So what you do think?

[Larks2242 251]

This is going to take some getting used to, but looking good so far!

[madhatter106 3,903]

I absolutely hate the new STEX.

There's little point in having the graphics so tiny that you can barely make out what they are on the front page. If I have to squint to make out a building whose screenshot is taken at zoom 5, then you know the images are too small.

And when you click on a submission, why must the original photos be truncated to a square shape? And why are you only showing only the first screenshot and not the second one? More often than not, uploaders would include a day shot and a night shot

[kakado_to_save 514]

I like the old site :\ the site is ...quite messy..

The STEX is really annoying, its really....empty and not comfortable..

Many pics from my forum CJ are missing...

no STEX search bar...

there are a lot of spaces between every element even here at the forum with make it look really messy...

any ways.. i love the old site

besides that.. the site is really too(!) bright...

it makes me feel like i am in a clinic...

[Joe 90 358]

Couple of other things I've noticed:

- the time is off - 1 hour behind. It doesn't appear to recognise daylight savings, even though it says it does.

- I don't think you should be able to give your own posts +rep, as it seems you can do right now.

  Edited February 26, 2011 by Joe 90  

[warrior 169]

Really dislike the STEX, I think you should keep the formatting of the old one,

I don't care about the highest rated or most watched on the front page, if I want those I'll click on tabs or somethings.

Old STEX

• Picture without clicking
• Description without clicking
• Rating without clicking
• Stats (downloads/views ) without clicking
• space used really well

New Stex

• Have to click on a mini picture to get any useful details
• Way too much unused space
• The opposite of above

Forum is a great improvement, but in my opinion the STEX is more of a great unimprovement.

Nice to see the forums finally have a mobile version

[fukuda 351]

The forums look good so far (good thing we still have our old smileys)

But well.. I hope this STEX version is just a temporary one

[jdenm8 362]

I tend to agree with what was said above...

The new STEX poor.

What I liked about it before was:

*click* *scroll* *investigate* *download* *gotoSC4D*

It's now

*click* *wait* *click* *wait* *click* *wait* *scroll* *wait* *click* *wait* *investigate* *click* *wait* *download* *wait* *leave*

The performance sucks.

I'm sitting on a 1MB/s connection at the worst of times and most pages take 10+ seconds to load. I can download the Nokia PC Suite in that time (80MB BTW).

As well as all that, how did you get Facebook's Chat bar and where has the Forum dropdown box gone?

[hkboondoggle 20]

New layout, improved forums & maybe nice graphics; but all of the above is pointless if response of the site is hopelessly slow, which it is now. I tested it out and in some occasion, seriously, I can even cook my noodle when waiting the site to spawn the page I'd like to visit; and why on earth is this even possible with my 1MB/s web connection? STEX is a disappointment as the user-friendliness in the previous version is gone. Nice work people.

  Edited February 26, 2011 by hkboondoggle  

[CSGdesign 27]

Firstly can I say that I think everyone has to remember the amount of work involved in doing something like this.

I think it's really great how much effort has gone into it, and everyone involved should be thanked for their volunteered time.

However there are a few problems with it, for sure, and I'm confused why something so huge wasn't shown to members BEFORE going to all this mammoth effort, so that the kind of feedback we're seeing was to a dummy version rather than the fully implemented version... seems like common sense to me but maybe things are done differently here?

Over-all I don't mind it. It scrolls a bit too "clunky" (sort of like low fps effect) for my taste, but the design layout is nice, and it's clean (too clean for some apparently).

I haven't looked at the stex yet, but if what madhatter and warrior is saying is true then I totally agree it's a step backwards....

BIGGER pics not smaller. I can understand the desire to reduce bandwidth use, for sure, but every single journal writer and reader will agree with me when I say "people look at the pics LONG before they could be bothered reading the words".

I hope it works out fine... it'd be a shame to see such a great site lose readership.

To me a site's attitude (ie: the way it treats contributing members) is far more important than what it looks like... although looks are important too.

My heart goes out to Dirk - Dirk was primarilly responsible for this change right? - it's a lot of work for the kind of feedback it's getting.

[TekindusT 3,809]

Still discovering the new stuff to have a solid opinion; I think we would need a "getting started" guide to make our first steps here...

As for the general slowness, I guess it's normal; if the Admins are still working on it I don't think we have to worry about the site speed. In a couple of days we'll see.

And just asking, where can I see the Trixies me or anyone has won? They don't appear on the avatar...

[mntoes 270]

Nice work people and I like the forums. But please re-think the Stex, it is a big disapointment. How on earth are you supposed to quickly judge if a Bat is to your taste with such small pictures? Sorry folks but I'm with Madhatter106 on this one.

When and if the site is ever up-graded to vesion 8 would it not be a good idea to show some pre-view pictures of the new look so that this sort of reaction could be avoided? Don't get me wrong I am very appreciative of all the hard work and congradulate all those involved in the transfer over to version 7.

  Edited February 26, 2011 by mntoes  

[mightygoose 92]

why is all the time i spent setting up my profile during the beta gone to waste, this greatly irritates me as i was instructed to do it. second, the chatroon bar rooms don't seem to ever load, the site is now very slow, while i like the overall format chat in new tab is something i really miss. also the stex is not very good.

mixed thoughts, mainly irritation but mixed thoughts.

however that being said.

i will congratulate dirk on an amazing job of transfering the enormous amount of data over from the previous version in a very shrot space of time with very few errors and for his continued commitment to this site, without our beloved dirktator we would not have a forum to argue about the merits of changes to. so for that and all his continued hard work i will show my appreciation.

but seriously, all my profile info. $%&^!.

g o d d a m n is filtered apparently. i did not use a real swear word.

  Edited February 26, 2011 by mightygoose  

[_marsh_ 1,117]

Well, The theme I have to say, is growing on me. And I love the fact that there is BBcode again.

However.... the STEX. Awful. Sorry to say that but it is. I agree with many of the above comments.

,marsh

[TowerDude 2,186]

I myself love it!! , and yes the stex could be maybe improved but the rest looks great! Good jobs, and thanks to all of you and your hard work

[warrior 169]

The slow loading of the site is expected after an upgrade, it will get faster once the upgrade is fully complete, I"m thankful that Dirk, and the admin team goes to all the trouble of maintaining the site and to do upgrades through 7 versions and 8 years. So yes overall the upgrade is completely awesome, just the old STEX was pretty much perfect and it's really hard to improve on it.

Dirk said the Trixies will be coming a bit late.

[bourneid 13]

I have been getting two to three minute page load times... is that about the same for everyone else?

I also noticed earlier {before the site went off-line again} that there were some threads created by a single post count member advertising a product like the robo spam'ers do on some sites. I know Dudyconstrctor had the same problem on his SC4 site and me and the other mods had to spend alot of time clearing them out. I know that was what brought his site crashing down before the host could impliment the patch for it... just thought I would give a heads up.

[GMT 389]

hm... lets start with the layout.

Over all, I liked the layout of 6.0 more than I am currently liking the 7.0 layout. but then again, I gotta get used to it first.

What I do like better is the color-theme. well balanced and less aching contrasts. Allthough I must copy one of the earlier posts concering grey text on grey background. A little fine tuning here to make the text more readable wouldn't hurt imho.

As for the stated small text issue, I'm not quite with these posts. I'm on full HD resolution and have no problems reading any of the text. shouldn't be any smaller tho.

What's also quite cool is the basically full featured fast-reply box. Not that the low-pro featured fast-reply box in 6.0 was bad, but every now and then I wish there was a little more power to it, which now is more than satisfied.

What leads me to the next downside: there's no big difference between fast-reply and "regular" reply. From the looks of it, the only difference seems to be of organisatory (is that even a word?) organizational (looks more like it) nature. But I guess that's ok aswell as most people use the fast-reply box anyways thus making the full featured box necessary. Maybe adding the remaining features of the reply-box to the fast-reply-box and abandoning the normal thing entirely? just thinking...

now, last but not least, to the worst: The Stex.

This guy needs a lot of improvement. Browsing files never felt that 1980 on the stex before (I know what I'm talking about, I'm a regular since 3.0 at least). On it's main page, thumbnails are too small to catch a drift of whats going on while there's sooo much space wasted with blank background. Also I doubt there's this much micromanagement needed. We got us a featured download followed by most recents, highest rated and most whatched. I don't think the latter is necessary at all. get rid of this and use the room either to enhance the size-quality of the remaining 3 features, or get the most downloaded bar down there.

Also, a minimum 4 digit search in a custom content world full of NAM, CAM, NWM, RHW, PEG, SG, blabla... to put it short, a custom content world full of 3-digit abbreviations... well... I guess you can do the maths in splitseconds

What's cool tho is the more than necessary split bewteen cxl and sc4. from my pov, there was the occasional instance when the preview made me go whoah and the details made me go as it revealed itself to be a cxl download.

another waste of space is the "detail" information about a specific download. Here, bigger pictures would be more than appropriate, as the given pictures are too small for a detail view. they are actually barely bigger than the size of the pictures in the featured download preview.

As for the facts themselves, I see much potential to enhance the file information list. file descriptor. i can think of additional, more specific info here, as there's plenty of room left to fill even with bigger pictures. think of wealth, density, lot size, costs, tileset, occupants/jobs,... information to be entered and used to browse files by their characteristics rather than their name or cathegory. of course this info has to be entered, but to me, it makes no difference either to enter them text-based in the description or into a dedicated place. Somewhere down the road, this might be a handy feature... once the basic problems with the stex are fixed.

[+Guest Homer3003]

What was wrong with the old ST. I couldn't find any. So why the change.

If it's only the look and feel, then I'm slightly disappointed. If it was for a technical reason, I can fathom that, but there's much of the site not working as we were used to...

How about the old links. Even in the posts on the STEX there are many links which are not working. Also in dependency links of existing lots. Hope you will improve this very soon, otherwise I think you're gonna loose many dedicated supporters of your site.

[Dexter 40]

I agree with everyone, the old STEX layouts were better, the thumbnails on the current one are way to small.

I especially liked the one from ST 5:

Other than that though, as I said before, everything else is great

  Edited February 26, 2011 by Dexter  

[MandelSoft 2,769]

OK, here's my opinion:

• First of all, the new site is very slow, and sometimes even refuses to load. Quite annoying.
• I miss the home page
• The STEX is less user-friendly than the old one. It just feels uncomfortable, not as instinctive as the old STEX and off course the small pictures. This will definitely require a change!
• The possibility rating your own comments up needs to be fixed too...
• The rest of the stuff is great! Lots of new stuff added that I like

Best,

Maarten

[§haÅ--Ñ€ §hÅŽo 370]

I agree with Mrtnrln. I really don't care for this update. I want my v6 back!

Or at least have the things Mrtnrln said to get fixed.

[warrior 169]

The site is just slow because it's not finished yet, the homepage will still be added, obviously Dirk thought we'd like the forums back ASAP, rather than wait for everything to perfect. The only issue people (including me) seem to have is with the STEX, I'm sure it will changed in some way or another in the near future.

[Renedius 25]

Great update simtropolis site

[Calculatrice 8]

It seems it's sped up at least a small ammount since the last "tweak." That a good start.

[fukuda 351]

I agree with Mrtnrln. I really don't care for this update. I want my v6 back!

I don't think we are seeing the fully-functional version of ST 7 yet... Patience is your best ally right now.

[Calculatrice 8]

I don't think we are seeing the fully-functional version of ST 7 yet... Patience is your best ally right now.

I think you're right. They fix the STEX, cut out the four letter minimum for search, vastly improve the site speed, add a homepage and get the omnibus up and running, abd it'll be fine. Of course, we had all of these things in 6. :|

[warrior 169]

I think you're right. They fix the STEX, cut out the four letter minimum for search, vastly improve the site speed, add a homepage and get the omnibus up and running, abd it'll be fine. Of course, we had all of these things in 6. :|

It's not we don't have this or that, it's we have a forum

[SimCity4IE 202]

I think that the colour scheme needs to be slightly changed to make it feel less clinical. Less whites; more darker colours. Less clinical feel.

Why is there a Facebook chat bar at the bottom? We already have a chatroom.

Of what I saw of the STEX; yes it needs to be improved. ST5's STEX was perfect regarding images; and ST6's general layout. Too much wasted space; too small pictures; too clunky layout. Add tabs for the highest downloaded/rated etc. I don't want to view that. I want to be able to see a streamlined interface; not this explosion of info which I don't need to see.

I'm not commenting on this update until it's fully finished; but these need to be fixed urgently. When it's fully finished, then I'll comment. Good job so far Dirk and the team; I know that this is not an easy task to do.

Also everyone; as I have learned from owning a BAT thread, focus on CONSTRUCTIVE criticism. Beating down someone's work gets you nowhere. It's just rude.

  Edited February 26, 2011 by SimCity4IE  

[warrior 169]

Why is there a Facebook chat bar at the bottom? We already have a chatroom.

The chat bar is for chatting with people on your friends list 1 to 1. I guess the Live Chat could/will be put in the chatroom button next to the Chat button, I just want to know what the notifcations button on bar is? It seems different to the notifications in the user box at the top left.

[Nego16 26]

The new site looks great! I find it a lot easier to navigate. My favorite part is the ability to write posts in BB code. I also like new look and feel. It looks really nice and cleaned up.

The only thing I don't like so much is the new STEX. Improvements to browsing and opening a lot to download are needed.

Other than that, the site looks great! I'd like to congratulate Dirk and the rest of the Simtropolis team on a fantastic job on Simpropolis 7.0!