Welcome To The New Luminous-Landscape

[Slobodan Blagojevic]

... Undoubtedly, you were born to test :-)

...our patience?

[Isaac]

You can have an opinion without testing, and there is plenty of user feedback to support that particular opinion.

Everyone has an opinion and people like to quarrel.

These days, pdf "Usability testing on 10 cents a day"

[Farmer]

Some people like to quarrel...

Bad link - at least for me - can't download it.

[Kevin Raber]

Hello,

two things I recognized when using old article.

• there is no space betweenbold printed keywords or links in the article ( see example1.jpg )
  http://luminous-landscape.com/1ds-field-notes/
• there is just an info that a plugin is needed, but no hint on the required plugin ( see example2.jpg )
  http://luminous-landscape.com/vj8-1ds-critique/
• some old articles contain strange letters ( see example3.jpg )
  http://luminous-landscape.com/canon-1ds-field-report-2/

These are only examples - all little problems occur in several different articles, if not in all ! The used browser is Firefox 35.01 running on Windows 8.1.

I want to make sure that I'm not complaining about anythng - this is just meant to be informal to help optimze the new site.

For m the new site is 100% improved to the old one, much cleaner and it is much easier to find the content needed.

Robert

Hello Robert - thanks for pointing out links as you did.  The issue with the strange letters is a problem with current HTML editors and old ones.  It seems that whenever a long dash was used in an old article it presents a series of crazy letters when it was ported over.  We'll try to fix those issues as we see them.  These will only appear in older articles.

As far as the plug in goes that will be something that can't really be fixed as we are moving to a new video system.  We'll try to patch things up to new videos as we go.  The new video system will be finished this week if all goes well.

The no space between words happens when a word runs into a bolded word or sometimes a link.  No easy fix except to fix those as we see them.  One of the challenges with a big site like this is the transition from some old articles.   The content is still good and may have to be worked through.  We are looking at pages getting the most hits and making corrections on those.  It will take time for stuff like this to get it all fixed.

Kevin Raber

[Kevin Raber]

Lots of Wordpress to SMF bridge options out there to check out, also it's not that difficult to directly interface with SMF via the database.

Overall pretty good stuff guys.  One thing to note, you might want to have the devs look at what used to be private articles as I think pretty much everything is now public and can be both navigated to directly and found via search.

Thanks Mark, we'll be working on a number of forum topics and features in the coming weeks.  We are just now finishing up a major new video interface and we should launch that this week.  Then we can move onto some bells and whistle items.  I'll get the guys looking at the private topics.  Then finally we will be introducing a more advanced search and results option.  Your feedback is appreciated.

Kevin Raber

[Kevin Raber]

Tapatalk is still broken, at least for me.

BTW, is there a posted bug list we can check to see if a problem we see is a known one? It would be nice if it contained a list of recently fixed problems so we can check and see if the fix cured our instance of any given problem.

Thanks,

Jim

Tapatalk fix is being worked on.  The lists of things being worked on is ever changing and fixes are being made pretty quickly so there is no public list.  For now we will apreciate folks letting us know issues etc and we'll work on them.

Kevin Raber

[Ed B]

Tapatalk is working for me but to put it bluntly, it sucks. There doesn't seem to be a way to browse forums, just posts.

Is it possible the forums don't play well with Android because it's an older, outdated version of the software? It seems the devs have stopped supporting this version according to their website. Canon Rumors uses the 2.x version of this and it scales much better in Android.

[Kevin Raber]

We will eventually update the forum software but it's not broken and I like to give new versions of software a chance to work the kinks out before switching over.  We will look at in the next month or so.  Still have lots of projects on the list for the current site.  You can always look at the forum with a regular browser and bypass Tapatalk. 

Kevin Raber

[Ed B]

Thanks for the response Kevin. I've attached a screenshot of how the forum looks on my phone (a pretty big one actually) with my preferred browser. I think it's about lifesize and as you can see a forum upgrade can't get here quick enough for me.

On another note, aren't you concerned about security patches for the software? I've seen other outdated boards brought down by hackers because of outdated security. BTW, keep up the good work, the front page looks great on my phone.

[BJL]

Ed B,
    Have you tried using your phone in landscape mode?
This site is then tolerable for me -- and it seems appropriate!

[Ed B]

Yeah but it's still pretty small, it strains my eyes.

[250swb]

I'm perhaps an old fuddy-duddy, but the old site was easier to scan quickly, easier on the eye, and it was clearer what you (the owners) thought were the important headline articles. The new site offers a democratisation of layout that mimic's any other site that doesn't have it's own editorial opinions. And it was having an opinion (shown in a criteria led layout) that was so good about the old LuLa. And it looked far different to the 'drag-n-drop' design of other sites. Now it is an anonymous bland offering that copies (other site layouts) rather than informs, it was never a problem instantly recognising a new article to read in the old LuLa, now I can hardly be bothered to try and find one.

Steve

[BJL]

Yeah but it's still pretty small, it strains my eyes.

True; I only said "tolerable", and I do a lot of zooming and panning.

Perhaps we must to submit to the trend of ever bigger phones!

[Kevin Raber]

I'm perhaps an old fuddy-duddy, but the old site was easier to scan quickly, easier on the eye, and it was clearer what you (the owners) thought were the important headline articles. The new site offers a democratisation of layout that mimic's any other site that doesn't have it's own editorial opinions. And it was having an opinion (shown in a criteria led layout) that was so good about the old LuLa. And it looked far different to the 'drag-n-drop' design of other sites. Now it is an anonymous bland offering that copies (other site layouts) rather than informs, it was never a problem instantly recognising a new article to read in the old LuLa, now I can hardly be bothered to try and find one.

Steve

[/quote

Well let's see.  All new articles are at the top.  Bigger photos with articles, read a few lines of the new article, click to read more, bigger home page pictures that are expandable, easier to read type.  What's so bland and hard about that?  There aren't any other sites that look like ours.  Our old site was boring and worn out and we couldn't move forward without a change. We had more requests to go away from white on black for many years.  The new site isn't a drag and drop site, let me assure you of that.  Time for a change like lots of things in life.  Based on what we are hearing there are a lot of people that like the new look.  Hope you continue to visit.  I think you'll find the site will be easier to use in the long run.

Kevin Raber

[BJL]

... The new site offers a democratisation of layout that mimic's any other site that doesn't have it's own editorial opinions. And it was having an opinion (shown in a criteria led layout) that was so good about the old LuLa. ...

All new articles are at the top.  Bigger photos with articles, read a few lines of the new article, click to read more, bigger home page pictures that are expandable, easier to read type.

Kevin,
    you are just going to have to accept that having the great majority of feedback being positive is a rare degree of success for a web-site but achieving unanimous praise only happens in police states!

And what says "having an opinion" better that a new top-of-the-front-page heading for "rantatorials"!

[Ed B]

True; I only said "tolerable", and I do a lot of zooming and panning.

Perhaps we must to submit to the trend of ever bigger phones!

It's the panning part that drives me nuts.

Sadly, I have a Nexus 6, it doesn't get much bigger than that.