Granted, I’ve only tried to use the forums over on http://area.autodesk.com for a day but my initial impression is not favorable.
There is no hierarchical navigation from one forum to another. The only way to switch forums is to use the “Discussions” button on the top of the page which takes you back to the forum synopsis page. The problem with the forum synopsis page is that it doesn’t list all of the forums, only five or so from each product category. You have to click the “Show all forums” button in the product category in which you are interested to get a list of forums for that product.
That’s three mouse clicks and an amount of searching to switch forums. On the old forum system changing discussion forums was a one click operation.
Supposedly the Area can be read via RSS and read & posted to via NNTP. I can’t get Sage to recognize the RSS feed information and there’s no page with the pertinent information to set up NNTP access.
The forums on the Area are a step backwards. I hope Autodesk doesn’t fracture the community with this “upgrade”.
