Is anybody else completely dissatisfied with this new forum?

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.

The new forum interface, well, sorry, but IMHO stinks. The older forum format was much better.

I thought the new, narrower, format could be designed for mobile users. Something​ that could make some sense in some forums. Not in this case. But actually the portal states the opposite, that is designed for a desktop browser.

Let alone that during the transition from the old Altera domain most links were lost, really too bad :(

Amen. This brother speaks my mind.

Completely, utterly, pointless. And the fact that (a) search engine results don't work because the links are broken, and (b) no-one from Intel/Altera appears to be reading or responding, makes it worse than pointless. It might as well be a Microsoft forum.

As a long-time brand X user, I'd have to give this pile of garbage 0/10. It really would be much better just to set up a few usenet groups.

@HazlinaR_Intel​ & @MaryT_Intel​

• If I type [at]NRami & [at]MaryT, Chrome hangs after I try to type the 'M' of Mary (Firefox doesn't)
• if I upload a .vhd file using Chrome, the forum has no file attachment preview for .vhd extension. This appears to be the same for Verilog (.v) extensions. A NoNo for an FPGA related forum
• if I upload a .vhd file using Firefox, Firefox hangs when I click on the attachment link
• if I type [Tab] in the code snippets window, the window loses focus instead of an indent appearing
• in the code snippets window, I'm missing line numbers and syntax highlighting (both suddenly appear out of nowhere after posting)
• if I hit the translate button after posting and select 'German' (my native language), German words appear, but they do not make least sense. If you can't do that any better, better leave it away. This way, it's just embarassing
• the 'Show More' thing has been mentioned already. Awkward. It says 'hey, we have DHTML. But didn't understand it'

This is the result of less than 10 minutes testing; really frustrating.

QA testing should have been done upfront by paid individuals. Not (paying) customers.

[applications engineering team]

I'm really sorry to say that, but this made me laugh. If I'd 'engineer' like Intel does, I would have probably lost my job long ago ...

I agree.

A start would be to reorganize the grouping and may be adding "sub groups"

The FPGAs are lumped with the CPLD and Soc S/W in the same forum (Programmable Devices).

Another one (FPGA Embedded Systems)

Description:

Embedded Development Tools, Processors (SoCs and Nios® II processor), Embedded Development Suites (EDSs), Boot and Configuration, Operating Systems, C and C++

The only thing that may missing from that list is "and everything else"

When I'm looking for SoCs info, I would appreciate not having to go though CPLD postings.

And for the SoCs, if I'm looking for ARM A9 S/W topics, not having to go through FPGA design postings would be nice.