I know how each catagory is able to be closed so that ones that you don't visit you can close and clean up your board and don't have it so cluttered. But what about the catagories you do visit? Say I visit the Recreational Activities catagory on a regular basis but never go into the The Neobahn or the The Sporting Arena forum. Well maybe I would like to close that forum so I don't have to see it and clean up the board a bit more and have it streamlined to mine likening.

Now you would still be able to get back to those forums be opening them back up just like the catagories as you do now or by clicking on the forum posts from the main page.

Default site as it is:


The board as I have it streamline to my tastes:


The board mockup with a closeable tags on each forum as well as each catagory:


The board mockup with the The Neobahn and The Sporting Arena closed:


I have no idea if IPB would allow this as part of the coding....that is something that toxikk and the rest of the coding team would have to think about.

Also understand my photoshoping skills aren't great.

Just a thought. Please discuss.

I think it's a good idea, but it would just drag down the server more with cookie's and stuff having to be altered. If it can be tested and be proven to not slow down the server, why not?

Surely it could all be done client-side with client-side scripting (aka javascript) so it wouldn't affect the load anyway... Nice idea though!

What indicator would be left to tell you there's a forum there? The categories at least leave the header, while hiding the forum. If you hide the forum, what's left?

Each of the individual forums are still there just squeased together to streamline it.

the more features neowin has the more and more 1337 it gets ! i'm with this all the way, i know id use it

I like the idea of hiding individual categories, as long as it is technologically feasible.

Actually, I'd like to see this as a feature also!

Kind of adapting the idea, would it be possible to customise it a bit further by going into the control panel and being able to tick what forums you want loaded on your own custom style sheet?

I've had a simular idea before, but much more simpler and does not have so many buttons along the right of the page.

Simply 'streamline' all of the forums...
- Reduce the Size of the circle button image to be no higher than one line height
- add the Description and Leaders information to the tooltip of the Forum title (or instead of tooltip, Morph the text onMouseOver to the Description/Leaders)
- Move the ">>Date: Today, 00:00 PM, In: Blah Blah Blah, By: Username" to one line like: "In: Blah Blah Blah (Username, Today 00:00PM)"
- Maybe combine the Topics & Replies Columns in the format like Replies/Topics (eg: 9,730 / 352)

edit: Added mockup of how a 'streamline' look would be like

Same here, it'd be a lot more handy then just hiding total forums

To me it looks like you're just deleting the forum description? Sorry but I think the best thing you can do if you browse Neowin on a 56K modem is to use the lite skin. Little graphics and fast loading time.

You misunderstand, please take the time to read the starting post rather than jus the title before you post. It's a 56k warning in the title because there is a large image in the body of the thread.

The topic itself has nothing to do with Loading times/small filesize graphics. It's about reducing clutter on the board index, now that there are 37 Forums on the Board Index alone (not counting Sub-Forums)

yeh, good idea, i'm all for it

Another vote here, I quite like that idea.

Actually, that's a really good idea!

I thought he ment that 56K'ers could hide the forum description to increase fast loading time. My bad.

It is a good idea but it would increase more clutter as you will have the -/+ symbols on each forum description.

Great Idea

What about if the "My Neowin" area was updated to allow you to have more than 3 links posted, then you could actually "subscibe" to the forums that you wantes to automatically load when you entered the forums. That way the original page stays the same, the only thing that would change is that each person would have their own "forum page" or start page. Much like MSN does on their homepage. THis could probably be used as an incentive for subscribers only. That might attract more people to subscribe (myself included)

I said something like that, pick the forums you want to see rather than the whole lot, that would definately be an incentive for me to subscribe and i probably would.

Just had a quick go at doing it: http://www.enetuk.com/nw/test.html

^ That is awesome this idea is ****en sweet! I am all for it

IT would be really stupid to just squeeze them. Just have checkboxes in the control panel so you can set which ones to hide and which ones to show. They do it over on the g4tv.com boards

Yup, my vote's with you! I always wanted a feature like this.

That looks really cool and helped reduce the clutter a lot. I navigated away from the page though and then clicked "back" and the page returned to the default (all boxes expanded) mode. I think it would be even better if subforums had this option!

For example in the Design & Programming forum I only use two of those forus... therefore I would have to keep the whole thing open in order to read the two subforums. I wonder if i could minimize all but just the forums I want to read.

Don't get me wrong, I love newin and will continue to use it even if it stays the same, but while we are discussing this, might as well put all the ideas on the table I always say! Great work though Adrian!

Nice work, do you think you could please make a working mockup like the one I made too?

As long as it would not slow the site down I am all for it

Another idea would be to have a section in the User Control Panel where we would be able to select what topics we want to display and remove

EDIT: Gelob posted it. Silly me.

Although it's a nice idea, I would prefer something more along the lines of what Gelob suggested where we go into our CP and pick which forums, and subforums we'd like to see.

i wonder if something like this will be in ipb 2.1

while i like the idea, it does seem a bit like too much. we'll see.

what about totally hide the category and in our control panel, having the oportunity to put them back
this way, our page would be cleaner and we would have the option in our control panel?

This is done now on neowin? WOW what the? Was that always like that or was this just done?

Yep, try it now and minimize the Overclocking & Modding forum

Hehe dont see it there. Maybe 2.2

Man...I really like this idea. I really hope that IPB implements it. Or that the great coders guys can think of something. That is one reason I never collapsed anything. I read general but I don't read NeoBahn. I don't really read Members Metropolis and not the server side of Linux (yet).

The fact that it can be done and that toxikk likes the idea just made my day.

@adrian: That is exactly what I was getting at with being able to collapse the individual forums.

@everyone else I also like the idea of being able to subscribe to individual forums via your control panel.

Toxikk: Even if this isn't in 2.1....maybe it could be a custom code for neowin ver 4?

I think making this as a subscriber perk might get more people to donate to neowin...just a thought also.

wasn't this submitted before?

maybe not.. great idea im all for it!

vote++;

I love this idea