Welcome to the new whathifi.com!

[Covenanter]

It doesn't fill in the subject box on IE10, smileys don't seem to work, and the b****y spam filter has come back!

Chris

 

[Andy Clough]

I can't say I like it (using IE10) but will give it a go before making a final judgement. Can't see a "Mark all posts read" button. Is there one?

Chris

Go to www.whathifi.com/forum and you'll see a big blue tab saying 'Mark all forums read' at the top of the page.

 

[scene]

Still getting Page not found for http://www.whathifi.com/news/site-offline - when trying to click on News.

*dash1*

Please clear your cache and refresh your browser.

Thanks Andy - working now (tried that earlier - but forgot to this time!)

One question: Why the rather random placing of the news item pictures, i.e. two on the first line, three on the second, two on the third, but with a gap between them, etc?

 

[7760]

Have to agree as well, it's all far too large and far too narrow. For example, a review fills up less than half the screen width and contains just about a couple of words per line, the forum here being similar. It looks like one is reading this on a 32" pad device with font size 50!

Who on earth made the decision to change it to this?! And why, who's supposed to benefit? I assumed I'd be writing "phone users" here, however judging by the comments so far, apparently they're not faring much better.

I do hate being negative but I am unlikely to use this site all the while it is so slow and while everything is huge.

Can it not just be a normal forum layout like this one for example? It almost seems custom designed when perfectly adequate templates are out there being used every day?

Again, sorry for the negative tone, hopefully taken as constructive critisism. I used to visit the site daily but now it's such an odd layout I am not so sure. Sorry!

Edit: I would also add that this does not reflect the nicely layed out magazine...

Totally agree with you. Can't believe they've spent 12 whole months producing something so cluttered, unintuitive and hard to use. What a completely pointless and thoroughly disappointing exercise. That's me out.

 

[Covenanter]

Just a reminder for our regular Forum users that your signatures from the old site have not been migrated across to the new one, so you will have to go into your settings (click on your username at the top of the page) and add a new signature.

I did that and I can't see anywhere to put a signature.

Chris

 

[TrevC]

Couldn't get in with my old log in, it didn't recognise my password. Using Facebook instead (which I joined to get Deezer).

The new look is just awful. Sorry.

 

[Covenanter]

I can't say I like it (using IE10) but will give it a go before making a final judgement. Can't see a "Mark all posts read" button. Is there one?

Chris

Go to www.whathifi.com/forum and you'll see a big blue tab saying 'Mark all forums read' at the top of the page.

Ok but we can't do it for individual forums anymore?

Chris

 

[Andy Clough]

Just a reminder for our regular Forum users that your signatures from the old site have not been migrated across to the new one, so you will have to go into your settings (click on your username at the top of the page) and add a new signature.

I did that and I can't see anywhere to put a signature.

Chris

Go to settings, click on that and then scroll about half way down the page – then you'll see a box called 'Signature settings'. Add the text in there and save.

 

[pauln]

Have to agree with most of the negative comments. It's absolutely awful. Is it designed for the visually impaired? (I use the term 'designed' very loosely) It has the look of something aimed at 10 year olds.

Doesn't seem to work for me with IE 11 - I get the HiFi forum but none of the others - click on forums and I get page not found. Works OK in Chrome.

I'll be spending a lot less time here, some may be pleased about that I suppose.

 

[ISTE]

I sometimes wonder about WEB designers, these days they seem to live in a different world to us mere mortals.

I'm finding it really hard to be not too negative but this change is one of the worst that I have seen in the past year (and a lot of WEB sites that I use have been changed recently). What is it with the HUGE font, I'll end up with RSI with all the mouse movements that I need to do to scroll up and down the reviews. We do not all use tablets/phones/touch screens (which seems to be the driver for these changes) and on a good old fashioned PC (albeit a massively powerful one) this new site is slow and extremely difficult to navigate about. It is no longer a pleasing experience to use this site. The Home page is worst than the Windows 8 home screen, and that is saying something. The old site was simple to navigate, simple to read, and a nice experience to use. This new design is the opposite in every sense. And to those who say "will get used to it", then I say we should not have to get used to it, it should have been designed in the first place to be easily useable.

I'm sorry, but I do not think I will be using this site as much as I did.

And one last thing, if you are wondering why this is my first post ... it is not ... I had to re-register as by old user name and email address was not recognised !

And ... just to prove how stupid this font is, I have just previewed my post and I had to scroll up and down to read it all, and that is on a 23" screen. Just nuts, really nuts.

 

[pauln]

Any response from WHF to the massive negative reception to the new 'look'?

 

[Andy Clough]

One question: Why the rather random placing of the news item pictures, i.e. two on the first line, three on the second, two on the third, but with a gap between them, etc?

[/quote]

If you're referring to the Homepage, the most recently published News articles appear first. The site uses a system called Mosaic to automatically reformat the layout of the page to fit whichever device you're viewing it on. Sometimes you might have to refresh the page to get it to reload correctly.

 

[chebby]

Just a reminder for our regular Forum users that your signatures from the old site have not been migrated across to the new one, so you will have to go into your settings (click on your username at the top of the page) and add a new signature.

I did that and I can't see anywhere to put a signature.

Chris

Go to settings, click on that and then scroll about half way down the page – then you'll see a box called 'Signature settings'. Add the text in there and save.

It's not there yet. (And I cleared cache, history, cookies, temp files etc.)

 

[Anderson]

Positive comment below

There have been complaints from people about everything being too big. At work I've got a fairly large widescreen monitor but it's got a low resolution, at home the laptop is a 1080 screen and the sizing is spot on. I like it. 🙂

 

[matt49]

Andy, serious question: has the font been checked for compliance with accessibility for visually impaired and dyslexic users?

Matt

 

[Anderson]

Also, anytime I've seen a website do an update there's always an outpouring of moaning from some very vocal members, the vast silent majority will most likely not care or like the change. At the end of the day, the place was in need of a face lift, it does look more modern, there's some bits I don't like, some I do.

Some comments from people saying you shouldnt have been charged more than £x, how childish is that? Some people need to get a grip of themselves.

 

[Andy Clough]

Any response from WHF to the massive negative reception to the new 'look'?

All feedback is welcome

In fact, the Beta version of the new site was open for all to see on the old Forums for a couple of weeks, and the feedback then was generally positive.

That said, we understand the new site is a big change from the old one, and while some people will like it, some won't. Technically, the old site was well past its sell-by date and needed a massive upgrade under the bonnet, which it has now had.

We had a couple of key priorities in developing the new site: to improve site search (which was broken on the old site), to make it quicker and easier to find the product you're looking for, and to make the design responsive so it works as well on smartphone and tablet, which now accounts for 40% of our user traffic. A lot of users complained the old site was hard to use on mobile devices, for which it was not designed.

We've also added proper user reviews for the first time, so you can add your own tests to our own, and massively expanded the database of products in our system (30,000+) to provide information on thousands of products we haven't tested, as well as the ones we have. There are also latest prices on a range of products to help you find the best deals.

Virtually anyone who has launched a new website knows that you'll get a lot of flack to begin with (exactly the same happened to our sister title Autocar not so long ago, and some other sites we publish). We'll listen, and if necessary make improvements as we go along. This is only the first phase of the new website development - there's a lot more stuff in the pipeline.

 

[pauln]

We had a couple of key priorities in developing the new site: to improve site search (which was broken on the old site), to make it quicker and easier to find the product you're looking for, and to make the design responsive so it works as well on smartphone and tablet, which now accounts for 40% of our user traffic. A lot of users complained the old site was hard to use on mobile devices, for which it was not designed.

We've also added proper user reviews for the first time, so you can add your own tests to our own, and massively expanded the database of products in our system (30,000+) to provide information on thousands of products we haven't tested, as well as the ones we have. There are also latest prices on a range of products to help you find the best deals.

So, tough on the 60% that still use those old fangled laptops and desktops. It's like having a 17" screen with a resolution of 800 x 600. Reminds me of how Win 95 used to look.

 

[chebby]

I have just tried on the iPad (it's native safari browser) and - despite clearing 'cookies & data' and history beforehand - I get the 'offline' page when pressing on 'forums'.

It will allow me to login (no signature section in settings there either).

Am I right in saying this is only really only optimised for IE and not iPads (Safari) or Firefox? I would find that very unlikely.

Advice please.

Or do I just wait until the team iron out all the bugs?

 

[Andy Clough]

Hi Chebby, I'm seeing the signature box in my settings (on MacBook and iPhone), but obviously you can't, which is odd. If you can give me as much info as possible, I'll get one of our QAs to take a look at it in the morning.

 

[Andy Clough]

I have just tried on the iPad (it's native safari browser) and - despite clearing 'cookies & data' and history beforehand - I get the 'offline' page when pressing on 'forums'.

It will allow me to login (no signature section in settings there either).

Am I right in saying this is only really only optimised for IE and not iPads (Safari) or Firefox? I would find that very unlikely.

Advice please.

Or do I just wait until the team iron out all the bugs?

No, certainly not optimised for IE and not iPads (Safari) or Firefox, we've been testing it on everything. It's working fine on my (older) iPad 4.

 

[Anderson]

Android HTC One 1080 display, looking good on this too.

 

[chebby]

Windows 7 Pro, Dell laptop, Firefox ESR 24.6.0.

iPad Mini, Safari, latest release of IOS 7.1.2

 

[Anderson]

I have just tried on the iPad (it's native safari browser) and - despite clearing 'cookies & data' and history beforehand - I get the 'offline' page when pressing on 'forums'.

It will allow me to login (no signature section in settings there either).

Am I right in saying this is only really only optimised for IE and not iPads (Safari) or Firefox? I would find that very unlikely.

Advice please.

Or do I just wait until the team iron out all the bugs?

No, certainly not optimised for IE and not iPads (Safari) or Firefox, we've been testing it on everything. It's working fine on my (older) iPad 4.

Most likely a PEBKAC issue... 😉

 

[tinkywinkydipsylalapo]

Another 'new' sign-up here, as my existing log-in won't let me anywhere near posting.

Looks like a bit of a disaster all-round, really it's all very Janet and John, with more than a sniff that you've let your staff person entrusted with trawling the web for rumours stories to repeat as news loose on the whole site. They've simply tried to copy AVForums, and failed dismally. That site is hard to navigate, but this one would challenge an orienteering team with state of the art GPS, OS maps and compasses.