Also it should be mentioned that those who join the new forum will not miss any post on Google Forum! as the new forum mirror GG forum!
2 Likes
I’ve logged in, but was unable to reply to a GG post over there, so came back here. 
I don’t have a lot to say about it yet, but will come back to try it more.
Best,
Chris
The Discourse interface makes it far better than GG, especially on mobile imho. I think there are a couple of things the moderators and admins should consider:
- Allow cross-site replies; as seen above, it seems folks would prefer being able to reply to GG posts from Discourse to ease the transition
- Allow easy access to GG posts from Discourse, especially if the above is technically unfeasible or difficult. Currently, one cannot easily click somewhere on Discourse to go straight to the GG post. One has to either manually search or click on some bookmarked link, and then find the post manually.
Plus, the Discourse site does not leak emails oh so liberally like GG!
I don’t think I can go over there to play with it. When I’m forced to go, I’ll try it. If I can’t stand it, I’ll have a decision to make then. Well, if there is an alternative interface, or an alternative way to interact with the discourse site without actually having to look at it, then I’ll be fine.
My immediate reaction to the discourse site: It is busy. I don’t know where to look. Too many icons/avatars. I am overstimulated. It looks like and android app. I really dislike mobile apps. I’m outta there.
Google groups keeps me happy because it reminds me of Gmail in regards to layout. Visually appealing, not overstimulating,
I am all for it but as posted elsewhere I am not getting the confirmation email and can’t use my account.
Whos the admin? Help please.
Tones
@cj.c,
You wrote exactly what I was thinking.
Birthe
Yeah, something else that irks me: I like one line per conversation, with few columns of info (person who started the conversation, last reply date/time, and subject (with a little bit of text from the message to fill remaining space, that’s fine.)
And: here I am with a nice 27" display, loads of room to stretch things out horizontally, and the discord site ignores close to 50% of that horizontal space with large left and right margins. What the heck?
I feel curmudgeon-esque today. Likely made worse by lack of caffeine …
@TW_Tones, this may be totally off-base for your situation, (and apologies if I’ve missed more details elsewhere) but I am currently logging in to Discourse with Google – if I’m logged into this group, I can select the sign in with Google option at the Discourse board and the Clutterstack user is there.
Best,
Chris
@cj and @Birthe, LOL! I think there’s a generational issue going on there. I know I tend to use too-small text, too-small line spacing, and too-small margins, but I get such an uncomfortable feeling from gobs of empty space.
I think I’ll get used to the interface. I’m hoping the functionality will be better than Google. The animated timeline is sure annoying, though! 
Best,
Chris
Yeah, just looked at it again. Created an account to see if I can customize the interface to be more GG looking, no dice.
Love TiddlyWiki, really loathe that new forum. Not convinced I’ll have the patience to deal with that interface. Too many bells and whistles going on. Bare-bones minimalism is more my cup of tea.
At the moment there is only 1 theme installed. … But there seems to be a possibility to add more. They should even be selectable by users. … BUT I have to read the docs first … If I can find it 
There are 16 popular themes that can be reviewed. … So there are probably more …
We will see.
-mario
1 Like
Well, I say that …
If the theme doesn’t make viewing a conversation thread full-screen, I’m not going to enjoy that.
Software that doesn’t take advantage of the full desktop display width turns me off.
Is it just me or is discourse designed for mobile devices?
Folks,
I am on air because of Boris and others help.
On discourse I am very happy, we have regained features lost in GG forums updates, dropping tiddlywiki title links on a thread converts it to a markup link and a lot more. I believe we have an integration for discourse comments on a published tiddlywiki, I will try and locate that. I can integrate discourse with WordPress to maybe continue with my idea of http://www.colabteam.net/tiddlywiki/
There are ways to apply an overlay to any webpage to refactor it to a more compact look, so if none of the themes help I would not give up. Also I don’t concur with the criticisms when compared with google groups, Sure GG makes use the the real-estate a lot more but when deep in a thread there is way too much information on the screen you do not need. Whilst there is a lot of white space on discourse I would like to reduce, it has all the information one may want.
Reintroducing the ability to highlight code, edit after posting, and many other new features like private chats make this far superior the GG and in my mind a “no brainer” even if we want improvements.
Tones
@CJ, @clutterstack,
Most of those are fairly minor design issues that can be easily solved using a custom CSS hack (involving Stylus/GreaseMonkey/…).
Regarding the avatars, I’m going for
img.avatar{
filter: grayscale(100%) contrast(0.3) brightness(1.7);
}
to discretely blend them in the background without doing away with them completely, but you may prefer a display: none
To avoid some of the empty spaces, you can use:
div.main-outlet.wrap {
max-width: 100%;
}
.topic-body {
width: 100%
}
The latter isn’t great because you’re going to tire your eyes in left-to-right saccades on a large screen but your call 
main-outlet.wrap has a maximum width specified, remove or change it →
hide avatars (img.avatar display none)
Best
That is quite awesome for folk who want to learn about and fiddle with that stuff.
I’m already throwing myself into other things I really want to learn, so the plate is already cognitively overflowing (hence the instant push-back when anything new approaches my plate.)
Doesn’t matter. If everybody else is set to go, I say pull the plug on this forum anytime. I’ll get around to participating in that other one when there’s a theme option that doesn’t annoy the stuffing out of me. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and I say go with the majority of the beholding eyeballs.
@R², I’m with Charlie on not getting into GreaseMonkey to really customise the forum – BUT your post reminded me of something. I used the dropper tool in uBlock Origin to zap the animated date thingy. Now it doesn’t grab my eye when I’m reading. Thanks.
I will certainly be looking at it further.
1 Like
Correct me if I’m wrong, but it doesn’t appear to be truly two-way (at least at the moment I’m posting). Google Groups threads and posts get mirrored on Talk.TW (awesome for archiving!), but I can’t reply or contribute to those on Talk.TW — and new threads created on Talk.TW do not seem to get mirrored back to Google Groups.
No complaints from me on this. It seems like a good migratory pattern to ease people over to the new platform — but it’s definitely a migration, it seems. (One I’m all for, as long as it seems sustainable.)