Front Page Confusion

[MajorKong]

Just a small observation and suggestion: Once you get into the forums, the way you move to another forum is through the Navigation drop-down box. The entries in that list become very familiar. However, if you come in on the front page of the forums, no such list exists, making going to a desired forum a bit of a pain. Since the front page is so long, with the descriptions of each of the forums, you generally have to scroll the page and search for the one you're looking for.

A solution to this is to simply include the drop-down forums list on the front page.

K

 

[Jason Clark]

We won't be changing this, as there is no need to put 2 forms of navigation on one page, the categories are listed there, if its too long customize and remove the ones that dont interest you.

 

[MajorKong]

Obviously no need, just makes navigation easier.

How about this approach: Have a "brief" option in the user customizations, where the forum descriptions would simply be omitted from the front page and the oversized folder icons would be trimmed to the size used in the forums themselves. It's much more likely to fit within a single screen and be more easily navigable.

The front page is just a jumping off point - essentially just a menu. I don't know about you, but I've used (and designed) a lot of menu-based interfaces. When a user needs to scroll a page to find a menu selection, it makes it a lot less user-friendly.

K

 

[Yo Ma Ma]

What about the http://forums.anandtech.com/whoson.cfm page? From there you need to use <back> or go to the "today" or "home" page to re-enter a forum.