Feedback and suggestions

No punches held, I hate the new format of the website. You buried the dark mode option, and even just trying to browse to the forum to post this the navigation is atrocious, and not very intuitive. I was just presented with a list of posts under various categories until I clicked further and apparently leveled up to earn the "create topic" button once I'd apparently invested enough time and delved deep enough. WTF? Did the BOFH take over with the site redesign and simply say to hell with the users? What is this garbage new interface?

Who knows, maybe the first portion is related to the fact that I do not allow cookies to be stored, so it's a real pain in the ass to hunt and peck for the dark mode option every time I load the website. Please improve the site to be security conscious compatible.

Agreed, I absolutely hate it. No question. I didn't think there was anything wrong with the navigation at the top. The fact it's now on the left and so incredibly IN YOUR FACE is specifically annoying. I don't need to stare at my profile and certainly don't need all these obtrusive drop downs. It's not even like they're all over there either, there are still navigation options at the top. Worse yet, I can' minimize the hide the menu and now I have to stare at my f-ing face on EVERY page?

100% absolutely terrible update. Makes me not want to come back here. There wasn't anything wrong with the old navigation bar at the top. And like fatiluvr says, the forums are almost impossible to use now. It's so large and gaudy. Why are the previews so big? Why are there any previews on the main forum page at all? I'm really struggling to understand these changes are supposed to make my experience here better.

Thanks for the effort, but I hate it.

This

You are right, and you should say it.

It's not so bad on mobile. In some respects, it's better that it used to be by leaps and bounds.

Desktop on the other hand ...

I can't agree more. The update was so bad, that at first I assumed they were just experimenting with the back end or made a mistake. That it might actually have been done on purpose is completely baffling.

The bar on the left side wouldn't be SO horrible, except they still have the one at the top. All the same information used to be handled by the top bar, so the only result is a massive loss of screen real estate for no gain.

Before, the only way to use chat without being a completely fumbling mess was full screen mode. But this update broke the full screen mode of the chat too. I'm not alone noticing this.

Seems to me they just change stuff cause they think it might be cool on a whim, don't test it, and don't even care about rolling it back if it doesn't work lol

Edit: Either that or they really only care about mobile and what happens to desktop along the way is ancillary lol...

Please accept my apologies for the chat issues, this was an oversight in the latest update but should now be fixed.

Perhaps I can explain my reasons for the navigation changes to show that there has been some thought gone into it and the changes are not just random. First of all the changes should only affect desktop users, the navigation for mobile users should still be the same as before. For desktop users, we've moved the navigation to the left hand side which gives space for many more top level links. It's using space that was previously just blank and cleans up the header, allowing room for more icons up there in the future. It also makes the desktop navigation similar to the mobile navigation, making it consistent for members who access the site on multiple devices.

Finally, were not finished yet, this is just the first step in improving the navigation and you should see another update soon which will recategorise some of the links into more intuitive groups. Oh, and unfortunately we don't have a test team like Microsoft, but we do try to get the fixes out as soon as we can. We rely on members pointing out bugs, so even though it can be hard to hear when we've screwed up, please do keep pointing them out because it helps us improve the site (I really mean it).

Please could you clarify this issue, since the update shouldn't have affected the forums. What's the URL of the page you're referring to?

Could we maybe make dark mode something that's saved directly to the profile, rather than being a cookie based thing? It's always been a pain in the ass to hunt and peck for it, the reorganization of the interface only exacerbates the existing problem.

Also, have you looked at the forums on a PC? There is nothing intuitive about it, it's certainly not organized in any manner that I've seen on any other website over the last two decades.