To OB Browncoats: Why is it hard to navigate this site?

POSTED BY: Succatash
UPDATED: Friday, September 5, 2025 05:14
VIEWED: 11168
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ASTRIANA

Wednesday, June 23, 2004 1:31 PM

That would be because troll posts here get moved to Troll Country.

~A~
El Jefe Magnifico's Mistress... of Communications and Harems...

...I'm still free,
You can't take the sky from me.

RABIT

Wednesday, June 23, 2004 6:16 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by ecgordon:
There is an unread system here.

Shiny! Thanks!

Uh, so can someone please tell me where the OB is located? I'm just curious - haven't been there myself...

Rabit

KELLAINA

Wednesday, June 23, 2004 7:52 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by Rabit:

Uh, so can someone please tell me where the OB is located? I'm just curious - haven't been there myself...

Rabit

Try this http://forums.prospero.com/foxfirefly/start

From there you should either be able to login as a guest or sign yourself up.

RABIT

Wednesday, June 23, 2004 10:48 PM

Many thanks, Kellaina.

HAKEN

Thursday, June 24, 2004 8:20 PM

Lots of great comments so I'm going to lump them together and answer them accordingly.

if you are looking at anything that occurred less recently, it is very hard to find on this site (for me anyway). For instance, If I want to see the script for Heart of Gold I can't find it. I know it's here somewhere, but where? I find it hard to even find my own fan fics that I put on this site.

I'm well aware of the lack of a search feature on this site and it bothers me too. I started working on one based on what I wrote for the Refence Database but never finished it. The problem with global searches are that they take up a large amount of system resources to perform, that's why you don't usually see them on heavily visited sites. One alternative is to use Google, which someone suggested here, until I get my act together and finish the darn thing.

I hate that I have to scroll through the whole thread to find where I left off reading. With threads the size of the ones on the OB this would be impossible.

This one is a bit tricky because there's really no way for me to know where a reader left off reading when he is done. I do provide a listing of posts that have appeared since a reader's last visit and also a listing of posts that have appeared for that day, both of which works well for me personally. As you may have noticed by now, the thread structure on FFF.NET is different from that of the OB. A OB reader knows where they left off on a thread because the threads are page breaked. It simply records what page a reader clicked on last. This works well for those who don't mind clicking from page to page, but if you're a "scan reader" like me, it can get annoying.

Now, I'm no web designer, so I don't really know what works best for everyone when I programmed the message board for this site. But one of the things I really wanted to do was to create a message board that's self maintaining. Threads on FFF.NET is like a game of hot potato. Someone post a thread on a hot subject, a bunch of people respond and pass it around until another thread on a different hot subject gets posted, meanwhile, the cold thread falls off the list, and we do it all over again. The whole idea was to keep the conversations fresh and moving along. Boring topics fall off. Interesting topics stay. And without page breaks for the threads, lengthy threads will eventually fall off as well through a kind of natural attrition.

On the OB, it's not unthinkable to have a single message thread containing tens of thousands of posts with a subject matter from two years ago, posted by someone who is long gone, to continue on indefinately. I didn't want that. I like the fact that when I respond to a post, the person who originally started the thread is still around to post a response back.

The moving emoticons and picture icons on this board annoy me excessively. I read very fast and they just slow me down and get in my way.

Yeah, annoys me too when they are abused. But they're fun when under the right circumstances.

Can't post to an individual person

If you mean in a thread, you can always quote them. If you mean messaging, I do have that. Just click on a person's profile and you can send them a note.

Can't sort the threads

I'll add that to the list of things to do. That's a relatively quick fix.

Can't ignore threads or mark as high interest

That's actually not a bad idea. It might affect performance over time if the ignore list grows too lengthy. I'll add it to my todo list nonetheless.

I agree that the main page is a bit cluttered - I'd suggest making broader categories and then letting things like the boards, what's been newly posted, fireflyverse info, etc, have their own pages. I suspect that it's a problem that began when there was much less information to categorize, and it's just been added instead of rethought.

I admit, I pump a lot of information out from the main page, but I think once a person gets used to seeing it, they can usually ge

ECGORDON

Friday, June 25, 2004 12:19 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by Haken:
Now, I'm no web designer, so I don't really know what works...

You could have fooled me, man. You've done a GREAT job!

wo men ren ran zai fei xing.

SIWANGMU

Saturday, June 26, 2004 10:55 PM

This is a strange sort of thing to prompt me to post...
I am a relatively new Browncoat. I ended up on the OB where I've gotten totally hooked, but I kept following links here, especially since you have the coolest content ever and I've barely scratched the surface of it. I don't do much actual wandering here, because I'm mildly overwhelmed by my array of options, but I don't see it as an unnecessarily steep learning curve--at first, I couldn't make heads or tails of the OB, either, and now I love it. So I'm certain after a while I'll figure this one out, too. I was thinking that I generally agree with the other things cited by people in this thread, and, for instance, I went looking for desktop wallpapers the other day and ::sheepish:: I kind of gave up. I found this awesome listing of artwork things and I saw little pictures of the most recent ones on the left, but if I wanted to look further back I had to read each title to figure out what things were and then navigate to the picture itself and wait for it to load (my comp is slow). I feel so whiny even saying it, but I have to admit that after a while I gave up. I don't know what I'd like to have seen... if I knew just which ones were desktops or, if this wasn't too hard, if I could see little thumbnails of all of them to decide which ones to look at, that would've been cool.

Actually, none of that was what I most wanted to say. I wanted to say that you, webmastery person, you are very very nice. I was just amazed at what a good attitude you have, and... and... this isn't meant to sound patronizing, but I was really impressed by reading your response to the suggestions. I'm actually more interested in exploring this site because you seem like such a nice person.
So yeah. You're cool and your site is beautiful.

AERRIN

Saturday, June 26, 2004 11:35 PM

Thanks for the responses! I, for one, really appreciate them. For one, I hadn't realized you were writing everything yourself - color me impressed! Also, color me a bit more patient. A few things I wanted to comment on -

- Scrolling down giant posts: I can accept that as a matter of taste, I suppose. ;) While on dialup, I do wish pages loaded a bit faster, though, and page breaks would help a tad. I hate the supershort breaks of the OB, though. So I suppose I'm just difficult to please.

I really appreciate info on how to find new-to-me posts!

Quote:
Originally posted by Haken:

I agree that the main page is a bit cluttered - I'd suggest making broader categories and then letting things like the boards, what's been newly posted, fireflyverse info, etc, have their own pages. I suspect that it's a problem that began when there was much less information to categorize, and it's just been added instead of rethought.

I admit, I pump a lot of information out from the main page, but I think once a person gets used to seeing it, they can usually get to what they want very quickly at a glance without going through several layers of menu.

- I still think some things are difficult to find, in part /because/ of the lack of menu layers. Scripts, gag reel, even particular threads that haven't been posted in 'recently' all take some work.

Quote:

It also frustrates me that you have to reply to a 'person' rather than the 'thread' - which means whichever random person you click on to reply gets a notice, but no one else does.

You can post a reply and overide the notification, which results in just replying to the thread. And I don't know how happy people will be to receive an email everytime a thread gets updated. Everyone gets enough spam as it is.

Sorry - I didn't mean to imply that everyone wants an email - I sure don't! What I meant instead was that it'd be nice to have a 'unread posts' o-meter - which I didn't realize we had. Thanks for the info on posting to threads instead of people! Maybe someone industrious could collect 'fff.net board tips' and share them all together somewhere? I've been around for roughly 7 months, regularly, and I didn't know half this.

Quote:

A forum whose system I love is the Pern M* forum, at http://pernmu.com - it lets me see what I haven't read, by board and then thread, it lets me jump directly to what I haven't read, it allows me to get emails if I want, private messages, and search.

Yeah, they bought their BBS with all the bells and whistles. I wrote mine. I guess I could have bought the same software, but what would the fun be in doing that? Give me a year or so and I'll probably get it all in. :)

Ha! Again, didn't know you were writing it yourself - that's awesome. You've put together an excellent system for someone starting from scratch. Mostly, I thought it was easier to show than tell .

One last suggestion - in the future, maybe a way to preview your posts? Had to add that after going through in hopes that I got all the board marks in the right place.

KOHAN

Saturday, July 3, 2004 4:12 AM

once again man, awesome website.

I think after re-catagorizing the content of the website, maybe you could consider designing different layouts for different contents and not have them unified messege board style.

you know, for pictures, have them grouped and then presented in thumbnails; for fan fics have the option of sorting by alphabet or date posted... and so forth.

than again, all of this does seem like a lot of work. ^^|||

anyways, just my thoughts; I think the website is fabu as is.

-------------------------------------------------------------------
"You know, they say mercy is the mark of a great man.

Guess I'm just a good man.

Well, I'm all right. "
╮╯▽╰╭

THG

Friday, September 5, 2025 4:33 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by Succatash:

I understand that most FFF Browncoats find Haken's site easier to nagivate than the OB. And over there, they find this site hard to nagivate. It's an old story, actually. But instead of saying, "Oh, well, people are different," I'd really like to know WHY this site is hard to navigate. I'm curious how people can come to the home page of FFF, look at the links and then say, "O God, what am I supposed to do now?"

Haken won't be mad. Please, OB people, explain why this site is hard to navigate. Maybe with love and honesty we can solve this big mystery.

T

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