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OH GOODIE !!!! ..... so now I can have a candle and a heart in a box......I,m sure a 55 YO farmer will find a use for those....
Come to think of it ......I live in S.A. so the candle might come in handy.....
sorry for my previous post. I wanted to show something but needed identical one line posts to make my point.
One of the reasons given for moving to a USA board layout is that it is mobile friendly. I'm going to have to disagree.
Take a look at the one line post from a USA board thread and my post shown side by side in screenshots from my samsung mobile. The one line post on the USA thread takes up my whole mobile screen, but my one line post with identical text takes up very little of my screen. My point is to show that the proposed move to a USA style layout WILL NOT be an improvement for members who use their mobiles to view and post on the Australian boards. Maybe their is a way to go to a mobile friendly view of the USA thread, but I couldn't find it. On the Australian boards their is a link at the bottom of the screen when viewing from a mobile that enables you to toggle between mobile and full view.
What is even worse is how the top of the thread shows on a mobile. I urge those members who use their mobile to view the boards to go to click on the link below while viewing from their mobile to see what I mean about how the top of the thread is presented in mobile view, then compare how the top of this thread is currently presented on our boards.
The more I look at how the USA boards are presented on screen, on both my iPad and my mobile, the more I dislike them . . . . . and I don't believe that time will make any difference to this feeling.
Maybe be my feelings about this are influenced by the fact that I don't do Facebook or twitter and am not used to how these sites appear onscreen. On the USA boards, when viewing the boards on a computer, much of the screen is blank space.
Apart from the layout of the US boards in general, this is what else I really hate.
There is no message posted count. No, I'm not patting myself on the back because I've posted thousands of messages, but if a new member can see at a glance the amount of posts another member has made, it can instill some confidence that the person answering their message has some experience. Especially when members like myself use a posting ID with 0 feedback.
There is no feedback number visible. Again, having a number there can instill some confidence to some members that the person responding to them knows what they're talking about. My 0 feedback has concerned a number of members, as it's hard to convince them that I have thousands of feedback on other accounts, so have an understanding of how things work.
The "titles", like explorer, adventurer, are childish. That is something I would expect from a kindergarten class. Just being logged in and doing nothing earnt me 5 "badges". Reminds me of "awards" that kids get at school. It doesn't matter how good or bad you are, everyone must get one at some point.
There is so much dead space on the right hand side. Surely something could be put in that dead space?
There is no indication that a message has been read. Here, an unread message will be in bold text. That goes for new unread messages, or old threads with new messages (bold blue text) and recent threads with new messages (bold red text). Once they are read, the text converts to red unbolded. When you're logged in, you can see at a glance which threads you need to click on.
It's difficult to add photos or smileys. I tried to add a smiley from my hard drive and got a square box with a pencil. I tried to add a picture, got the same thing. Cutting and pasting a picture adds it onto a new line of its own, so you can't add one 
which kind of causes you to lose the flow of your sentence.
I hate that every time you do something, the bell lights up with a message telling you what you've done. Leave my bell alone! I posted 2 replies to messages and the wretched thing lit up like a Christmas tree! Heaven help me if someone marks my reply as "helpful".
Which brings me to my last point. Helpful? Really? That's a crock.
What I do like about the layout of the US forums......NOTHING
