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After impatiently scrolling all the way to the bottom of the Expanded Index to find the Motorola Droid Razr forum, I thought "god there has to be an easier way..." I found the Compact index and it's a little better, but still takes a lot of scrolling to get thru. Can we have an even more compact index, with only the phone models and not their sub-forums listed? I'm OK with having to click thru to get to the list of sub-forums. I was thinking of just a calendar/grid style layout. It could be a picture gallery, with the model names as the caption, or just text. Anything to reduce the amount of vertical scrolling needed to find a phone model.
And on a slightly related note - I would really love to see an index organized by chipset/phone architecture. Mainly because I'm playing with my Droid4 and want to see what other phones' software I could possibly take advantage of. I've found a lot of interesting items in the Droid Razr forum already, but there's obviously more out there that I haven't discovered yet.
For another example, there were whole series of phones built on the Qualcomm MSM720x chipset, both WinMo and Android. It appears that the XDAndroid builds for HTC Rhodium et al were also useful across non-HTC phones like the Sony Xperia 1.
It would help us, as developers, to know what hardware out there is similar to each other. It would allow us to better leverage all of the software development work that's taking place, and we would all make progress faster.
It could help reduce the clutter in the index page, if forums were divided by phone architecture, not Carrier-branded model names. E.g., I don't really see why the AT&T Captivate / T-Mobile Vibrant / other Galaxy S phones needed separate main forums.
My $0.02, after a few years of working with this stuff...
Mostly good ideas..
highlandsun said:
After impatiently scrolling all the way to the bottom of the Expanded Index to find the Motorola Droid Razr forum, I thought "god there has to be an easier way..." I found the Compact index and it's a little better, but still takes a lot of scrolling to get thru. Can we have an even more compact index, with only the phone models and not their sub-forums listed? I'm OK with having to click thru to get to the list of sub-forums. I was thinking of just a calendar/grid style layout. It could be a picture gallery, with the model names as the caption, or just text. Anything to reduce the amount of vertical scrolling needed to find a phone model.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
So I agree with you on just about everything you said, that would definitely improve the site. I even agree with the revamping of the index. What I don't understand is why you're complaining about scrolling though. You could either use the provided search bar or even use Ctrl-F while in the index. Either way will get you to a specific phone pretty quickly, no scrolling needed. Unless I completely misunderstood you...
At leas for me, when deciding for a new phone, one of the biggest if not the biggest factor is how active is that device on xda. But this is quite hard to determine. Only statistics I have found was total number of posts, which does not help much as 3 year old device will probably have more total posts than 3 months old one.
So I made little application that crawled over development forums and counted all posts made in last month, to see which devices are most active. Here are my results:
http://pastebin.com/raw.php?i=Bs4Gb7Pc
I hope that helps anyone deciding for a new device. And I also hope that feature like that would be integrated directly into xda, since its interesting to see how active devices are.
This is exactly what I was looking for. It would be nice to have this integrated in the xda website.
What is device Name¿
That's very interesting, no surprise on the Nexus devices.
This is a neat idea. We'll work on it. Might take a couple of months, as there are a lot of other todos around here
This is missing legacy devices? Because i couldnt find Galaxy Y & other phones which are in legacy devices..
But a great chart none the less..!
All device that appear on first page when you select ALL are included.
matejdro said:
At leas for me, when deciding for a new phone, one of the biggest if not the biggest factor is how active is that device on xda. But this is quite hard to determine. Only statistics I have found was total number of posts, which does not help much as 3 year old device will probably have more total posts than 3 months old one.
So I made little application that crawled over development forums and counted all posts made in last month, to see which devices are most active. Here are my results:
http://pastebin.com/raw.php?i=Bs4Gb7Pc
I hope that helps anyone deciding for a new device. And I also hope that feature like that would be integrated directly into xda, since its interesting to see how active devices are.
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Click to collapse
Hi matejdro,
Can you provide the app source or update the data?
Thanks.
Sorry I lost the source. I attempted to recreate it few weeks ago but it looks like XDA forums has put some heavy bandwith control on their servers and I can only crawl through about 1 page per second which is way too slow to get results in meaningful time.
Great idea thanks!
I know this is a really old post, so apologies for bumping.....However as it is the only post that I have come across that shows what the most active devices are, I would like to see if there is any way of resurrecting the discussion and the application itself!
As stated by the OP, this is a major factor for me in deciding what phone to purchase as we can see what sort of support any particular phone is getting, so I was wondering if there was any outside chance of this being updated??
I know it is a long shot but can always hope
Seriously, this is one of the WORSE forums i've ever seen, when it comes to structure.
The content, on the other hand, is stupendous. Absolutely brilliant.
Back to the structure again. It's mildly unacceptable.
What beautiful mind came up with these 3 tabs ? "ALL DEVICES" "TOP DEVICES" and "NEWEST DEVICES" ??
Are we serious here? It's gruesome. Why do you guys keep them ?
Ok, let's say the answer is "we like them". Fair enough.
Let's try and search the forums. Holy crap, i have to scroll through a 2x2 list to find my device.
I'll have to blink my eyes SO FAST just to catch up a similar word to my device's name. Let it be
Samsung, Sony, Xperia, Nexus, Motorola or whatever you wish.
Guess what ? I did see the option "search subscribed forums" !! Very convenient...if only i could find out how to subscribe to one.
The structure of the forum looks like a tornado came by and put everything out of place.
Let's see...
General discussion (ok)
Marketplace (ok)
Drums rumbliing...
Windows 8
Windows Phone 7
Windows Phone 8
Windows Mobile
Android Developemnt
...
...
Ubuntu
Firefox (wtf ?)
Chef central (i'm a cook btw)
..
The stupidity begins
HTC Leo
Nexus
HTC Legend
Desire
Supersonic
SONY XPERIA X10
Samsung Captivate
blah blah
Motorola Droid 2
HTC Aria
Motorola Droid X
You get the point.
Why not keep 6 forums and make all the other sub-forums ?
In example
General
Marketplace
Windows ---> Inside this forum all the sub-forums
Samsung --> All Samsung stuff
Sony --- > All Sony stuff
Motorola ---> All motorola stuff
blah blah blah
This website LAGS like watching a movie shot at 1 FPS.
Maybe you can COMPILE a kernel for the website so it won't lag and give us a special button
to "Boost MyXDA" with "Browsing Mode" "Patience Mode" and "Quit Mode".
That's all i had to say. I really don't care if it will have any impact on any aspect of the website.
I'm just speaking my mind. It might look like an endless speech of flame but it is for the best.
Great content whatsoever and you are wasting it.
P.S: Excuse my poor English,as they're not my native language.
Thanks for your time.
-end-
I'm guessing you missed the little box that will take you straight to any device or the alternate layouts?
Sent From My Fingers To Your Face......
Well...anywho, maybe not the worst post to make up your 10.
Also, if you like it, take it..if not, then bye bye. It works for me pretty nicely.
K.A. said:
Well...anywho, maybe not the worst post to make up your 10.
Also, if you like it, take it..if not, then bye bye. It works for me pretty nicely.
Click to expand...
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The way he came across may have seemed offensive, however, I consider this as constructive criticism. :angel:
Having designed several successful communities (I know.. every Tom, ****, and Harry think they're a web designer, but hear me out), I have to say I somewhat agree.. On one hand, there are some great features to deal with the organization problems, but on the other, it would take one admin about one day to reorganize the sub-forums without losing any data whatsoever. It's very simple to make your forum more organized, and all forum software I've worked with has that feature.
Nonetheless, as mentioned the forum's highlight is the amazing community, and the amazing content.. The forum works, so why mess with a good thing. *meh*
NFleck said:
The way he came across may have seemed offensive, however, I consider this as constructive criticism. :angel:
Having designed several successful communities (I know.. every Tom, ****, and Harry think they're a web designer, but hear me out), I have to say I somewhat agree.. On one hand, there are some great features to deal with the organization problems, but on the other, it would take one admin about one day to reorganize the sub-forums without losing any data whatsoever. It's very simple to make your forum more organized, and all forum software I've worked with has that feature.
Nonetheless, as mentioned the forum's highlight is the amazing community, and the amazing content.. The forum works, so why mess with a good thing. *meh*
Click to expand...
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Yeah, I know, but as you said..its working, and has been for years. Agreed it may be a little unorganized but everyone's gotten used to it, so why change it?
Lol i'm still on the 2010 style.
I have to agree with the OP, the forums (layout wise) are an unorganized mess. The Galaxy S2 and S3 devices alone have like 10 different forums. Sure keep them separated but they should be sub-forums under a main S2 or S3 forum, same goes for other devices of course.
Thanks for the constructive criticism all, we welcome it!!
We actually put a ton of thought into the layout of the forum. We used to have it split up per manufacturer. Guess what, it doesn't make it any easier to browse the forum!
Most people look at one forum - and that is the forum for their device. They don't care about any other devices. We split up forums based on development. For example, the Verizon Samsung Galaxy SIII doesn't use the same roms or kernels as the AT&T Samsung Galaxy SIII. Don't blame us or the manufacturers, blame the carriers who make the manufacturers create their own specific versions of their phones.
The best way to find your forum for your device is to use the device search at the top, or the box next to it which will search the entire site. It is pretty good at finding the forum you are looking for when you type in the device name.
I agree that having 2 search boxes is sub-optimal. We have a plan to fix that, but as with most things, its never easy.
Regarding the page load times, a lot of that is out of our hands and caused by the ads. You can switch to the 1024 theme which has fewer ads and loads faster, or contribute enough that we remove the ads for you. We are also considering a paid subscription to remove the ads.
Hope that answers your questions, please keep the feedback coming!
I think what you guys should do is remove all tabs on the front page except General. There's no point in having devices when you have the search box. Also, you can go to the control panel instead of subscribed tab, and compact tab just seems useless to me. Other than the front page I think the site is great.I agreed with this guy on how the front page is. When I first joined here, the site was too busy. Even though I've gotten used to it, it's still looks busy.
New to this forum, can I change the forum home page to have my devices (sgs3 and nexus 7) appear above all the others?
Or whats the easiest way to access those devices forum? I keep scrolling through twenty other phones to find mine and that cannot be the best way..
Thanks
NVM- I found out how to subsribe through use of the app... Awesome app! almost preferable to using the site forums
Narcan Man said:
New to this forum, can I change the forum home page to have my devices (sgs3 and nexus 7) appear above all the others?
Or whats the easiest way to access those devices forum? I keep scrolling through twenty other phones to find mine and that cannot be the best way..
Thanks
NVM- I found out how to subsribe through use of the app... Awesome app! almost preferable to using the site forums
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
if you are on the main page www.xda-developers.com, just click on "forums" then there is a box at the top right. Start to type the name of your device and it will give you only those options that match the name.
for instance, I use the Galaxy Nexus forum a alot, what I do is go to the box and type "Galax..." and I already have it there to select with the other Galaxy Phones, or just type "nexus" etc...
I do the same for harder to find forums like Nexus One (currently using), HP TouchPad, HD2, etc... as well.
Because I frequent so many forums and switch phones on the regular, that search box is really the best way to go.
The thing is this forum supports SO many phones, many of them different only because of SoC (international Note / One X etc.. vs US variants) and they have to be split. if you use an N7000 Odin image on an i717, you are going to have problems. So no matter how they are arranged, it is likely that someone is going to want it changed.
The best advice I can give is to use the search bar I mentioned.
1.Bookmark
2.Subscribe
3.Device Search bar
That's it
Sharing my tech and gadget news app, it is designed for big screen phones like the HTC One M7. My app is designed to be annoyance free and is minimilistic. It is light on resources and when you close it, it will stay closed (unlike some apps that run in background and eat up battery).
My tech and news app displays tech/gadget news from all major sources.
Hope you enjoy it.
http://www.techlightspeed.com
not too bad. do you have a list of the places your pulling articles from? and also can i customize what websites i'm pulling articles from?
syaoran68 said:
not too bad. do you have a list of the places your pulling articles from? and also can i customize what websites i'm pulling articles from?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks for the reply, it cannot currently be customized. I pretty much included all major trusted technology news sites so I can satisfy the majority of my app users.
If you have a suggestion, I can change things or add anything I am missing. I am open to suggestions as this is my first app and it pulls data from my actual site which is www.techlivewire.com, this app is pretty much a version of my site with some minor differences. The places I am pulliing the article headlines from are the actual sites themselves, if you notice, each one is separated with a big title such as ARS Technica, TechMeMe etc, those are the ones I am pulling stuff from. They allow their headlines to be pulled, that is the only reason I am able to do this.
A similar site does this same thing I am doing, it's called techlinks.com but they are very slow loading, it takes 60 seconds just to load their page since they have to pull from all sources.
I however have a super fast loading site because I know some tricks.
Like many of us, I'm not a big fan of these recent dramatic changes. At least make an option for us to still use the older one like Reddit does.
rms112 said:
Like many of us, I'm not a big fan of these recent dramatic changes. At least make an option for us to still use the older one like Reddit does.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Tbh I don't think this is possible, because xda has undergone such an overhaul, even the thank meter system and the title system has been changed. Having the older version would mean to recreate it so it embraces all the new stuff here, it could happen but that's very unlikely since it's hard work, and the vast majority of the members actually like this revamped version. Give it a day or two and I think you'll get used to it
This is not going to be possible, but we do have a classic theme if you want an older look.
Yeh, need to move forward into the unknown!
The Classic theme helps....
Aw goly, not liking this new site.
Particularly don't like that the most recent threads under their respective sections can't be seen.
If this could be brought back it would be appreciated.
There is no more "old way" anymore, they migrated and moved all the content from the old site to the new site so as far as I am aware, the "old" site is gone. I personally don't like it yet, but with anything new, comes change, and time to get used to it. I am sure in time we will all have a better experience once they finish the migrations and we all get used to it.
I also noticed I cant edit the posts yet (or I cant find a way to do it) in the new system, so I hope its a bug that gets fixed because I make numerous grammar issues the first round (trying to get the info out of my brain tends to be funky the first round), then I clean it up but only when I can edit my post. This could simply be a user error, or possibly an ID10T error.
The amount of work it would take to maintain two completely separate codebases wouldn't be worth the hassle at all.
As for "like Reddit does":
They are owned by a massive company, they can afford to maintain the old site for at least a bit while they build the newer site out. XDA doesn't have the manpower or server power to do that.
It's only temporary, Reddit isn't gonna keep the old site around forever. Just like YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook when they did massive redesigns a couple years ago, the old site eventually shut down once they migrated 90-100% of the functionality over.
bgiesing said:
The amount of work it would take to maintain two completely separate codebases wouldn't be worth the hassle at all.
As for "like Reddit does":
They are owned by a massive company, they can afford to maintain the old site for at least a bit while they build the newer site out. XDA doesn't have the manpower or server power to do that.
It's only temporary, Reddit isn't gonna keep the old site around forever. Just like YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook when they did massive redesigns a couple years ago, the old site eventually shut down once they migrated 90-100% of the functionality over.
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Click to collapse
Yeah I get that small team etc. But no one does an overnight overhaul with half of the features missing/not working. Even mobile app stopped working including the official app. That is very unprofessional. Most sane people would have them both side by side, for sometime, while fixing bugs on the new site and new app. This way users can still have a nice user experience, while getting familiar with newer website transition.
But, well what can I say, XDA is not my company. They can do whatever the heck they want.
bitpushr said:
This is not going to be possible, but we do have a classic theme if you want an older look.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
On individual forum it's not displaying the lastest post info on the main page forcing you to open each section. The global new posts section works fine.
Doesn't display the user stats on the poster's post as before; more blank, unused dead space.
The "thanks" is all goofed up.
Rather have a smart complicated gf than a pretty dumb one... as their beauty rapidly fades as you get to know them.
Im fine with the overhaul but come on, where are the files attachments on other posts? where are the links? if you will left those, then better shut down this BS forum.
rms112 said:
Yeah I get that small team etc. But no one does an overnight overhaul with half of the features missing/not working. Even mobile app stopped working including the official app. That is very unprofessional. Most sane people would have them both side by side, for sometime, while fixing bugs on the new site and new app. This way users can still have a nice user experience, while getting familiar with newer website transition.
But, well what can I say, XDA is not my company. They can do whatever the heck they want.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You should know that you are only seeing the tip of the iceberg. This change didn't happen overnight. There was a significant userbase testing the new XenoForo interface for months prior to release so they did exist side by side. Thing is, a testing environment is never the same as the real deal so at the official launch so of course some quirks came up. If anything, you can say they have been working in a very professional manner to work those out. In the first 24 hours after releasing most major issues were already resolved. The biggest one right now is probably still some posts/threads missing. Change is never easy
infinitylook said:
Im fine with the overhaul but come on, where are the files attachments on other posts? where are the links? if you will left those, then better shut down this BS forum.
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The changes were announced a long time ago and the announcement was highlighted on top of every section of every subforum. Which are you missing anyway? I see my attachments (like this one) are still present. Mind that the migration is still not 100% complete yet.
Oh and if anyone is still feeling a bit homesick, remember that the web's archive is there for you! *CLICK!*