[Disgruntled Head of C-3PO]

Seems that this board is stuck in 2001, I have heard over and over mods say they will be upgrading but I am wondering if Apple will even still be around by the time they do.

[SafariX]

Negative.

[JHromadka]

In before move to the correct forum.

[ManOfSteal]

I guarantee you they update before vB 4.0 goes gold.

[Disgruntled Head of C-3PO]

Originally posted by ManOfSteal:
I guarantee you they update before vB 4.0 goes gold.

Update to what vBulletin 2.3.6?

[ManOfSteal]

Originally posted by Disgruntled Head of C-3PO:
Update to what vBulletin 2.3.6?

No, v2.3.7 Optimized.®

[brapper]

yes, and addtionally, no.

[GoGoReggieXPowars]

Link? Is that you?

[Demonhood]

i voted yes

[willed]

Originally posted by Demonhood:
i voted yes

Well... you would



What additional features are available in new versions that are so great anyway? The last significant change to the boards that I can remember was the Great Nipple Alert System Implementation of 2003 (or 2004).

[Psychonaut]

I should hope not. These boards are snappy as it is.

[macintologist]

Please no. I really like the forum the way it is, and it's much Snappier™ than others forums.

Anyone been to the SpyMac forums recently?

[Mac Write]

They will be upgrading to the next version of VB (3.5? no 3.1 according to Kier). They wanted to wait for VB3 to be stable before upgrading. I think having an optimized server would drasticly improve performance of the forums (hint hint).

[macintologist]

If they upgrade, is there any of way of maintaining the same appearance as now? Could enlarged and colored text be prohibited for users? Could you disable avatars and only allow small signatures like now?

[storer]

I personally have always thought these forums were really ugly. I suppose it's just a matter of taste though. Maybe an updated board and new look would really do wonders. New board softwares have some nice features.

[spiky_dog]

Originally posted by willed:
What additional features are available in new versions that are so great anyway? The last significant change to the boards that I can remember was the Great Nipple Alert System Implementation of 2003 (or 2004).

1. quick reply (which also allows for quoting of any single, arbitrary post)
2. ability to jump to unread from the new posts search (altho this is might just be a flaw of macnn's template)
3. profile pictures, meh
4. arcade! with scoring and titles tied to usernames

[Demonhood]

there's a lot of new stuff in the vb3 version.
the hard part is making it look similar to this version while still looking updated. that's what i'm working on.

[Cubeoid]

No similarity! Let's shake the rocking stick, by which I mean the shaking rod! It will feel like an icy cold bucket of water being splashed on our hot necks.

[Amorya]

Originally posted by spiky_dog:
1. quick reply (which also allows for quoting of any single, arbitrary post)

I hang out on the PHPBB development forums, and people keep trying to get them to include this.

They always refuse, with such posts as

As I've said elsewhere, no it won't be included in 2.2.x ... I've checked with the physicists and been reliably informed that the world will not stop turning and the sky will not fall due to my decision.

Many features useful to admins/users are being included but frankly I view "quickreply" as being "quickspam" and "quick-how-to-implement-something-which-appeals-to-everyone-without-it-actually-being-a-pain-in-the-arse-reply". I'm sure several Mods will appear implementing various types of "quickreply" and thus users can add whichever version they prefer.

or

If you've got an active board, quick reply would only increase the bandwidth usage (not to mention the havoc wreaked on the database) as people would use the quick reply as a sort of realtime chat.

Even without quick reply I have to have a forum dedicated to chat type threads to prevent chit chat from interrupting topic driven forums/threads. I even have a chatroom on my site, and people still prefer to chat in threads. I'm talking about a single thread that can gain 100 replies in a matter of hours and my board's got more than one thread that that happens in.

Furthermore, if you have a board that attracts trolling or flaming (such as a politcal site) quick reply would make it worse. The ability to post without pause would cause a full blown flame war faster than you can say <insert politician here> sucks.

(My emphasis)

Amorya

[Kilbey]

Originally posted by Demonhood:
i voted yes

I voted "yes" because Demonhood did. [/brownnose]

[Sealobo]

it's working just fine... no? so what do we get for upgrading? animated sign?

[Mediaman_12]

If I remember rightly, wasn't the last (attempt?) at an upgrade somewhat of a disaster?

[CreepingDeth]

I hate QuickReply. Do NOT implement it. If I'm lazy, that means, I believe, that I will have to put in the tags myself. And like Amorya said, flame wars faster than you can say AIDS.

[Sealobo]

QuickReply is bad, MacNN will get so many less banner-ad impression...

[MacMan4000]

Originally posted by storer:
I personally have always thought these forums were really ugly. I suppose it's just a matter of taste though. Maybe an updated board and new look would really do wonders. New board softwares have some nice features.

Your kidding right? These forums are the only forums left in the known universe that haven't turned into pure 100% uglyness. Take ResExcellence forums for example. They used to be nice and clean, simple design. then they went to pbb or whatever the ef its called. and now there sig's the size of small countries. and massive avatars and huge post count pics (like stars here on macnn, only a jillion times bigger.) and everything is animated. i swear that damn forum need an epilepsy warning. I don't even have epilepsy and I think i might have a seizure just looking at it.

PLEASE DONT SO THIS TO MACNN!

[Sealobo]

a friend of mine is very impressed with the fact that people's sigs at MacNN are so uniform in terms of size.

o he came from some car-forum.

[CreepingDeth]

Originally posted by MacMan4000:
Your kidding right? These forums are the only forums left in the known universe that haven't turned into pure 100% uglyness. Take ResExcellence forums for example. They used to be nice and clean, simple design. then they went to pbb or whatever the ef its called. and now there sig's the size of small countries. and massive avatars and huge post count pics (like stars here on macnn, only a jillion times bigger.) and everything is animated. i swear that damn forum need an epilepsy warning. I don't even have epilepsy and I think i might have a seizure just looking at it.

PLEASE DONT SO THIS TO MACNN!

http://macusersforum.com/index.php?s...=2815&amp;st=0

I counted no less than 44 smilies over maybe 40 posts. My god. And they're not the tasteful ones that have maybe 4 colors. No, those are those big ones that are all smooth and have gradients and repeat with even more annoying animations, complete with poor design and almost an infinitely niche use. Example:



Come on, that is just terrible. It looks like one of those grum worms.



…This one speaks for itself.



This is the dumbest emoticon I have EVER seen.

Please 'NN, don't become this. Don't have 20 pixels of wasted space with each post. Don't have large graphics that get annoying over the course of months, or even days. Don't let those lame smilies ever slip in here. That new forum is okay, but it is pretty damn ugly, and I have seen ugly.

[macintologist]

I agree Creeping Death. It has to do with what I call 'microculture'

Look at the culture of that mac board compared to ours. We are more intelligent and mature than them. We probably have an older poster base too.

A lot of it has to do with appearance, which is why maintaining the current Macnn appearance is so important.

Look at how cute and bubbly that forum is. That appearance encourages immature posting. I assure you.

[Cubeoid]

To be frank, I must say that MacNN has the best forums design I have ever seen. It is one of the reasons I decided to join this community. Everything is neat and fresh looking. Over the years I've seen other forums, and almost all of them have bloated oversized features and look just plain crap. I hope that they will remain the same, however small updates such as the nipples are cool. Kudos to the MacNN forums big wigs. Kudos.

[CreepingDeth]

Originally posted by Cubeoid:
To be frank, I must say that MacNN has the best forums design I have ever seen. It is one of the reasons I decided to join this community. Everything is neat and fresh looking. Over the years I've seen other forums, and almost all of them have bloated oversized features and look just plain crap. I hope that they will remain the same, however small updates such as the nipples are cool. Kudos to the MacNN forums big wigs. Kudos.

But what should a new desing look like? As far as the color scheme goes, I think it's pretty good. I couldn't imagine another color besides the med dark blue. But I think the pinstripes need to go. Find an average color and it should be find (a color between the gray and white). But I do like the simpler designs. I would like a larger sig size. Maybe 225x60, or even 200x60. But I like the uniform sizes. I've seen game boards and graphic places with sigs like 500x100 with 10 lines of text and some sort of animated thing at the bottom. On one forum, some sort of RPG rating system had grapgics that stretched across the entire post, even when the window is maximized.
I hope Matas, whom I believe is working on the design (rumored) keeps it simple and doesn't change much.

I for one believe in my brilliant idea for the smilies:
Have a static gif of the smiles that work like normal, but don't have 10 billion animations going.