Originally Posted by
DHfan
Off topic really but related to the Flypast changes, and the updates here a while back. In my experience, software updates, always and without fail, make things worse for the people who actually use whatever it is. I accept that sometimes revisions have to be made as security protocols and other requirements change over time but the developers always seem to find that an excuse to completely change the appearance and tell everybody it's better. This is usually accompanied by a statement about "clean, modern design" which means acres of white space and less than half of the text there used to be on any given page.
Sadly, most of the time its about updating to newer formats that allow better access to people accessing them on mobile devices, which the older forum based systems designed to be accessed from a PC/Laptop etc were not designed to be. With more and more people using mobile devices thats what drives a lot of the changes. From listening to my mates son who works in android app development and calls me a dinosaur for still using a laptop with a mouse, he reckons there will be hardly any web based forums within 10 years, as younger people use other forms of social media and the support for older style forum formats will disappear. From what I've heard it was this reason that prompted Key to make the changes to the Flypast forum. Shame they killed such a great resource, but being mostly populated by old gits, it was no surprise hardly anyone stayed after the huge changes to it. I lasted a week and have not even bothered to look back in there since.