ChowHQ's Profile
New Feature Coming: Been There/Wanna Go buttons
Hi everyone - thanks for the feedback. It has been very valuable to us and we appreciate all of the comments. The feature will have an optional privacy setting that you can adjust in your profile - under the Lists category you will see a Restaurants link. Under the Restaurant section you will see two tabs, one for Been There and the other for Wanna Go. To the right of these two tabs, there will be radio button where you can chose 'private' or 'public'. This will make both lists (Been There and Wanna Go) either public or private, whichever you choose. Hopefully this will make the feature a more usable. Again thank you for the feedback!
New Feature Coming: Been There/Wanna Go buttons
In the next week or so we will be launching a new feature we're calling Been There / Wanna Go. This feature will allow you to create lists of the places you've been or want to go. Those lists will be visible in your profile page. Check out the annotated page to see a full visual description of the feature:
http://www.chow.com/may-updates
And let us know what you think!
Feedback Wanted on New Feature Coming Soon
rworange that is a great idea! We have talked about additional dependencies on the moderation tools but your suggestion will definitely be added it to the feature requirements.
Feedback Wanted on New Feature Coming Soon
Hi Everyone,
This is great feedback, thank you so much for taking the time to share your opinions.
First we want to make sure that you all understand why we ask for feedback when planning new features. User feedback is a critical part of developing and launching great features. We want to hear opinions, both positive and negative. We strive to create tools that will help users, not hinder them and/or promote popularity contests. Actually this is what we are trying to avoid.
The feature is intended to extract ‘helpful’ information, rather than highlight people. We hope that users police themselves for the most part. However we know this isn’t always the case – that is why we rely on our amazing community of moderators (thank you guys!) and a brilliant Community Manager in Jacquilynne.
Threads and posts on the boards are conversations that have a cadence, and we don't want to interrupt that. But we do want to offer users a way to quickly scan the conversation for useful/helpful pieces of information. In the long term this feature is meant to branch out to small screen portable readers (mobile, tablets, etc.) In the future it will allow users to highlight the exact phrase that they found helpful as a way to pull out specifics about a restaurant -- like what dishes people should order. But in the short term we have to start small (on the website) developing simple functionality (a link with a number).
This isn't meant to undermine the main premise of the boards or go against the manifesto. That would go against the grain of everything we are trying to accomplish: to provide the tools to make every bite count.
Feedback Wanted on New Feature Coming Soon
Hi limster - we completely agree that the digests are a wonderful tool that aren't visible enough - we are working on promoting the digests in a better way thank you for your feedback.
Feedback Wanted on New Feature Coming Soon
Hi Chowhounds! We've noticed that many users would like an easy way to acknowledge informative posts without necessarily jumping fully into the conversation or cluttering the thread with a bunch of '+1' or 'thank you' or 'I agree' posts.
So we're thinking about allowing users to mark a post as "helpful." Pretty straightforward, nothing you haven't seen on other sites, but something that could come in handy. And down the road we'll do more with the data, as a way to bubble up the most relevant or informative parts of the thread.
The button would be next to the reply and permalink buttons underneath the text box and would look something like this when 212 people clicked the link -
Helpful (212) | Permalink | Reply
Let us know what you think!
Unreadable information in the restaurant records
Hi rworange - We aren't testing any new functionality on the restaurant pages at this time. And while it could be interesting, we don't have any plans to make an update like that any time soon. I would guess that its a Skype setting of some sort. Thanks for alerting us.
truncated i-phone site?
Hi Melanie, I filed a bug on the maps too. I should know in the next day or two if it will be fixed for your trip.
truncated i-phone site?
Hi Melanie, our apologies for not responding for so long...looks like there's some issues with the mobile version of the site. I will log a bug and hope to have this fixed in the next release on 4/21. Are you still on the road?
truncated i-phone site?
These changes we have introduced are all towards the goal of simplifying the UI for a small touch screen. Having to touch exactly on the post name or the board name or the number of replies requires too much dexterity for most people. So, we changed it so that you can touch anywhere on that line and you go to the thread which is the most common desired action.
However, we realize that the power users want all of these additional capabilities. So, we will add back in the the option to opt out and go to the full advanced site view.
Release 08/10/2010 - Restaurants and Bars
Hi Melanie, we have been working with our Restaurant data provider to get us good and viable data for months. We hear your concerns and are equally interested in resolving the data issue. We are close to having a process that will update the restaurant data on a routine basis and correct a lot of the errors in our data base. We appreciate all of the work you have done to send us the lists and are working diligently on resolving the this issues so that our records are current and up to date. Hang tight we hope to have the new feed and a good stream of data up and running sometime in the next month.
Release 08/10/2010 - Restaurants and Bars
Hi Melanie - thanks for alerting us we apologize for the delayed response. There is a bug filed against it and we hope to resolve it in the November release (launch date TBD).
Who else has teeny tiny font when writing a reply?
Hi septocaine queen - this was a bug from the release yesterday and not the intended user experience. It got resolved today - but let us know if you are seeing it still. Thanks for alerting us!
"There's a 'SEARCH THIS BOARD' link at the top of each board and thread -- it's next to the name of the board. "'
Hi Melanie and squid - that was a known bug that we were very happy to resolve this release. If it happens again let us know, that is not the intended experience. Thanks for alerting us.
I hate the new release
Update here - some fixes are coming please see this thread for details - http://chowhound.chow.com/topics/724128?tag=ol-5798443;highlight-5829407#5829407
RELEASE COMING!
Hi Everyone -
Thank you so much for all of the feedback since launch, we really appreciate hearing the good and the bad and we are working really hard to fix bugs.
On a quick note, the things that will be included today in another release will be -
1. Fixes to make the font size smaller, thus saving some of the vertical space on posts.
2. Minimize the padding around posts, again to minimize vertical space.
3. Put the darker grey background back, to help with bleeding eyes.
There will be more fixes coming in the next few days and the coming weeks. Thanks again for all of the feedback! The Chow Team
I hate the new release
Hi Jfood - We are just as invested in developing a better Blackberry experience as the Iphone and Android experiences. The goal is to have the Blackberry site redesigned by the end of the year.
Has Supertaster Disappeared Entirely?
You can now read all Supertaster stories here:
http://www.chow.com/food-news/supertaster/
Search - 08/10/2010 release
Hi rworagne - this is great feedback. We are looking at ways to optimize the search experience and appreciate that you 'stumble' upon content via search. Thanks for the feedback! Keep it coming!
too much white space
We will be resolving these issues over the next couple of days.
Font size, line spacing and the amount of white padding in each container are currently off and will be addressed.
Concerning the amount of white space you are seeing, We did not add in any white space to what was on the page before, what we did was remove the grey coloring that was appearing between the edge of the page and the browser window.
We will monitor the comments here and if needed we can potentially reintroduce that shading to the sides of the site.
Thanks for your patience while we fix these details, we know how much of a difference these details make to readability and will correct them asap.
I hate the new release
Hi LGN212 -
--The saved list putting the board names into one single long column is a bug that we are working on fixing along with the fact that it overwrites the header.
--the edit feature should allow you to remove multiple at a time. However we are working on functionality to allow the user to rank them in any order they want. It didn't make this release but will be coming in the following couple weeks.
Thanks for alerting us about these bugs.
RELEASE COMING!
Thank you to everyone for this really useful feedback on Tuesday's release. We are so thrilled to hear that you're excited about a few of the new features! But here's the requisite cover-your-ass statement: it's a huge release, and we might have some hiccups after launching. (So yes, perhaps a little downtime, perhaps some janky interactions, perhaps some funny-looking design stuff.)
The release should be live by midday Pacific time. And then you should be able to get right back into the site and start getting used to the new features. Please, please do let us know if you see problems. Feedback is always welcome; if it's a bug we will get it into the queue to fix, and if it's a request for change or enhancement, we will refer to it when mapping out future releases.
A few people have mentioned the mobile site. This release includes an iPhone/Android version of the site that fixes a lot of the problems the current mobile site has, and allows users to reply to threads and post new threads from their phone. It's not an app (that's in the works, of course), but you'll be able to visit the site on your iPhone or Android and it'll automatically detect the mobile version. There are a few things we're still working on; in the next week or so you'll be able to: upload photos to a review; upload photos to a restaurant page; use the swipe motion to scroll through photo galleries. We haven’t enabled video on this version, yet; we're expecting to have that done in the fall.
I'll be checking in constantly and will try to be as responsive as possible.
RELEASE COMING!
That is great to hear rworange, it is our feeling as well! The feature is very useful in theory, but in practice it's almost unusable. Pretty sure that you have figured out ways to work around its limitations but it will be great when we can get it working to its full potential. Thanks for the feedback - keep it coming!
RELEASE COMING!
We aren't revising any of the Hot Posts functionality in this release. Thus, It should work as its always worked in the past even though you access it from your profile now. However we will be improving/optimizing the Hot Posts experience in the next couple cycles of releases.
RELEASE COMING!
Changes are afoot.
We've got some changes coming soon! Our August 10 release includes some updates to the site that we hope will make navigation and browsing easier. For a peek at what’s coming down the pike, check out the annotated pages here: http://www.chow.com/release_announcement
Some things you’ll notice right away: the CHOW and Chowhound parts of the site are given more distinct identities, though CHOW content will still appear in the right column of Chowhound (because we know you love those jalapeno poppers images ...). The drop-down menu to navigate through the boards is going away, and instead you’ll navigate around the site via a module that sits at the top of each page. And you can quickly save your favorite boards to the module so it’ll take fewer clicks to get where you normally go.
Search is changing too. The search box that sits at the top of every page on Chowhound will be specific to discussions and restaurants. When you refine, it’ll immediately refresh without having to click Search again. “Best match” will be the default result; it means that it will return the most relevant and most recent results.
On the CHOW side, the home page is going to look rather dramatically different. We really scaled it back. And the rather useless distinction between stories and blogs will be a thing of the past.
We’ve done all of this with you in mind, and the goal of easing navigation. You’ll tell us what you think when it goes live on August 10. For now, take a look at the annotated pages: http://www.chow.com/release_announcement
Problems with video link on the sidebar, possibly making browser crash
We believe we solved the issue, but let us know if this pops up again.
New behavior of posts under Stories
Thanks Bob for the suggestion to put a poll on to the Stories page to see what users think about the new behavior, that is a great idea. When we post the poll we will be sure to let the thread know so everyone will have a chance to vote.
Floating, pop-up windows.
Thank you Servorg for sending the URL this is very helpful.
Problems with video link on the sidebar, possibly making browser crash
Hi Jasmine - thanks for letting us know. We just recently moved to a new video player which may be causing this bug. We will investigate this issue and fix as soon as we have a solution.
Floating, pop-up windows.
Hi All, thank you for reporting this. If anyone can capture the survey before closing the window and upload it to the thread that would be very helpful. Another question for the group- which operating systems are you using with which browser?
