teemuflyer

I was being a little facetious, having led the launch of dozens of websites and their corresponding backends over the years, many of them with multiple million users..

Canarsie

Internet Brands — which owns FlyerTalk — also owns vBulletin, which is the bulletin board software which currently powers FlyerTalk.

Not that it is impossible; but I highly doubt that Internet Brands would use a platform from some other entity as long as it owns vBulletin — unless it acquires that other entity, of course...

trek604

A reply to this long thread of criticisms should be posted in public view. Not hidden in PMs.

Efrem

Others have already pointed out that this redesign seems to be change for the sake of change, not change to improve anything users care about. Rather than belaboring their points, I'll just say I agree.

And one specific comment that I didn't see above: the "Go to first new post" icon at the left of a thread title used to be a square that was large enough to click on. It's now a tiny triangle which is much harder to zero in on. It seems to accept clicks in a limited region around the triangle itself, but I'd like to see something larger - ideally the previous icon restored, but in any case something that one can realistically expect to hit with a mouse at least 80 percent of the time. Also: a downward-pointing triangle is understood throughout the computing world to mean an open list of some sort (such as a list of the files in a directory). When you click on it, what everyone expects to happen is that the list will close and the triangle will now point to the right. This is giving a standard symbol a totally different, and unexpected, use. That's another reason to change it.

ashill

I generally like the visual appearance of the new skin.

Two significant issues which I think have been mentioned above, but I can't tell because of #1 :

1. Find on page does not work (in Safari 11.0.3 in macOS 10.13.3).
2. I can't distinguish links from other text.

IBJoel

So I do think it's your screen. I've attached a clipping of mine, for reference. Hopefully the fact that it is an image will let you see the difference.
​​​​​​​

ashill

I can see a clear difference between the gray for the quotation and the white for everything else.

We have one desktop in our house which had that issue (on many things, not just one web site). I fixed it by calibrating the display (on a Mac: System Preferences > Displays > Color > Calibrate); specifically, changing the white point on the display separated out the gray from the white.

Jagboi

I can see a grey background on yours, but not something in the main thread that isn't an image. Most odd. Prior to the change it wasn't a problem - was the quoted background darker previously? It also isn't a problem on other IB owned forums.

JoeDaejeon

I like the new font and size. Much easier to read than the old one. So far that's my only comment on the changes.

As for the order of the forums in 'Airlines and Mileage Programs', it's still extremely annoying that you can't sort the list alphabetically, ie. why does 'KLM Flying Dutchman' and 'Virgin America' appear in the A section? There's probably some good reason why it was done, but for someone scanning the list, no matter how many times, I always need to do a double take due to the non-alphabetical order.

Efrem

- KLM is grouped with Air France. As long as they're grouped, which is a separate issue from site design, they have to be somewhere. Would putting them both under K be better? I don't think so, though perhaps it wouldn't be worse either.

- Virgin America is under Alaska, as makes complete sense given their 2016 merger and the likely elimination of any separate Virgin America identity in the very near future. Maybe that's unfortunate, but again, it's not a FlyerTalk site design issue.

I don't like the new design in general, but to me the airlines seem to be organized in a reasonable way.

justforfun

Did no one preview the site before it went live? It's embarrassing how awful it is. Pure amateur hour.

Globaliser

That's because "Air France Frequence Plus" and "KLM Flying Dutchman" are sub-boards of the immediately-preceding board ("Air France, KLM, and Other Partners | Flying Blue"); and "Virgin America | Elevate pre 2018" is a sub-board of the immediately-preceding board ("Alaska Airlines | Mileage Plan").

The current colouring and layout don't make this sufficiently clear at first glance. But the logic seems impeccable.

RatherBeOnATrain

I'm running Firefox with some extensions. With the new FT style, links in FT posts are no longer showing up as links unless I hover the cursor over a link... when I do that, the link correctly changes color (from black to blue).

Buster

You're right. The Virgin America board used to be slightly indented to make it clearer that it was sub-board of the Alaska board, but now it looks to be basically in-line, so we've lost that distinction.

Grog

I don't recall seeing an explanation as to WHY this involuntarily change was implemented.

It's simply unusable for any duration. And, believe me, I'm not a technological fuddyduddy. I design apps and websites (and earn money doing it). I don't like it when Sonos changes things arbitrarily either. Sonos pull this stuff all the time. Why turn something on its head when it's something that thousands of people have bought into and obviously love already? Give haters options; don't take away options from the lovers. It's quite simple, really.

[After further usage...]

Far beyond any issue of esthetics, the current design is causing eye pain. Increasing the font size makes certain elements far too large and otherwise unreadable. A member since 2003, I can say I'm forced to take a break from FT due to this design (I've considered it for other reasons and this now puts it over the top). It's clear I'm not alone in hoping you get the site usable again for all of your members.