There was an app for iOS, but it wasn’t maintained. The new site will allow us to revive the app. I’m not sure about the timeline, but it’s a high priority for our developers.
I think it’s this page: https://discuss.qa.collegeconfidential.com/about
At least one of the “moderators” is on our test team. I did see missing moderators too. So I added them. Thanks for letting me know.
Glad to see @“Erin’s Dad” and @MaineLonghorn made it back to that mod list.
Just curious- how do the comments/suggestions/observations being made here align with the feedback given by the folks who participated in the 1 hour zoom meeting and beta testing prior to this pre-release? And when I signed onto my iPad a brief YouTube video about the upcoming changes popped up, but I was unable to get any sound.
Overall I don’t mind the changes .
I do want the agree, helpful buttons. I use them and would like them. It tells me if my posts really are helping someone.
Badges are not needed. It is like you are playing some game to get them. Childish. Even my kids think badges are a waste of space on webpages.
I would like to see Pre-vet and Veterinary medicine just below the pre-med pages because they both have similar challenges and would be nice to see them close together for navigating purposes.
Didn’t notice the absence of the post numbers on first look. Definitely, they should be kept, because some replies reference the post number of previous posts.
Regarding paging, perhaps the number of posts per page could be a user setting?
Good question. Some of the feedback is similar, but there are certainly new items for us to consider. We also heard contradictory feedback. For instance, some people liked how colorful the site is others didn’t. In cases like that, there is usually a middle ground or some other way to address the concerns. (In this case, I think the problem is the colors are random; they don’t mean anything in particular.)
But we didn’t see the issue with 1 being added to names. (I have one now, myself for some reason!) This is why it’s so important to get many people involved in testing. It was very helpful to have the 1-on-1 tests early and also helpful to have this open beta period. As we get more people looking at the site, we’re getting a fuller picture of what works and what doesn’t.
I have a 2 added to my screen name. Probably because thumper1 already had a 1. So mine is thumper12
That’s why I’m thinking this was a way to distinguish those viewing Discourse from using regular CC.
I do expect that my screenname won’t change from thumper1 when the final product is completed.
“liked how colorful the site is…”
Personally, I don’t care so much is they liked the look. I care if it’s functional. I don’t see that this “every shade under the sun” scheme is functional. If you had blue for prep/boarding, green for FA, it would immediately distinguish among those categories.
As the beta now stands, what good do all those shades do? Only some visual design specialists who learn the whole Pantone scheme can discern Turquoise from Blue Turquoise. And that’s extra tough on our ordinary screens.
Dark mode is one of the new cool things the current phones can do. It’s been in the Android world for awhile now. Once you do dark mode you won’t want to go back.
While I like options, I personally dislike dark mode. YMMV
So I have not even started playing yet and noticed a more serious problem. I have seen this with Electronic medical record systems and worked with Nuance (Dragon speech) to fix it years ago. On an android pixel 3a you have a page break issue. Something like aligned up. So if I take a post like one of mine and I move it up just a bit it “scrolls” away by itself. This will be extremely problematic since you need to bring down and back in focus. So like in Word once the page gets to a page break it automatically occurs and is reproducible.
You can worry about logging in but that’s the first thing I saw within 5 minutes of using this site.
BTW it automatically logged me in. I didn’t have to actually put in a login per se. I will have more time tomorrow to play with the site and can try to “break” it but if all your worried is about logging in then what I find won’t be a concern.
Not sure if your on a time table to switch vendors but if not I would take a different approach. This isn’t my first rodeo and have done beta on many things including national websites. Go slower and fix what needs to be fixed or your going to have more issues after you figure out the log in issues.
You did not mention which browser on Android, but I see a scrolling jump occasionally when browsing with Firefox on Android.
Pardon me if I’ve missed this @CCadmin_Jon is there a expected release date? ( I know “November” but a projected date?)
Also how do you know how people access the site (phone, tablet, laptop, desktop) - is that something you can tell?
Words to live by:
“Go slower and fix what needs to be fixed”
This is very true and why they need to test on all the main ones out there… Lol. Chrome and Brave browser.
Note that many browsers besides Chrome are Chromium based; Chrome has the largest market share, and Chromium based browsers add a few percent to that. The next largest ones with different code bases are Safari (WebKit) and Firefox (Gecko), and older Microsoft browsers (before Edge switched to being Chromium based).
Of course, the browsers could also have variants for desktop versus mobile, and without and with dark mode add-on.
Another pitch for the Agree/Helpful/Like buttons. For example, in this discussion, people are indicating agreement with suggestions made by others, so you know the issue(s) is relevant to many and we don’t each need to repeat to get that point across.
I am not interested in the option to “summarize a discussion” - meaning CC somehow condenses the posts in a thread to the most popular posts in the thread.
Also don’t need to know how long it’s going to take me to read the posts in a thread. Please don’t remind me of how much time I do or need to spend on a thread!
Button suggestions:
Get rid of “reply” - does anyone actually click that to reply?
Keep AGREE
Keep LIKE
I feel like “helpful” is somewhat like “like”. I mean I can “like” a thread that is helpful. I can do without helpful if other buttons are added like…
Buttons to consider:
“Caring” (for hugs, sympathy, support)
“Dislike” - I know this seems negative, but sometimes it seems REALLY appropriate. I can also “dislike” that something bad happened to someone.
Yes, it conveniently quotes the previous post with a link back to it, so that it is more clear what is being replied to.
In NEW TOPIC, the category drop down is confusing for people who are new. Students aren’t going to scroll for the most appropriate but are just going to choose the very generic “general admissions” that is at the top. Maybe highlight the search function box so they can type in a key word and then narrow it down for them.
After I started a new post, a list of “your topic is similar to” options popped up on the side. They had NOTHING TO DO with my post. Either make the similar topics accurate or eliminate that section.