Forum upgrade

[jimdahl]

As usual, things might be a bit wonky over the next few days as I iron out the bugs, enable new features, etc...

Also as usual, things are reasonably different, so will undoubtedly feel uncomfortable for a little while (I don't like Facebook "upgrades" either), though there's lots of good stuff and now seemed a better time than mid-season.

One change to the software was it went from the old scheme of supporting both an avatar and a photo to just one profile image per person, but I unexpectedly managed to lose everyone's photos/avatars. I might be able to get those back, or you might just want to take this as an opportunity for a refresh.

[Cratter]

Is this part of taking "SS to the next level?" ha

PS. I wish the software had more "smilies."

[Cratter]

What's the added value of this upgrade for the users?

[westsidesioux]

I like this!

[siouxfan68]

Not having the ability to move to the next page at the bottom of the current page is very inconvenient.

[Ray77]

Not having the ability to move to the next page at the bottom of the current page is very inconvenient.

You can - it looks like the page numbers are at the bottom left. So if you're in a thread that is multiple pages, at the bottom of the page you're on look on the bottom left. I think it was on the bottom right in the previous version.

[siouxfan68]

Thanks, I found it. It is above the "Reply to this topic" area.

[MissSioux85]

I'm having trouble uploading an avatar. It says "Failed to set new photo." I tried uploading without resizing and I also tried uploading after resizing in Photoshop - pixels set at 200 X 200. Lastly, I tried uploading in two different formats - .jpeg and .png. Nothing seems to work.

[Redneksioux]

Is there a mobile view like the past version? Im on my phone and cant find it.

[jimdahl]

PS. I wish the software had more "smilies."

Fixed. I migrated all the smilies from the old verison.

Is there a mobile view like the past version? Im on my phone and cant find it.

Yes, that's one area in which it's a lot better, particularly on the most modern (iOS/Android in particular) devices. It's supposed to autodetect most common phones (and does in my testing) and default you to that mobile version (though you can always opt back to the full version). I'll look into why there's not a "skin selector" in the bottom.

UPDATE... to get the "change theme" link to appear I had to reenable the default theme. Not sure why that's necessary, probably a bug, but it lets you manually select the mobile theme for now.

[jimdahl]

What's the added value of this upgrade for the users?

While it's true that most of the improvements are on the admin side (last summer's upgrade was a big user-oriented upgrade), stuff I've noticed so far that users are likely to directly benefit from...

- Improved mobile / phone support

- Enhanced social network integration (e.g. you can now post with your Facebook account rather than separately register, or link your Facebook account to your existing account to autologin)

- Better reputation / like functionality (that let me configure it to address a lot of the previous concerns)

- Improved user interface interaction (better post editor / quick reply / more "AJAX" [interacting with the page doesn't require reloading the page as much])

[Cratter]

Can you not negative rep people anymore? I only see an arrow pointing up for positive reps.

[jimdahl]

Can you not negative rep people anymore? I only see an arrow pointing up for positive reps.

Among the improvements, I was able to implement both ideas from this discussion. However, in hindsight, just one (attaching the rep to the post but not the person) probably would have been sufficient. I'll try to give it a little more thought and tweak it in coming days... Off the top of my head, I could see reinstating neg post rep and possibly upping the rep/day limits.

[jimdahl]

I'm having trouble uploading an avatar. It says "Failed to set new photo." I tried uploading without resizing and I also tried uploading after resizing in Photoshop - pixels set at 200 X 200. Lastly, I tried uploading in two different formats - .jpeg and .png. Nothing seems to work.

Ok, I put in some patches that make the photo importer a lot better. In addition to local files, in can now pull photos from URL or your facebook profile (if you link -- which is actually a handy way to login if you're usually logged into facebook).

[choyt3]

Just a small issue... used to be able to click in front of the thread title and go to "last unread post" in that thread. Is that gone? Or am I missing something?

[Snake]

I'm wondering the same thing, choyt3. I'm having the same issue.

[mikejm]

^Same problem for me.

[jimdahl]

Just a small issue... used to be able to click in front of the thread title and go to "last unread post" in that thread. Is that gone? Or am I missing something?

Just to be clear on what I'm looking for, that behavior changed with the patches I applied yesterday? (That is, up until today clicking the title thread jumped to the last unread post?)

For now as a workaround, near the top right of the first page of each thread is a "jump to last unread" link that you can use. It's an extra click, so reasonably annoying, but it will get you by while I'm looking into the other.

[Snake]

Yes, until today there used to be an icon (dot, star, caption bubble) to the left of each thread title that when clicked brought you to the first unread post. The area to the left of the thread title is now blank.

[jimdahl]

Yes, until today there used to be an icon (dot, star, caption bubble) to the left of each thread title that when clicked brought you to the first unread post. The area to the left of the thread title is now blank.

Got it. Fixed.

[Speez]

Thanks Jim.

That was a pain to find the last one especially when there were multi pages since the last visit.

As always, "you're the man"

[Snake]

Thanks Jim!

[PhillySioux]

This may be a problem with just me, but when I click the add hyperlink button my browser screen goes gray and locks up. It happened on chrome and safari.

[zonadub]

This may be a problem with just me, but when I click the add hyperlink button my browser screen goes gray and locks up. It happened on chrome and safari.

same problem with chrome and when trying to insert a quote on ms internet explorer

Thanks for all you're doing about this stuff, Jim

[jimdahl]

This may be a problem with just me, but when I click the add hyperlink button my browser screen goes gray and locks up. It happened on chrome and safari.

I can't currently reproduce it on Chrome latest -- for me the background screen goes gray and a white popup window with a green title bar appears. However, I know a lot of little layout tweaks were made to improve browser compatibility, so my best guess is that you're getting some combination of the new pages and some cached content on your PC.

First, hitting escape causes that popup window to close, so at least can you back out of that without having to close the window/tab.

Second, to make sure you don't have any old stuff lying around on your machine, go to the little wrench, options, under the hood, "Clear browsing data" button, uncheck everything but "empty the cache" and hit ok. That won't break any of your logins or cookies or autocomplete or anything it will just make sure your Chrome isn't serving up old versions of anything.