter productive that an editor/publisher would have to become a member just to view the images in a person's portfolio or in some of the critique galleries, especially if you goal is get your images "out there".
I like the ease of access we have here in viewing the member galleries, it is a simple click, ditto if you want to view their portfolio. If you want to see what comments someone made on other images that too is easy to do. It is not that easy on some of the other nature photo critique sites.
On my phone I have difficulty with the dropdowns at the top of the page if I want to switch from the Avian critique gallery to the discussion forums and have discovered that I can go to the site map at the top right side of the pages and from there select the forum I want.