We have been working on making the design of the daily Digest email sent to Yahoo! Groups users, better. The digest design was modified on June 28th and in response to feedback, again on June 29th 2012 (for U.S. users only). We placed a feedback link to invite comments and feedback on the design and we heard from thousands of users.
We’ve made changes to the Daily digest format based on the feedback. This will be rolled out starting July 11th 2012. Pls do review the new design when it is implemented (this is a heads up only ). Here’s a summary of feedback and changes being made:
- The header or dashboard area is much taller due to header design, spacing between lines, bigger font size and reduced width,consequently users need to scroll more to read the summary.
- Made the digest dashboard area wider and header compressed to make the dashboard accommodate more lines.
- A subset of users had rendering issues where the message content would be rendered one word at a time.
- We’ve fixed the one-word rendering issue – this was happening with Outlook on older versions of Windows and other mail client /OS combinations as well.
- Some HTML markers were changed which caused issues with screen reader programs used by visually challenged users.
- We brought back the HTML markers that were there earlier.
We’re eager to listen and fix any other issues that you may have. As in the previous iteration, we would have a feedback link in the daily digest mail, so do let us know what you think.
- Yahoo Groups team
Hooray! I no longer have the issue of one word per line in the Digest. And this version is much better. Thanks for fixing the problems!
Just received the first view of this revision. It is MUCH better then the previous two, especially on the Summary’s side.
Much better. One suggestion, there is still too much white space between the line after the message and the beginning of the next message.
I will wait a day or two and change my settings back.
You state “We’ve fixed the one-word rendering issue – this was happening with Outlook on older versions of Windows.”
I have the newest version of Windows and I too had the one word rendering issue. It was happening in Windows Live Mail and I reported it as such.
Will have to wait a few days and see the real thing. Thank you for listening.
Wow, for once, I like what you are going for there. The only thing I object to is the “Trending Now” data. That has no bearing on a group and shouldn’t be anywhere in there. It’s like going to the apple store and seeing ads for “bananas” (no context, no relevance, just a word). What’s the point there?
Otherwise, I am interested enough to even try it out.
Also, thank you for reviving this blog, and giving us previews of your intentions. It’s nice to see Groups get some proper attention again. I look forward to what comes next. Thoughtfula ctions like these, even a bit late, are always welcome.
Better. Would still prefer it if it were one line per post with no separators. At least get rid of the separator lines – they serve no useful function.
That is the fastest I’ve seen user feedback changes made by a big company, much better.
I agree with Greg. The digest form is specifically for people who don’t want to read everything, they just want to glance at summary and see if there’s anything interesting. Even this revised layout makes that much, much harder.
I really wish there was an indented space in front of each subheading under the main topic. For example, on your sample, you have 1. 1a. 1b. 1c. Indent the 1a, 1b, and 1c, and that would help a lot! I also agree with the others that there is still too much uniform space between groupings, which adds to the difficulty seeing which groups of topics are together.
Other than agreeing with the comments about grouping summary subjects and less space in the summary, I think the newest new format looks nice, clean and easy to read. Thanks for listening to our comments and concerns and responding so quickly.
I do not see any mention of the non-functioning hyperlinks to each individual message within the digest. Have you fixed that? They hyperlinks do not work. Clicking on a message hyperlink is not taking the reader down to that message in the digest.
What about I used to be able to click on a message to get to the message in the body of the email, and now I have to scroll through all the messages to get to the one I want to read…..the messages up top should be “links” to the messages, as they were before!
Please!
This is a correction. In my previous post I said “DECREASE the space between lines within messages.” What I meant to say was “between the PARAGRAPHS within messages.” It is very uncomfortable and fatiguing to have to skip through so much space between paragraphs, especially when each paragraph is just a line or two as many are, and when there is a huge number of messages, as mine often have. Thank you.
There’s still too much space between lines, which increases the amount of scroll. Please leave the space between each GROUP of messages (1a, 1b, etc.) as is, but DECREASE the space between lines within messages, and also between the messages WITHIN each group. I want even less scroll than the mock-up, but also to retain the ability to “eyeball” the whole thing and instantly “see” the thread groups as separate entities.
Also, as long as I’m here–With a creative group like you guys, couldn’t you take a minute to change out the packaged WordPress header on this blog?
I agree with Brad. The summary spacing still doesn’t seem tight enough to me. The idea of a summary is to not waste time on things that either don’t interest you or don’t apply to you. If I can’t see the entire summary on a digest on a single screen without scolling it’s a waste of my time.
Very nice. Thanks for listening to our feedback and reducing the scroll-scroll-scroll effect.
New format looks better here will reevaluate when it rolls out!
Hi,
Thanks for being responsive to my (and many others) feedback.
The revised digest design appears to be a significant improvement on the re-design launched recently.
From the sample it looks good. I’ll look forward to seeing the “real thing” when it is released in the near future.
cheers
Dave
if its not broke dont fix it ,there was nothing wrong with the previous version
Is it possible for you to vary the vertical spacing so there’s a clear discernible grouping of common subject headers? The old format had clear vertical space between each group of threads, which made it trivially easy to skip through each group in an instant. With the new format and its *uniform* vertical spacing there’s no such visual clue; so I have slow down drastically and ‘step through’ each line iteratively, forced to reading each number/subject to work out when a new group starts. Thanks, Brad.
Ps
The new formatt is much better!