UI Suggestion [4✓of 7]: Forum layout changes - a critique

The new layout changes should be reconsidered. There are a number of issues with the presentation that are inferior to the previous layout.

Side by side of the topic portion of the screen 1366x768 full screen Google Chrome

Old UI ....................................................................................... New UI .............................................................................

First impression in no particular order:

1. Lost avatar. Having the avatar provides a nice visual indication as to the poster
2. Lost column presentation. Can no longer easily visually scan comment count, poster, time of the latest entries
3. Reduced topic presentation. Now just 2 recent, compared to 7
4. Lost top of page navigation. Chess.com consistently release UI changes only presenting page navigation at the bottom of the page. This is bad UI design.
5. Wasted topic presentation real estate by placing the way less frequently used Search and New Topic items at the top of the page. These less frequently used features are better placed on the right sidebar.
6. Can't make a quick assessment of topics page with the non-column layout as the current presentation is hard to visually parse.
7. The value of including part the opening topic may be somewhat dubious, as it chews up real estate that may be better used by presenting more topics.
8. [ ] Presenting the topic's opening lines might be better presented using mouse hover tool tip presentation.
9 [ ] Bug: the first topic summary does not present the text correctly
<<THE ABOVE>> presented as  &lt;&lt;THE ABOVE&gt;&gt;...

Please reconsider this UI overhaul as it greatly decreases UI presentation effectiveness.

These are all very valid points. I was noticing that the forum list was not as easy on the eyes and is harder to tell what's happening at a glance.

Thank you for your thought-out presentation, @jas0501!

Will quote you in my critique, very good points!

I think overall, the new design doesn't have enough white space. Everything is too packed together, due to the topic previews and the lack of column design.

It's not even that the previous layout was particularly good. This is just much worse. The devil you know and all that.

Gee, everyone seems to hate the new UI

Update:

Second impression:

✔ 1. Lost avatar. Having the avatar provides a nice visual indication as to the poster

✔ 2. Lost column presentation. Can no longer easily visually scan comment count, poster, time of the latest entries

3. Reduced topic presentation. Now just 2 recent, compared to 7

✔4. Lost top of page navigation. Chess.com consistently release UI changes only presenting page navigation at the bottom of the page. This is bad UI design.

5. Wasted topic presentation real estate by placing the way less frequently used Search and New Topic items at the top of the page. These less frequently used features are better placed on the right sidebar.

✔- 6. Can't make a quick assessment of topics page with the non-column layout as the current presentation is hard to visually parse.

7. The value of including part the opening topic may be somewhat dubious, as it chews up real estate that may be better used by presenting more topics.

8. [ ] Presenting the topic's opening lines might be better presented using mouse hover tool tip presentation.

9 [ ] Bug: the first topic summary does not present the text correctly

<<THE ABOVE>> presented as  &lt;&lt;THE ABOVE&gt;&gt;...

Still an issue:

Was this ______________________________________________ Now this

I still think:

5. The Search and New Topic belong on the sidebar, providing more topic presentation real estate.

7. & 8. The topic's opening line presentation: I would be interested to see the mouse hover approach, providing more topic presentation real estate. But I can live with the current approach.

Rough mock-ups
without opening lines .............................................................. with opening lines

I'd like it if the page changer was next to the new topic button. Then you fix the search, topic and page changer, and allow the rest to be scrollable as per norm. Now you can scroll through the topics and immediately change the page or search for a specific forum as needed.