This used to be a robust forum, lots of new questions everyday and, most impotantly, lots of responses. This new forum is clunky and time consuming to navigate. Nobody seems interested anymore. I used to check-in everyday to see what's new. Not any more.

Indeed the new forum is much harder to navigate compared to the old one. The classification of the different sections is far from optimal. Two of the current sections have less than 10 posts, which clearly shows there is not enough interest in those topics to need their own separate sections. On the other hand, the first three sections are clustered with posts from vastly different topics which make them extremely hard to navigate. I would specifically object to merging the OpenCL section from the previous forum into the FPGA Design Tools section in the new one. OpenCL and HLS could certainly use their own separate section. I am sure the first three sections can be split into more fine-grained sections to allow easier navigation. One thing I really wished had been kept from the previous forum was the section structure.There are also multiple other problems that have been mentioned before by other users but still remain:1- The forum is still too heavy and too slow.2- The general design of the forum wastes too much white space. The laderboard/ask a question column on the right is of little practical use.3- Threads in a section are sorted by last reply as they should be. However, only the author and time of opening the thread is included under the thread name in each section which makes it hard to tell whether the thread has been updated since last visit or not. In my opinion, the author and time of the last reply should also be included as it was in the previous forum.4- One thing I have noticed is that there is no way to download attachments that can be previewed. I certainly prefer to open a 100-page PDF attachment using my own PDF reader rather than the built-in preview mechanism provided by the forum.5- The boundaries of each post when viewing a thread are not very clear. There is basically just a very thin line separating replies from each other. Furthermore, the "show more" mechanism cuts replies far too early. The threshold for cutting the reply could be increased for easier navigation.Unfortunately, as it seems, many of the previous users have either left the forum or are not as active anymore and I cannot attribute this to anything other than the sudden huge change in the structure of the forum. I would urge the developers/admins of the new forum to take another look at the previous forum and I am sure they would be able to find a lot of useful features from the previous forum that are missing in the new one.

For me, the major point missing (besides the ones already mentioned and the disappointing lack of performance) is a "new since my last visit" view.A basic functionality I would expect from any half-decent social media application.

Well, lets see. You can't find this forum anywhere from the Altera/Intel web page or login. You have to have an email with the "secret" link. No one from Intel responds. It is hard to read, hard to find things, takes up a lot of space on the page. It is kind of like the whole intel web page. Clunky, hard to read cluttered, useless, links go in circles, links not correct, too much crap to sort through to find what you want if it is even there.This is my first impression after trying for weeks to find this forum, hours on the phone to see if anyone in intel even knew they had an FPGA group(they don't I have been told) then finally given the secret location to this mess.

Not being able to see the timestamp of the last post to a thread and which threads you have unread topics in unheard of in most other forums.

I agree. 💔 This feels dumbed down. Like right now I'm supposed to respond using this narrow column because it looks cool??? FWIW as a former Altera now Intel employee, I couldn't even login without escalating to several people to find out how employee get permission to this site due to bugs in the current website. I not sure this affects everyone but it could be a reason a lot of old Altera folks are not responding.

Is anybody else completely dissatisfied with this new forum?

119 Replies

LLars
New Contributor
8 years ago
As another topic I called the Intel support number over a dozen times today, an Intel hung up pn all of ghem, before I could describe my problem. So support is non-existant Lee
Hazlina_R_Intel
Contributor
8 years ago
HI @LLars
Sorry to hear about your trouble in getting support from Intel. May I know which product are you looking to get the support on? FYI, for FPGA, CPLD and Enpirion power related products, we do not provide a Hotline or phone-call support. The first line of support for us is these forums where over 25 Intel engineers are working to help customers directly. You can identify them through "Intel" tag in their userID.
For FPGA, CPLD and Enpirion power related products support, my recommendation to you is to post your questions on the forums and we will be able to assist you accordingly.
Look forward to supporting you on these forums!
-Hazlina
Sr. Manager
Applications Engineering
Hazlina_R_Intel
Contributor
8 years ago
@mfro, I apologize for the wrong word used in my reply. That is not what I meant to write. I meant "first line of SUPPORT" :). Just to let you know, we are providing feedback internally as well. Yes, please be patient as we work through the feedback and improve the forums.
-Hazlina
Sr. Manager
Applications Engineering
corestar
Contributor
8 years ago
Just a thought, but why not just restore the old forums and use that as a starting point? The new ones are so broken, it does not seem like there is anything about them worth keeping.
Porting any new messages back to the old forum should not be too difficult. There has been essentially no traffic since the switch (see attached). If you exclude messages complaining about the forums, there are only a couple of hundred in the months since the change.
MaryT_Intel
Occasional Contributor
8 years ago
Hi mfro, my developer team says they took care of this Friday so I believe it should be addressed now but please let me know if you still get an error.
Thanks,
Mary T.
Community Manager
MaryT_Intel
Occasional Contributor
8 years ago
Hi @corestar , we appreciate your request but unfortunately we cannot go back to the old forum platform. Our old platforms were being End of Life'd so we needed to move our Communities to a new platform. We want to hear all your improvement ideas and are working on them as fast as we can. The 'Show More' has already been removed from posts/replies in the Forums, and we'll get it removed from posts reflected in the My Community section where it shows posts you've made or are following.
Thank you,
Mary T.
Community Manager
MaryT_Intel
Occasional Contributor
8 years ago
Ok, @corestar , I let my team know this so we can have someone take a look. Thanks for the picture and details. I'll see what we can find out.
Mary T.
Community Manager
dave_59
New Contributor
8 years ago
@corestar , I've seen this happen with other forums that were taken over by people who have no idea what a "forum", especially a technical one is. They want single-sign-on for marketing purposes. And that brings up another "bug". When I do sign in, it does not remember the page I was on and I have to drill back down to it.
corestar
Contributor
8 years ago
Today I started getting the following error when I hit "View More" (which I hope you are getting rid of as well). I'm on Windows 7 Pro and using FireFox 62.0.3 (64-bit).
DBay
Occasional Contributor
8 years ago
I get all these error messages too. So far, I just hit the 'x' and it just goes away with apparently no problems. I wish I could just ignore all the quartus errors and crashes....

Forum Discussion

Is anybody else completely dissatisfied with this new forum?

119 Replies

Recent Discussions

EDA_MAINTAIN_DESIGN_HIERARCHY obsolete?

Known issues in Quartus Standard 18.0

Setup slack violations?

I do not get an eMail with the generated license file

serv_req_info