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Bugs/Suggestions - Metal Storm 4



Posts: 132   Visited by: 176 users
28.02.2011 - 21:06
Lucas
Mr. Noise
Hi all,

Welcome to Metal Storm version 4.0! You've always known us as an ever-evolving website and today is no different from any other day. We can image this change may seem huge & sudden, but trust us, you'll get used to it. Change is always difficult, but just give it some time and we'll all be fine.

There may be some initial bugs & flaws though, so please report those here. Suggestions are also welcome, but please be sure to keep your criticism constructive.

Thanks in advance and happy browsing!
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SLUDGE. DOOM. DEATH. Wait, what?

"The reason I'm running for president is because I can't be Bruce Springsteen." - Barack Obama
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28.02.2011 - 21:08
Risto
Wandering Midget
Submit button and page change in the Shoutbox didn't work in the latest version of Firefox. Currently using Chrome to browse the page.
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28.02.2011 - 21:10
Cyroth

Votes for album/singles/etc don't get submitted
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28.02.2011 - 21:10
Lucas
Mr. Noise
Written by Risto on 28.02.2011 at 21:08

Submit button and page change in the Shoutbox didn't work in the latest version of Firefox. Currently using Chrome to browse the page.


Thanks. I'm slightly confused though. Which 'submit' button? For edits you mean? If so, could you maybe check if that's for all edits or just for one type of edit.
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SLUDGE. DOOM. DEATH. Wait, what?

"The reason I'm running for president is because I can't be Bruce Springsteen." - Barack Obama
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28.02.2011 - 21:12
BitterCOld
The Ancient One
Written by Risto on 28.02.2011 at 21:08

Submit button and page change in the Shoutbox didn't work in the latest version of Firefox. Currently using Chrome to browse the page.


it didn't on my first visit to the revamped design. i either refreshed or clicked the log, page reloaded, and the sb started working normally.
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get the fuck off my lawn.

Beer Bug Virus Spotify Playlist crafted by Nikarg and I. Feel free to tune in and add some pertinent metal tunes!
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28.02.2011 - 21:12
Risto
Wandering Midget
Written by Lucas on 28.02.2011 at 21:10

Written by Risto on 28.02.2011 at 21:08

Submit button and page change in the Shoutbox didn't work in the latest version of Firefox. Currently using Chrome to browse the page.


Thanks. I'm slightly confused though. Which 'submit' button? For edits you mean? If so, could you maybe check if that's for all edits or just for one type of edit.

The main Shout! button

EDIT: Works now.
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28.02.2011 - 21:15
Bad English
Tage Westerlund
Change SB in same possition where it was
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Life is to short for LOVE, there is many great things to do online !!!

Stormtroopers of Death - ''Speak English or Die''
apos;'
[image]
I better die, because I never will learn speek english, so I choose dieing
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28.02.2011 - 21:18
HateSpark

I want Random album and Random Pic back ... it seems they are only applied to the Home page , but I have found many good bands only because it was on every page and I was like " oh this cover art looks cool ... let's check this band "
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28.02.2011 - 21:28
Bad English
Tage Westerlund
How about voting poll old vs this
now and ome more voting pool after one week or 2 weeks to see if ppl use to it or not use, anonymuss vote whit out coments
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Life is to short for LOVE, there is many great things to do online !!!

Stormtroopers of Death - ''Speak English or Die''
apos;'
[image]
I better die, because I never will learn speek english, so I choose dieing
Loading...
28.02.2011 - 21:43
Lucas
Mr. Noise
Written by Bad English on 28.02.2011 at 21:28

How about voting poll old vs this
now and ome more voting pool after one week or 2 weeks to see if ppl use to it or not use, anonymuss vote whit out coments


How about: no.

Can you please stop asking this? Take a drink, get some good night's rest and take a look at the new design again. We promise you, it's going to look better.
----
SLUDGE. DOOM. DEATH. Wait, what?

"The reason I'm running for president is because I can't be Bruce Springsteen." - Barack Obama
Loading...
28.02.2011 - 22:01
Bad English
Tage Westerlund
Log in whit email now its still cookies, because I log out and log in I did not saw a cookies or other option how it is now?
How long I be log in till I dont log out?
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Life is to short for LOVE, there is many great things to do online !!!

Stormtroopers of Death - ''Speak English or Die''
apos;'
[image]
I better die, because I never will learn speek english, so I choose dieing
Loading...
28.02.2011 - 23:39
IronAngel

I don't know if it's just my resolution, but compared to all the other sites I frequent the proportions are off. I actually need to scroll down to see Reviews/Articles sidebar, and that's a definite no-no. The MS banner alone (along with browser bars) takes over 1/3 of my screen. I don't know what exactly to do to fix this, but I reckon something should be done. The font is pretty large for a "quick overview" page, and there's a lot of stuff around it.

Overall, I can imagine this will be easy to use once I get the hang of it.
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28.02.2011 - 23:57
Lucas
Mr. Noise
Written by IronAngel on 28.02.2011 at 23:39

I don't know if it's just my resolution, but compared to all the other sites I frequent the proportions are off. I actually need to scroll down to see Reviews/Articles sidebar, and that's a definite no-no. The MS banner alone (along with browser bars) takes over 1/3 of my screen. I don't know what exactly to do to fix this, but I reckon something should be done. The font is pretty large for a "quick overview" page, and there's a lot of stuff around it.

Overall, I can imagine this will be easy to use once I get the hang of it.


That does sound a bit awkward. Can you post a screenshot? Although my top bar actually does take up a lot of space, too....
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SLUDGE. DOOM. DEATH. Wait, what?

"The reason I'm running for president is because I can't be Bruce Springsteen." - Barack Obama
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01.03.2011 - 00:07
Risto
Wandering Midget
Written by Lucas on 28.02.2011 at 23:57

That does sound a bit awkward. Can you post a screenshot? Although my top bar actually does take up a lot of space, too....

Yes, it's around 30% of a standard widescreen display.
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01.03.2011 - 00:08
Lucas
Mr. Noise
Yeah. Might be different for different types of monitors, though. Mine is pretty wide compared to it's height.
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SLUDGE. DOOM. DEATH. Wait, what?

"The reason I'm running for president is because I can't be Bruce Springsteen." - Barack Obama
Loading...
01.03.2011 - 00:13
Bad English
Tage Westerlund
How about when I open site I see all time members online, some kind a option to choose 'events' or online or b days, I prefere see who's online automaticly when come in, is it possible?
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Life is to short for LOVE, there is many great things to do online !!!

Stormtroopers of Death - ''Speak English or Die''
apos;'
[image]
I better die, because I never will learn speek english, so I choose dieing
Loading...
01.03.2011 - 00:35
IronAngel

This is what it looks like without my bookmarks sidebar open. It gets slightly better if I decrease font size with Ctrl - but that makes the forums rather tiny. It's annoying, but as I said, I don't have any idea what to do about it. (Edit: That's actually a bad screenshot because I have the reviews tab open rather than the news tab which takes way more space.)

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01.03.2011 - 01:46
Troy Killjoy
perfunctionist
My only quip would be the overall size of the frontpage. Everything does seem rather large, almost like the font size and images exploded, but I'm sure by tomorrow afternoon that won't be a problem.

And the shoutbox! That'll surely take me longer to get used to.
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"Wise men talk because they have something to say; fools because they have to say something."
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01.03.2011 - 01:48
Darkside Momo
Retired
Written by Troy Killjoy on 01.03.2011 at 01:46

And the shoutbox! That'll surely take me longer to get used to.

Well I must say that was really quick for me, it already seems it was always there
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My Author's Blog (in French)


"You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you"

"I've lost too many years now
I'm stealing back my soul
I am awake"
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01.03.2011 - 17:19
corrupt
With a lowercase c
The ability to hide the scroller is a well-received improvemend. But if hidden, the MS banner is cropped here. I can't attack a screenshot atm because I'm at work. But MS-Guy is only shown up to his neck and his head is cut off if I hide the scroller.

Can you also provide an option to disable the javascript overlay menus in favor of a multi-row html menu or something? I'm not using a mouse while browsing at home and can't exactly hover those links.

Edit: The above bug happens in Firefox 3.6.12 on MS Windows XP, one should mention that.
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01.03.2011 - 17:32
jupitreas
hi-fi / lo-life
Written by corrupt on 01.03.2011 at 17:19

The ability to hide the scroller is a well-received improvemend. But if hidden, the MS banner is cropped here. I can't attack a screenshot atm because I'm at work. But MS-Guy is only shown up to his neck and his head is cut off if I hide the scroller.

Can you also provide an option to disable the javascript overlay menus in favor of a multi-row html menu or something? I'm not using a mouse while browsing at home and can't exactly hover those links.

Edit: The above bug happens in Firefox 3.6.12 on MS Windows XP, one should mention that.


We will of course continually strive for MS to be both aesthetically pleasing and usable for the largest amount of people possible; however, I just need to ask - why arent you using a mouse at home? I don't get it at all... I am sure you also realize that you are in the most astounding minority imaginable (even mobile users are a larger minority) so don't count on us focusing on your problems anytime soon. MSv4 has just been launched and there is still a long road ahead of us to iron out all the bugs, optimize the code and generally fine-tune everything but we certainly can't micromanage by focusing on demands of a statistically irrelevant minority.
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01.03.2011 - 17:50
corrupt
With a lowercase c
Written by jupitreas on 01.03.2011 at 17:32

We will of course continually strive for MS to be both aesthetically pleasing and usable for the largest amount of people possible; however, I just need to ask - why arent you using a mouse at home? I don't get it at all... I am sure you also realize that you are in the most astounding minority imaginable (even mobile users are a larger minority) so don't count on us focusing on your problems anytime soon. MSv4 has just been launched and there is still a long road ahead of us to iron out all the bugs, optimize the code and generally fine-tune everything but we certainly can't micromanage by focusing on demands of a statistically irrelevant minority.

Understood. I'm not asking for everyone to do by my own standards. But you can't argue that dynamic content triggered by hover signals isn't actually the definition of usability. It's not something people will expect if they don't know it will happen. In classical interfaces, everything is triggered by active actions. I click somewhere and something happens. Mouseover menus are something that came up when javascript gained popularity more as a can-do thing than an actual improvement in usability. It was cool that stuff like this worked now but that was in the 90's. If you look around the web now, you'll see that most sites that had these features like webshops (amazon and the like), blog and cms frameworks or even ebay switched back to the classic action-reaction-way of GUI-design. But I'm not here to argue that. It was a suggestion, period. I will do a quick mock-up later tonight to illustrate how stuff could be done and the it's up to you.

To answer your question, because I think it's more practical for me. Of course I do have a mouse, but I use it mainly for gaming and applications that can't do without like Photoshop. I'm using a tiling windowmanager on all my computers and the pentadactyl addon for firefox (formerly vimperator) that allows me use it in a vim-like fashion without the mouse. I've come to really like it because it feels more like computers did before you needed a mouse to do your work. And believe it or not, you are faster using only the keyboard. Nerds and geeks all over the world keep telling you that and it turns out, it's true
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01.03.2011 - 18:08
jupitreas
hi-fi / lo-life
Written by corrupt on 01.03.2011 at 17:50

I will do a quick mock-up later tonight to illustrate how stuff could be done and the it's up to you.


Constructive and detailed criticism with suggestions like this is of course exactly what we are looking for so if you choose to help us out in this way, it will be very appreciated and we will definitely consider it seriously.

With this said (and this goes to everyone, not just Corrupt), we have put a lot of thought into the redesign so that it does the best job possible of highlighting our most important features. It is understandable that some other features became harder to access.

The most important part of MS is, and has always been, the content contributed by the staff. Without this content, none of our other functions would even get the exposure to become appreciated by the community. The idea is to prioritize our content and let the users enjoy all the hidden functions when they get more invested in the community. Besides, we continue to publish content regularly and we deserve to get the exposure. This is a design approach we are not going to change and we feel that MSv4 is a major improvement over the previous version in how it presents the content on the front page and teases people to check out more content and eventually become a part of the community.

We will not consider suggestions that do not fit with this vision of what our design should do. We will happily accept suggestions how we can improve this initial version of MSv4 though. MSv3 was actually more of a technical change than anything because of how the database management was overhauled. MSv4 does not change anything technically but it is a paradigm shift in how the front page communicates with our users.
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01.03.2011 - 23:14
corrupt
With a lowercase c
Written by jupitreas on 01.03.2011 at 18:08
...





That's what I was talking about. I increased the height of the bar by some pixels to make it all fit appealingly (margins are still off a bit). This way, not much more space is wasted but all the information is right at hands and there's no need for javascript overlay stuff. And, just to show that the additional height can be put to more use, I've outlined another place to put the pointer about new notifications and stuff. The yellow menu item would be the currently selected one here. It's just a mockup, but you get the idea. And it shouldn't be too hard to implement. In the menu, just the line-height would have to be reduced from 40 pixels to around 25 and the <div class="menu"> increased a little. The submenus would just be divs with style="display:none" until a certain menu item is clicked.

Also notice that the 'headless MS-guy'-bug can be seen here. I simply hid the scroller and this is what I get as a result.
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02.03.2011 - 01:43
jupitreas
hi-fi / lo-life
Thank you for that, I am sure Ivan will consider this idea very carefully.
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02.03.2011 - 10:47
corrupt
With a lowercase c
Appears the headless MS-guy isn't a bug. Looking at the css it turns out the banner image is like that. With the head faded out. While I'm in favor of small banner images, I suggest using just the text banner then, to avoid weird looks and confusion.

Also, on my work PC (Windows XP, Firefox 3.6.12), the overlay menus don't align with #menu. Setting line-height from 40 to 45 in #menu fixes things here but I haven't seen this on any other machine. And browsing the site with IE6 for confirmation unveils that the overlays aren't even displayed there. I can't upload pictures now because I'm behind the worst proxy in the internet's history. I can send them per mail though.
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02.03.2011 - 13:10
Himann
Orm KrigGud
I know you guys probably wont be bothered with this shit but here goes. SuggestionsL:

- Is there some increase in font size or change in font? Since I'm used to the older one this one seems unusually large in comparison (perhaps this is just an illusion due to the width of posts now). Dunno if this option is there but perhaps we could custom pick the font size or something for our preference. I can understand some people wanting a larger font due to poor eyesight and other issues so maybe its best to give the users the option of selecting it.

- The Italics font style for all topic titles seems to give the site a slightly cheesy look, perhaps a different font here might give the new look a bit more professionalism. Always feel very large italicised fonts tend to take away from the look and feel of a site more than actually aid it.

- Why is the User Name on the top bar green? A site always looks better when it sticks to a specific set of colours to maintain consistency. The green seems to contrast with this in a slightly negative way.

- The navigation has become slightly harder with the new changes. Have to scroll to the very top of the screen to natigate to another section of the board. Was somewhat easier when the navigation pane was on the left and always viewable as opposed to the top bar.

Im no graphics pro by any means so I guess you guys may have more realastic reasons for your changes. This is what comes to mind on a second look through the site. First look was pretty much "What the fuck happened?" to be honest.
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To be Draped by the Shadow of your Morbid Palace. Ohh, Hate Living...The only heat is warm blood

So Pure... So Cold
Transilvanian Hunger
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02.03.2011 - 19:23
corrupt
With a lowercase c
The reply box anywhere in the forums is missng it's right margin:

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02.03.2011 - 21:08
Bad English
Tage Westerlund
Members online is in 2 colloms, how does it has been organised I saw not in aplafebethical order, how? Those wholog in leither shown in secend collum?
----
Life is to short for LOVE, there is many great things to do online !!!

Stormtroopers of Death - ''Speak English or Die''
apos;'
[image]
I better die, because I never will learn speek english, so I choose dieing
Loading...
02.03.2011 - 21:26
Troy Killjoy
perfunctionist
Written by Bad English on 02.03.2011 at 21:08

Members online is in 2 colloms, how does it has been organised I saw not in aplafebethical order, how? Those wholog in leither shown in secend collum?

It's in alphabetical order as far as I know. It reads like this:

A ------> B
|
C ------> D
|
E ------> F

As opposed to the original format:

A
B
C
D
E
F
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"Wise men talk because they have something to say; fools because they have to say something."
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