Chess

[muppetman]

I just want to say, NICE ONE PROF!! the chess is great.. all day at work i have been locked in a battle of wits and its great, i have a crap job so it was nice to think about something else..

Top job mate

[Prof.Witchheimer]

thanks, very glad you like it, I really enjoy the games too 

[assi]

I spend atm more Time in the Chesspart than elsewhere in this board. 

[matakishi]

I'm finding that I don't read the boards at all now.
I used to navigate by hitting the 'posts since last visit' link but now I wipe the list by taking my move in a chess game and then navigating away before remembering to look at the bords.
I don't see attachments because I don't get the paper clip showing and I can't spot links because the text looks the same colour as the main text. I assume it isn't really but I'm colourblind so it does to me.
The index pages are difficult to scan for interesting topics too, I don't know why, they seem a lot more crowded I think.
The less time I spend here the more I get used to not being here. I appreciate that the new forum is better from a running/upkeeping/programming point of view but from a user's point of view (mine at least) it isn't an improvement.
I am making an effort to get to grips with the new look but, so far, without success.

EDIT with examples:
Private messages are a pain now, I've just emptied all of them because I had 15 pages or so of 'your move' messages and I got fed up selecting the messages about other stuff that I wanted to keep and ended up discarding everything.

I've taken a look at the index pages of the forums to see what I don't like: the sidebar is full of mostly irrelevant stuff but it's a sidebar so I don't mind; some of it is interesting too.

The list of topics is made up of lots of columns, the first one displays pointless information as far as I can see, I don't care if something is a 'hot topic' I can see if I want to read it by the title and see how popular it is by the number of replies.
The next column serves no purpose at all as far as I can see, what do the diagonal pages signify?
Next is the column displaying the titles, this is marred by the fact that EVERY topic has a blue 'new' box in it, even topics that haven't had an entry since 2006. These boxes draw my eye, it's they that prevent me easily scanning the topics. I hate them.
After this it all gets normal and functional, topic starter, replies, views and last post info are all useful.
So, to sum up, the little page icons and the blue boxes make the page too busy and don't serve any purpose that I can discern. I vote to have them removed. They are a barrier between me and the forum content.

[Driscoles]

Iam hooked on chess again.
Its great to have a chance to play with nice fellas here at the LA Forum.
Thanks
Björn

[revford]

The links really are the same colour as the text now.  It's not just you being colour-blind Matakishi.

[Plynkes]

The problem with the little blue "new" boxes is that the forum software doesn't know which topics from the old LAF you have read, everything you haven't looked at since the move is counted as "new." To cure this you have to either read every topic on LAF or find the master "mark as read" button (which is I think somewhere on the main page).

Once you have clicked on that only topics with genuinely new posts since your last visit will have the blue "new" thing. At least, that worked for me.

I too have some reservations about the new forum. On the whole I'm happy with it, but there are some minor irksome things (by personal beef is with the way it handles bigger pics, not really loving that).

The lack of all those error messages all the time is something I am digging, though.

[matakishi]

Genius!
That's sorted the little blue boxes, thanks very much

[Prof.Witchheimer]

Paul, we're not yet finished with the forum optimization, I just wanted as soon as possible switch to the new one due to all that error messages. I'm unfortunateyl too busy at the moment to make some updates but i guess next 1-2 weks I'm going to do it for sure, so no worries, it will be better

Attachments don't work for some reason, I'm working on it.

Links are really not good visible at the moment, I will correct that.

Chess PM's - just check off  Chess - Stettings - Chess Receive PM updates from SMFChess

more later..

[twrchtrwyth]

Cheers Prof, I'm going to turn my chess pms off now.

[H.M.Stanley]

Chess too!! Lovely - i'm in [but not from work]

I'm a bit rusty though