Clickable
I have a certain amount of forum experience, but I obviously spend far longer using other people’s systems than I do my own. One thing that I’m constantly amazed by, even on the systems that have features that far exceed Chatbear, are user interfaces that look something like this…
To start off with, I question the need for First and Last links as it is, I don’t think I’ve ever visited a forum and thought that the first thing I wanted to do was jump to the last page of topics or posts (although granted if I did, I’d want to go back to the beginning again). What annoys me about this is the small size of the links I would actually want to click on, namely the next and previous page buttons. It’s basic user interface design, the common items that people are going to actually click on should be larger and more prominent than those around them, simply because the larger the clickable area is, the easier it’s going to be to use it. But almost every major forum system out there thinks that a single > symbol, likely the most clicked on element of the entire page navigation system, is a big enough element, even when right next to it is a giant link to the last page. It’s not about size either, it’s close proximity to so many other links makes it easy to accidentally click on the wrong thing, especially when forums like to make the page links appear in a 10px font.
I wonder sometimes whether these people are actually using the systems they create.
