Those were interesting to read. Opened the week I was born. I love the phone number.
Back in the olden days of Cartalk, during the Rant 'N Rave days, they had the ability to embed pictures. It only took a few bad apples to ruin that for everyone. I predict the clock is ticking on this “feature”…
Morning, everybody! Just to let you know, the search function is now live. You’ll find it on the right-hand side of the screen, underneath the Bookmarked Discussions box, which itself is under the Car Talk Tool Box. Any problems? Let us know here.
The “Submit a Car Question” button is white text on a light blue background. You need to change that.
You should consider putting the Search at the top of the page.
You should consider labeling the Search.
to those complaining about the red border:
The last version had a much larger border on it, this version you hardly notice it anymore
bscar: Not if you have a wide screen high-res monitor. I’ve about 3.5 inches of red on either side.
Why don’t you adjust the size of the browser window so it doesn’t show the red borders? That’s what I do.
That’s an option, but it’s generally considered poor site design to make your user have to contort the window in order to make your page readable 
The red part isn’t borders, it’s background.
“Why don’t you adjust the size of the browser window so it doesn’t show the red borders?”
I did and the text is sometimes garbled. Text doesn’t seem to adjust well in Chrome. But it does look fine in IE.
It garbles text in IE, too.
Hi, just a PSA for anybody who didn’t check the announcement thread in the Repair and Maintenance section…post-flagging is now available. You’ll see the “Report” link next to the name of the poster and time stamp of the post you’d like to flag. Clicking it brings up a window to confirm the flag, and, optionally, to add a reason why you feel the comment is objectionable. Let us know if you have any trouble with it.
There’s one feature I think we really need. We’ve lost the tree structure of replies and replies-to-replies, which is okay, because it can be unwieldy and because many other Internet message boards don’t have that. However, in its place, we need the ability to quote part of a post easily so that it’s clear exactly what we’re replying to.
For now, I discovered that I can put text in italics by using HTML directly (which, by the way, doesn’t appear to be documented anywhere), so I can manually assemble a quote, but it’s certainly not convenient. See an example of what I think we need.
???
For now, I discovered that I can put text in italics by using HTML directly
There should be a key on the right side of your keyboard that looks like two apostrophes together. That should work.
Having now used it a bit I love the new forum. There was SOOOO much “real estate” wasted in the formatting of the old one. And I love being able to scroll down a large volume of posts rather than going “next page; next page; next page; next page”.
The ability to scroll an entire thread is probably my favorite thing as I also hated paging through. Once I just get used to it all and it feels “normal” I’ll probably like a lot more overall too.
The lack of a tree structure will be a problem at times. As we all know, for those never ending threads there are usually multiple conversations all going on at once. It will get very messy without the trees.
It did occur to me that I’m not sure about the editing of initial posts. There are, of course, 100 different reasons that it should be fully possible since I think most are aware of the past issues.
However, this new format doesn’t provide an indication of whether and when a post was actually edited. In the midst of dealing with someone’s issues it sort of means that you’re going to have to review the entire OP each time to find out whether info was added or changed.
I think on balance the benefits outweigh any drawbacks by a longshot. But I was just thinking about that.
Shadow, I guess you’re right about the boarder. But, I’m running my TV as a computer monitor, so I need the screen(although the res is 1920x1080) to be a bit larger than when I was using my 24" LCD at 1920x1200 and sitting about a foot away from it
The mobile version is much nicer than the old format. My smartphone easily had enough resolution to display the page in native format but it was tiny and refreshed multiple times while displaying. The new format is much easier to read and faster to display. In addition, there are actually lines between each post delineating them and making them easier to read.
However (you knew there was a however coming right?), what is missing is a way to navigate between the main “folders” (e.g. repairs vs general discussion). There is a top link for re-displaying the discussions in the current folder but not a selection for navigating discussion folders. I had to create a separate bookmark to go to the main page and start there each time.
Could you guys please please please modify the screen one gets when they click on Email & Chat? Just move the “Send Email” link up to just above or just below the “Car Talk Community” link or something.
I suppose I shouldn’t give it that much thought, but every time someone shows up and posts thinking that they are sending an email to Tom & Ray my blood pressure actually goes up. Its just a pet peeve I suppose. But it happens all of the time and its pretty darned clear that the discussion boards aren’t where you send an email to Tom & Ray (since there a link that says “Got something to tell Tom and Ray?” and it clearly isn’t the one that comes here).