New Release! Dynamite!
It's new release time (hello 12, aka Bee) and as usual, this release has a theme: "Bee" is all about the Vox community.
While Vox is intended to best enable community and communication between small groups of people who already know each other, we realize that Voxers also love to discover new content from people that they may not know. With this release we wanted to make it easier to discover cool stuff that isn't necessarily in your neighborhood.
Onto the new features that enable improved Vox community:
New Vox Home
The biggest improvement in "Bee" is the new homepage. We wanted a place that reflected the strength of the Vox community -- some place where Voxers can get a quick view of what's going on each day. So, to do this we've added some new features on the Vox application home.
[this is good]
This spot is our place to spotlight neat things we've found on Vox. Sometimes it's the everyday posts that really just stand out and we want to show you what *we're* liking. We'll be writing about how you can suggest your content in the upcoming days.
Recently Favorited
Prior to this release, there hasn't been a good way to see what's publicly being favorited on Vox. Recently favorited does just that. It's a great way to find all sort of content that *you're* liking.
Better Explore Box
Now you can select what type of content you'd like to search via a pulldown menu. And with the "view responses" link we added to the Question of the Day and Vox Hunt boxes, you can easily view the responses from each day.
Recent posts from friends & family
We've tweaked the way that recent posts and photos are displayed. And now, excerpts include photos! Vox home will continue to evolve with future releases and of course, the more we play with it, the more we'll learn what works and what doesn't. You'll notice that "recent comments" is no longer on the home page. This is because we're busy building up the reader with a much more complete "recent activity." As with all of Vox, this will be made easier to use/find in the next couple releases. We think that you should like all these improvments!
New Themes
Country (Day and Night)
Desert (Day and night)
Flowers (Blue, Orange, Pink, Purple)
Manga (Dora, Fumi, Hatsugon, Uno)
California Poppy
And since we're constantly adding new themes each release, we've added more design categories in order to make it easy to find your dream theme.
Localization Improvements
On the backend, we made a ton of improvements to the way our users in other countries/languages experience Vox. You may not notice the changes, but believe us, they'll make a difference in the future. The most noticeable change is now you can choose to explore content either exclusively in your language or in all languages.
As always, there are little improvments and changes through Vox that weren't mentioned in the release notes. We hope that you enjoy this release!
- Mena
Comments
But the worst part is the absent of recent comments. I think it would be good not to have to jump to a sub-page only to check if someone wrote something.
Email me - steve at sixapart dot com and I'll help you get sorted.
I love the "Country Night" theme. Thanks!
At first look, the new home page looks nice too. Great release!
Totally hear you about the recent comments. To read your recent comments, we've built out an entire page. As with all of Vox, this will be made easier to use/find in the next couple releases. We think that you should like all these improvments! We will be making it even easier for you to catch up on all new content on one page.
BTW, the "recent posts" at the bottom is cycling too fast and maybe I'm just easily distracted, but my scroll bar changes with each cycle. Guess that's happening because the area varies from post to post, changing the screen size. I'm probably not making sense...
The pages are still too wide, and we still don't have LJ-style comments.
Not that I'm just commenting to gripe - I do appreciate all you guys are doing, and know you're trying to please the greatest amount of people. Keep it up =)
I like what you guys are doing with the place, but this one's a bit annoying.
BTW, there is a bug on "Recently favorited on Vox". Most of the entries are identical.
(It's all been said before, but just want to weigh in on the changes in case in makes a difference for future design.)
I love some of the improvements, but I've got to say I liked the old-style 'recent comments' much better than the new (or newly promoted) 'recent activity' page. It was much easier to quickly scan just the new stuff and not have to scroll through pages of comments you already read, or have to specifically seek them out. Plus, I guess I just liked the old Home page better ~ having it all in one place, a quick scan, an easy update.
I really dig the [this is good], although I, too, miss the old comment set-up.
Call me a dork, but I feel the subject of this update should've been "The buzz about Bee." Har har... har... *hides in a corner*
i love it!
thank you!
But please please PLEASE make an option to disable the cycling through the recent posts, it makes me dizzy, and manually clicking on it every time is not a good solution !
Also it could be awesome if the users were allowed to customize the content of their "home" page, like, for example, the Google users can customize their home page. Some (most ?) of the users are not really interested in random posts, no matter favourited by strangers or not, for them it would be useful to replace this module with the recent comments module.
That being said, please... the profile. Can we get a little customization there? I'm not asking for much, just... I don't want my profile "About me" section or whatever it is to be one big paragraph. I understand your concerns about allowing HTML but can we at least get the same options we do for our posts? Paragraphs? Something bold? A bit of color?
Cheers if you're already working on it. And feel free to tell me to bugger off. :)
My 2 cents on the new home page: it feels less like my home page now. As it stands, I have to scroll to get to any personalized content.
- I love the team vox news box.
- I like the compact Recent Posts (but not the animation). Though I'm unclear on why content I've said I'm interested in (i.e. posts from friends & neighbours) is way down on the bottom of the page (requiring scrolling) and gets less space than random content that other voxers are talking about.
- I'm another one who is more interested in my "recent activity" than in other people's favourited.
But that said, great job guys! Keep them coming, and we'll keep using and complaining. ;->
I'm wondering... how do the ability to see posts in our language works? Where can I set it to French?
Do I have to have "France" as my location? I'm asking because you called this change a "Localization improvement", and I don't find anywhere to set my favorite language...
Count my vote for the old comments layout. It's a scanning thing for me, I'm interested, but not enough to go to another location...
I love the "found on vox" feature, and am very glad to see that you liked the photo. Does this make me a Vox star? ;-)
I don't find the 'recent actvity' a good replacement for the 'recent comments' on the old home page because a. I have to navigate through more pages (and it's not that easy or intuitive to find), b. I have to remember to actually go there and look (which I don't), and c. then I have to scoll down pages of things, most of which I've already seen before, just to try to see anything new.
I like to scan everything quickly (new stuff, esp my neighborhood, all on one page) and then delve deeper into more what I want.
(I live in SF; I'd be happy to come in for any Vox usability studies...for a t-shirt of course :))
Thanks for all the kind comments :)
i think the flashy comment is ok, but less useful to me. i don't think you should trash it, but maybe make it optional.
i really like the view responses for qotd and hunt. those 2 features of vox really keep me here and posting.
i think home needs to be an option on the menu on top. maybe it's just me, but i don't always have an option of going to my home. if clicking on my name or picutre takes me to my blog, then why have a menu option for blog as well? this is super redundant.
You say you all about building community, Team Vox, but you've taken everything on the home page related to my community and either removed it or delegated it to annoying, moving thumbnails at the bottom of the page. Why?