As you have probably noticed 8052.com has switched to a new forum format. The changes are both cosmetic as well as functional.

1. The color scheme itself, I think, is a little gentler on the eye--at least that's my sense. I have received feedback from beta-testers that it may be hard to read. Please let me know if you find the new color scheme hard to read or hard on the eyes or if you have suggestions for a different color scheme. I'm open to suggestions.

2. This new format is "threaded." That means the reply list will not be a single list of messages in the order they were posted, but rather will be indented and positioned to indicate the message to which the user replied. This can be useful to better see how a conversation evolves and, in fact, can lead to several related conversations being clearly carried out in a single thread.

3. On the main forum page you can now sort the threads by the date the thread was started (that's the way it has worked in the past) or by the date of the last post in the thread. Traditionally, old threads would "fall off" the page as new threads were created. This caused threads to die off just because they got pushed off the first screen. If you sort by "last post" then every time a message is added to a thread, that thread will pop back to the top of your list. This makes it easy to keep up with the latest posts on the forum even if the threads themselves are old.

4. To change the order the main forum page is sorted by, click the name of the header ("FIRST POST" or "LAST POST"). The forum page will then be reloaded with the threads sorted in that order.

5. The possible downside to sorting by "LAST POST" is that some rather ancient threads (2 years or older!) sometimes appear because someone decided to post to an old thread. I'm open to suggestions as to whether old threads should be automatically closed after some number of weeks or months so that truly ancient threads don't come back from nowhere. Or perhaps it is a GOOD thing that old threads come back rather than new threads being started on the same topic. I'm open to suggestions.

If you have any comments or run into any problems or bugs with this new format, please let me know.

Regards,
Craig Steiner
8052.com Webmaster