Ideas for the Abime Websites

[Codetapper]

Originally Posted by Steve

Personally I would like to see higher resolution scans for the pages on AMR. Most of the scans are far too difficult to read and take quite a lot of strain to read the small text - and I have good eyesight. I think minimum should be 300dpi.

Galaxy and I scanned the majority of the images on AMR so I have quite a lot of higher res files. A lot of the remaining scans are from Mort's DVDs and sadly, those are the original resolutions.

[CodyJarrett]

Some of the recent Amiga Power scans that I did have been in higher sizes. For example:

http://amr.abime.net/issue_60_pages

[Predseda]

What I really dislike in HOL is the impossibility of BROWSING screenshots, preferrably x2 stretched size. On the other hand - HOL plugin is my main search engine in firefox / palemoon.

[Thalion]

So any thoughts about what was proposed about adding the PDFs? The earlier the decision comes the earlier we will have them.

[Amiga1992]

Originally Posted by CodyJarrett

Where the HOL deals with objective information, Lore deals with the subjective side of things e.g. game ratings, comments, reviews, lists, interviews and articles. The reason that it wasn't added to the HOL was that there were some objections to overloading the HOL with extra features and also that HOL development had ground to a halt.

Yeah totally understand and I LOVE HOL as it is, it is the most visited website for me after EAB. Both EAB and HOL to me are perfect.

I just think Amiga Lore is daunting, not self-explanatory and ultimately dysfunctional. The fact that AGTW and APOV are within it makes me never visit those sites. I gave up on them. AMR I do visit because it's self contained like HOL and it's clear what's up.

[Thalion]

This topic seems to have died? Anyone news if something is gonna be changed or will this just be forgotten again?

[CodyJarrett]

There is a plan underway to update the Abime websites. Personally, I favour bringing the various sites together as I think that the Abime is a little fractured. However, it's still under discussion.

I'm putting together a design/specification to plan how it's all going to work.

[Thalion]

Good to hear And anything about the PDF thingie? As i stated i would be willing to either compile the AMR stuff into PDFs or use the ones that are in TOSEC available. Guess its just a question which has the better quality.

[TenLeftFingers]

I like that eab works with Tapatalk. But I would like to see all the abime sites have responsive design as its painful to use them on a phone. Even eab, if I want to pm somebody or go to my cp I need to use the desktop site on the phone.

I have no problem with ads being displayed and would be fine with even more being displayed if funds are needed.

I agree that the sites are fractured. I only found the wiki yesterday

HOL watermarks, I agree are irritating. Doesnt exactly make for good desktop wallpaper. Also, scanned articles don't display properly on mobile devices (at least, not mine. But I think it was the same with previous phones).

Sent from Ubuntu Touch using the Forum Browser app

[TenLeftFingers]

Now that Tapatalk are being pratts by closing their development support forums and chasing down third party developers with lawyers, I think the mobile friendly site is even more important.

Any news on this ?

Sent from Ubuntu Touch using the Forum Browser app

[RCK]

Originally Posted by TenLeftFingers

Now that Tapatalk are being pratts by closing their development support forums and chasing down third party developers with lawyers, I think the mobile friendly site is even more important.

Any news on this ?

Sent from Ubuntu Touch using the Forum Browser app

You can try mobile skin
http://eab.abime.net/?styleid=4

[TenLeftFingers]

It seems to be okay

[ReadOnlyCat]

Originally Posted by CodyJarrett

Which features do you most like and dislike on the various Abime websites?
[...]
Are there any ideas that you'd like to see on these sites?

Ohhhhh yes.

• English Amiga Board (EAB)
  • Display a simplified/condensed version of the left side user description when it occupies more vertical space than the post itself.
    =>
    This would make threads with short answers so much more easy to read. No long scrollings of almost empty pages anymore.
    Currrently they consist of one/two text lines followed by empty vertical space used for the description despite it being secondary to the thread content.
    _
  • Replace the

    <

    and

    >

    symbols of the page selection widgets of a thread by written texts:

    First

    and

    Last

    . And also add

    Prev

    and

    Next

    ones.
    =>
    The large text links would make this widget much simpler to target and click than the one-char symbols.
    

    First/Prev/Next/Last

    are very likely to be the most needed (and thus used) symbols of this widget.
    The numbers are useful but are likely used much less often since it is rare that someone knows exactly at which page number they want to go.
    _
  • Mobile platforms support: do not hide image attachments on the slightest scroll.
    =>
    Currently, clicking on an image attachment displays it, but scrolling the image just a wee bit, hides it back as if clicking on the close button.
    (On iOS but I assume it's the same for Android/WP.)
    This makes all threads with images an absolute pain to watch on mobile.

• Hall of Light (HOL)
  • More zoom modes for screenshots: x3 and possibly x4
    =>
    On modern computers with high resolution screens, even the x2 image is sometime too small to visualize properly.
    More zoom modes would make the screenshots way more enjoyable to newcomers to the Amiga.
    (Also, ideally, the zoom mode should be selected automatically based on browser window size, with an option to lock it on.)
    _
  • Mobile platform support: make it possible to scroll screenshots with two images left/right.
    =>
    Currently, when clicking on the screenshot image with two images, a window pops up.
    When the window is larger than the current browser screen, it is truncated and it is not possible to scroll left or right (up/down is fine) to view it entirely which is really annoying.
    (On iOS but I presume Android/WP too.)

I know that more of them came to mind when I was browsing these sites on previous occasions but obviously now that they are needed they refuse to show up.

Hope this helps!

[TenLeftFingers]

Originally Posted by ReadOnlyCat

Ohhhhh yes.

• English Amiga Board (EAB)
  • Display a simplified/condensed version of the left side user description when it occupies more vertical space than the post itself.
    =>
    This would make threads with short answers so much more easy to read. No long scrollings of almost empty pages anymore.
    Currrently they consist of one/two text lines followed by empty vertical space used for the description despite it being secondary to the thread content.
    _
  • Replace the

    <

    and

    >

    symbols of the page selection widgets of a thread by written texts:

    First

    and

    Last

    . And also add

    Prev

    and

    Next

    ones.
    =>
    The large text links would make this widget much simpler to target and click than the one-char symbols.
    

    First/Prev/Next/Last

    are very likely to be the most needed (and thus used) symbols of this widget.
    The numbers are useful but are likely used much less often since it is rare that someone knows exactly at which page number they want to go.
    _
  • Mobile platforms support: do not hide image attachments on the slightest scroll.
    =>
    Currently, clicking on an image attachment displays it, but scrolling the image just a wee bit, hides it back as if clicking on the close button.
    (On iOS but I assume it's the same for Android/WP.)
    This makes all threads with images an absolute pain to watch on mobile.

• Hall of Light (HOL)
  • More zoom modes for screenshots: x3 and possibly x4
    =>
    On modern computers with high resolution screens, even the x2 image is sometime too small to visualize properly.
    More zoom modes would make the screenshots way more enjoyable to newcomers to the Amiga.
    (Also, ideally, the zoom mode should be selected automatically based on browser window size, with an option to lock it on.)
    _
  • Mobile platform support: make it possible to scroll screenshots with two images left/right.
    =>
    Currently, when clicking on the screenshot image with two images, a window pops up.
    When the window is larger than the current browser screen, it is truncated and it is not possible to scroll left or right (up/down is fine) to view it entirely which is really annoying.
    (On iOS but I presume Android/WP too.)

I know that more of them came to mind when I was browsing these sites on previous occasions but obviously now that they are needed they refuse to show up.

Hope this helps!

Fantastic, those bug me too. Particularly the wasted vertical space and the navigation buttons. And the image displayed on EAB and HOL

[Michael Sykes]

Embedded videos would be nice.
Away from that everything is just fine....

[ReadOnlyCat]

I finally recalled one problem of the forums which is really annoying because it makes some unlucky people's posts much less visible which is a shame in a discussion forum where every opinion matters.

Let me explain:
have you guys noticed that in threads, the last few posts of every page _very_often_ get much less replies than other posts? This seems weird but it's true. I started calling this "the page limit effect" when I noticed it while browsing ancient threads.

What seems to happen is the following:

1 - someone starts a thread.
2 - people reply, every one is still on the first page

=> at this point, every one's opinion is still visible because we usually read from the top of the page
but then:

3 - the bottom of the page is reached by a few new posts (which reply to the ones mentioned above)
4 - a post triggers the page limit and thus is added to the second page

=> at this point, that's where posts "disappear" from sight.
The last n-1 posts occurred on the first page, but now the thread has two pages so when people click on "Last page" (or the last number) from the top level pages (Today's posts, or forum hierarchy), they will not see these last n-1 posts, they will only see the one which landed on second page.

This might look insignificant and one might think that many people will go to the pain of making sure they did not miss any posts on the previous page so this not so much of a problem in the end.

But alas, that is incorrect: to verify it, just follow some long threads and you will start noticing that people reply _much_ _less_ to the last posts of a page. It is as if these posts were very often ignored, even though statistically they should have as many replies as the other posts of a page.
On average, these posts seem to effectively disappear from readers's sight because it is so much more practical to jump to the last page rather than go to the second to last page and check that every post was read.

This is a shame because it means that many valid opinions and remarks are ignored as if they silently disappeared.

Of course not all of them are ignored because a few people do make the effort to check they have seen all posts but on average these posts are still much less seen than others and thus replied-to/taken-into-account/etc. even if they are very relevant to the post.

It seems to be a tricky problem to solve but I think there is a super simple solution to it:

Instead of doing what is done now when filling pages, that is:

Page1 (full), Page2 (full), Page3 (full), Page4 (2 posts)

start by filling the last page first with the maximum amount of posts,
then fill all remaining pages (from 1 to last-1) with posts_lefts/(n-1) posts per page:

Page1 (p posts), Page2 (p posts), Page3 (p posts), Page4 (full)

with p = (post_count - full_page_post_count) / (page_count - 1)

This seems silly but this guarantees that the last written posts are always together on the same page and thus equally visible.
Even if a new post is added, this only puts the oldest of the last posts to the previous page but that is fine because it has already been visible for quite some time already.

The drawback is that the pages from first to last-1 will not always have the same number of posts as the last page. But that seems pretty harmless compared to the "silent disappearance" of people's opinions.

Hope this helps!

[prowler]

Originally Posted by ReadOnlyCat

1 - someone starts a thread.
2 - people reply, every one is still on the first page

=> at this point, every one's opinion is still visible because we usually read from the top of the page
but then:

3 - the bottom of the page is reached by a few new posts (which reply to the ones mentioned above)
4 - a post triggers the page limit and thus is added to the second page

=> at this point, that's where posts "disappear" from sight.

It is not worth the effort of reprogramming the forum merely to force members to trawl through all new posts, IMHO.

To encourage members to read, or at least see, every post in a thread, each thread will not be marked as read until the user has opened every page containing unread posts (unless he or she chooses to 'Mark Forums Read' using the link at the top of every page).

Furthermore, any member concerned about missing recent posts for the reason you describe has the option to display the newest posts first in all threads from their Control Panel: Select Edit Options (under Settings & Options), select "Linear - Newest First" Thread Display Mode (under Thread Display Options) and then Save Changes.

However, the fact that those "disappearing posts" receive statistically fewer replies than others in the forums indicates that most members prefer to browse threads "oldest posts first".

The main problem with your suggestion to solve this problem, IMO, is that each new post in a thread will modify every page, which would be bad news for those who like to save offline copies of threads they are interested in for reference purposes.

As a Global Moderator, I try to ensure that any post which ends up at the top of a new page contains a quote from the post replied to (if any), inserting one if necessary for better continuity.

[RCK]

Agree with Prowler, moreover if pages number of posts change each time someone reply, it will break the search engines indexing logic.

[scifi]

It's been a while since I made an offer to support the HOL database with logos made from the title screen of the game. Even though I haven't supplied the latest additions this doesn't mean that my project has stopped. It progresses slowly, but it progresses.

However, I do remember that the addition of a logo directly on HOL's database was a significant problem because it entailed extra programming. The suggestion was that this extra artwork should be placed on Amiga Lore.

Cody said that there is a wider plan to host every possible abime site on a new, more flexible megasite. I guess that my project could fit in right there, too!

[BippyM]

I'd like to see some form of notification if my name is used within a post. A form of tagging.

Would be useful