Will this become relevant again?
http://www.wayne2.net/cnetnot.htm
Status:
*** Update as 9/28/2010--10:29 AM PST we are doing the switch over now. Please read here: http://forums.cnet.com/5208-7598_102-0.html?messageID=3383233
See you all on the new platform shortly!
******* Update as of 9/28/2010--6:05 PM PST. We are a go for launch tomorrow morning 9/29/2010.
No exact time yet, but it most likely begin the process in between the hours of 10 - 11am in which the forums will go into read mode only for approximately 6 hours. I will post an announcement as the time gets closer. Thanks!****** Update as of 9/28--12:37 PM PST. Sorry folks, unfortunately it's not going to happen today.
I will update this thread if it happens tomorrow. ******* Update as of 9/28--9:30 AM PST. Just a heads up folks. It's a short notice, but we maybe doing the platform switch over today. Our team has figured out the major bug in our system last night that has been holding up this transition to our new platform. And we are in the mist of determining if we will get the green light to go live (I will know in about an hour). If we do go live the forums will be in read mode only for approximately 6 hours--where you will not be able to post. As soon as we get the thumbs up I will post a global announcement to let everyone know. ****
***********
Hi folks,
I hope this post finds everyone well! If you haven't heard already, on (As of now launch is to be determined),, if all goes to plan, we will be moving off of Jive software (the 3rd party software that currently powers our forums) and moving to our own in-house forum system. With this switch, the majority of the changes will be on the backend (behind the scenes) and most of the functionality that you are currently using in the forums will remain the same.
However, one change will be very obvious to some of you, and I wanted to let you all know ahead of time that we will be retiring the Forum Tree and Linear view. Now before you start kicking and screaming, please hear me out.
For a long time the tree and linear views have had very, very minimal use (linear view use is almost non-existent and the tree view use to be exact is 0.5%). Now, I personally know that some of you like the tree view and use it frequently, and to be quite honest with you, we were initially going to eliminate that view completely. The amount of use just didn?t justify the development work involved to continue supporting it. But I know many of our core forum users (especially those who have been around since the ZDNet forums) prefer the tree view. So what I did was recommend a hybrid view, which incorporates the best of both worlds as a compromise -- combining the threaded and tree view together which will allow users to expand or collapse the discussion thread. With that said here are some screenshots of it below. Note that when I captured these screen shots, the hybrid view was still in development, so you may see things that are a bit off. But for the most part, they're correct.
Have a look. Note: these are just screen shots, so the pages will look smaller on your screen--with that said all font sizes and layouts when we launch will remain the same as you see the forums today.:
Collapsed view:
http://i964.photobucket.com/albums/ae128/lee-koo/hybridview/collapse1.jpg
Expanded view:
http://i964.photobucket.com/albums/ae128/lee-koo/hybridview/expand1.jpg
Collapsed view with a couple of posts expanded:
http://i964.photobucket.com/albums/ae128/lee-koo/hybridview/collapse_partial1.jpg
Some notes about the hybrid view:
-- You'll be able to choose to either view the discussion thread in the expanded or collapsed view (the link to select your preference is located directly below the first post in the grey bar). Once you select the view you like, this setting will be saved automatically as a cookie in your browser and as long as that preference cookie is not deleted, you will remain in the view you?ve selected. By default, everyone will see the expanded view, until you select collapsed. With the move off of Jive, we are no longer storing the forum views preferences for each individual and we will be eliminating the forum preference page.
-- When viewing the thread in the collapsed view, you can expand each post individually by clicking on the "+" plus icon (located on the left of the each subject line) and clicking the "-" minus icon will collapse the post.
-- The first post in a discussion thread will always remain expanded regardless of which view it is in. And will remain expanded at the top of the forums thread even if you paginate through the thread.
-- Regardless which view is selected, 30 posts in the thread will be displayed on one page. (This number has not been set in stone yet and I?m thinking of displaying 50 posts, but it really all depends on the performance of the system). And pagination of the thread will remain the same as it is currently in the threaded view. Below are a couple of screenshots of where pagination will be located. We've moved the pagination below the first post of the thread which will always remain at the top open even as the reader paginates through the pages.
Here is page 1 of the thread
http://i964.photobucket.com/albums/ae128/lee-koo/Miscellaneous/pagination.jpg
Here is page 2 of the thread
http://i964.photobucket.com/albums/ae128/lee-koo/Miscellaneous/pagination2.jpg
A few additional feature changes when we move to own system:
-- The permalink, report offensive post, and email a friend feature will be displayed with icons only (we are removing the text along side of them) and if you hover over those icons it will display text to tell you what each feature is for.
-- All submission forms: report offensive post, email a friend, reply to posts will all be inline forms and when clicked will expand directly beneath the associated post--no more going to a different browser page for submission--woo hoo!
-- Logging into the forums will be through a modal window (a form which opens directly on top of the browser page) rather than going to a separate login/registration page.
-- Creating a new discussion will be a modal window also, rather than going to a separate submission page.
-- Message/post permalink will be a true permalink page now--meaning if you click on the permalink icon, it will actually take you to a separate page that contains that specific post all by itself.
I think I've covered most of the changes that will occur once we switch off of Jive, but if I left something out I will be sure to add it to this post.
I hope you folks like these few changes. I know some of you are quite attached to the tree view and I hope this hybrid view is a good compromise rather than having no tree view at all.
Please let me know your thoughts. Feedback is welcomed!
Thanks for your time!
-Lee Koo
CNET Community
Message was edited by: admin on September 28 to update a no go live status
Message was edited by: admin on September 28 to update status of switch to the new platform.
Message was edited by: admin on September 22nd to announce delay in launch date.
Message was edited by: admin to edit launch date and a few edits to the announcement.
Message was edited by: admin on August 30th to update launch date.
Message was edited by: admin on Sept 13th to update launch date
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