New vs old forum experience. - Forums

Today I received an email informing me that the old forum experience will be retired at the end of this month. That’s a disappointment. I still use it because I absolutely hate the new one. I don’t understand how it works.

Sometimes I like to browse the topics in a forum on a subject, usually specific hardware, not searching anything in particular, just browsing to see if I’d find anything of interest to me in old topics. I could never find how to do that with the new experience, it seems that all I can do is view new posts and do searches. I can’t find a page that shows all the forums.

In the same manner, it seems we can no longer choose a forum when we start a topic. Unless I missed it completely all I can do is choose tags and let AB decide where it’s gonna be posted. I can’t find a list of forums, go in one and click some “new topic” button.

But the biggest issue for me is it’s extremely difficult to read new posts in a topic. It think it has to do with the feature that brings us to the first new post in a topic. Posts with nested quotes can be long, more often than not I’ll need to read the quotes before I read the post itself. I can never do that. I scroll up, start reading and AB always always automatically scrolls back down. I can’t count the topics I stopped following or didn’t even start reading because I didn’t think I’d be able to read from the start.

So I got fed up last week and I disabled the new experience. Now I am told I won’t have a choice anymore. It’s a big disappointment. And TBH I don’t understand what the need was for this new experience, AB was perfect, nothing was broken, why change it ?

Hello Eric,

I understand that you prefer the classic forum interface.

The decision to retire it is not based on the classic version being “broken.” Software does not only change when something fails. It also evolves to improve organization, flexibility, performance, and long-term maintainability.

Maintaining two parallel forum systems increases complexity and slows down improvements and fixes. Consolidating on a single system allows continued development and stability going forward.

Regarding your points:

Browsing topics: the new forums use tags instead of fixed categories. This allows topics to belong to multiple subject areas rather than a single forum. You can browse by opening a specific hardware tag and viewing all related topics, including older ones. Additionally, you can see the full list of recently created topics.
Starting a topic: instead of choosing one forum, you select tags. Those tags determine how the topic is organized and discovered. AstroBin recommends relevant tags to you automatically from the contents your post.
Auto-scroll when reading: both the classic and new forum interfaces scroll to the first unread post. Your feedback about long nested quotes is helpful, though. If large quoted blocks make it difficult to read from the beginning, I can look into limiting quote height with an expandable option to improve readability.

The classic forum interface will remain available until March 31st, 2026. After that date, the new forum interface will be the only version.

Salvatore

I understand the classic interface won’t remain, I was not trying to make you change your mind 😉. I only needed to say I’m disappointed.

On your answers now. I know I can click on a tag, if I see it in the recent posts, and see all the related topics but is there a list of tags somewhere ? If I buy a new scope or camera tomorrow and want to see all the topics about that camera, I would I do that ? This is exactly what made me switch back to the classic interface last week, I wanted to see all the topics about the Stellavita an could not find a list.

About the quotes, this was just an example I gave you. Quotes or not I very often go back up in a topic to read previous posts again and keep having this issue that it’s taking me back to the end. I tried that on my iPhone, iPad mini5 and iPad mini6, in Edge and Safari and had the same issue. I haven’t tried on a computer though. If it can help I’ll try to see if I can record what’s happening on my iPad when it does this so you can see for yourself.

Hello Eric,

Thank you, this is helpful.

List of tags

Yes, there is a list of tags. You can access and search tags directly from the header bar at the top of the forums page (see screenshot attached). From there you can:

Browse tags alphabetically
Search for a specific camera or telescope
Open a tag to see all related topics, including older ones

📷 Screenshot 2026-03-01 at 18.20.18.jpg

If you buy a new scope or camera and want to see all related discussions, you have a few options:

Search for the tag in the tag browser.
Open the item in the equipment database and access the related forum posts from there.
Use the forum search, which has been significantly improved in the new system.

All three routes will surface the relevant discussions.

Scrolling issue

Regarding the automatic scrolling, that does sound like a bug. The forum should scroll to the first unread post when opening a topic, but it should not pull you back down if you manually scroll upward.

I remember addressing a related issue in the past, so this may be an edge case that I missed. Since you are seeing it consistently on iPhone and iPad (Edge and Safari), that gives me something concrete to test against.

I will look into that with high priority.

Salvatore

Tags: I don’t know how I managed to not see it. Maybe you just gave me the excuse I need to buy a bigger iPad…..thank you 😁

I can’t reproduce the scrolling issue now. My iPads got OS updates 2 days ago……..I wonder if………

Eric Gagne · Mar 1, 2026, 05:33 PM
I can’t reproduce the scrolling issue now. My iPads got OS updates 2 days ago……..I wonder if………

I actually think that an issue does exist, because I got it too on my iPhone. It's rare, but I'm already investigating.

One thing I found a while ago is going back to the home page, “reopening” the topic I could then scroll up without issues. I think it happens only when we get to a topic from the a notification that that takes us to the first new post

Salvatore,

The “tags”button does not show up in portrait, it only does in landscape. That’s probably why I never saw it.📷 IMG_0210.png📷 IMG_0209.png

I’ve had the scrolling issue too. Happens whether I use safari, the “app”, or if I use Firefox which is my normal browser.

Not that I did much before, but now I don’t (won’t) start topics either because I don’t know what forum it’s going to go in.

There are some good things though. The timeline on the right is kinda useful. I guess marking specific users as good contributors can be useful too.

Hmmmm. It’s on my iPad Mini 6 that I don’t have the tags button, I have it on the Mini 5.

Well, not much long to enjoy the forums then…

Eric Gagne · Mar 1, 2026, 06:00 PM
The “tags”button does not show up in portrait, it only does in landscape. That’s probably why I never saw it

Thanks Eric. Will fix tonight.

Quinn Groessl · Mar 1, 2026, 06:07 PM
Not that I did much before, but now I don’t (won’t) start topics either because I don’t know what forum it’s going to go in.

In the new forum system, there are no fixed “forums” in the old sense. Instead, topics are organized by tags.

When you create a topic and assign tags (for example a specific equipment item, or processing technique, etc), the topic automatically appears in:

The feeds of users who follow those tags
The tag pages themselves
Search results
The general recent activity stream

So nothing is placed randomly, and AstroBin does not “decide” where it goes. The tags you select determine how it is categorized and who sees it.

This is more flexible than the previous system, where a topic could only belong to one forum category. Now it can belong to multiple relevant subjects at the same time.

If you ever feel unsure which tags to use, you can simply choose the most relevant equipment or subject tags, and that will place the topic correctly.

You can see the list of tags here:

https://app.astrobin.com/forum#tags

in addition to being able to browse and select them when posting.

Hi Eric,

I also loathed the new browsing layout when Salvatore introduced it. I liked the old one, was familiar with it, and could easily navigate it to see what I wanted. I even expressed my dislike to Salvatore, and he showed me how to revert to the old interface.

I must say, now after having used the new interface for quite some time, I much prefer the new one.

I can be a bit stuck in my ways but in this case I am happy to admit I was wrong.

Hope you find answers to all your questions, and I hope you do come to appreciate it as I do.

Dan

PS, the app interface is just BRILLIANT, imo.

@Eric Gagne and @Quinn Groessl, I deployed what I think is a very likely candidate for the scrolling fix. Please let me know if you can still reproduce it (ideally via the Support link in the Help menu). Do make sure you refresh the page if you have AstroBin tabs open, to make sure you get the new version of the web app. If you installed the app on your phone, simply tapping on the Astrobin logo in the top-left corner until you see it become a loading indicator will do it.

Eric, I also fixed the visibility of the “Tags” button in portrait mode on iPad.

Thank you for reporting the issues and best regards,

Salvatore

Tags vs Topics is a battle that tags continue to win across forums/sites/databases I've enjoyed in the past and have subsequently stopped using.
Topical organization has a structure and organization like a dresser so you have a sock drawer, a shirt drawer, an underwear drawer…And the drawers can be further divided: dress, casual, blue, green…
Tags is just a big laundry basket that you stick your hands in looking for matching socks and come out with all the socks as well as a couple shirts with a picture of socks or the word "socks" written on it.

Ian McIntyre · Mar 2, 2026 at 12:34 AM
Tags vs Topics is a battle that tags continue to win across forums/sites/databases I've enjoyed in the past and have subsequently stopped using.
Topical organization has a structure and organization like a dresser so you have a sock drawer, a shirt drawer, an underwear drawer…And the drawers can be further divided: dress, casual, blue, green…
Tags is just a big laundry basket that you stick your hands in looking for matching socks and come out with all the socks as well as a couple shirts with a picture of socks or the word "socks" written on it.

From your comparison I suppose I should prefer the new experience then because my dresser is everything but structured and organized. My drawers look more like tags 😀

Salvatore Iovene · Mar 1, 2026 at 10:57 PM
@Eric Gagne and @Quinn Groessl, I deployed what I think is a very likely candidate for the scrolling fix. Please let me know if you can still reproduce it (ideally via the Support link in the Help menu). Do make sure you refresh the page if you have AstroBin tabs open, to make sure you get the new version of the web app. If you installed the app on your phone, simply tapping on the Astrobin logo in the top-left corner until you see it become a loading indicator will do it.
Eric, I also fixed the visibility of the “Tags” button in portrait mode on iPad.
Thank you for reporting the issues and best regards,
Salvatore

Thanks Salvatore. So far so good