ILIAS open source Forums

I do not want to conceal my opinion from you - so here is my vote:

Indenting postings (like in Moodle) does not look good for me. It make me think of a CSS style error when DIVs are not displayed correctly under each other. Imagine the current discussion of this thread layouted in that way -

Default behaviour of the forum should be presenting the thread in the "order by date" mode. If discussions are short, this is a good and easy way to read them. When they become longer, a user can change to the "Order by Answer" mode to see who has answered to whom (something which is not possible in this popular PHPBB forum!).

The style of the OrientalWeb does not convince me. I always need to load a new page to read the next posting. That's not user-friendly. I doubt the entrance page with all postings mentioned still looks good with a lot of threads and postings. Maybe showing always the newest posting of each thread with the first lines of the posting text might be a useful extension - something like an appetizer.

Concerning the tree layout of a thread: The font size of the tree should be smaller. Then it does not take that much space. Same for all the additional information like "Created ..." And why the font of the tree is bold now?

Adding always a title to my posting does not seem an appropriate way for me to reduce complexity. Most users are not used to add an additional title to their postings. They do not even change the subject of their mails when they reply - even when the subject of the message itself has changed! Have a look in your Inbox!

Maybe we should add a little margin bottom to each entry in the tree to make the posting lists lighter.

But I am still convinced of a tree left of the postings instead of top of them. It makes navigating much easier.

That was my opinion on this issue!

Best, Matthias

I agree with you, this is really not user-friendly. But I never said that this functionality is great.



I vote for a new button at the entrance-page: Tree-Structure. => then there are two entrance-views.
But with the actual design, this will be really a bad solution, because the font of the entrance page is too large. It must be smaller (like in Orientalweb).



I don`t think so. This functionality, will produce an "overload" of the user: Too much informations on the simple entrance-view.



I agree.



Some teachers use forums as an archive (questions of students, answers of teachers). And in some forums in our university, there are about 30 replies, and all with the same title!

You said: "When they become longer, a user can change to the "Order by Answer" mode to see who has answered to whom". Now for the users it would be fine, if they find more informations:
- I vote : if users don`t write a new Subject, this will not be accepted, and they will see a red! information text: Please fill out the Subject! What do you think?



Yes, a new design - maybe smaller/lighter fonts of the tree would be useful. wmeyer wrote
- ist zu eng, um hilfreich zu sein
- die einzelnen Einträge stehen zu dicht. Optisch klebt eher der vorherige Autor mit dem nächsten Subject zusammen

Hans

The style of the left tree will change with 3.8.0 (see current SVN).

@Matthias: Bold is used to identify unread postings.

Up to now I cannot see a widely agreed alternative layout for the "order by answers" view.

In ILIAS 3.8.0 the quotings will also include the name of the original posting. This also makes the relation between postings clearer.

What about highlighting the posting currently located under the mouse pointer on both sides?