I love the posting features and capabilities of newbb. I like a lot of options and capabilities. I like a site with lots of buttons to push and bells and whistles.

Unfortunately, many of the people who come to my site are complete neophites when it comes to using the computer.

I was helping one of them out the other day, and well, it became obvious that I need to simplify, simplify, simplify to get the participation level up by this level of users.

One measure I took was to add the 'quick reply' box to the screen. It is a simple text box sith a single reply button. That should help some.

But what quick, practical steps can I take to make the 'new post' feature extremely simple.

I am thinking two text boxes - one for the title and the other for the message - and a single POST button.

No Message Icons, selection of text editors, no 'options' lists, no 'preview' or 'cancel' options.

I don't want to get rid of these other features, I want to be able to add them on to the user if/when they stick around and get a bit more computer savy.

I want to figure out how to get a 'newbie' mode.

Most of these options should be included as boolean flags to turn on and off in the $GLOBALS['xoopsModuleConfig'] which is the config options in /module/newbb/xoops_version.php.

I agree a simplified interface is what I look for, since i added and plugged to several leaders in the field XOOPS with wcag2 support and wcag1 support as the deaf , dump and blind with sight impairment can now use XOOPS forms as well, but remember the brail boards also segment the HTML around them to read the page out and annote on certain tags.

Most of the companys that do wcag development for government heath services have an extremely complex game of including it in Joomla or Drupal, but it is standard in Xoop 2.4..

btw.. Blindman noticed your first post recently.. My friend you are welcome!! I to wonder what would happen if i was suddenly blinded and needed to still develop xoops.. Never know in this crazy world.

I think for the editor part, you can use tinyeditor, which allows to set all features depending on the users group. So you could have it as bare text editor up to full WYSIWYG editor.
For the other parts if it is in a template you could use the new Smarty xoops_usergroup variable.
If the form is in a PHP file (/includes/?) you have to show / make hidden fields depending on the users group.