Interesting! Nicer design feel.

Funny, I think the old site was better.

Several bugs/annoyances found so far, and reported to the webmasters.

Also, still no ability to (easily) add color.  The "post" button is still only located at the bottom.  But, hey, we have Spell Check!

Personally, I'd have thought Avid had somewhat higher priorities than fiddling about with the forum interface and 'Community' site.

Large fonts and largest fonts look the same to me, except for bigger subject headings and even bigger Post-button. In Safari, I don't get a WYSIWYG-editor, just a plain text one, with bracket codes. In Firefox, I get a WYSIWYG editor, but it displays differently from what shows up in the actual post (difference between paragraph breaks and line breaks). Equipment entry in the profile has been converted to "interests" and is truncated, so that most of my gear was now gone. Forum options are located under "Edit my profile", which does not make sense to me. And I don't dig the brownish background color that seems to be all the fashion these days, but that's the least of my problems.

Just out of curiosity, has this all been beta tested by actual users?

Post Republic:

Personally, I'd have thought Avid had somewhat higher priorities than fiddling about with the forum interface and 'Community' site.

I surely hope that the HTML code writer is not the same guy writing Media Composer :/

Point is, website design and NLE engineering are two vastly different departments with their own staff, budget and priorities.

I can no longer see who the original poster was... booooo.... other than that, I like it... except for the color thing that Randall mentioned.... grrrr.

Thanks for the comments; please keep your thoughts and opinions coming.

The redesign of the community is actually a much larger effort we are undergoing, and the changes last night are only the first of three planned phases. In fact, the first phase still has some more work.

To me, the important piece of work was upgrading to the very latest version of community server; this gives us better flexibility for the future plus allows us the opportunity to add some more community features.

The current looks and feel of the forums specifically is mostly out of the box with no additional enhancements made. We felt it was more important to start with a rock-solid platform before redoing the frontend code. Personally I hate the html code of the default, and in our next phase of development I will be replacing the forum code with a more open version. This should allow for better control over your choice of font sizing, plus should make a lighter page.

There are a number of new features introduced with the new forums. For example, the old private messages are replaced with the "start a conversation" feature - this allows for more than one recipient. Marianna is already working on a list of all of these new features and enhancements.

In the upcoming releases, we are totally revamping the user profile system - changing it into a portfolio system. We are approaching it as a place where you can basically "advertise" yourself in better details with those items that are important to editors. Because of this, we didn't adjust the out of the box profile code that came with the upgrade.

There will be a few rough spots - we've already identified dozens. So please as you see things (annoyances, bugs etc) please keep posting them here. As usual we may not reply to each post but we are taking everything down and working on the most annoying and important items.

Thanks for your time,

<Mike>

 Pif:

Here's another issue regarding auto email:

http://community.avid.com/forums/t/56091.aspx

I usually only view the forum via "Active".  However, on the front menu, "Active", ""Unanswered", and "My Discussions" all display "My Discussions".  Is there no way to see all the Active posts?

 It is not obvious on the opening page of the new site that you have to go to Avid.com to get to the support site. That should be made clearer on the opening page.

Darn, active Posts indeed no longer works, neither does Unanswered; I only get to see posts I already replied to (which defeats the purpose of those lists). The font size is utterly unbearable and has to be top priority. It makes the forums illegible, if only for having way too many words on a single line (which prohibits the necessary speed-reading.

What are points, and why do I get them assigned?

Is there a projected timeframe for phase 2 and 3 of this turnover?

*edit* the loss of Active Posts & Unanswered makes these fora completely useless for me.
 Is this just a bad link (both send me to MyForums), or has this functionality gone?

For now, this looks like a royal screw-up. pardon my French. HTML, not HTML, I don't care. I don't have time for this any longer.

Why has the points system resurfaced? To me, as disscussed first time around, it is an unused irrelevance. 

I hope the new navigation sorts itself SOON. Especially The Active Posts.

Please dont loose sight of the principal function of the forum which is IMO to raise and solve members problems. This should be made as easy and obvious as possible. The eye candy and community spirit should then enhance the basic functionality.

My first impression is that this upgrade a backward step in simple functionality so I will reserve judgement.

Points will actually be "worth" something; we'll use them as a measurement of how active people are in the community, and at certain thresholds you can earn perks. The specifics of this program belong to Marianna and she will be posting much more detail; probably after we deliver the next round of functionality.

Pif, please comment on the Active/Unanswered issue. If you click the links, you are erratically redirected to MyForums.aspx.