Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

MacRumors Forums Feature Request Wiki

Status
The first post of this thread is a WikiPost and can be edited by anyone with the appropiate permissions. Your edits will be public.
arn

arn

macrumors god
Original poster
Staff member
Apr 9, 2001
16,416
5,882
Let's try this as a wiki. I realize there are a lot of changes. Let's try to consolidate feature requests here. I can't promise all will happen. But we will at least consider each one, and prioritize it based on feasibility and importance.


Hints
  • When editing this opening post, no need to add your name
    • @arn and other decision-makers may/should ignore that suggestion
    • if you wish to be identified with a point, then please link to – and/or give your thumbs-up to – the separate post about that point
      • for each point of discussion within this concise wiki area, it’s highly likely that you will find at least one post expanding upon that point
  • at the foot of every wiki post there’s the History button
  • the history for this post includes the name of each editor √

Feature requests and ERs (enhancement requests)

Spy
# of posts per thread customization
  • plugin available -- looking into – arn.
Exclude forums from New Posts
Sorting of replies by poster within thread when clicking on 'number of replies' in thread lists.

Allow the forum to show the number of likes
  • instead of x, y and 3 others.
Include reasons for editing
  • as that is not a core feature of XenForo, it will be difficult to add - arn.
Restore the functionality and compactness of the forum page.

In each forum, show the latest post.

Offer a gallery view for threads that include many pictures/images.

As all signatures can be hidden, so there should be options to hide avatars; to hide images in threads (and how those features worked in the previous version of the forums)
Specify original poster in thread.
  • done.
Add automatic post merging for consecutive posts.
  • we had this in the old software where a member would post 2x, it would automatically merge the posts.
Improve the 'Insert Quotes…' review dialogue.

https://forums.macrumors.com/account/upgrades should be more descriptive
Add 'go to last post', in addition to, last page link on the 'History' page and other areas where it would make sense.

In conversations, allow attachments
  • not just URL images.
Allow us to designate location as in the old software. We are located all over the world. In many cases this helps us understand different perspectives.
  • if a person chooses to publicise his or her designated location, then the whereabouts are shown at his or her profile page, and and visible elsewhere (overlays within topics, and so on)
  • please see the previous paragraph, and discussions on the subject
  • done.
Wherever a person’s location is not already shown with their avatar, add that location
  • below the avatar.
Allow repetitive metadata (locations, dates of joining, 68030 and so on) to be hidden whilst viewing topics
Date and time formats should be user preferences
  • e.g. day-month-year instead of month-day-year.
Allow thread author to edit thread title
Clarify how multi-quoting works.

Allow attachments to be created using the URLs of online images.

Vastly reduce the rendering overhead in Safari so that it's performance is comparable to the old forum.

Allow up to 100 posts per page.

On a thread index page allow 100 threads to be listed.

Add 'News Feed' to main forum menu items
  • this link allows members to see what posts members they follow have made.
Add option to receive forum alerts as push notifications.

Add button to 'Cancel' the post you are composing deleting any auto-saved text and multi-quote data
  • wasn't really needed in the old system where you could just abandon a post
  • with auto-save, it can come back to haunt you …
  • because https://xkcd.com/481/
In search results: excessive abbreviation too often reduces the value of search results
Disable text coloring or add an option the override these colors. It can hamper readability.

Add the ability to multi-quote people whose comments appear on different pages of a discussion
  • I'm not too hopeful for this
  • as far as I know, this worked from the outset.
Allow for the post/wiki editing window to be resized
  • the ability to make vertical adjustments would be greatly appreciated.
Bring back daily e-mail notifications of the activity that occurs in a specific forum whether they were new posts or replies
  • with the old forum style, I was able to set certain forums that I followed to send me a daily email notification (of all the new and reply threads in that forum for that day).
Allow for nesting of comment replies instead of everything flatly ordered in time. Each non-reply post would be the head of a sub thread and if you are interested in that point being made, you can expose the replies to it and participate. This way, we would know instantly whether someone already made the response to a post we would like to make and we can skip over off-topic replies and all the replies to that off-topic post. Nesting would significantly lower the number of pages to read through and should significantly lower the number of people making the exact same point all throughout the thread.

Bugs

Dataloss: leading white spaces are sometimes lost from code.

Dataloss: – en dashes converted to control characters, U+0096 (start of guarded area). Whether some ellipses … were also wrongly converted, I don't know.

Attributions may be incorrect
  • ‘… said:’ may present the wrong person’s name.
Shortcut on iOS saved to homepage for MacRumors is now updated to XenForo blue logo, not MacRumors logo.

Status indications may be incorrect
  • "online status" doesn't work properly
  • you can see some people's activity even when online status is supposed to be off.
Whilst drafting a new topic, the 'Insert Quotes…' option may fail to appear. Topic resolved.

A nonfunctional drag handle within a edit dialogue that should be probably be expandable.

Keywords for search (a.k.a. Search Everything) are lost when preparing to refine the search
  • some time after that point was added, enhancements became noticeable.
OS X forum category also has a sub-forum called ‘OS X’
  • maybe turn that forum into a category with sub-forums OS X Yosemite, etc. like before?
The bold, italic, and underline buttons don't always click on and off to represent whether they are selected
  • iPad issue.
When a formatting button is clicked in the editor at the bottom of a thread, the top/bottom arrow floater appears, obscuring the right side of the text box
  • iPad issue.


Style issues/requests

Circular avatars are too dislikeable
  • I think we'll live with this for now, for simplicity sake – arn
The circular border on an avatar does not look great on non-Retina devices. Wonder about:
  • increasing the stroke width
  • user preferences (options) to increase that width, or to have no stroke.
Increase the resolution of avatars.

Avatars show up as squares rather than circles when used to indicate that you have posts in the thread (placed as a smaller 'sub' avatar to the Original Poster's avatar in a list of threads).

Option to view thread lists in a more compact form.

Better differentiation of quoted text. Suggestions:
  • combination of indent, italics, gray box.
Move edit and response button
  • from bottom left
  • to a position that will not interfere with the flow of a thread
  • Maybe to the top right, like shown in this example (Tinypic link)
… same for list of people who 'liked'.

Smaller default font size
Replace the Verdana typeface with something else.
  • Maybe later. The whole site has been Verdana for so long, it's hard to change – arn
Dividing line between posts be actually between all post material
When the location text under user's avatar is more than one line, the new line is not left aligned with the rest of the text.

Animated GIFs as avatars
  • everyone gets an avatar, so we decided to avoid animated gifs for now – arn.
Remove the gratuitous whitespace
  • especially the cursor-length padding between posts.
Fix the huge ads on iOS
  • preferably swap them out with something less real-estate happy
  • at least differentiate them more
  • their bleed into posts is very distracting.
Swap out the green with something more consistent with the rest of the site, like the dark blue (or red to match the MR logo?)
  • The colors are different in every section - arn.
Links in search results should look more like links
  • Working on this - arn.
- Add a dark mode
  • Considering this - arn
- add Lthe ability for users to switch to 24H time mode (done via languages according to the XF forums)
  • done
Red scroll to bottom button should go to last post on page. (On an iPad, the up arrow is redundant, as one can just tap the top edge of the screen to get that.)

Topic listings that use emphasised (bold) text may be misinterpreted as unread topics.

Break out the forum link into a separate column in thread lists
  • currently it is inline with the thread author and time, in the same font size, weight and color - difficult to quickly identify.
Fix the poster avatar
  • they look very low quality, especially on Retina display.
Bring back custom Retina smilies
  • instead of the XenForo defaults.
Make everything significantly more compact
  • at least twice as compact vertically
  • maybe three times.
On one site that uses vB, where they have the posting box at the bottom of threads, there is a "Go Advanced" button that is approximately the same as the "More Options…"
  • the big difference is that when you click "Go Advanced", it has an implicit Preview Post built in
  • please do this, it would help a lot.
It seems like XenForo has the ability to support User Name changes. If so, yes please.

----

arn
 
Last edited:
  • Like
Reactions: The Doctor11, ardchoille50, Yakibomb and 4 others
arn said:
Let's try this as a wiki. I realize there are a lot of changes. Let's try to consolidate feature requests here. I can't promise all will happen. But we will at least consider each one, and prioritize it based on feasibility and importance.

Feature Requests
- Spy
- # of Pages per thread customization
- Exclude forums from New Posts
- sorting of replies by poster within thread when clicking on 'number of replies' in thread lists
- more posts per page
- Apple logo BBcode
- If possible, allow the forum to show the number of likes, instead of x, y and 3 others
Bugs

Style issues
- Don't like circular avatars
- Option to view thread lists in a more compact form
- better differentiation of quoted text
- move edit and response button from bottom left to a place where it doesn't interfere with thread flow (same for list of people who 'liked'
- smaller default font size

arn
Click to expand...

Hi @arn, great opportunity for all of us to make a 'change'! :cool:

Cheers
 
This one may really be impossible but I just figured out that the 'line dividing posts' doesn't. The time of the post is above the line, and the content below. Ick. Anyway to actually have a divider between posts? (Or change that light blue to something you can actually see? :) )
 
@arn:

Let me at the very outset thank you for the great job you have done with the new UI.
I would consider extremely useful the following features:
1. Exclude forums from New Posts, this way users can eliminate "hundreds" of threads dealing for instance with "may delivery, june delivery etc." of certain products.
2. Sorting of replies by poster.
 
Two things...
 

Attachments

  • Untitled.jpg
    Untitled.jpg
    176.1 KB · Views: 353
  • Untitled2.jpg
    Untitled2.jpg
    215.2 KB · Views: 361
  • Like
Reactions: dilap
KALLT said:
Would love to be able to view threads that have many pictures in it as galleries instead. Some threads are just more interesting for the pictures and not the individual posts. There must be something to accommodate this!
Click to expand...

I agree, especially the post your ____________ threads.

I would honestly like reporting of threads/posts to be more informative. More specifically, why a certain post reported may not be removed. I'd also like more diversity training for the moderators. They really let a lot of insults go simply because it's not an insult where they come from.
 
Minor thing, but the favicon or whatever controls what gets saved on iOS (shortcut to your home page) ends up not with the old Macrumors now, but XenForo blue logo. Not exactly great branding. :) (I'd call this a bug?)
 
  • Like
Reactions: arn
Hi @arn
Mentioned this elsewhere, but it might have got missed with all you have going on today. On the old forum we had the Forum/Sub forum links at the bottom of the page. Now if I want to read another thread in this section I have to scroll to the top of the page to do that. Could the shortcuts be reinstated at the bottom (where one naturally finishes reading).
 
  • Like
Reactions: pacmania1982 and arn
Too soon to start implementing changes - I personally think people need to just adjust to the new site over next few weeks and any real issues that aren't merely subjective preferences will raise there head and can be fixed.

After 10 years using this site, these changes whilst a little strange initially are for me and I'm sure many other long standing users / contributors are breath of fresh air.

Thanks Arn / DoctorQ and all the gods, admin and staff.
 
  • Like
Reactions: grahamperrin
balamw said:
MOD NOTE: We actually have new tools to provide feedback to thread reporters and are experimenting with them as we get used to them. Stay tuned.

B
Click to expand...

This comment alone is an improvement! Thank you so very much! In the past, moderation recommendations were always followed by a, "We're doing our best, if you don't like it, leave!" mentality.

I really really REALLY appreciate the reply and the effort on that front.
 
  • Like
Reactions: grahamperrin
Is it possible to have it notated under a user's avatar that they are the original poster when they reply to their own thread?

This is especially useful in topics where the OP requires help and or when there's a long, interesting thread and you're trying to see if there's been a resolution to the issue.
 
  • Like
Reactions: monokakata, iEric007, zhenya and 2 others
boshii said:
Is it possible to have it notated under a user's avatar that they are the original poster when they reply to their own thread?

This is especially useful in topics where the OP requires help and or when there's a long, interesting thread and you're trying to see if there's been a resolution to the issue.
Click to expand...

yep. we'll do that.
 
  • Like
Reactions: monokakata, Benjamin Frost, grahamperrin and 4 others
arn said:
yep. we'll do that.
Click to expand...
Thank you!

Also, is it possible to make the red arrow that pops up at the bottom right while your scrolling take you to the last post on the page instead of the bottom of the page? Every time I click the arrow I end up scrolling back up to the last post.
 
  • Like
Reactions: arn
As the day has worn on and I've been able to spend more time on MR today, I'm feeling more and more at home -- at first it was kind of like being in a house where suddenly all the furniture had been moved around and repositioned.....even though I was familiar with Xenforo from its utilization on another site. The furniture had been moved in THIS "house" and it still took a bit of adjusting! Overall, though, I feel that this was a wise and good move. I think in another week or so we'll all be saying, "wow, this is great, so much better than vB, why didn't we do this a long time ago?" LOL!

Oh, almost forgot why I was posting. Will there come a day when animated .gifs are able to move again? My "sparkly" avatar isn't quite as sparkly as it used to be since it's now still rather than animated. Not complaining, really, just an observation......

Oops, just noted the mention of this in the first post here. OK, that's fine, no hurry..... You guys have enough other stuff on your plates at the moment! :)

"- animated gif as avatars?
Since everyone gets an avatar, we decided to avoid animated gifs for now - arn"
 
Last edited:
Clix Pix said:
it was kind of like being in a house where suddenly all the furniture had been moved around and repositioned.....even though I was familiar with Xenforo from its utilization on another site. I think in another week or so we'll all be saying, "wow, this is great, so much better than vB, why didn't we do this a long time ago?"
Click to expand...

I'm not going to go as far as being completely comfortable in a week, but it's been a rather smooth transition even in the back end. It is rather disconcerting to have everything in different places than one is used to and not having some of the tools we are used to at our fingertips.

I recently took a new job that had me working part of the time in a building where I had previously worked for over a decade. I can't count the times I walked right into what used to be my office before remembering that it was now occupied by my supervisor! Fortunately he was rarely in his office. Now a year and half later, I still almost pulled off the freeway at the wrong exit due to muscle memory.

B
 
in the thread list page, it is possible to jump to the most recent post of a thread by clicking on the time it was posted, on the far right (waht previously was an arrow).
however this works only when logged in.
Is there a reason for this? it seems a functionality useful also when non-logged in and for guest visitors
 
Our minds and muscle memory do strange things at times, don't they?

Considering the size of this site, its complexity, its very large member population, I'd say that yes, this has been a very smooth transition overall! I suspect, though, that for me it was a little easier than it might have been had I not already been familiar with Xenforo somewhere else.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back