@trevor got to agree with you on that. You always have to think of your end users here or at least give the option to dumb down the composer view. 98% of users in my forums are middle aged non-tech guys. They like boring kitchen sinks, big buttons to insert links and so forth. They also like one place to type. It's really not supposed to be a tech demo.

Double panes is a cool option that may be applicable to a certain demographic but it will be a small one.

I'm totally impressed by this endeavour as it's something not far from what I've been contemplating for a while. Let me know when you get started and will try to contribute

@trevor Finally got to try M4 out on mobile on your convoe site.

Few glitches on my Samsung Note 3 using chrome.

Hitting reply works ok but when the keyboard pops out the composer is entirely obscured. Kind of inoperable. Also has this rather confusing "Replying to What s.." in the middle which throws me off completely.

I like where you're going with the upvote buttons on mobile, the rest of them also need appropriate resizing i.e. quote/reply/share.

Do the standard widgets operate well with M4 or are the widget areas preset to what we see?

Screenshot attached:
https://s3.amazonaws.com/pushbullet-uploads/ujyTa0DhLSS-YOev95ePQjpvKI8u5OkwrNwHZVXO7WWx/Screenshot_2014-07-04-22-20-36.png

Keep up the good work sir. Just constructive feedback for you.

Have to agree with this. Live preview doesn't do it for me either. Confusing to new users and somewhat needless. Like the old way for previews.

Make your life easier, created issue #1744 on github for the FAQ update.

@trevor any time. Let me know when you've patched it up so I can give it another once over.

@a_5mith Well not really. Private messaging allows you to thread/segregate multiple messages (to the same user even). Chat as it is seen here doesn't do that. I cannot start a chat session with the same user and cover multiple topics without scrolling through a single chat session.

PMing is the equivalent of pseudo email within the forum domain.

Instant messaging/chat is exactly that, a one to one open ended chat session that can cover multiple topics. The fact that the chat is persisted here is great but it's no replacement for PM.

The difference being in how messaging is segregated, threaded and presented to the user which is key. Accessibility of what I typed to you about topic A and what I typed to you about topic B is the driving factor behind the different UX.

1. Mobile view - this needs major rework and a dedicated mobile theme. Right now it's practically unusable to type as the keyboard is taking up 95% of the composer box. The voting buttons are too small and things basically don't look right for anything but browsing. Other buttons to attach pics are equally too small. Needs mobile specific features like 'take a pic'.
2. Who's online widget - an extension of the active users widget but showing a dynamic view of registered users currently browsing any category
3. More rigorous compatibility checks on plugins would be great on the backend to avoid a plugin crashing the whole platform
4. I raised this already but a real time update of post teasers (the ones beneath each category) would definitely improve the experience
5. Geo-tagging posts would be cool. Probably in plugin form.
6. I'm sure this has been mentioned but Search Search Search. Far from ideal. Global search produces a mess and we need category search (by keyword, username at the very least but maybe have time/date filter)

I may end up joining with my own contributions at some point. Soon as I have time to wrap my head around this.

Keep up the good work lads.

Nik

Looking pretty spiffy. When is the official champagne ridden launch date?