New Site Design Feedback

When I open the My Online Chess from HOME, I see a view of chess boards where it'smy turn to make my moves. But it's sad that I cannot cover in forhand where I actually already have made my move. There has to be an indicator besides each board that tells wheter I already have made my move or not. This is a certain issue since the view of boards now make no sence, and just make the players upset when they open boards and cover they already have made their moves etc. So please apply an indicator besides each board that tells the player wheter they already have made their move or not.

Where is Opening Explorer in the new user interface? In the old interface, a link to it was on the game page. When a player used that link, a board with that specific game's position would appear; and the player could use it it without setting up the position. Now, it seems, it has been replaced by Game Explorer in the Learn dropdown menu. Game Explorer is inconvenient because the player must go to the Learn dropdown menu and then to Game Explorer to gain access; and it is less useful because the specific game position for which the player wants to use it is not on the board. Instead, it is set at the starting position. I strongly urge that Opening Explorer be restored in the new user interface.

You can change the view of your games back to the list view using a button to the top right of the games.

And if it is your move, the boards have a yellow border around them.

It not feel ok that all my alerts shows up when I enter to a team of mine.
When I enter my team startpages should everything on that page only be related to the team but maybe my matches for that team that still remains to make my moves within.

Why should I see all my alerts when I enter to a team page?

It makes me very confused, since I expect to see stuff on the team pages that are related to the team, and not to anything (or at least not so much) else besides.

The submenues in sections like on the team pages are too heavily far away from the header. It would be much better if the submenues are lying closer to the headers and not in the mid or bottom of the pages. As it is now, you need to go to HOME, open "My Groups/Teams", and then scroll down to find the group menu far away from the header. This is not the only case where the submenues are almost hidden and far away from where you currently keep your eyes and your cursor actually are placed.
This makes everything goes slow. I guess it takes 3-4 extra seconds every time I open the pages to move my eyes and then cursor. The submenues need to be closer to the header and the main menu. This may not make sence to guys that not doing 100s of actions every day. BUt assume that you're doing all this maybe 100 times per hours (as I do), it means that you need spend 300-400 seconds more per hours just to move your eyes and the cursor compared to within the old format. If you sitting 8 hours per week in front of chess.com, it means that you have to spend more than 2,400-3,200 seconds more per week just to be able to do the very same moments as when using the old format. It means approx. 10-20% lower effeciency, or approx. 10-20% less activity in general within all teams. So from a productivity or activity point of view, it would be better if the submenues always where lying closer to the headers!

Under the new interface, how does one create visible borders in a table in a thread post?  Also, how do you make it so that clickable links in a thread post have an underline below them?

This thread, valuable as it may be, is becoming chaotic. If we attempt to classify peoples’ problems concerning the new interface, these fall under two major categories:

TYPE I: Technical Problems, i.e. problems relating to bugs, fixes, compatibility of various browsers, etc. Members’ feedback is valuable on that front and before long the majority of these problems will be addressed and fixed, therefore people should not get overtly upset about them.

TYPE II: Conceptual problems, i.e. problems arising from the huge changes which affected the way our personal (or Team) Home Pages look. Here the beast will not be tamed that easily: the root cause of the shock to many members, in my opinion, relates to the forced shift of someone’s priorities and classification preferences brought about by the upgrade to center stage of THE NOTES. This is the defining and crucial change behind the new design’s concept and it is this that instills a negative Facebook feel to many of us.

The promotion of THE NOTES caused many members’ cherished items to be demoted to footnote, margin or out of view status. I think this was a mistake. Still, it can be corrected – if only the designers could be persuaded of this conceptual flaw and move the Notes back to the margin, where they, under any sensible prioritization, truly belong. Or, at least, work out a “show/hide” button, if that is feasible. This has to be done – to force an arbitrary and ill-conceived priority on a user while asking him to get used to it is a mistake.

To test my hypothesis (given that I could not get used to it), I had to resort to something drastic: much as I lament the loss of cherished friends’ notes, I deleted them all… And, surprisingly enough, the New -minus Notes- Look (as in the screen shot below) started to resemble the Old (and very wise in its priorities) Look. And that is something I can get used to.

Having said all this, it would be an omission not to thank Erik and his Staff for the huge effort and their diligent and prompt response to every issue that arises during this major shift – I only hope the iconoclastic designer(s) of the New Look will give this argument the benefit of the doubt.

@ himath2009

you seem like don't have any tracked activities?

I tried to navigate on the site tonight with  my iphone. Was a waste of time. Can't get full screen in, can't enlarge/reduce, couldn't view any alerts, so gave up after 5 minutes. It was working perfectly fine before the new site went Live. But I see many others  having the same issue. Hope they can sort out this problem soon for those who rely on their phones to make moves in time or tend to anything they need to her  if they have no pc access, like I did tonight.  

i think they started to work on it, because today you can zoom in-out and now the menu bar is better functional.

and additionally now when you use your iphone horizontally, the page fits to your screen. 

but still you can't write to forums or make your moves. 

I do...

If you rely on your iPhone, why not use the free app? It's brilliant. It just needs to include Chess Mentor and Conditional Moves and then it's a perfect accompaniment to the website.

I was trying to navigate on my iphone only 20 minutes ago and couldn't enlarge or reduce still and also couldn't get the full screen in vertically or horizontally.

i didn't mean that one, sorry.

here is what i mean. reason to ask is that it gives a much  different look, which is not my favour. 

@himath2009. I thoroughly agree with your point about the grotesque prominence the new user interface gives to Notes and the way in which that change tends to distort the fundamental nature of the site (it is, after all, a site for playing chess, not one for socializing), as well as its role in causing the widespread dissatisfaction with the new interface. I join you in the hope that the staff will correct its gross miscalculation in that regard as soon as possible so we can get our minds back onto playing chess and improving the site's integrity by ridding it of cheaters. Remember them?

it's very strange babs.

even now i can do zoom in-out and can see the whole page horizontally.

Ok, Omer, now I see what you meant... No, I mean yes, I have removed, through the personal alert settings, all automated tracking - it was becoming an abstraction (some of my chessfriends tend to contribute so much...) - and prefer to revise topics of interest manually...   

yes free app is nice for playing. but not for groups administrations.

That was fixed early on for the Home page. Games were moved to the center and Note below that. If someone were to post a note to your page, it would be below the game. Not sure if you were just commenting on the way it was before or the way it was now, so I thought I would mention that.