Hello,

We have added a couple of new features to the ALS Forum (www.als.net/forum). We made these improvements based on user feedback gathered and suggestions found posted on the ALS Forum. These features were prioritized above potential others, and we intend to continue to improve the Forum based on user feedback going forward.

These features will take place within the next 24 hours. If you do not see any of them, please refresh your browser and if the problem still exists, please contact me at the information below. These include:

- automatic tracking of "last viewed" threads. This will track the last 5 threads that you viewed. This will appear on all pages to the right of the main Forum section.

- ability to add "favorites" to a list. This list too will appear on all pages to the right. you can add an item to this list by selecting "Favorites" located at the top of the thread

- we have moved "watch" "email" "print" and the new "favorites" option out of the options drop-down (and removed that all together). This was done to eliminate the need for an additional click to accomplish any of these tasks through the Forum.

- we have made timeout gone. Behind the scenes, we are keeping folks logged into the Forum permanently - at least until they close their browser and/or have conflicting settings on their own browser or other operating system. We can not ensure this works for all users on all platforms in all places and at all times, but for the vast majority of users, timeout after logging in should no longer be an issues.

- fixed password/username issues. we have gone in and dedupped our password/username system. There was a small number of users that have errors in their password files. this has been fixed. However, if you experience an issue logging in, please email us at rgoldstein@als.net. and we will look into your specific file.

We will look for feedback on these over the next couple of months and work with users to continue to improve the ALS Forum. Thanks to all the users that provided feedback already, those that test-flew these new features for us and everyone that participates in the ALS Forum, making it what it is today.

Best,
Rob

Robert A. Goldstein
VP, Communications
rgoldstein@als.net
617-441-7295
ALS Therapy Development Institute

where has the old feedback gone

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Arthur van Outersterp
dx PLS 1999

Hi Rob,

It's great that you are continuing to upgrade the forum.

The latest updates are useful from a functionality point of view but placing them on the right hand side really ruins the balance of the page. Space on forums is always at a premium so squeezing the threads and post, which are the most important content, is not a good idea. Not that white-space is bad but just check out the empty column to the right of this post. Now view this on a thread page that has reached it's maximum limit of posts per page.

The ALS Resources title and links are redundant as they have no relevance to the forum. As for recently viewed and favorites just place them as links alongside "inbox, search, active topics" etc.

I see from the source of the site that you are using jQuery. If you wanted to keep the new features on the forum pages try something a little interesting and use the library to slide in the recently viewed / favourites links?

http://api.jquery.com/toggle/

Just wondering but do you make the changes in house or do you use a web company?

like said many times before but the old feedback has vanished
.previous / next page navigation
.bottom of page navigation
.many more...

also it is space consuming to have the new features above the main thread list

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Arthur van Outersterp
dx PLS 1999

new feedback also in http://www.als.net/forum/yaf_postsm348679_Everyone-who-wants-the-new-funtionality-to-be-moved-to-the-bottom--Please-post-here.aspx#348679

if you know where the old feedback has gone
.provide us with a link there
.better yet, read it again and see all improvements you did not implement and are really important to us, the users
, who has asked for the new features

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Arthur van Outersterp
dx PLS 1999

Ok, much better with it actually working and showing on the right as opposed to having it appear at the top of the page.

There is still the issue of losing message content width due to the links on the right sidebar.

I would strongly urge you guys to consider moving to a 1280 wide format instead of the current targeted at a 1024 wide display as this would alleviate some of this lost width. 1024px was great 5 years ago but every laptop and display from the past few years is at least 1280 wide.

Even better would be to resize to the browser window width, but I understand that this is a lot more effort.

new have allways been top of page for me and still are
nevertheless not useful and not asked for and space consuming
other things more important, see above and old feedback if you can find it

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Arthur van Outersterp
dx PLS 1999

Arthur and others. I am following this thread and will reply to it in time with additional feature and forum edits as suggested and as i deem approrpirate for the Forum. I'm not so cold as to ignore people's requests, but please understand that there are thousands of users of this Forum and many of them have different sets of needs. I have the ridiculous and constantly set up to fail job of attempting to keep all Forum users happy at the same time. Please wish me luck.

The "last viewed" item was designed to bring a tracking of use feature throughout the forum. Currently, the only way to see what you and others are interested in is to goto the main page. We put this in the right to add a way to move around between things you are reading and following from points throughout the forum without having to go to "home" each time. As we have people add "favorites" and as we track "last viewed" we can soon add a feature to allow users to see what a lot of people view and add to their favorites, but we can't do that without this feature being used first. I envison soon having the user able to choose which of these things to see on the right and to expand/minimize them eventually....but right now, we are trying to gather user data.

a place holder per thread would help
so you can remember a specific page for later use

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Arthur van Outersterp
dx PLS 1999

in column last post you can either shift or omit the word "by" which saves one row per entry in the thread list

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Arthur van Outersterp
dx PLS 1999