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Realpolitik help - dknemeyer   (May 30, 2010, 2:11 pm)
Mac or PC Sean?

[Reply]

Realpolitik help (Help & Suggestions) Sean2010 May 30, 02:14 pm
PC I think. It's a emachine with Windows XP.
Realpolitik help - Sean2010   (May 30, 2010, 2:10 pm)
How do I go about downloading and unzipping variants that didn't come with the initial realpolitik download?

[Reply]

Realpolitik help (Help & Suggestions) dknemeyer May 30, 02:11 pm
Mac or PC Sean?
Realpolitik help (Help & Suggestions) Sean2010 May 30, 02:14 pm
PC I think. It's a emachine with Windows XP.
Realpolitik help - dknemeyer   (May 28, 2010, 9:13 am)
Kind thanks for the reply Matthew. Mike Sims actually replied to me privately and pointed out an old forum thread that showed how to overcome the issues I was having. My Mac appeared to have it properly installed and loaded when in fact it was not yet fully installed as an application. The pointers also helped me figure out how to add new variants which I may not have been able to determine without it.

I am glad to be up and running. Smile

[Reply]

Realpolitik help (Help & Suggestions) Sean2010 May 30, 02:10 pm
How do I go about downloading and unzipping variants that didn't come with the initial realpolitik download?
Realpolitik help (Help & Suggestions) dknemeyer May 30, 02:11 pm
Mac or PC Sean?
Realpolitik help (Help & Suggestions) Sean2010 May 30, 02:14 pm
PC I think. It's a emachine with Windows XP.
Realpolitik help - Rocketship   (May 28, 2010, 1:23 am)
Hey,

I have Realpolitik running on my Mac without problems. What OS version are you using?

Matthew

[Reply]

Realpolitik help (Help & Suggestions) dknemeyer May 28, 09:13 am
Kind thanks for the reply Matthew. Mike Sims actually replied to me privately and pointed out an old forum thread that showed how to overcome the issues I was having. My Mac appeared to have it properly installed and loaded when in fact it was not yet fully installed as an application. The pointers also helped me figure out how to add new variants which I may not have been able to determine without it.

I am glad to be up and running. Smile
Realpolitik help (Help & Suggestions) Sean2010 May 30, 02:10 pm
How do I go about downloading and unzipping variants that didn't come with the initial realpolitik download?
Realpolitik help (Help & Suggestions) dknemeyer May 30, 02:11 pm
Mac or PC Sean?
Realpolitik help (Help & Suggestions) Sean2010 May 30, 02:14 pm
PC I think. It's a emachine with Windows XP.
The new forum look - sunchung   (May 27, 2010, 11:23 pm)
I think having the summary of the message also confuses things a bit. You only get a glimpse of the topic, and sometimes things can meander in a thread. My 2 cents (and by the way, I really appreciate the thoughts and efforts in improving the site) is if there's an infrequent visitor to the site, then they don't quite know what people are responding to.

If you want to include the summary of the topic, and have it display on the landing page, then why not the first post of that thread? And then if you showed what the number of responses are to that topic, then you can see which are the "hot topics" currently on the site.

Lastly, I think the other thing is I think the font may be too small...


Notice this, too...
With the concept of only the most recent post in a thread being shown, it is too easy to never see the older ones, unless you show them all.

E.g. I just posted 3 messages in this thread. But when I go to the home page now, my posts about the colors and the arrangement will never get seen, unless someone happens to deliberately go into that thread and read it intentionally.

By listing all the messages, yeah, this thread does appear to dominate Help & Suggestions today, but isn't that appropriate if it's really that active? If ppl want to see older inactive threads, you can scroll down and see them in the "Threads in this Topic" section.

Just brainstorming...

[Reply]

The new forum look - sunchung   (May 27, 2010, 11:17 pm)
I think a single line per topic, how many postings, and the date of the last post makes sense.

In terms of threaded versus flat (I think that's the term) I realize it's a personal preference. It's just that it's sometimes hard to follow the conversation if it splits out. Where as a flat structure makes sure that the conversation is a single one... There's a website that I've seen that actually has both options. If you go to www.dpreview.com and go to the "forum section" and then click on one of the topics, there's a toggle button at the top that allows you to switch the view.


Ok, so that is something we can change... I clicked thru how you said, and yes, "Variants vs Standard" fills approx 40% of the messages on the 1st page of the Community forum. So what would you rather see here, "Variants vs Standard" have one line? One line with an indicator of how many replies it had? Sort it by date of last post in the topic, I presume, right?

This comes down to taste. Some forums, I've seen it where popular posts will indeed fill your general view. On others, you just have one line per thread.

Try this...
Go into like you described, then click on "Variants vs Standard" (any one of them). Read the message if you like. Then scroll down. Toward the bottom, you see two columns...

1st column is an indented tree of the current thread, showing who all replied to who.

2nd column has all threads in the Community Forum. I presume a list like this column is how you'd prefer to see the initial list? This gives you a grand overview of every thread that has been posted in Community, but very little feel for "what's being talked about, today".

That's what the other view was designed to show you. Today, these issues are hot... sort of thing.

Thoughts?
-mike

[Reply]

The new forum look - dknemeyer   (May 27, 2010, 9:43 pm)
I think post volume matters. Traditionally DC has a very LOW post volume outside of the games themselves. Thus, if you only show the most recent single post of n topics you are going to have a small group of recent things and then a bunch of stale ones. If we assume the forums will remain lightly used into the foreseeable future, what we have now seems right.

On the other hand, in an active forum with lots of posts and diversity, it is far better to simply show the last post on each topic as Sun is mentioning.

Beyond that it is just personal preference. I'm not sure what mine is I suppose it changes on context. It sounds like Sun's is the single post/many topics. Both ways are valid in some absolute sense.

[Reply]

The new forum look - dknemeyer   (May 27, 2010, 9:37 pm)
It would take some testing. The key is lots of contrast; the optimal is near-white on near-black or vice-versa for readability, but you don't need to be that pure. Given the aesthetic that you've established here I might suggest making the grey darker, maybe quite a bit darker, and get the font as close to white without breaking your overall colour palette as possible. That should do it. The only thing to be aware of then is whether or not those changes clash with other font/backgrounds elsewhere on the site so it no longer seems coherent.

[Reply]

The new forum look - FuzzyLogic   (May 27, 2010, 9:02 pm)
Notice this, too...
With the concept of only the most recent post in a thread being shown, it is too easy to never see the older ones, unless you show them all.

E.g. I just posted 3 messages in this thread. But when I go to the home page now, my posts about the colors and the arrangement will never get seen, unless someone happens to deliberately go into that thread and read it intentionally.

By listing all the messages, yeah, this thread does appear to dominate Help & Suggestions today, but isn't that appropriate if it's really that active? If ppl want to see older inactive threads, you can scroll down and see them in the "Threads in this Topic" section.

Just brainstorming...

[Reply]

The new forum look (Help & Suggestions) dknemeyer May 27, 09:43 pm
I think post volume matters. Traditionally DC has a very LOW post volume outside of the games themselves. Thus, if you only show the most recent single post of n topics you are going to have a small group of recent things and then a bunch of stale ones. If we assume the forums will remain lightly used into the foreseeable future, what we have now seems right.

On the other hand, in an active forum with lots of posts and diversity, it is far better to simply show the last post on each topic as Sun is mentioning.

Beyond that it is just personal preference. I'm not sure what mine is I suppose it changes on context. It sounds like Sun's is the single post/many topics. Both ways are valid in some absolute sense.
The new forum look (Help & Suggestions) sunchung May 27, 11:23 pm
I think having the summary of the message also confuses things a bit. You only get a glimpse of the topic, and sometimes things can meander in a thread. My 2 cents (and by the way, I really appreciate the thoughts and efforts in improving the site) is if there's an infrequent visitor to the site, then they don't quite know what people are responding to.

If you want to include the summary of the topic, and have it display on the landing page, then why not the first post of that thread? And then if you showed what the number of responses are to that topic, then you can see which are the "hot topics" currently on the site.

Lastly, I think the other thing is I think the font may be too small...


Notice this, too...
With the concept of only the most recent post in a thread being shown, it is too easy to never see the older ones, unless you show them all.

E.g. I just posted 3 messages in this thread. But when I go to the home page now, my posts about the colors and the arrangement will never get seen, unless someone happens to deliberately go into that thread and read it intentionally.

By listing all the messages, yeah, this thread does appear to dominate Help & Suggestions today, but isn't that appropriate if it's really that active? If ppl want to see older inactive threads, you can scroll down and see them in the "Threads in this Topic" section.

Just brainstorming...

The new forum look - FuzzyLogic   (May 27, 2010, 8:58 pm)
Since we have the picture frame look what would ppl think if we went to a canvas-colored background, and black text? A lighter canvas than we have on the left side, in the currently dark frame?

Or is it as simple as a whiter font color? The peach is hard to read on the gray, agreed. It's easier to read on the charcoal.

[Reply]

The new forum look (Help & Suggestions) dknemeyer May 27, 09:37 pm
It would take some testing. The key is lots of contrast; the optimal is near-white on near-black or vice-versa for readability, but you don't need to be that pure. Given the aesthetic that you've established here I might suggest making the grey darker, maybe quite a bit darker, and get the font as close to white without breaking your overall colour palette as possible. That should do it. The only thing to be aware of then is whether or not those changes clash with other font/backgrounds elsewhere on the site so it no longer seems coherent.
The new forum look - FuzzyLogic   (May 27, 2010, 8:53 pm)
Ok, so that is something we can change... I clicked thru how you said, and yes, "Variants vs Standard" fills approx 40% of the messages on the 1st page of the Community forum. So what would you rather see here, "Variants vs Standard" have one line? One line with an indicator of how many replies it had? Sort it by date of last post in the topic, I presume, right?

This comes down to taste. Some forums, I've seen it where popular posts will indeed fill your general view. On others, you just have one line per thread.

Try this...
Go into like you described, then click on "Variants vs Standard" (any one of them). Read the message if you like. Then scroll down. Toward the bottom, you see two columns...

1st column is an indented tree of the current thread, showing who all replied to who.

2nd column has all threads in the Community Forum. I presume a list like this column is how you'd prefer to see the initial list? This gives you a grand overview of every thread that has been posted in Community, but very little feel for "what's being talked about, today".

That's what the other view was designed to show you. Today, these issues are hot... sort of thing.

Thoughts?
-mike

[Reply]

The new forum look (Help & Suggestions) FuzzyLogic May 27, 09:02 pm
Notice this, too...
With the concept of only the most recent post in a thread being shown, it is too easy to never see the older ones, unless you show them all.

E.g. I just posted 3 messages in this thread. But when I go to the home page now, my posts about the colors and the arrangement will never get seen, unless someone happens to deliberately go into that thread and read it intentionally.

By listing all the messages, yeah, this thread does appear to dominate Help & Suggestions today, but isn't that appropriate if it's really that active? If ppl want to see older inactive threads, you can scroll down and see them in the "Threads in this Topic" section.

Just brainstorming...
The new forum look (Help & Suggestions) dknemeyer May 27, 09:43 pm
I think post volume matters. Traditionally DC has a very LOW post volume outside of the games themselves. Thus, if you only show the most recent single post of n topics you are going to have a small group of recent things and then a bunch of stale ones. If we assume the forums will remain lightly used into the foreseeable future, what we have now seems right.

On the other hand, in an active forum with lots of posts and diversity, it is far better to simply show the last post on each topic as Sun is mentioning.

Beyond that it is just personal preference. I'm not sure what mine is I suppose it changes on context. It sounds like Sun's is the single post/many topics. Both ways are valid in some absolute sense.
The new forum look (Help & Suggestions) sunchung May 27, 11:23 pm
I think having the summary of the message also confuses things a bit. You only get a glimpse of the topic, and sometimes things can meander in a thread. My 2 cents (and by the way, I really appreciate the thoughts and efforts in improving the site) is if there's an infrequent visitor to the site, then they don't quite know what people are responding to.

If you want to include the summary of the topic, and have it display on the landing page, then why not the first post of that thread? And then if you showed what the number of responses are to that topic, then you can see which are the "hot topics" currently on the site.

Lastly, I think the other thing is I think the font may be too small...


Notice this, too...
With the concept of only the most recent post in a thread being shown, it is too easy to never see the older ones, unless you show them all.

E.g. I just posted 3 messages in this thread. But when I go to the home page now, my posts about the colors and the arrangement will never get seen, unless someone happens to deliberately go into that thread and read it intentionally.

By listing all the messages, yeah, this thread does appear to dominate Help & Suggestions today, but isn't that appropriate if it's really that active? If ppl want to see older inactive threads, you can scroll down and see them in the "Threads in this Topic" section.

Just brainstorming...

The new forum look (Help & Suggestions) sunchung May 27, 11:17 pm
I think a single line per topic, how many postings, and the date of the last post makes sense.

In terms of threaded versus flat (I think that's the term) I realize it's a personal preference. It's just that it's sometimes hard to follow the conversation if it splits out. Where as a flat structure makes sure that the conversation is a single one... There's a website that I've seen that actually has both options. If you go to www.dpreview.com and go to the "forum section" and then click on one of the topics, there's a toggle button at the top that allows you to switch the view.


Ok, so that is something we can change... I clicked thru how you said, and yes, "Variants vs Standard" fills approx 40% of the messages on the 1st page of the Community forum. So what would you rather see here, "Variants vs Standard" have one line? One line with an indicator of how many replies it had? Sort it by date of last post in the topic, I presume, right?

This comes down to taste. Some forums, I've seen it where popular posts will indeed fill your general view. On others, you just have one line per thread.

Try this...
Go into like you described, then click on "Variants vs Standard" (any one of them). Read the message if you like. Then scroll down. Toward the bottom, you see two columns...

1st column is an indented tree of the current thread, showing who all replied to who.

2nd column has all threads in the Community Forum. I presume a list like this column is how you'd prefer to see the initial list? This gives you a grand overview of every thread that has been posted in Community, but very little feel for "what's being talked about, today".

That's what the other view was designed to show you. Today, these issues are hot... sort of thing.

Thoughts?
-mike

The new forum look - sunchung   (May 27, 2010, 6:54 pm)
The issue I've been having with the threads is that it's embedded versus "flat". On one hand, you can see who is responding to whom, but it forces you to click through each message in order to see the entire conversation. I prefer the vBullentin style where it's a flat organization and you can see what everyone else has written.

For instance, when I click on "Community" and then "Category Tree", and then under "General" select a topic, I get a long list of new messages that all relate to the same topic. Instead, I would prefer to see all of the topics themselves. If there's a fast moving topic, then that would dominate the view. Right now, "variants vs standard" takes up 1/2 of the first page. It makes the other topics hidden.

[Reply]

The new forum look (Help & Suggestions) FuzzyLogic May 27, 08:53 pm
Ok, so that is something we can change... I clicked thru how you said, and yes, "Variants vs Standard" fills approx 40% of the messages on the 1st page of the Community forum. So what would you rather see here, "Variants vs Standard" have one line? One line with an indicator of how many replies it had? Sort it by date of last post in the topic, I presume, right?

This comes down to taste. Some forums, I've seen it where popular posts will indeed fill your general view. On others, you just have one line per thread.

Try this...
Go into like you described, then click on "Variants vs Standard" (any one of them). Read the message if you like. Then scroll down. Toward the bottom, you see two columns...

1st column is an indented tree of the current thread, showing who all replied to who.

2nd column has all threads in the Community Forum. I presume a list like this column is how you'd prefer to see the initial list? This gives you a grand overview of every thread that has been posted in Community, but very little feel for "what's being talked about, today".

That's what the other view was designed to show you. Today, these issues are hot... sort of thing.

Thoughts?
-mike
The new forum look (Help & Suggestions) FuzzyLogic May 27, 09:02 pm
Notice this, too...
With the concept of only the most recent post in a thread being shown, it is too easy to never see the older ones, unless you show them all.

E.g. I just posted 3 messages in this thread. But when I go to the home page now, my posts about the colors and the arrangement will never get seen, unless someone happens to deliberately go into that thread and read it intentionally.

By listing all the messages, yeah, this thread does appear to dominate Help & Suggestions today, but isn't that appropriate if it's really that active? If ppl want to see older inactive threads, you can scroll down and see them in the "Threads in this Topic" section.

Just brainstorming...
The new forum look (Help & Suggestions) dknemeyer May 27, 09:43 pm
I think post volume matters. Traditionally DC has a very LOW post volume outside of the games themselves. Thus, if you only show the most recent single post of n topics you are going to have a small group of recent things and then a bunch of stale ones. If we assume the forums will remain lightly used into the foreseeable future, what we have now seems right.

On the other hand, in an active forum with lots of posts and diversity, it is far better to simply show the last post on each topic as Sun is mentioning.

Beyond that it is just personal preference. I'm not sure what mine is I suppose it changes on context. It sounds like Sun's is the single post/many topics. Both ways are valid in some absolute sense.
The new forum look (Help & Suggestions) sunchung May 27, 11:23 pm
I think having the summary of the message also confuses things a bit. You only get a glimpse of the topic, and sometimes things can meander in a thread. My 2 cents (and by the way, I really appreciate the thoughts and efforts in improving the site) is if there's an infrequent visitor to the site, then they don't quite know what people are responding to.

If you want to include the summary of the topic, and have it display on the landing page, then why not the first post of that thread? And then if you showed what the number of responses are to that topic, then you can see which are the "hot topics" currently on the site.

Lastly, I think the other thing is I think the font may be too small...


Notice this, too...
With the concept of only the most recent post in a thread being shown, it is too easy to never see the older ones, unless you show them all.

E.g. I just posted 3 messages in this thread. But when I go to the home page now, my posts about the colors and the arrangement will never get seen, unless someone happens to deliberately go into that thread and read it intentionally.

By listing all the messages, yeah, this thread does appear to dominate Help & Suggestions today, but isn't that appropriate if it's really that active? If ppl want to see older inactive threads, you can scroll down and see them in the "Threads in this Topic" section.

Just brainstorming...

The new forum look (Help & Suggestions) sunchung May 27, 11:17 pm
I think a single line per topic, how many postings, and the date of the last post makes sense.

In terms of threaded versus flat (I think that's the term) I realize it's a personal preference. It's just that it's sometimes hard to follow the conversation if it splits out. Where as a flat structure makes sure that the conversation is a single one... There's a website that I've seen that actually has both options. If you go to www.dpreview.com and go to the "forum section" and then click on one of the topics, there's a toggle button at the top that allows you to switch the view.


Ok, so that is something we can change... I clicked thru how you said, and yes, "Variants vs Standard" fills approx 40% of the messages on the 1st page of the Community forum. So what would you rather see here, "Variants vs Standard" have one line? One line with an indicator of how many replies it had? Sort it by date of last post in the topic, I presume, right?

This comes down to taste. Some forums, I've seen it where popular posts will indeed fill your general view. On others, you just have one line per thread.

Try this...
Go into like you described, then click on "Variants vs Standard" (any one of them). Read the message if you like. Then scroll down. Toward the bottom, you see two columns...

1st column is an indented tree of the current thread, showing who all replied to who.

2nd column has all threads in the Community Forum. I presume a list like this column is how you'd prefer to see the initial list? This gives you a grand overview of every thread that has been posted in Community, but very little feel for "what's being talked about, today".

That's what the other view was designed to show you. Today, these issues are hot... sort of thing.

Thoughts?
-mike

The new forum look - dknemeyer   (May 27, 2010, 9:09 am)
The main issue absolutely is the contrast. Peach on grey just ain't easy to read.

[Reply]

The new forum look (Help & Suggestions) FuzzyLogic May 27, 08:58 pm
Since we have the picture frame look what would ppl think if we went to a canvas-colored background, and black text? A lighter canvas than we have on the left side, in the currently dark frame?

Or is it as simple as a whiter font color? The peach is hard to read on the gray, agreed. It's easier to read on the charcoal.
The new forum look (Help & Suggestions) dknemeyer May 27, 09:37 pm
It would take some testing. The key is lots of contrast; the optimal is near-white on near-black or vice-versa for readability, but you don't need to be that pure. Given the aesthetic that you've established here I might suggest making the grey darker, maybe quite a bit darker, and get the font as close to white without breaking your overall colour palette as possible. That should do it. The only thing to be aware of then is whether or not those changes clash with other font/backgrounds elsewhere on the site so it no longer seems coherent.
The new forum look - FuzzyLogic   (May 26, 2010, 9:17 pm)
Hi Charles,
I have to wonder if it's harder to read w the serif font we have now vs the (boring?) verdana we had before. Verdana seems to be the most popular for easy-on-the-eyes reading.

Threads by default, including all replies...

Currently you can go into the Category Tree, pick a topic, and then it'll show you all the (first 20?) recent messages in that topic. You can switch the view then from Compact to Brief to Full, to show the entire messages.

You want to what, be able to read one whole thread that way?

Is a thread, then, "this message" and "replies to it" and "replies to those" or is it also including walking up the tree, perhaps to the original post?

Open to any other suggestions...

[Reply]

The new forum look (Help & Suggestions) dknemeyer May 27, 09:09 am
The main issue absolutely is the contrast. Peach on grey just ain't easy to read.
The new forum look (Help & Suggestions) FuzzyLogic May 27, 08:58 pm
Since we have the picture frame look what would ppl think if we went to a canvas-colored background, and black text? A lighter canvas than we have on the left side, in the currently dark frame?

Or is it as simple as a whiter font color? The peach is hard to read on the gray, agreed. It's easier to read on the charcoal.
The new forum look (Help & Suggestions) dknemeyer May 27, 09:37 pm
It would take some testing. The key is lots of contrast; the optimal is near-white on near-black or vice-versa for readability, but you don't need to be that pure. Given the aesthetic that you've established here I might suggest making the grey darker, maybe quite a bit darker, and get the font as close to white without breaking your overall colour palette as possible. That should do it. The only thing to be aware of then is whether or not those changes clash with other font/backgrounds elsewhere on the site so it no longer seems coherent.
The new forum look (Help & Suggestions) sunchung May 27, 06:54 pm
The issue I've been having with the threads is that it's embedded versus "flat". On one hand, you can see who is responding to whom, but it forces you to click through each message in order to see the entire conversation. I prefer the vBullentin style where it's a flat organization and you can see what everyone else has written.

For instance, when I click on "Community" and then "Category Tree", and then under "General" select a topic, I get a long list of new messages that all relate to the same topic. Instead, I would prefer to see all of the topics themselves. If there's a fast moving topic, then that would dominate the view. Right now, "variants vs standard" takes up 1/2 of the first page. It makes the other topics hidden.
The new forum look (Help & Suggestions) FuzzyLogic May 27, 08:53 pm
Ok, so that is something we can change... I clicked thru how you said, and yes, "Variants vs Standard" fills approx 40% of the messages on the 1st page of the Community forum. So what would you rather see here, "Variants vs Standard" have one line? One line with an indicator of how many replies it had? Sort it by date of last post in the topic, I presume, right?

This comes down to taste. Some forums, I've seen it where popular posts will indeed fill your general view. On others, you just have one line per thread.

Try this...
Go into like you described, then click on "Variants vs Standard" (any one of them). Read the message if you like. Then scroll down. Toward the bottom, you see two columns...

1st column is an indented tree of the current thread, showing who all replied to who.

2nd column has all threads in the Community Forum. I presume a list like this column is how you'd prefer to see the initial list? This gives you a grand overview of every thread that has been posted in Community, but very little feel for "what's being talked about, today".

That's what the other view was designed to show you. Today, these issues are hot... sort of thing.

Thoughts?
-mike
The new forum look (Help & Suggestions) FuzzyLogic May 27, 09:02 pm
Notice this, too...
With the concept of only the most recent post in a thread being shown, it is too easy to never see the older ones, unless you show them all.

E.g. I just posted 3 messages in this thread. But when I go to the home page now, my posts about the colors and the arrangement will never get seen, unless someone happens to deliberately go into that thread and read it intentionally.

By listing all the messages, yeah, this thread does appear to dominate Help & Suggestions today, but isn't that appropriate if it's really that active? If ppl want to see older inactive threads, you can scroll down and see them in the "Threads in this Topic" section.

Just brainstorming...
The new forum look (Help & Suggestions) dknemeyer May 27, 09:43 pm
I think post volume matters. Traditionally DC has a very LOW post volume outside of the games themselves. Thus, if you only show the most recent single post of n topics you are going to have a small group of recent things and then a bunch of stale ones. If we assume the forums will remain lightly used into the foreseeable future, what we have now seems right.

On the other hand, in an active forum with lots of posts and diversity, it is far better to simply show the last post on each topic as Sun is mentioning.

Beyond that it is just personal preference. I'm not sure what mine is I suppose it changes on context. It sounds like Sun's is the single post/many topics. Both ways are valid in some absolute sense.
The new forum look (Help & Suggestions) sunchung May 27, 11:23 pm
I think having the summary of the message also confuses things a bit. You only get a glimpse of the topic, and sometimes things can meander in a thread. My 2 cents (and by the way, I really appreciate the thoughts and efforts in improving the site) is if there's an infrequent visitor to the site, then they don't quite know what people are responding to.

If you want to include the summary of the topic, and have it display on the landing page, then why not the first post of that thread? And then if you showed what the number of responses are to that topic, then you can see which are the "hot topics" currently on the site.

Lastly, I think the other thing is I think the font may be too small...


Notice this, too...
With the concept of only the most recent post in a thread being shown, it is too easy to never see the older ones, unless you show them all.

E.g. I just posted 3 messages in this thread. But when I go to the home page now, my posts about the colors and the arrangement will never get seen, unless someone happens to deliberately go into that thread and read it intentionally.

By listing all the messages, yeah, this thread does appear to dominate Help & Suggestions today, but isn't that appropriate if it's really that active? If ppl want to see older inactive threads, you can scroll down and see them in the "Threads in this Topic" section.

Just brainstorming...

The new forum look (Help & Suggestions) sunchung May 27, 11:17 pm
I think a single line per topic, how many postings, and the date of the last post makes sense.

In terms of threaded versus flat (I think that's the term) I realize it's a personal preference. It's just that it's sometimes hard to follow the conversation if it splits out. Where as a flat structure makes sure that the conversation is a single one... There's a website that I've seen that actually has both options. If you go to www.dpreview.com and go to the "forum section" and then click on one of the topics, there's a toggle button at the top that allows you to switch the view.


Ok, so that is something we can change... I clicked thru how you said, and yes, "Variants vs Standard" fills approx 40% of the messages on the 1st page of the Community forum. So what would you rather see here, "Variants vs Standard" have one line? One line with an indicator of how many replies it had? Sort it by date of last post in the topic, I presume, right?

This comes down to taste. Some forums, I've seen it where popular posts will indeed fill your general view. On others, you just have one line per thread.

Try this...
Go into like you described, then click on "Variants vs Standard" (any one of them). Read the message if you like. Then scroll down. Toward the bottom, you see two columns...

1st column is an indented tree of the current thread, showing who all replied to who.

2nd column has all threads in the Community Forum. I presume a list like this column is how you'd prefer to see the initial list? This gives you a grand overview of every thread that has been posted in Community, but very little feel for "what's being talked about, today".

That's what the other view was designed to show you. Today, these issues are hot... sort of thing.

Thoughts?
-mike

Realpolitik help - dknemeyer   (May 26, 2010, 3:30 pm)
Just refreshing this - I'm trying to get Realpolitik installed on my Mac but it keeps throwing errors and not installing. Any Mac Realpolitik users out there who might be able to help? I'm wanting to start GM games and support DC but not having RP installed makes it a non-starter. Kind thanks in advance.

[Reply]

Realpolitik help (Help & Suggestions) Rocketship May 28, 01:23 am
Hey,

I have Realpolitik running on my Mac without problems. What OS version are you using?

Matthew
Realpolitik help (Help & Suggestions) dknemeyer May 28, 09:13 am
Kind thanks for the reply Matthew. Mike Sims actually replied to me privately and pointed out an old forum thread that showed how to overcome the issues I was having. My Mac appeared to have it properly installed and loaded when in fact it was not yet fully installed as an application. The pointers also helped me figure out how to add new variants which I may not have been able to determine without it.

I am glad to be up and running. Smile
Realpolitik help (Help & Suggestions) Sean2010 May 30, 02:10 pm
How do I go about downloading and unzipping variants that didn't come with the initial realpolitik download?
Realpolitik help (Help & Suggestions) dknemeyer May 30, 02:11 pm
Mac or PC Sean?
Realpolitik help (Help & Suggestions) Sean2010 May 30, 02:14 pm
PC I think. It's a emachine with Windows XP.
The new forum look - charlesf   (May 20, 2010, 5:58 pm)
Apparently the site has received this overhaul a whole month ago. I've only noticed this now.

I must confess that the new forum isn't working for me. I find the way individual messages are presented highly confusing and it makes it difficult to follow any conversation - unless I'm missing something.

Also, I find light-on-dark text less easy on the eye than the previous font and colour scheme.

I wish I could give more positive feedback as I am grateful what work you guys put into this site. But I'm afraid I'm feeling nostalgic about the previous message board, despite having been a DC member for less than a year.

To some things up, I'd like to see:

- a black-on-light-colour layout
- threads by default including all replies

[Reply]

The new forum look (Help & Suggestions) FuzzyLogic May 26, 09:17 pm
Hi Charles,
I have to wonder if it's harder to read w the serif font we have now vs the (boring?) verdana we had before. Verdana seems to be the most popular for easy-on-the-eyes reading.

Threads by default, including all replies...

Currently you can go into the Category Tree, pick a topic, and then it'll show you all the (first 20?) recent messages in that topic. You can switch the view then from Compact to Brief to Full, to show the entire messages.

You want to what, be able to read one whole thread that way?

Is a thread, then, "this message" and "replies to it" and "replies to those" or is it also including walking up the tree, perhaps to the original post?

Open to any other suggestions...
The new forum look (Help & Suggestions) dknemeyer May 27, 09:09 am
The main issue absolutely is the contrast. Peach on grey just ain't easy to read.
The new forum look (Help & Suggestions) FuzzyLogic May 27, 08:58 pm
Since we have the picture frame look what would ppl think if we went to a canvas-colored background, and black text? A lighter canvas than we have on the left side, in the currently dark frame?

Or is it as simple as a whiter font color? The peach is hard to read on the gray, agreed. It's easier to read on the charcoal.
The new forum look (Help & Suggestions) dknemeyer May 27, 09:37 pm
It would take some testing. The key is lots of contrast; the optimal is near-white on near-black or vice-versa for readability, but you don't need to be that pure. Given the aesthetic that you've established here I might suggest making the grey darker, maybe quite a bit darker, and get the font as close to white without breaking your overall colour palette as possible. That should do it. The only thing to be aware of then is whether or not those changes clash with other font/backgrounds elsewhere on the site so it no longer seems coherent.
The new forum look (Help & Suggestions) sunchung May 27, 06:54 pm
The issue I've been having with the threads is that it's embedded versus "flat". On one hand, you can see who is responding to whom, but it forces you to click through each message in order to see the entire conversation. I prefer the vBullentin style where it's a flat organization and you can see what everyone else has written.

For instance, when I click on "Community" and then "Category Tree", and then under "General" select a topic, I get a long list of new messages that all relate to the same topic. Instead, I would prefer to see all of the topics themselves. If there's a fast moving topic, then that would dominate the view. Right now, "variants vs standard" takes up 1/2 of the first page. It makes the other topics hidden.
The new forum look (Help & Suggestions) FuzzyLogic May 27, 08:53 pm
Ok, so that is something we can change... I clicked thru how you said, and yes, "Variants vs Standard" fills approx 40% of the messages on the 1st page of the Community forum. So what would you rather see here, "Variants vs Standard" have one line? One line with an indicator of how many replies it had? Sort it by date of last post in the topic, I presume, right?

This comes down to taste. Some forums, I've seen it where popular posts will indeed fill your general view. On others, you just have one line per thread.

Try this...
Go into like you described, then click on "Variants vs Standard" (any one of them). Read the message if you like. Then scroll down. Toward the bottom, you see two columns...

1st column is an indented tree of the current thread, showing who all replied to who.

2nd column has all threads in the Community Forum. I presume a list like this column is how you'd prefer to see the initial list? This gives you a grand overview of every thread that has been posted in Community, but very little feel for "what's being talked about, today".

That's what the other view was designed to show you. Today, these issues are hot... sort of thing.

Thoughts?
-mike
The new forum look (Help & Suggestions) FuzzyLogic May 27, 09:02 pm
Notice this, too...
With the concept of only the most recent post in a thread being shown, it is too easy to never see the older ones, unless you show them all.

E.g. I just posted 3 messages in this thread. But when I go to the home page now, my posts about the colors and the arrangement will never get seen, unless someone happens to deliberately go into that thread and read it intentionally.

By listing all the messages, yeah, this thread does appear to dominate Help & Suggestions today, but isn't that appropriate if it's really that active? If ppl want to see older inactive threads, you can scroll down and see them in the "Threads in this Topic" section.

Just brainstorming...
The new forum look (Help & Suggestions) dknemeyer May 27, 09:43 pm
I think post volume matters. Traditionally DC has a very LOW post volume outside of the games themselves. Thus, if you only show the most recent single post of n topics you are going to have a small group of recent things and then a bunch of stale ones. If we assume the forums will remain lightly used into the foreseeable future, what we have now seems right.

On the other hand, in an active forum with lots of posts and diversity, it is far better to simply show the last post on each topic as Sun is mentioning.

Beyond that it is just personal preference. I'm not sure what mine is I suppose it changes on context. It sounds like Sun's is the single post/many topics. Both ways are valid in some absolute sense.
The new forum look (Help & Suggestions) sunchung May 27, 11:23 pm
I think having the summary of the message also confuses things a bit. You only get a glimpse of the topic, and sometimes things can meander in a thread. My 2 cents (and by the way, I really appreciate the thoughts and efforts in improving the site) is if there's an infrequent visitor to the site, then they don't quite know what people are responding to.

If you want to include the summary of the topic, and have it display on the landing page, then why not the first post of that thread? And then if you showed what the number of responses are to that topic, then you can see which are the "hot topics" currently on the site.

Lastly, I think the other thing is I think the font may be too small...


Notice this, too...
With the concept of only the most recent post in a thread being shown, it is too easy to never see the older ones, unless you show them all.

E.g. I just posted 3 messages in this thread. But when I go to the home page now, my posts about the colors and the arrangement will never get seen, unless someone happens to deliberately go into that thread and read it intentionally.

By listing all the messages, yeah, this thread does appear to dominate Help & Suggestions today, but isn't that appropriate if it's really that active? If ppl want to see older inactive threads, you can scroll down and see them in the "Threads in this Topic" section.

Just brainstorming...

The new forum look (Help & Suggestions) sunchung May 27, 11:17 pm
I think a single line per topic, how many postings, and the date of the last post makes sense.

In terms of threaded versus flat (I think that's the term) I realize it's a personal preference. It's just that it's sometimes hard to follow the conversation if it splits out. Where as a flat structure makes sure that the conversation is a single one... There's a website that I've seen that actually has both options. If you go to www.dpreview.com and go to the "forum section" and then click on one of the topics, there's a toggle button at the top that allows you to switch the view.


Ok, so that is something we can change... I clicked thru how you said, and yes, "Variants vs Standard" fills approx 40% of the messages on the 1st page of the Community forum. So what would you rather see here, "Variants vs Standard" have one line? One line with an indicator of how many replies it had? Sort it by date of last post in the topic, I presume, right?

This comes down to taste. Some forums, I've seen it where popular posts will indeed fill your general view. On others, you just have one line per thread.

Try this...
Go into like you described, then click on "Variants vs Standard" (any one of them). Read the message if you like. Then scroll down. Toward the bottom, you see two columns...

1st column is an indented tree of the current thread, showing who all replied to who.

2nd column has all threads in the Community Forum. I presume a list like this column is how you'd prefer to see the initial list? This gives you a grand overview of every thread that has been posted in Community, but very little feel for "what's being talked about, today".

That's what the other view was designed to show you. Today, these issues are hot... sort of thing.

Thoughts?
-mike

Realpolitik help - garry.bledsoe   (May 06, 2010, 8:58 am)
Dirk,
Feel free to contact me with the issue you are having. I had some problems when I first tried to install it too but I use a Mac for all my RP stuff now.

Garry

[Reply]

Realpolitik help - dknemeyer   (May 05, 2010, 6:09 pm)
Hi Folks,

I just installed Realpolitik on my Mac but it doesn't seem to be working. It tries to find all of the variant files but can't find any of them - including Standard - and then crashes. Any of the experts here have experience with the Mac client?

Thanks!

Dirk

[Reply]

Realpolitik help (Help & Suggestions) garry.bledsoe May 06, 08:58 am
Dirk,
Feel free to contact me with the issue you are having. I had some problems when I first tried to install it too but I use a Mac for all my RP stuff now.

Garry
Realpolitik help (Help & Suggestions) dknemeyer May 26, 03:30 pm
Just refreshing this - I'm trying to get Realpolitik installed on my Mac but it keeps throwing errors and not installing. Any Mac Realpolitik users out there who might be able to help? I'm wanting to start GM games and support DC but not having RP installed makes it a non-starter. Kind thanks in advance.
Realpolitik help (Help & Suggestions) Rocketship May 28, 01:23 am
Hey,

I have Realpolitik running on my Mac without problems. What OS version are you using?

Matthew
Realpolitik help (Help & Suggestions) dknemeyer May 28, 09:13 am
Kind thanks for the reply Matthew. Mike Sims actually replied to me privately and pointed out an old forum thread that showed how to overcome the issues I was having. My Mac appeared to have it properly installed and loaded when in fact it was not yet fully installed as an application. The pointers also helped me figure out how to add new variants which I may not have been able to determine without it.

I am glad to be up and running. Smile
Realpolitik help (Help & Suggestions) Sean2010 May 30, 02:10 pm
How do I go about downloading and unzipping variants that didn't come with the initial realpolitik download?
Realpolitik help (Help & Suggestions) dknemeyer May 30, 02:11 pm
Mac or PC Sean?
Realpolitik help (Help & Suggestions) Sean2010 May 30, 02:14 pm
PC I think. It's a emachine with Windows XP.
Link from adjudications page - FuzzyLogic   (Apr 21, 2010, 9:18 am)
You got it - should have some quick links across the top now to take you to whichever tools you need for the game. (You're not the first to request this!)

[Reply]

Link from adjudications page - Douglas_E_Fresh   (Apr 21, 2010, 8:42 am)
The game page cannot currently be accessed from the adjudications page (despite being coloured up like a link)
It would be mighty convenient to be able to go to the game page in one click rather than about 3 Smile

[Reply]

Link from adjudications page (Help & Suggestions) FuzzyLogic Apr 21, 09:18 am
You got it - should have some quick links across the top now to take you to whichever tools you need for the game. (You're not the first to request this!)
A new look for DC! - FuzzyLogic   (Apr 15, 2010, 2:44 pm)
Hey folks, it's finally here. After two months of work by Fredrik, Garry, Jason, Dirk, and myself, and testing by Jerry and Jorge, we're happy to present you with a fresh new Diplomaticcorp!

A few changes are fairly obvious, most notably: The new appearance. Hopefully something a little warmer and "diplomatic" in the look and feel of the site. The old having been largely unfinished since we went live on it 3 years ago, we hoped to tie everything together with a rich themed ambiance.

But the real changes this spring have come on the interworkings of the dc site...

All the things you're used to finding here are still here - the Open Games, your Profile, the Hall of Games, the Variant Statistics. But what we have now is a fundamentally new messaging system. Since migrating from the Yahoo Groups back in the day, we've never really felt comfortable w the PHPBB installation we had. It got the job done of allowing us to track the explosion of games that we had, but it lacked the community feel and overall experience we want to foster. It had separate logins, separate theme, heck, it felt like an entirely disconnected site. Really, it was.

Now the DC messaging system is built from the ground up as an integral part of dc. All the old posts are migrated over, so your old content is still here - but going forward we have many new benefits:

* Single login!
This one is key, with the forum no longer having a separate login to be able to post or reply to messages. Now when you come to dc, whether you log in each time or use the Remember Me cookie, you can dive right into posts with a single click.

* Subscriptions!
One of the greatest features of the old Yahoo Group was the Daily Digest subscription feature. PHPBB didn't have anything close, so subscriptions died off. Now, you can pick - each forum individually, to receive copies of each new post, or a daily or weekly summary, just like in the old days. Reply to individual posts from your email, and DC can come to you. This should really help our users who cannot get to the site often due to playing from work where gaming sites aren't allowed.

Want to know when someone announces an open variant? Just subscribe to the Open Games forum. Set up your subscriptions under Resources -- My Profile, then Subscriptions.

* Integrated content!
We can now bridge forum content to other parts of the site, without requiring the framed structure of the old dc.

These are just a few of the key differences - There are many more, so take a moment to look around, explore the new forums, upload an Avatar, and set up any subscriptions that might help you.

Be sure to bring up any ideas or suggestions here, in the Help & Suggestions forum.

Enjoy!
-mike

[Reply]

A new look for DC! (Help & Suggestions) Dudemaster Jul 22, 12:30 pm
Hello! While I am not the most regular of visitors and this is a fairly old topic, here are my 2 recommendations (this is a partial democracy after all!):

1. This is important. The logo of the website needs to be remade. Now, I am not an artist of any sort, but if there are any on this website, why not put up a message on the front page for them to see? The logo is fine and its size fits in just fine with the [excellent] website design, but it is terribly pixellated and the letters cannot be made out. Also, it is not too distinctive to make a visitor think every time he/she sees the logo 'Why, this must be about Diplomaticcorp!' So for those reasons, while a new logo is not urgent by any means, why not look into it? There is nothing to lose!

2. [minor] On the front page, on both Google Chrome and the Opera browser (maybe others, I don't know) the [non-HTML] line break has the writing 'DC is undergoing some renovations - please post any comments or ideas in the Help & Suggestions forum.' over it while the writing should probably be above the line break. If this could be fixed, that would be great. It's not of big importance anyway, although I wouldn't call it nitpicking either.

Regardless of these fairly minor annoyances, if you will, the website looks a million times better than the old website. There is now a proper, fully existent 'House style' (a term used to denote consistency in the layout of a website) and the website seems much better overall and also easier to use.
Congratulations!

-- DM
A new look for DC! (Help & Suggestions) FuzzyLogic Jul 27, 08:02 am
1. The Logo is always up for reconsideration if there are any graphic artists out there who can help out, come find us!

2. No prob, this should be fixed. Moved it up one line. Was just the wrapped (last few words) part going too low on the page? On my screen it was fitting fine unless I sized the screen down too narrow.
Problem changing Rows per Page in Forum - bielf11   (Apr 15, 2010, 10:25 am)
Works fine now. Rows per page is sticky when switching between forums.Just one minor thing: when 100 rows is selected the field showing the number has only room for 2 digits and comes up as 10. When you click on it, it shows 100.

Frank

2010/4/15 <help(at)diplomaticcorp.com>

Poobaloo replied to your post 15608 in the Diplomaticcorp forums. The reply was...Rows Per Page should work ok now, and it should keep your setting for the duration of your visit. Pls retest to make sure it works as it should!
Read or reply to this post online.You can also reply to this post via email. If you do, be sure to leave the [post:15618] in the subject line so your message is routed to the appropriate forum.
You received this message because you opted to be notified if someone replied to a post you made at diplomaticcorp.com. If you do not wish to receive future notices of replies, you may disable notifications for this post or turn off reply notifications entirely in your profile. If you are unable to discontinue undesired messages, please notify feedback(at)diplomaticcorp.com.

[Reply]

Problem changing Rows per Page in Forum - FuzzyLogic   (Apr 15, 2010, 10:19 am)
Rows Per Page should work ok now, and it should keep your setting for the duration of your visit. Pls retest to make sure it works as it should!

[Reply]

Problem changing Rows per Page in Forum (Help & Suggestions) bielf11 Apr 15, 10:25 am
Works fine now. Rows per page is sticky when switching between forums.Just one minor thing: when 100 rows is selected the field showing the number has only room for 2 digits and comes up as 10. When you click on it, it shows 100.

Frank

2010/4/15 <help(at)diplomaticcorp.com>

Poobaloo replied to your post 15608 in the Diplomaticcorp forums. The reply was...Rows Per Page should work ok now, and it should keep your setting for the duration of your visit. Pls retest to make sure it works as it should!
Read or reply to this post online.You can also reply to this post via email. If you do, be sure to leave the [post:15618] in the subject line so your message is routed to the appropriate forum.
You received this message because you opted to be notified if someone replied to a post you made at diplomaticcorp.com. If you do not wish to receive future notices of replies, you may disable notifications for this post or turn off reply notifications entirely in your profile. If you are unable to discontinue undesired messages, please notify feedback(at)diplomaticcorp.com.
Pic of new home page on Nokia phone - bielf11   (Apr 15, 2010, 9:00 am)
Tested the image again and now it works as expected, flowing over the frames.
Much better. Thx

[Reply]

Pic of new home page on Nokia phone - FuzzyLogic   (Apr 15, 2010, 8:32 am)
Ok, I changed the overflow so the image should now expand over frames around it. Looks nice on the phone!

[Reply]

Pic of new home page on Nokia phone (Help & Suggestions) bielf11 Apr 15, 09:00 am
Tested the image again and now it works as expected, flowing over the frames.
Much better. Thx

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Rows per page:

Diplomacy games may contain lying, stabbing, or deliberately deceiving communications that may not be suitable for and may pose a hazard to young children, gullible adults, and small farm animals.

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