Bob is not happy !
 

I have been hanging out here since early 1996. That is 13 years now--or over 4700 days. Most of those days I have visited my favorite travel forum right here. Now, it is so darn slow I am falling asleep, and it will not even let me reply to a post. I know that I am set in my ways, but at my age maybe I have a right to be. The advantage of the new format escapes me. Tell me you did a beta test with some Fodorites before you launched this piece of doo doo. Bob is not happy !

Hi Bob; Not sure what is happening, but everything is working within seconds on my computer at 3pm. Just like it was this morning and then slowed up about noon. Fine now. Iris

Bob, I think there is occasionally some 'instability' (ex. not being able to reply) because Fodors is constantly modifying the site, based on the loads of feedback they've received.
I'm kind of set in my ways, too, and seem to be coping very will by simply utilizing the 'recent activity' archives only. That is fairly close to scrolling the old "50 per list" method.
The fonts and bolds, etc, have been improved - they've added some additional navigation buttons. Hang in there!! You're the NAVIGATOR, you will learn to navigate this, too :)

Bob, I understand your frustration. I think that there is indeed additional tweaking taking place as we <STRIKE>speak</STRIKE> write.

Ultimately things will be better and in many respects I believe they really are better already.

I'm with you Bob, but I think this IS the test. They've been receptive to a lot of comments and criticisms so be specific about what you don't like. As to the speed, I was having a real problem all along with slow loading pages on the Fodors website before the change when I used my AOL Explorer browser; but it was fine with mozilla firefox. I find that nothing has changed. AOL still really slow but firefox is mostly fine.

Hang in there, bob! It really is speeding up and improving by the hour. And the advanced search function is working much, much better than before. I was even able to read some of your vintage posts way back from 1997! Archives treasures :">

Hi Bob, I hope this isn't just an age thing, but I don't understand why the board needed to be changed anyways. After using it for a few days, I am getting used to it but I still cannot understand why they used the white background - much to glare for me. If this is the test, I sinerely hope there will be some changes in this.

This new site doesn't work well with old AOL browsers---including netscape. Firefox is a good bet---and it has a spelling feature for the spelling aware out there. I'm not a great speller and rely on this feature so that you all don't think less of me. :-d

This is basically a beta test on many fronts; while we would have liked to have more thorough test prior to---it was very difficult to run both sites at the same time due to the nature of the extreme transition. Many of the speed problems also could only be identified once we had a mass of folks using the site.

We're very publicly going through our growing pains. On the upside, this is such a more nimble platform; making changes in our old set-up required ridiculous measures. We're making changes every day now--there's larger fish to fry though with this set-up that we haven't been able to fix overnight. But we'll get to them.

We're extremely grateful for your patience and your feedback.

Chin up, you old curmudgeon!

Actually, it's been acting buggy for me today too. But I have faith the cracker-jack Fodors techs will work out the kinks by sometime next week.

It was slow as molasses for me this morning at certain times, and around noon it was barely working. I don't use AOL, I use IE and sometimes Mozilla. I think the slowness is related to different times, that seems obvious. so maybe they were doing something at noon on here, don't know. Sometimes it works okay and others it will barely move -- in fact around noon, it wouldn't even open up certain posts for me, I just gave up and left. It is not my computer or connection, as someone else proposed on other threads. I have a highspeed business T1 line and a very good, fairly new, OS and computer. Besides, it's only Fodors.

They were making some changes to the forum a few hours ago.... including making all the titles in BOLD, and making the clickable links change from Blue to Grey after you've clicked on it.

Right now it's working very well for me, and defintiely much faster than yesterday or even early this morning.

The database has had a rocky day; it was extremely slow about an hour ago. Our team and a larger IT team from Random House has been working on it this afternoon. It should be a bit better now--but keep us posted on your experience. Thanks!

Regarding only 25 left column topics, there were 50. There is a lot of wasted line spacing space there. It looks as if it is double spaced lines within each topic. No need for that. Close it up and we might get back to 50.

regards - tom

>> This new site doesn't work well with old AOL browsers--- <<

Could this be the reason I have this problem? (I've tried changing 'settings' without success.)

I've seen so many complaints about the white background. Wasn't it white in the old format?

Wow!

I'm an old guy myself but people using 600X800 screen resolutions, AOL browsers, preferring framed web pages over style sheets . . .

The Fodor techs couldn't have possibly comprehended the public service they are performing by thrusting us kicking and screaming into the 21st century.

I'll offer all of my time to anyone who seriously wants either display or browser help.

For example, try the Firefox browser - it's free and offers such improvements as:

1. ad blocking - I'd pay for this function but you do not need to.

2. spell checkers - just check my spelling

3. remote bookmark or favorites organization

4. Tabs (and Firefox had this long before Windows Explorer did).

5. Control font size with a roll of the mouse scroll wheel (by holding the CTRL key)

At least take a open minded look at its features:

http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/

Give it a try and you'll probably enjoy the new look of Fodor's a lot better.

<b>CAPH</b> - I've been wondering the same thing for the last 2 days. I think part of it is because there's more white spacing between lines and paragraphs than before. Or perhaps Fodors have picked White Paint #2 instead of White Paint #53 which they used in the old format. ;)

<b>Sarastro</b> - I really like the drawing/sketch on your profile!

<B>yk</B> - I wish I could take the credit but Picasso thanks you.

Hi Bob,

I've been experiencing irrregular, infrequent difficulty accessing posts.

OTOH, the Fodor's computer hasn;t gone down for a number of hours as it used to ----yet. :)

((I))

Bob is not the only one who is not happy. The sharply reduced number of posts shows that a lot of us are not happy.

Sometimes I think I will post an answer, then think of all the time/trouble it did to post the last one and don't bother.

This if NOT user friendly. Whoever designed it obviously doesn;t understand how most of the posters use the boards.