New forum : Comments and questions

[Pedro]

Hi,
In an effort to coordinate things, if you have any comments or questions about the new forum, add them to this thread and  I'll endeavour to maintain a list in this first post.
Hopefully this will give Deno or whoever an easier ride than trawling for separate threads.
So...

Open
1. Some folks having trouble logging in at all (login attempts "bounce-back" to the login screen).
2. Some still get logout problems sometimes when moving between boards.
3. One report of the new forum being *really* slow? Scrolling through the pages is like wading through treacle. Even typing replies there seems to be quite a lag and a very flickery cursor. I have this both at home and at work, in IE8 and Chrome, so it's not PC or browser-specific.
4. Is there any possibility of getting a "multi-quote" quote button? That would help alot so that one doesnt have to write "[quote...]" manually in order to quote more than one post at a time?
5. Forum not fully working in Firefox on the mac.
6. Unable to log-in on Google Chrome.

Older issues
1. What do the thread icons mean?
2. Could the 'new post' icon be made a bit more distinctive? It can be hard to spot sometimes. ALTERNATIVE: Could the Forum title be shown in red if there are new posts?

Closed
[FIXED] The forum makes you log-in everytime and seems to throw you out after a while. This is a bit annoying. One report of someone losing login as they move between topics.
[FIXED] View active topics doesn't generally work.
[FIXED for Board Index] What do the forum icons mean? In the old forum the icon filenames gave a clue, on here I can't see the names.
[FIXED] When copying/pasting the url for a thread (as you do when trying to point users to another post), the url contains the usual "f" (forum_id) and "p" (post_id) parameters but it also now contains a "sid" parameter (which I think might be something like a session id). If I leave this "sid" in the url, following the link keeps me logged-in, if I remove the "sid" parameter, following the link opens a window in which I am logged-out. What's going on? If people leave the "sid" parameter in the "url" what will another user get when following the link?

[johninblack]

I think we could do with Jem making this thread sticky for a while.

[Trapezium Artist]

Am also experiencing the "won't stay logged in" problem (Safari 4.05, Mac OS X 10.6.2), even as I transition between individual pages on the forum, let alone across sessions. Hope it can be fixed, 'cos it's becoming a major overhead to browsing and participating  :cry:

[catherine]

Me too with the login problem... also, View active topics generally doesn't work for me.

[RacingHippo]

Me too with the login problem... also, View active topics generally doesn't work for me.

Does "view unread posts" work? If not, does it say you're not logged in (i.e. give you the "login" option instead of "logout")?

[Pedro]

First post updated.

[Deno]

1. The forum makes you log-in everytime and seems to throw you out after a while. This is a bit annoying.
    One report of someone losing login as they move between topics.
2. View active topics doesn't generally work.

Should both now be fixed.

1. What do the forum icons mean? In the old forum the icon filenames gave a clue, on here I can't see the names.

Added a legend to the bottom of the page. Any good?

2. Could the 'new post' icon be made a bit more distinctive? It can be hard to spot sometimes.

Not sure about this one. Looks fine to me, could you post a screengrab to show what you mean?

3. When copying/pasting the url for a thread (as you do when trying to point users to another post), the url contains the usual "f" (forum_id) and "p" (post_id) parameters but it also now contains a "sid" parameter (which I think might be something like a session id). If I leave this "sid" in the url, following the link keeps me logged-in, if I remove the "sid" parameter, following the link opens a window in which I am logged-out. What's going on? If people leave the "sid" parameter in the "url" what will another user get when following the link?

Fixed.....it think....

Thanks for pointing all this out. It was the result of backing up the old board onto the latest version at the new server.

Dene

[Pedro]

Hi Deno,

Nah, the thanks should all be flowing your way - there'd be a fair few people cut adrift if you didn't put in the time you do!

1) The legend at the top level is good.
The next level down is less clear.
I'm not sure how many different ones there are but here's four...



I think :-
Red outline = "New-Posts"
Plain outline = "No new posts"
Scrolling list = "Busy Topic"
Static list = "Not a busy topic"
Red-Frost*erisk = "I've posted to it"
No Red-Frost*erisk = "I've not posted to it"

Are there more combinations? I guess there's a locked thread version too?
I don't know if this wants to be on every forum index page or just in a FAQ somewhere?
In fact, if you could make the tooltips for the image reflect the real maning then a legend wouldn't be needed at all.

2) Regarding the "New Posts" icon, this is really just me being a bit fussy/selfish.
I probably take the mod role a bit too seriously (considering this lot hardly need it) but I tend to quickly glance at the index page on my iTouch several times during the evenings - without firing up my main PC.
With my 50-year old bifocular vision, I now see this :-



With the old place (don't want to go back!), it was visible a mile away when there were new posts. What we have now looks much nicer - I just need to change my way of working. ;o)

Apart from that, thanks for this so far.
I'll update the first post to reflect this excellent progress. Hopefully folks will carry on using this thread if they have any more issues.
I did PM you with some of these but I'm happy for you to ignore that now.

Much obliged!  

[rogerg]

the log-in worked for me this time, I'll give it a try again when I come back later.  I'm hopeful!!

thanks for all the work!!!

[Trapezium Artist]

Good work, Deno: soon we'll have the sofas and side tables fitted for a nice cuppa and a plate of everyone's favourite biscuits.

[gr8gonzo]

The header - is that random art made to look like it's from a song, or is it from an actual song?  If so, what song?

[Deno]

The header - is that random art made to look like it's from a song, or is it from an actual song?  If so, what song?

No, it's not random but i'll leave that one for Jem.....  

D

[ich_bin_besser]

I'd like to have the possibility to mark topics or forums as read. You know, sometimes I don't wanna read through all threads. I didn't find such an option (like we had in the old forum).

[rogerg]

I'd like to have the possibility to mark topics or forums as read. You know, sometimes I don't wanna read through all threads. I didn't find such an option (like we had in the old forum).

you can't mark a Topic as Read, but you can mark each Forum category, up on the right hand side.

[Pedro]

I see a "Mark topics read" above the list of topics in a forum and "Mark forums read" above the each of the indexes.

Did you want something else?