Hi voto1979,

> Why not buying a template?

I looked into that a bit, but often times the templates are rather complex and can tend to be difficult to modify and maintain.

It tends to be easier for long term maintenance to just develop the full web site yourself.

The first links you show use the Bootstrap system which I looked into some, but it was complicated enough that I decided it would take too much effort to learn it properly so that I could do a proper job of maintenance and making new pages later on.

The part that is particularly bad about a complex system that has a lot of pieces to learn is at some point in the future when I need to create a new page for some reason, if the system used to set things up is particularly complex and I haven't been directly messing with it for a while that creates a barrier at that future time.

This would not be a problem if I was only focused on web development, but that's not what I do - the web site development aspect is very much a small part of my work and not something that I'm tweaking or working with every day and that makes me all the more hesitant to use complex systems to set it up.

Anyway I've already got a new design worked out, I posted it above in case you missed it:
http://moi3d.com/forum/index.php?webtag=MOI&msg=7321.10


> I am sure your customers will surprise you with interesting things for your homepage.

Yes, as you can see in the above previous message I've already collected several interesting model screenshots from PaQ to showcase on the new page.


- Michael

Hi adamio,

> Michael you should take a look at https://discourse.org I think it may fit the bill...

Yeah I've looked into it and it's pretty interesting but it does not cover the requirement that I mentioned above to be able to have a topics list that stays visible on the left side while having the thread contents displayed to the right of it. That's what I consider a fundamental needed feature.

Or do you know if it's possible to configure that way? None of the links that you posted show that though.

- Michael

MoI's forum is my favorite. It's so easy to just follow "EVERY TOPIC THAT GOES BY".... There is no other forum where I do that.... It's by far the best....

Cant find something? A simple post with a question would most likely be answered within minutes. First by several users, then the developer himself.... (Kindof fostering a community)

Pictures big? My browser automatically does the resizing once the image has filled. Maybe users can note that inline'ing a 3000 px image is kindof a bummer? If you want to post some hi res image just post it somewhere else and link it. Or just don't inline it, so it opens in a new window (Which "should" handle any resizing issue)

I'd also like to add that "responsive" websites are puke. (Funny how opinions vary)........

+1 for the Burrman. Michael has more important things to worry about IMHO. The Forum may not be flashy, but it works.
Ron

<< Cant find something? A simple post with a question would most likely be answered within minutes. First by several users, then the developer himself.

And don't forget the own "Search" button multi-criteria of the forum itself! (at the top right middle of the screen)
Works very fine! :)

Hi Michael ..

I used to be on the Rhino forum regularly and in their attempt to make it more usable it ruined it for me. I very much like the simplicity of this forum so please don't change it just to make it more glitzy and complex.

The same thing applies to the UI ... I appreciate all the work that Max has done and might buy it as a plug in ... but I don't want to have it take over or complex the UI.

Yes, the home page ... your sales page could use some updating but I would bet that your sales come mostly from satisfied users raving about your product.

cheers'
eric

it's one of the few occasions, where a frame-based layout actually do make sense. it might be sufficient to upgrade the forum software, beehive, to a more recent version( 0.8.2. -> 1.4.4.). they did introduce responsiveness some versions ago, so no need to change horses.

If it ain't broke don't fix it!

I've had no issues with the forum and I've been here for a long time :)

-

>So it's intentional that some functions that are only used by a smaller number of people are somewhat hidden rather than put into the top level command UI.

Keeping things simple sounds great.

Still too many things cannot be scripted or scripting gets tedious fast (->factories). A command line with autocomplete would be great as well.

> In the future I do want to make scripts and extensions more easily browsable...

Recently you wrote that you are checking things out...

The latest versions of QtNetwork e.g. have typed arrays and you can easily use already existing code to unzip files. Using Git you can download whole repositories as zip files and when every file has a comment on the first line you could then just copy all scripts and the describing comment to the options window.

That could be done without a lot of work on your side.

Michael not sure if it could be customised that way, sorry not my area of expertise.

I love this forum like it is. It is just a forum, and in it´s simplicity it is perfect.

I think forum must has categories, like, News, finished Models, Wip, Discussions, Scripts, Help, e.t.c In the rest forum is ok.

Il like the forum, one of my favorite forum layout.

Moi3d is hands down the most rewarding experience I had in my whole 2d/3d computing life.
Don't care much for fireworks when a real work of art shows up, it's so rare.

Marc

Michael (amazingly) runs a one-man shop. He is one of the most responsive software developers going. I can't think of a single application that has a programming team that is more responsive to customer questions or desires that Michael manages to be all by himself.

I find the MoI discussion site very usable. I like how easy it is to find things and to control how it displays topics. Yes, it is bare-bones; but I wouldn't want to divert too much of Michael's valuable time into polishing it. Put me in the "ain't broke, don't fix it" camp.

Thanks everyone for the kind words!


@Marco:

> it might be sufficient to upgrade the forum software, beehive, to
> a more recent version( 0.8.2. -> 1.4.4.). they did introduce
> responsiveness some versions ago, so no need to change horses.

I occasionally check out new versions and haven't really seen enough stuff to really justify upgrading. It will be a fair amount of work to upgrade because I will have to reapply all the customizations that I've done.

How does the responsiveness come into play, is it only on mobile? I tried to look at their current version and resized the browser window and did not see any layout changes... ?


@Strube:
> That could be done without a lot of work on your side.

I wish that were so! But I expect the full feature set of a plug-in browser to be a very considerable amount of work, probably the back end would run on my own web server since it can be unwise to rely on servers that are out of your own control, and the most time consuming part would be all the new UI design needed for the plugin browser in MoI. So there's a whole lot more involved than just an unzip...


@Andrei:

> I think forum must has categories, like, News, finished Models, Wip,
> Discussions, Scripts, Help, e.t.c In the rest forum is ok.

Maybe... But what do you really think would be gained by having these different categories? One good way to analyze it, is look at the current top 50 topics and see what categories they would go in - is it some kind of even split or is it more like 90% of them would go into the general "discussions" category? If the great majority of messages would already be going into just one category, then there is not a whole lot to be gained by having different categories really. I think maybe in the future when there is more scripting going on a separate "developer" or "scripts" category could probably be good though.

- Michael

Hi Michael..

I think your right, they just seem to check for User Agents to trigger the mobile version. I first thought, i saw a media-query lurking somewhere...well, better than nothing..

Hi Marco, is the mobile version you're seeing there the same as using this link here ? :

http://moi3d.com/forum/index.php?webtag=MOI&noframes


If you like you can use that link above (it just has &noframes added to the address), and that will show only a one page topics list here rather than the regular split view.

- Michael

> In the future I do want to make scripts and extensions more easily browsable ... hasn't been a high priority quite as of yet.

> But I expect the full feature set of a plug-in browser to be a very considerable amount of work, probably the back end would
> run on my own web server since it can be unwise to rely on servers that are out of your own control...

Okay, this thread is about the forum. But for me trusting GitHub doesn't sound too unwise and having MoI3D load a repository and unzip it to the script form sounds like some full feature thing to me. (Considering that now people are searching the internet to find code snippets to get simple things like pan and nudge.)

But, well, I guess you already have a roadmap for V4 and don't need someone to explain time management to you...

Everything considered, I am reasonably happy with the flatness of the the current forum's structure.

There are two or three features I would definitely use if they were implemented:

- Giving kudos to a post: means a discussion needn't become bloated with 'thank you' messages - nice, and welcome as they are. For example, I like to give thanks for a useful post, but equally understand that I might be causing someone frustration when they open discussions with apparent new posts, only to find 'just another thank you note'.

- Favouriting a discussion: would make re-finding those discussions that much easier, without resorting to bookmarking. BTW, what do other people currently do in this respect?

The third isn't so much a forum feature request but general suggestion: that valuable discussions, (such as Max's scripts) are edited and added to the Resource page more frequently - they are most definitely AWESOME marketing material otherwise buried 'off-piste' in this forum to anyone who's new to MoI and trying to assess its capabilities within the 30 day trial period.

Beyond being enthralled by MoI's beautiful simplicity, delightful interface and power for all my needs, I am in complete awe of Michael's responsiveness on this forum, all-the-while simultaneously and single-handedly continuing to develop a product as complex as MoI. If that's the price of a forum without the fancy extras, or it takes time to consider them fully, so be it. Thank you Michael.

- Hamish

Hi Hamish,

> - Favouriting a discussion: would make re-finding those discussions that much easier,
> without resorting to bookmarking. BTW, what do other people currently do in this respect?

For this one, try going to "Edit thread options" which is at the bottom of the message view:




Or also a shortcut to get there is to click on the little icon area on the left of the thread list:




Once inside the thread options, set it to "subscribed":



After you click "subscribed" scroll down and push the "Save" button at the bottom to apply the change.


Later on when you want to view all these particular marked threads, change the "View" option at the top of the threads list to view subscribed threads only:




Is that the kind of thing you are thinking of?

One thing to note is that you may receive e-mail notifications of posts to subscribed threads, you can turn it off in options somewhere if you don't want that.

You can also use the "Interested" state instead of "subscribed" - but also I think by default any thread you post in will be set to "interested" - there is a setting under the forum options to not do that as well if you want to control it manually.


- Michael