Site Design "Wish List"

[boyzoma]

First of all, this thread is NOT for bashing the new site. This is for positive things going forward, not what you hate, like or what if's. Since we hope they will deal with all the issues being discussed, I think we need to start a "WISH LIST" of things we would like after the initial things are fixed or could be added during a current fix. My "wish" would be they add a feature so that if we edit our own post, you could still upload a photograph instead of only when the initial post is being made. (Thanks, LW for the suggestion on the thread).

[boyzoma]

These are all really good suggestions. I hope the CH team is reading these. It would be good to get some responses from them as well as to if any of these are "doable", either now or in the near future.

[queencru]

Is there any plan to fix the horrible setup for the comments on Stories? I remember someone mentioned putting up a poll to see what people thought should be done, but I never saw the poll or any changes. It's still an insane number of clicks to see all the posts. First you have to click to see all of them, are shown ten of the newest posts, and then have to click oldest, and then have to click to see multiple pages if there are more than 10 comments. Even though we were told it was supposed to default to "oldest" if we selected it, it always goes back to "newest" even though I've stayed logged in.

It's hard for me to have any interest in stories now when it takes so long to find the story I want in the first place and then it takes another several clicks just to get the comments in a readable layout.

[runwestierun]

I just tried to do a search and while I got alot of results, I cannot read any of them because they are written in a light gray font on a white background. And if you think I am a doddering old person, do a search here and then do the same search in Google (which uses black on white) including the word "chowhound" and see how much faster you can peruse the bodies of the results on Google.

So much of this new site is in this light gray lettering. Could it please be darker?

Does anyone remember one of the first issues of Wired that had yellow font on a white background? I never bought another one.

[letoile]

I would like a site map. The current
site map link doesn't really help me.

[thinks too much]

How about a way of adding polls? People frame questions like this all the time, you get many answers, but no tabulations. Like "How often do you eat out each week?" Never, once, twice, well, you get it.

[nsxtasy]

The new release is supposed to make it easier to add new forums. These are forums that it makes sense to add:

1. Metro North - for Westchester County NY (currently in New York State forum) and Fairfield County CT (currently in Southern New England forum)
2. Long Island - for Nassau and Suffolk Counties NY (currently in New York State forum)
3. Triangle Area - for Raleigh Durham Chapel Hill NC (currently in Southeast forum)
4. Detroit Area (currently in Great Lakes forum)
5. Cleveland Area (currently in Great Lakes forum)
6. St. Louis Area (currently in Great Plains forum)
7. Kansas City Area (currently in Great Plains forum)

[therealdoctorlew]

Yes to the subregional NY areas. If you are on Long Island, Westchester or New jersey, the other two are not really useful.

[rworange]

Is anyone even considering an exclude option?

I'm telling you it is all I can do to be civil in the cottage cheese thread that is nearing 400 replies ... especially when the post just says something like ... "me too". I want to bury them in cottage cheese.

Barring that ... as much as I am anti locking threads ... can't that option be considered after 300 or 400 posts. It is not like someone won't start a new cottage cheese or other similar hot topic thread.

It is easy to avoid the chatty General Topic or NAF threads ... but cottage cheese ... it seemed so innocent ... who knew it would be topic quicksand?

[kpaxonite]

me too

lol

seriously though, good idea

[Clarkafella]

Don't know if this would be useful to anybody else, but it is something I would sure like. Often with the old design, I would just click on "Chowhound", and a list of all new posts would appear- didn't matter what section they were from or anything, just all new posts in chronological order.

It would be wonderful if I could do that again, but only show the posts from my saved boards, again in chronological order. This may be possible to do right now, but if it is, I sure haven't figured out how to do it...

[The Dairy Queen]

Clarkfella, I think you can still do that by clicking on the giant, white CHOWHOUND banner that is in the upper left hand corner of the screen. It only works when you're in Chowhound. For instance, it should work for you after you read this post.

Is that what you're after?

~TDQ

[boyzoma]

That shows all the new posts, but it is from all categories, not specifically listing only those in the saved boards feature.

[The Dairy Queen]

Oh, you're right! Totally missed that part of his comment!

~TDQ

[greygarious]

And there is no longer a list of the latest NEW threads, which used to appear on the right side of the page, as well as at the bottom. That was redundant, but now both are gone.

[The Dairy Queen]

Now that they've fixed the white space problem, I'm fine with the redesign. But, I would love to see at the bottom of every thread, an option to go to MyChow in addition to these options:

Back to the Site Talk Board Back to the Top | Reply to original post

And, since USER NAME (VIEW PROFILE) in the upper right corner is now the only way to get to MyChow, I'd like it to be in a larger font, please.

~TDQ

[jen kalb]

Adding the "links" feature for International.
Making the Restaurant search feature more friendly for International
moving Search down onto text body from Corner
NYC is not user friendly front end for searcher, say in a particular neighborhood or borough
dont understand what happened to this - its pushing content (who generates?) rather than asking for content/being interactive with Board participants

[rworange]

Everything jen said

Jen, I wanted to ask. Has "country" always been on the Restaurant and Bar record or is that new?

Even though I've updated and added hundreds of these records, I haven't been doing too much lately because editing and adding these records has become increasingly more difficult. So I may have just forgotten it was there.

[Melanie Wong]

Country is a new field. It autofills for most of the spots I've been adding in the SF area. Where it comes in handy is that it autofills "Canada" for addresses in Windsor, CA, so I can change that to US. I've also edited some of the older records for Windsor, CA addresses that were unlinkable, as they were assigned to the Canada region rather than SF Bay Area before.

[rworange]

Gee, that's great.

OMG ... OMG !!!

I just entered a restauant, China Queen, for Guatemala City and it autmatically filled in the country code and even got the map in the general vicinity .... but if you rely on maps on Guatemala ... good luck to you.

I noticed the box for add a restaurant had changed a bit, but it was so discouraging to add foreign addresses I wasn't going to try again.

This is so cool. Now I can enter restaurants and rate them (yeah, I know all Chowhounds aren't on board with that))

And ... and ... search even works. I was able to enter China Queen II

Why don't they tell us some of the good changes like this. Every time I reported a restaurant I felt bad that I couldn't add a restaurant record for it.

Will have to see how it works for the places outside the major cities.

Huzzah.

Ironically for someone who didn't eat much Chinese food in the US, I'm becoming somewhat of the China Queen of Guatemala. I think I've eaten that particular cuisine more than any other.

[Engineering]

I am glad that country editing is working so well, but here is a little tip that should start the restaurant in the right country when adding new restaurants in California cities with a major Canadian counterpart. Enter the initial location in one of these formats:

Windsor, California or Windsor, CA, USA

[jen kalb]

For Italy country editing seems to be working about the same as before except for problems caused by floating text on IE7 which makes it impossible and incorrect ly located input box labels on IE8 which makes data entry in the second col more laborious.- One comment though, when the system is working right it indicates the province (i.e. Roma or Avellino) and postal code as well as the region (i.e. Lazio or Campania) - when the final record is created, the Province info falls away - it only appears in the input box for the street address and it gets deleted during data entry
Is there some other way of retaining this useful information (such as putting it after the name of the City?

Im still waiting for (1) for the linkage function to work for this and (2) for there to be any indication at all that locations outside the US are covered on the restaurant page ,any ETA? Something much simpler and more relevant that "romantic" "parking" "kid friendly" etc would help a great deal and forget about date of founding, liquor etc! Also, the big place to insert a picture while it is very difficult to upload a picture in the restaurant entries is pretty annoying.

thanks for all the work!

[Melanie Wong]

I'm not able to link up Windsor, CA restaurants from the SF Bay Area board. Has there been some switch back?

[chowser]

Not sure how easily this can be done, but it would be nice to know what thread/board you were on, when you are down further on the page. It could be a non-moving header or footer. Sometimes I've forgotten what thread I'm on and reply to the responses only to be admonished by another poster that it wasn't on the topic of the thread/folder. "Sorry, I forgot I wasn't on xxxxx but was on yyyy instead."

[kpzoo]

"Not sure how easily this can be done, but it would be nice to know what thread/board you were on, when you are down further on the page."

Just look at your browser's title bar and you'll see the thread and board name. Example screenshot attached (click to see regular view)

[chowser]

Simple--thanks.

[Chimayo Joe]

I'd also like a page that listed all the boards instead of breaking them up into sections. A pop-up would be okay for that, but I'd much rather the site just take me to another page that showed them all.

[Chimayo Joe]

I'd like to have something to click that would scroll down maybe 25 posts at a time or failing that something to click that would take me to the bottom of the page. Long threads aren't a problem on my desktop but scrolling through a 300 post thread to get to the end on my Ipod Touch is horrendous.

[chowser]

Is there a hot key, like "ctrl" "end" takes you to the bottom on a regular keyboard (sorry, I don't use the Touch online so have no idea).

[Chimayo Joe]

Yeah, it's not a problem on the desktop because there are several ways to get down the page quickly--space bar or end key or page down key or just dragging the scroll button downward. I don't know if there's some kind of shortcut to move down the page on the Touch. Touching the bar across the top of the page gets you back to the top quickly, but I haven't found a way to move quickly down. Haven't messed with the Touch enough to know the ins and outs of it, yet.

[chowser]

For way down the line, it would be nice if you could tell someone responded directly to one of your posts, instead of just being told that there have been new posts to a thread. Sometimes threads get long and I stop following them but learn much later that someone has asked me a question.

[boyzoma]

Oh - good one! I have done the same thing and then maybe found out a month later! Great catch!

[OCAnn]

It would be nice to reduce the white space on Show Saved Boards.

[kpaxonite]

I wish there were no italics

[JasmineG]

Seconding a few suggestions already made: I would really really like My Chow to be in a more easily reachable place, especially if it could be in the saved boards section.

I like the idea of the saved boards section a lot, but it would be great to allow us to rearrange the lineup of the saved boards. Also, when you click the saved boards tab, they drop down, but the reverse doesn't happen, i.e. you can't click it again to make them retract.

[LindaWhit]

Also, when you click the saved boards tab, they drop down, but the reverse doesn't happen, i.e. you can't click it again to make them retract.
~~~~~~~~
Yes you can. Click the small tab next to expand tab - it's a small dark gray box inside the lighter gray tab. That's the Collapse Boards tab. Or actually, you can just reclick the Expand Tab - that closes the Saved Boards on my PC.

[JasmineG]

We're talking about different tabs -- yes, the ones on the far right will expand and retract, but if you click the tab on the left that says "Show Saved Boards" it expands, but clicking it again does not make it retract. It seems silly and counter intuitive to have to move your mouse to the far side of the screen to retract it when it was right in that place to expand it.

[LindaWhit]

Ahhh, my bad. Yes, either clicking the Show Boards should collapse it completely (and then they could get rid of the "view" tabs completely! Perhaps a plus/minus sign on both the Choose A Board and Show Saved Board tab would suffice for the open/collapse.

[JasmineG]

Yeah, that would work too!

[rworange]

Thank you. Someone's comment about my very same thought about toggling the tags got a response of "ugh" because it didn't conform to web design standards.

If clicking on a tab is going to expand something, then clicking on that same tab should collapse it.

Linda, I thought about getting rid of tht 'view' section, but it is used for multiple things on the site, such as expanding search options. I think it is an attempt to standardize navigation thru the site, but it has its problems even in that regard.

[JasmineG]

Was the goal to hide or deemphasize My Chow? Because I found it a very useful feature, and would often start there, but I find that I go there much less often these days because it's in such an inconvenient location and hard to see. Is that going to be changed, or should we just assume that My Chow is going to go away soon with this de-emphasis?

That said, most of my major issues with the site design are fixed, though I wish the added grey was also there for My Chow as well (so maybe yes, it's being eliminated since they didn't bother to fix it for that?).

[Jacquilynne]

It's definitely not going away -- our hope is to add more functions to your profile in the future and make it a better dashboard for the site.

[JasmineG]

Is the location going to change, then? Because if not, I don't really see myself using it as much as I used to, it's just in a very non intuitive place and hard to reach and click.

[kpaxonite]

If no one has responded to a post you made in thread you should be able to delete it.

[LindaWhit]

Why? What you wrote might be pertinent to someone else who reads the thread later. The whole purpose of posting is *not* to receive a response. It's more often to disseminate information.

[kpaxonite]

I was just thinking that I fairly often see posts asking how do I delete my post ... and I know the answer to that question but wouldnt it make it easier on the mods to just allow people to delete their own posts.

[LindaWhit]

And yet allowing people to delete their own posts willy-nilly would probably damage the integrity of what a thread is all about. Someone might respond to their post before they choose to delete it, and that leaves that response hanging out there without any reference.

The CH Team has addressed this issue in the past - I'm pretty sure it's not going to ever happen.

[kpaxonite]

thats why I said 'If no one has responded to a post you made'

[LindaWhit]

Again - I still go back to what I originally said - what you said might be relevant to someone who reads it later. Someone could be replying to a post when a member is deleting their post - so it could STILL be left hanging there.

IF you want to delete something you just wrote, you can Edit, and delete the entire thing and put in a dash or something as a text placeholder.

[kpaxonite]

If I leave the board window open and there is a new post, it should automatically appear (so I dont have to click refresh)

Kind of like how I leave my facebook open all day but only look at it if I see a (1) on its tab because I know someone has posted on my wall.

The same could also be done if I leave a particular thread open.

[Sherri]

I would like to add "My Posts" to the Saved Board List instead of having to go to the top of the page and locate my name (in those teeny, tiny letters).

Speaking of teeny, tiny letters, finding the return to Chowhound is difficult. CHOW is in large blazing letters, not always the case for Chowhound.

Thanks for listening.

[queencru]

I'm not totally sure if this goes with the font size changes, so I figure I'd add it in case. I find it very annoying that when I go into Table Manners or The Juice, I see the big icon next to each story along with something that tells me what section it's in. I am already in Table Manners, so that just takes up unnecessary space and seems redundant. At that point I just want to be able to see a list of the latest stories instead of having to scroll to see anything other than the latest two. If the icon is necessary, something more the size of what we have for Most Popular is more than adequate.

[boyzoma]

I would love to be able to collapse a specific post within a thread. For example, if you hover over a collapsed response in a thread, you get a "click to expand" notice. I would love to get a "click to close" notice to close that response if I choose to. Currently, it must means more scrolling!

[carswell]

There should be an easy way to mark specific threads as read without having to open them.

[carswell]

There should be an easy way to go to the first unread post in threads, especially long threads. For example, users could click on the thread's New icon in the thread listing. This would drastically reduce scrolling.

[LindaWhit]

Oh, now THAT would be a brilliant addition, carswell - just click on a "New" button at top, and it'll automatically go to the first available NEW post. Love it.

[boyzoma]

+1 - I so agree with LW, carswell. That would be a fantastic add. Love the suggestion.

[chowdom]

Count me in, I was wishing for that this morning when I packed it in after 10 frustrating minutes.

[greygarious]

Agree on that one, and would also like an additional button (or a different color on the New button) that would indicate that there's a new post replying to one of your own.

I would like to be able to bring up my list of saved boards from my profile page.

[BobB]

I've seen that feature on other boards, but only on ones that are completely sequential - i.e., with no indented subthreads. Still, it shouldn't be that hard to code for it.

[carswell]

The "Choose a Board" and "Show Saved Boards" menus open automatically when you click on their respective tabs. Good (though I prefer the former design's clickless hover arrangement). Unfortunately they stay open until you manually close them.

They should close automatically when you select a board or when you click again on the tab. This would reduce clicking, reduce mouse movement and display more of the destination board. It would also mean the View tabs at the right edge of the page could be eliminated.

[LindaWhit]

On CHOW's "Recipes" link there is no way to get to a list of Member Recipes that have been submitted in Recency order. Here's the Recipe link:

http://www.chow.com/recipes?tag=chow_header_inner;chow_top_nav_inner

I've tried every which way and can't figure out how to get a FULL list of Member-submitted recipes. Here's the link I found, but it ONLY goes to the Main Recipes category, because that's what I clicked::

http://www.chow.com/recipes/50/catego...

I would love to go back to being able to see the ENTIRE list of Member-submitted Recipes, in the order in which they were submitted (most recent at top), and not just by category. When the Member Recipes board was created on CHOW, I remember this is the way I saw and reported a boatload of Spam that was posted there.

Now, unless you're within a specific category, you won't know.

[LNG212]

I would like the "edit" feature in the "saved boards" to allow one to, well, actually edit - not just add/delete but to move them to the order I'd like to see them.

I would like the "mychow" button to be put inside the "saved boards" area so I don't have to go all the way up there to find it.

I would a way to get back to a CH board that I'd like to go to from inside mychow or someone else's profile page (without having to go through the "go to chowhound" and "select a board" multi-clicks).

I would like to be able to click on the Table Manners (or whatever) picture at the top of the Chow page and get to a list of the stories there, instead of just to the most current story.

[Miss Needle]

"I would a way to get back to a CH board that I'd like to go to from inside mychow or someone else's profile page (without having to go through the "go to chowhound" and "select a board" multi-clicks)."

Ditto.

[LindaWhit]

And to head people off at the pass, here's what the CH Team is updating/fixing *TODAY* - so these items shouldn't be wishlisted:

http://chowhound.chow.com/topics/7241...

I agree with boyzoma - the ability to add pics via edit of your original post after you've mistakenly hit the Post My Reply button would be great...instead of having to hit reply on your original post, as you have to do now.

And you're welcome, boyz. :-)

[LNG212]

I think the same should be said for adding a place. When I've gone back to edit a post/reply, the "manage link" thing-ee is gone and I can't add in the place.

[jen kalb]

ought to be able to add the restaurant link by edit too if we forget in the initial trade.
checking the box is not enuf and its easy to forget