I am very active in the support forums, especially the Google support forums - that is how I bring you guys nuggets of information every day. So when they change the design, I am fearful. Google has update the design and interfaces of their support forums yesterday.
The good news is two fold:
(A) There is still a way to view the old design
(B) The main URL structures and features in terms of filtering have not changed drastically.
So my reporting should not be impacted by this change, which it was impacted in the past year on forum redesigns.
In any event, I wanted to share before and after shots so you can see the difference.
Google Welcomes us to the new design:
The old list view of threads was concise and easy to scan through. It was fast to scroll through headlines and see what stands out as important:
The new list view is much bigger, it shows a lot more data, requires a lot more scrolling. But I am not the average support user, I am looking for things that stand out. Most people just want help.
I do love the new single post view. Here is the old view:
Here is the new view:
You can always switch back by clicking on the gears icon on the right:
Google is saying that the "new design is focused on making it easier for you to find the answers you need and ask questions in Google Product Forums." Adding:
There are two main types of pages:(A) Topic pages that focus on the content you need to see: the question, any best answers, and all replies.
(B) Lists of topics that you can browse, filter, and search to find the information you need.
For now, I am sticking with the old design until I can figure out a way to make the list view a bit more concise.
Forum discussion at Google+ & Google Webmaster Help.
