[DISCONTINUED] New design of the forum - grey on white / wish list #3 / bug reports

NOTE: this discussion is continued at MATLAB Answers Wish-list #6 (and bug reports)

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.

[Nick Earnhardt]

@Simon, "Text color is a medium gray"

I am totally agree with you, as I don't even have a good eyesight, It demands more concentration, focus from me read, Couldn't we have a solid black color?

Instead of such funny changes, it was better to increase the size of the question box! It's so small that I have to scroll up and down each and every time to get to a different line!

I would suggest they put a mechanism, that by clicking on the "preview" section it could get the cursor to the write position in the answer writing position!

[Star Strider]

I have no idea what reason TMW had to make any of the changes in Answers it has imposed over the last six or so months.

Answers was functional and easy-to-use before. Every recent change has been a change for the worse.

[Chad Greene]

@Star Strider: Answers wasn't 100% easy to use before--the multi-step process for uploading images was clunky and frequently resulted in users thinking they'd uploaded an image when they had not. With the redesign: the issue remains. Sigh.

[Image Analyst]

I agree with Chad - the one thing that really needed fixing (attaching files) is left unfixed.

[Star Strider]

I agree with the upload complexity problem, but the two-step process (select image, upload image) I considered to be a sort of fail-safe to be certain the image I wanted to upload was the image I actually uploaded. It is likely more efficient than uploading an image (or other file), then finding out it wasn’t the one you wanted, deleting it, and uploading the correct one.

Just curious, not critical, but how would you improve on it?

[Image Analyst]

Star:

For images, I copy my image or figure window (that I created from running my demo) to the clipboard with alt-PrintScreen, and then I use snag.gy and paste my images in and then comeback here to answers and paste the URL that snag.gy gave me in to Answers (green/brown image icon). I don't see why Answers can't simply have a similar way, where you can just paste in your image from the clipboard. That would be so much better and more convenient. Just like now, with the green&brown frame icon, the preview shows you it immediately so no fail-safe confirmation is really needed.

For files, like m-files, the two or three step procedure (Choose file, Open, Attach File) is unnecessarily long. I'd say about half of people forget to click the "Attach file" button after they've chosen the file and clicked the Open button. And there is no reason they should have to. It should be attached immediately. And you should be able to click more than one file. If you want to attach an m-file and a fig-file, why should you have to go through all that twice when you can simply select both of them in the same "open file" dialog box?

[Chad Greene]

@Star: Good point point about verifying images, but we'd have the same chance to see our images if "Upload Image" were automatically clicked after "Select Image".

[Mohammad Abouali]

Why the side panel looks like this?

Refine by Product
52MATLAB
3Simulink
1Control System Toolbox
235Curve Fitting Toolbox
1Database Toolbox
2Econometrics Toolbox

The numbers are the number of questions (apparently), but why there is no space or anything between them. It just looks like the page didn't load properly.

I think it looks more natural if it was this way:

Refine by Product
MATLAB (52)
Simulink (3)
Control System Toolbox (1)
Curve Fitting Toolbox (235)
Database Toolbox (1)
Econometrics Toolbox (2)

When in edit mode also the buttons are not properly sized. This is how it is shown on my system

[Adam]

I haven't really used the forum since the changes to see what I like and don't although immediately the fact I have to click a dropdown menu to then select My Answers or My Comments annoys me. I use those links a lot when I come to the forum before I move on to any new questions and extra mouse clicks to reach the same functionality are always an annoyance.

[Walter Roberson]

Having the numbers run together for the counts appears to have been corrected (or at least has made its way to whatever server I am pulling the style sheet from.)

[David]

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.

[dpb]

@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.

[dpb]

@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.

[Walter Roberson]

Please post new discussions to MATLAB Answers Wish-list #4 (and bug reports)

[dpb]

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...

[Walter Roberson]

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.

[dpb]

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.

[Image Analyst]

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.

[Image Analyst]

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?

[Walter Roberson]

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.

[dpb]

@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...

[Image Analyst]

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.

[Walter Roberson]

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

[dpb]

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....

[Adam Danz]

For easy navigation and for the historians,

Wish list #1

Wish list #2

Wish list #3

Wish list #4

Wish list #5

Wish list #6

Anyone with edit privileges should feel free to update this whenever needed.

Answer 1

[Nick Earnhardt]

This completely SUCKS! HORRIBLE!

I tried closing and reopening my browser times and times, I thought there is something with the browser but apparently NOT!

What the heck is this! Everything seem to be randomly scattered here and there, as if browsers can't open the forum correctly!

I hope this is a problem with their server and not a new theme! LOL

Sure some good changes were required but not demolition!

Is this gonna stay with us?!

[Jan]

@Nick: I usually run the forum in Firefox, but today I tried it in IE and Chrome also in the hope to get a better optical impression - without success.

[Nick Earnhardt]

Guys I think they fixed most of the problems!

Its not that messy anymore. It is loading faster, things are more organized.

I just don't like the font in which I write, its looks blurred!

I am getting used to the new design.

[Jan]

@Nick: I'm still very disappointed by the design. The readability of the font is the fundament of a web service. My browser still stalls for 15 to 30 seconds when I open the Mathworks pages while it displays "reading font.mathworks.com" in the status line. The computer stalls during this time and therefore I think twice before I open the pages. For me this is a disaster for the usability.

The code indentation still fails, when white lines appear. The argument for this is, that this is consistent with the indentation scheme in the layout created by the publish command, but it is more important, that it differs from the Matlab editor and the logic behind any code indentation. Therefore I did not reach the status of getting used to teh design.

[dpb]

@Nick...what do you think has been fixed? I see no meaningful changes that really do anything. For example, in this comment the "veritable plethora" of frames within frames as squeezed this text response box to be so small as the total line length is...<count, count...> all of 32(!!!) characters...ridiculous.

[Walter Roberson]

I get 67 characters wide in the response box.

[Image Analyst]

I also get 67.

[dpb]

It depends on the amplification you're using; at the time I had been having the sidebar on the Version ID in the header of the desktop picture somebody had pasted and had expanded to try to make it legible. Hadn't gone back fully to "small and tiny" at the time so that's what actually showed up.

Irrespective, 30,40,60 is still miniscule compared to the whitespace owing to all the nested frames and particularly the wasting of the whole RH third of the window.

The point being I don't see how anything TMW has done has really "solved" or "improved" anything about the interface of significance. It still is way too klunky, has all kinds of warts and the problem of the paucity of data per screen is ridiculous.

Answer 2

[Chad Greene]

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:

Answer 3

[Jan]

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?!

[dpb]

"...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.

[Jan]

@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.

[Kelly Kearney]

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]

@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.

Answer 4

[Guillaume]

The css that is responsible for the grey text colour is line 1687 of site6.css (preceded by a comment Laurel Testing !), and it's actually defining the colour of the body element:

html body { color: #595959; }

The font of the answer box is overridden in application.css starting at line 1698 by the last two lines of this css:

.matlabmarkup textarea {
  resize: none;
  display: block;
  overflow: auto;
  min-height: 150px;
  border: 0;
  outline: none;
  padding: 0;
  font-size: 1.1em;
  font-family: monospace;
}

How you override that is browser dependent. On firefox, you use usercontent.css (or an extension).

I totally agree that the new css needs some serious adjustments. There are many rendering issues (weird boxes on the answer list page, code boxes split by blank lines, ultra large font in answer box, too much whitespace everywhere, mismatched sizes all over the place, etc.)

[Jan]

Thank you for mentioning the entry points to fix the css manually on the user side.

I've played a lot with userContent.css in Firefox and do not observe any differences.

Answer 5

[Walter Roberson]

I reported difficulties to Mathworks last night and they started looking into it then. I don't know which parts are intentional and which parts are not.

[Jan]

Let me repeat this: "I don't know which parts are intentional and which parts are not." This hits the point: It is the opposite of usability if teh user cannot decide, if it is just a mistake.

[Nick Earnhardt]

@Walter

Thanks a lot for reporting! it's much better now!

Answer 6

[Image Analyst]

Some of the changes instituted yesterday around 5:40 p.m. EDT are okay. I like the code being in shaded boxes and the ability to see what you're typing when you're adding tags to a long list of tags (before what you typed just plain didn't show up until you clicked submit), but mostly the changes are worse. For example the small light font, the splitting the code boxes into two whenever there's a blank line in the code, too much white space, not scaling up well, etc. I took a screenshot and brought it into Photoshop and found the darkest gray level of the text is 89 (=59 hex as Guillaume found out). But unfortunately most of the text is not even that dark due to anti-aliasing/font smoothing. See the screenshot below:

The pixels near the edges of the letters are in the range 190 to 236. Definitely harder to see.

With so much white space, I can't see as many questions on the screen at one time as before. It's like the lines are double spaced now. To make it worse when I "control-mouse wheel" to enlarge the screen items and make them easier to see, they're easier to see but I can only see like 3 or 4 questions. If I zoom out, I can see more but with my high res screen, the letters are too small and faint to read.

Tags and Products used to be on the same line and now they're on separate lines. That's less compact and means fewer questions per page.

Followed links used to be very hard to see (in Firefox). It was like blue if you hadn't visited that link and then bluish purple if you had visited the link before. Now it's virtually indistinguishable. It doesn't follow the "Visited links" (Tools->Options->Content->Colors) color that you set in Firefox. If you tell it to use your colors, so that you can see which links you've clicked on before, then everything else looks messed up.

[Nick Earnhardt]

Its very clumsy indeed.

[Chad Greene]

I like the new code boxes, but each empty line of code creates a new box. The end result gives the appearance that the code is not in a linear order, but are may be many unrelated bits that can come in any order.

x = 1; 

y = x + 2; 

z = y + 3;

Answer 7

[Chad Greene]

Seems like TMW went live with the new design before testing with Firefox.

[Star Strider]

I use Firefox, and while the new design was kludgy for a few hours, at least looks decent enough now.

That’s not to say that I like the new design — I’m not fond of any of the changes over the past six months — it’s just that some of the more obvious bugs now seem to be fixed.

[Jan]

This is one answer containing only 1 line of text and 3 lines of a comment + a white line. But if fills my 19'' monitor completely already. The exploding white areas minimize the information density.

I tried it with Chrome and IE also and it was not remarkably better.

[Chad Greene]

Jan, I agree. I have a huge, high-resolution monitor because I like to see lots of information in context. But the combination of enormous text and vast areas of white space means I get to see about as much information as if I were using a smart phone. Ctrl - helps with the text size, but the white space remains.

[Kelly Kearney]

I'm seeing terrible formatting in Firefox as well (the side bar in particular). Chrome is rendering as intended, I think. Running Mac OS X 10.9.5.

I also second the general consensus that there is waaaay too much whitespace in the new design.

Answer 8

[Image Analyst]

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.

[dpb]

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.

Answer 9

[Chad Greene]

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.

[Star Strider]

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.

[dpb]

+42

[dpb]

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).

[Kelly Kearney]

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.

[dpb]

@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.

[Star Strider]

@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.

[per isakson]

@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.

[Chen Lin]

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.

Answer 10

[Walter Roberson]

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.

[Chad Greene]

Given that this forum is for troubleshooting computer code, should the site design be optimized for mobile phones, or for computers?

[Image Analyst]

From what I've seen before, when the code is wrapped and you copy and paste into MATLAB, it puts a line break in there, which causes an error. Not wrapping would prevent that. A nice convenience would be a "Copy Code to Clipboard" button whenever code is present in the post - they have this kind of thing in some of their online demos and examples.

An annoyance: When you click Add/Edit Products, or Add/Edit Tags, it gives an edit field but does not put focus (the cursor) in it. You start typing and nothing shows up. You have to click in the box first, and that should not be necessary.

Another annoyance: Under the posting, the Cancel button is on the left and the Submit button is on the right. This is opposite to most other cases where the OK/Open/Save button is on the left and the Cancel button is on the right.

[Walter Roberson]

The style sheet for mobile phone interactions can be different than the style sheet for full browser interactions.

[Walter Roberson]

• When you Delete an Answer, then the deletion works, but the page does not repaint, making it look like nothing changed.

[Walter Roberson]

• When you Cancel a comment you are constructing, the box is closed and all is well. If you click again to add a comment in the same location, the zombie comment is resurrected for further editing. This is not a problem.
• But when you Cancel an Answer you are constructing, the entire page blanks and repaints, which is distracting and time consuming
• Refreshing the main page causes the entire page to blank and repaint, which is frustrating and time consuming. The infrastructure around the question list is slow changing and should not have to be cleared and redrawn.

[Walter Roberson]

Please add a keyword to the search box so I can specify the search order. For example, if I could search

contributor:roberson outerposition updated:desc

and have the updated:desc recognized as the sort=updated:desc for the search, then I wouldn't have to go through a two-step process most times that I searched.

[Walter Roberson]

If you click on a contributor's name, a little information box about them pops up. There is no way to get rid of that popup other than navigating away from the page.

[Walter Roberson]

I have had it happen a few times that after I create and Submit an Answer and then go to navigate away from the page, the browser says the site is asking me whether I really want to leave the page -- a warning that would come up if I had unsaved work to protect from accidental loss, which I did not have in those cases. So the "this area is clean" flag is not always being set properly. I do not seem to be able to reproduce this at will, though; it seems to happen more often if my answer is the first Answer.

[Jan]

@Walter: My Firefox/Win7 let the box disappear as soon as the mouse leaves the box.

[Walter Roberson]

Okay, so the extra warning about leaving the page occurs if one starts to create a comment (anywhere), and cancels that comment. It does not occur if one starts to create a comment and closes the page without canceling, which is the situation it is designed to protect. The internal flag is thus being used backwards.

[Walter Roberson]

The profile popup box does normally disappear when the mouse leave the box. However it turns out that if you make an update anywhere on a Question, including adding a comment, and then you go up and left-click on the name of the person who posted the question, then instead of being shown the popup profile for that user, you will be shown your own profile and that box will not die until you refresh or close the page. Something is wrong with the updating of the last-updated information.

[Walter Roberson]

Could the manage-spam facility please be extended to be able to examine the Answers and Comments that get automatically marked as potential spam?

When we post links to outside resources, sometimes the automatic analyst thinks the resources might be spam links, and blocks the entire content. And the person who posted the content is not allowed to pass judgement on the content even if they are full editor. So we have to bring it to someone else's attention to get approval. It would be desirable if we as full editors could see a list of such pending posts to vette them on behalf of others.

[Star Strider]

I completely agree with Walter. When any of my Answers and Comments get automatically flagged as spam, I e-mail Randy to bring it to his attention. They don’t show up on ‘Flagged Content’ (now hidden under ‘More’), so it’s otherwise just luck that someone with appropriate privileges discovers them and permits them. They don’t even show up as ‘Latest Activity’.

Could we perhaps have a flag symbol at the right edge of the title for any flagged content in that thread so Editors can check it?

[Image Analyst]

I've let them know that people with any decent amount of reputation points should be exempt from being labeled as spam. He agreed, but I just think it will take a while in coming because I think they're going to be fixing several things we've brought up all in one release rather than piecemeal.

[Star Strider]

True, and that would eliminate the problem for those eligible. However others submit Answers and Comments that are erroneously flagged as spam, and we need to know that they exist so we can look at them and take appropriate action. I look at the ‘Review questions automatically flagged as spam’ at least daily to ‘rescue’ any erroneously-flagged Questions, but Comments erroneously flagged don’t show up at all, and remain completely unnoticed unless incidentally discovered.

[Image Analyst]

Yes, I've noticed that. Comments flagged as potential spam don't appear in the quarantine. I'm not sure what would happen if none of us cleared the flag. Would it remain forever? Would it delete it after some time? I'm not sure. It would be good if a link to those comments would also show up in the quarantine so we would know to check it out.

[Walter Roberson]

With the current set-up it does not seem possible to get a list of Comments posted by someone else.

A moment ago I encountered a comment that was oddly out of place, from a user who had no Questions and no Answers. It led me to wonder if maybe something odd was going on. But I couldn't get at their list of Comments to see what else they might have posted.

[Walter Roberson]

The presentation of sections of code is much more readable now that the box extends over the entire stretch. But it is still odd that the horizontal scrollbars appear in the middle and affect groups of lines. There is still too much interaction required for reading sections of code that might have some longer lines. We need a setting to be able to choose whether we prefer scrolling or wrap.

[Walter Roberson]

When I access on my Android smartphone by way of Firefox, there is so much white-space being wasted that it is only possible to clearly see TWO questions in the list. Three in best conditions and you are just interested in the titles.

This is a real waste. The number of answers is in a big box when it is Not Very Important, and there is nothing else on that line -- for example the tags and products could be moved on to the same line. Move the number of answers to below the title along with the rest of the administrative stuff.

[dpb]

And while I don't use smartphone so don't know about that format, they've done nothing much to help re: the main page either.

What's the need for a box, anyway, it just takes up the extra room for no real reason. Plus, the wrap problem wouldn't be nearly so bad if they'd ditch the useless/inappropriate-for-the-forum-purpose ad box that uses us a third of the horizontal space for the entire thread life thus wasting as much space as is used when combined with the extra room at the left that could also be shrunk significantly.

[Walter Roberson]

we need "skins" perhaps. Along with a way to set different skins for mobile access.

[dpb]

I just wish even if they want the database format they'd give us an interface via newsfeed--then user can choose their own and TMW can spend their time doing something more useful instead...

[Walter Roberson]

The scroll interface is getting to be a real problem for material which represents quotations rather than code. When someone posts the text of a homework assignment, it needs to be marked off from the user's own words, so it needs to be a quote. Before it was no problem if it was a paragraph: just indent it and it would flow and use distinguished font both. Now there is no way to mark a section as needing both flow and distinguished font.

[Walter Roberson]

The interface on mobile such as via Firefox on smartphone is frustrating to enter any reply. The box for text entry is still only three lines long, but they are pretty short lines. There is the grab-triangle to enlarge the area, but you cannot use it: if you hold and drag on the triangle then that is interpreted as meaning you want to scroll the window.

The areas that are wider than the window, that on a laptop browser would show up with a scrollbar these days, have no distinguished marking on mobile. They just looked clipped. If you drag the area sideways with a finger then it does scroll, but it is not obvious that it is a possibility.

Having the Preview on the mobile interface is just a joke. You can't see the Preview unless you scroll, because the on-screen keyboard is taking up quite a bit of the screen and the text entry box is taking up a lot of what is left. The Preview is slowing you down unless you go down and Disable it. The main reason it is a joke, though, is that the rest of the entry interface on mobile ensures that you are not going to want to type enough to have anything worth previewing.

[Walter Roberson]

If I maximize my screen, then the actual content of Questions, Answers, and Comments starts at 3 1/2 inches from the left, and extends to 8 1/4 inches from the left, with my display being 13 inches wide. That is 4 3/4 inches usefully occupied out of 13, or 36.5%. The same 4 3/4 inches is used if I narrow my window to 9 5/8 inches, with the flow of words being recalculated if I go any narrower. Therefore the waste of space is at least 50%. And using a wider window to be able to see more of material that would require a scroll-bar does not work: only 4 3/4 inch usable is shown at maximum. Waste waste waste!

[Walter Roberson]

When a Question is closed, it disappears from the Asked_by_id: list a few seconds later. For those of us who are acting as moderators, this can prevent us from looking to see what the user posted that was already closed, which might inform us on the action to take.

[dpb]

For comparison, if I maximized, the usable text fills from 6" to 13" (roughly) whereas the total screen display width is 20.75". That works out to <34%.

As I've noted before, the "Discover" ad (that I personally don't think needs or should be on the page at all) is a major culprit to the waste in that it is the only thing occupying all that real estate to the right of the question/answer/comment outer frame and it covers only the very topmost section of the page; all the rest below it for the life of a discussion is thus unavailable.

At least if TMW is adamant about keeping the ad, spread it over the width at the top below the header and let the frames then flow to the RH side of the page boundary. That would roughly double the usable fraction by itself.

ADDENDUM Or, put the ad at the bottom below the new "Answer" box if just absolutely think it must be there. But, still, the fact is it doesn't fit the page purpose.

[Walter Roberson]

The system just flagged some of my pure MATLAB code as possible spam :(

Possibly it noticed that I had answered a bunch of questions within a particular time -- e.g., about 8 of the 15 most recently active Questions. Those kinds of things happen for the active volunteers.

[Star Strider]

I rescued it, since I was following that thread. I had to ask Randy Souza to rescue some of mine if nobody encountered them or checked on them (by checking More > Flagged Content). Flag them or contact Randy to get the scourge removed. (I usually check ‘Flagged Content’ once per day, sometimes more often.)

As Image Analyst mentioned, those with some minimum number of RPs should be exempt from the filter, providing there is no way for the ‘evil ones’ to alias our accounts and post spam from them. However since higher and stronger fortresses create better archers and trebuchets, it’s only a matter of time until the spammers destroy MATLAB Answers with their pointless intrusions, if that is their intent.

Answer 11

[dpb]

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.

[Image Analyst]

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.

[Walter Roberson]

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.

[dpb]

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.

[Jan]

@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.

[dpb]

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.

[Kelly Kearney]

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.).

[Jan]

@Kelly: The strange "107862Answered" disappeared in my Firefox after a Ctrl-F5.

[dpb]

@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.

[Guillaume]

@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.

[per isakson]

I often search the string "hours ago", which confirms your point.

[Image Analyst]

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.

[dpb]

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.

[Adam]

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.

[dpb]

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".

Answer 12

[Jan]

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.

Answer 13

[dpb]

When a response is edited the link to that answer or comment is broken.

[Walter Roberson]

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.

[Image Analyst]

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.

[dpb]

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.

Answer 14

[Jan]

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?

Answer 15

[Thomas Koelen]

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.

[Jan]

@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.

[Thomas Koelen]

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.

[Jan]

Let's try: neither nor works (both are embedded in this line, and the strings are written using &ampamp; 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.