....blows away technet and answers. Such TRASH they are. This one feels and looks comparatively VERY tight. So, nice job!
But a few suggestions/issues:
#1 this editor doesn't display properly with (at least) Firefox (v14 or whatever ridiculous number they're up to. Oh wait Office is 14 too, isn't it? :P). At times, "Preview", "Post", "Cancel" buttons are off the bottom of the working area
of the page, hidden behind the "Powered by msdn" etc. footer. This is NOT necessarily caused by sizing the editor window -- which by the way,
is too small -- or zooming the web page. When I first started using the site, it seemed to just display incorrectly like that as a default.
#2 the rich text editor is usually more trouble than it's worth.
#2a Originally had comments about what I and many other uninitiated lusers would probably term "auto-double-space"; which some of you may be more familiar with as termed "Only use Enter if you really want to start a new paragraph." I guess
paradigms that have been around for 50 years have to change sometime. (And since so many ppl already loathe MS for misc reasons, well, it may as well be you guys who initate it. ;) j/k love you all) P.S., yes I know all about "before and after
paragraph spacing", i.e. the "right" way to do this stuff in Word, but you've GOT to realize that that's just TEDIOUS. PPL DO NOT WANT THAT. They want "push a button, make it happen." I still use Enter (and now, SHIFT+ENTER) to do 99.99999999999% of my
vertical formatting. Ppl dont' want to write documents as an exercise unto themselves; they just want to
communicate, as painlessly as possible.
#2b JUST NOW, for example, I just tried to turn this into a bulleted list, and decided I didn't like it, because it doesn't support me doing things like "#2a", AND I found the bullets themselves to be too large and garish. After removing
the bulleted-list-formatting, now, in some places it wanted to double-space my post (i.e. use HTML <p>, and in some places single-space (i.e. use <br>), apparently arbitrarily, and I don't see where the spacing control is for this, anyway.
#2c I'm not going to bother putting this thing through the full range of paces right now, but for example I was posting some stuff on technet last week and the "HTML" feature TOTALLY failed. Just didn't work whatsoever. Threw my changes
out every time. I was trying to use [del] tags, and it would display the results as expected in the RTF editor, but throw them out when I actually posted. I would not be in the least surprised if I ran into similar problems with this editor.
#2dReally, I have to manually add hyperlinks, and use a little pop-up dialog to do it? That's so 2002. If u want to make this thing behave like Word, well, why not AutoFormat?
#2e I post on a LOT of "plain text" bbs - PhpBB, vBulletin, etc. - so I'm really not used to these rich text ones, but hey, after writing this mini-essay, I'm ALMOST getting to like it. :P Not quite tho. ;)
#3 Thread title display is too short on the "Browse Threads" screen, or whatever you want to call it. It was a challenge to pare my post down to a fully-visible length, yet still include every key word.
#4 The double login thing was confusing. How many unified ID systems does MS have, anyway? 3? 4? I made a stupid windows live ID (out of my .Net Passport, the
last be-all, end-all login), which is what I use on TN. Now I come here and it's not recognizing my login. Yes, it actually took a few minutes to figure out "I can't believe it but I think this site actually wants me to make a NEW account!"
#5 Once I had the misfortune to click the "Preview" button below, now the preview display at the top wants to auto-update every few seconds, which, with the flashing, is distracting enough in and of itself, even when it
doesn't do the "grab focus or whatever and scroll the page involuntarily while user is trying to work" thing. (<<Which it
does do.) Terrible, guys, just terrible. Bad habit with having all your software's "slick" little feature-lets take precedence and focus away from the actual PRODUCTIVITY the user is trying to do. Windows 7 explorer is a freaking disaster because
of this type of behavior. STOP DOING IT.
#6 re: the tag "USABILITYCOMMONSENSE". How fitting. Separating two tags with commas wouldn't make any sense at all, now would it?
#6a is it even adding my tags? No visible indication that it is... How very counterintuitive.
That's it for now. Sheesh.
P.S. I'm not buying Windows 8. Just thought I'd throw that out there. Whether it
is or isn't going to properly support desktop computing is no longer even an issue. The fact is, the propaganda and FUD about that topic ran rampant for so long, that now I'm just afraid to even find out, the hard way. Win 7 was supposed
to be an upgrade in "so many ways" (coming from XP, of course. wouldn't touch vista), and I found out the hard way that there is definitely AT LEAST one step back for every one step forward.
Now, someone is thinking, if not responding "Why are you even posting about that here? This is not Windows team, and they're not even going to see your opinion." To which I reply "That's 80% of your problem, right there." (Which, really, you can look at
two ways: #1, that somebody needs to trot their little sneakers across campus and TELL Win team about it (Not really; you'd send an email of course. :P); OR, BETTER SOLUTION: that these misguided decisions signify an approach that's pervasive throughout MS
culture, and that if you were to correct this incorrect thinking at the root level (i.e. give users what they want, and they DON'T want metro or half the other garbage you've done since Office 2003/Win XP ..... and IE6 for that matter! :P), that there
would be no need to send such an email, because you'd all be on the same,
correct page already!)
I swear, this addendum was really only meant to be 2 sentences. At this point, maybe I
should take it to the Win forums? ;)
P.P.S. How did an "I like this forum" post turn into what is well on its way to being a "rant"? (A lighthearted one, but still.) Sorry to say, that's just how it is with your 'wares, guys (and gals). Familiarity breeds contempt, I guess. I use your products
ALL DAY EVERY DAY. Sure, on the one hand they make the world of business (and increasingly, pleasure) go 'round, but on the other hand, there is so very much
clueless self-serving design, missed potential, and ultimately: user frustration. Have to cut it here before it goes full-blown. The ranting juices are flowing...
zmBu
0 Points
3 Posts
This forum is pretty slick....
Aug 09, 2012 10:39 PM|LINK
....blows away technet and answers. Such TRASH they are. This one feels and looks comparatively VERY tight. So, nice job!
But a few suggestions/issues:
#1 this editor doesn't display properly with (at least) Firefox (v14 or whatever ridiculous number they're up to. Oh wait Office is 14 too, isn't it? :P). At times, "Preview", "Post", "Cancel" buttons are off the bottom of the working area of the page, hidden behind the "Powered by msdn" etc. footer. This is NOT necessarily caused by sizing the editor window -- which by the way, is too small -- or zooming the web page. When I first started using the site, it seemed to just display incorrectly like that as a default.
#2 the rich text editor is usually more trouble than it's worth.
#2a Originally had comments about what I and many other uninitiated lusers would probably term "auto-double-space"; which some of you may be more familiar with as termed "Only use Enter if you really want to start a new paragraph." I guess paradigms that have been around for 50 years have to change sometime. (And since so many ppl already loathe MS for misc reasons, well, it may as well be you guys who initate it. ;) j/k love you all) P.S., yes I know all about "before and after paragraph spacing", i.e. the "right" way to do this stuff in Word, but you've GOT to realize that that's just TEDIOUS. PPL DO NOT WANT THAT. They want "push a button, make it happen." I still use Enter (and now, SHIFT+ENTER) to do 99.99999999999% of my vertical formatting. Ppl dont' want to write documents as an exercise unto themselves; they just want to communicate, as painlessly as possible.
#2b JUST NOW, for example, I just tried to turn this into a bulleted list, and decided I didn't like it, because it doesn't support me doing things like "#2a", AND I found the bullets themselves to be too large and garish. After removing the bulleted-list-formatting, now, in some places it wanted to double-space my post (i.e. use HTML <p>, and in some places single-space (i.e. use <br>), apparently arbitrarily, and I don't see where the spacing control is for this, anyway.
#2c I'm not going to bother putting this thing through the full range of paces right now, but for example I was posting some stuff on technet last week and the "HTML" feature TOTALLY failed. Just didn't work whatsoever. Threw my changes out every time. I was trying to use [del] tags, and it would display the results as expected in the RTF editor, but throw them out when I actually posted. I would not be in the least surprised if I ran into similar problems with this editor.
#2d Really, I have to manually add hyperlinks, and use a little pop-up dialog to do it? That's so 2002. If u want to make this thing behave like Word, well, why not AutoFormat?
#2e I post on a LOT of "plain text" bbs - PhpBB, vBulletin, etc. - so I'm really not used to these rich text ones, but hey, after writing this mini-essay, I'm ALMOST getting to like it. :P Not quite tho. ;)
#3 Thread title display is too short on the "Browse Threads" screen, or whatever you want to call it. It was a challenge to pare my post down to a fully-visible length, yet still include every key word.
#4 The double login thing was confusing. How many unified ID systems does MS have, anyway? 3? 4? I made a stupid windows live ID (out of my .Net Passport, the last be-all, end-all login), which is what I use on TN. Now I come here and it's not recognizing my login. Yes, it actually took a few minutes to figure out "I can't believe it but I think this site actually wants me to make a NEW account!"
#5 Once I had the misfortune to click the "Preview" button below, now the preview display at the top wants to auto-update every few seconds, which, with the flashing, is distracting enough in and of itself, even when it doesn't do the "grab focus or whatever and scroll the page involuntarily while user is trying to work" thing. (<<Which it does do.) Terrible, guys, just terrible. Bad habit with having all your software's "slick" little feature-lets take precedence and focus away from the actual PRODUCTIVITY the user is trying to do. Windows 7 explorer is a freaking disaster because of this type of behavior. STOP DOING IT.
#6 re: the tag "USABILITYCOMMONSENSE". How fitting. Separating two tags with commas wouldn't make any sense at all, now would it?
#6a is it even adding my tags? No visible indication that it is... How very counterintuitive.
That's it for now. Sheesh.
P.S. I'm not buying Windows 8. Just thought I'd throw that out there. Whether it is or isn't going to properly support desktop computing is no longer even an issue. The fact is, the propaganda and FUD about that topic ran rampant for so long, that now I'm just afraid to even find out, the hard way. Win 7 was supposed to be an upgrade in "so many ways" (coming from XP, of course. wouldn't touch vista), and I found out the hard way that there is definitely AT LEAST one step back for every one step forward.
Now, someone is thinking, if not responding "Why are you even posting about that here? This is not Windows team, and they're not even going to see your opinion." To which I reply "That's 80% of your problem, right there." (Which, really, you can look at two ways: #1, that somebody needs to trot their little sneakers across campus and TELL Win team about it (Not really; you'd send an email of course. :P); OR, BETTER SOLUTION: that these misguided decisions signify an approach that's pervasive throughout MS culture, and that if you were to correct this incorrect thinking at the root level (i.e. give users what they want, and they DON'T want metro or half the other garbage you've done since Office 2003/Win XP ..... and IE6 for that matter! :P), that there would be no need to send such an email, because you'd all be on the same, correct page already!)
I swear, this addendum was really only meant to be 2 sentences. At this point, maybe I should take it to the Win forums? ;)
P.P.S. How did an "I like this forum" post turn into what is well on its way to being a "rant"? (A lighthearted one, but still.) Sorry to say, that's just how it is with your 'wares, guys (and gals). Familiarity breeds contempt, I guess. I use your products ALL DAY EVERY DAY. Sure, on the one hand they make the world of business (and increasingly, pleasure) go 'round, but on the other hand, there is so very much clueless self-serving design, missed potential, and ultimately: user frustration. Have to cut it here before it goes full-blown. The ranting juices are flowing...
tmorton
All-Star
56341 Points
9684 Posts
ASPInsiders
Moderator
Re: This forum is pretty slick....
Aug 09, 2012 11:16 PM|LINK
Thanks for the feedback.
Regarding #1, this is likely because you are using an ad blocker. (Refer other complaints on this topic here http://forums.asp.net/t/1786788.aspx/1?Bottom+footer+covers+Preview+Post+Cancel+buttons and http://forums.asp.net/t/1787270.aspx/1?bottom+of+page+clipped+in+chrome.) We do have this issue logged and will likely address it in a future site updated.
Regarding #5, the Preview button is a toggle. If the refreshing is bothering you, click it again to turn it off.
Regarding #6, the tagging on the forums is not where we'd like it to be and will be revisited in the future. Personally I wouldn't bother adding them.
ASP.NET/IIS.NET Website Manager, Neudesic