Hey, nice work on the new bbs launch. There are a lot of features that I am liking - like the view favorite posts toggle, for example, and the ability to collapse all the rio categories, etc...

Once thing that echoes a lot of sentiment, though. The main index page does seem very cluttered. I think one thing that might help right off the bat would be to remove the light bulbs on the left all-together. A lot of people mentioned them being distracting, and I agree. I think removing them will simplify the look of the page greatly. And, I'd then suggest re-implementing the (# new) text in the # of posts column for each forum. That was the way that I new that new posts had been entered, and it seemed to work a lot easier than the light bulb. Anyway, those are my suggestions. I think it looks great, though, and thanks for all the hard work!!

Okay, I see now that the table rows that contain new posts are a different color. That's not bad. I can probably get used to seeing that as meaning new posts.

I do not like the different colors for new threads. I might be able to get used to the different colors for new posts, as that could be helpful, but if you'll notice, there are two different colors for threads with new posts, depending on the alternating rows. This gets kind of confusing, particularly if you are checking the threads in a non-linear order.

However, I don't like the white/yellow new posts color indicators. A yellow light doesn't seem more or less on than a white light to me. Maybe if it was dark/white or dark/yellow.

I agree, but that might be a bit ugly. Dark white? I just want to get rid of those glaring white folders. Of course, now I can't even remember what those icons were on the old software. Whatever it was it wasn't as unpleasing to the eye.

It will take a little getting use to but other than that I think it's looking great!
Especially the new logo

It could of been just me but a found that my birth date was set to a default of Janurary 01, 2004. I'm not sure if it is because I never entered a date or what.

Keep up the great work!!!

Dark white

I mean dark bulbs and white bulbs, not dark white (gray?). Actually, yellow would probably be better.

now I can't even remember what those icons were on the old software

They were yellow and orange folders, where orange meant new stuff. I thought it was a good color scheme.

I understand your complaint about the alternating colors when you read out of order. I hadn't considered that. Maybe if the unread colors were a bit more contrasting to the read colors. Really, though, I think that the icons need to be different colors and that would help a lot. Actually, they are, but somehow, again, the white looks more like a mistake than an indicator.

If this post works, then an ongoing problem I've been having is fixed!

One thing I do miss is the "Last 24 hours", "Last 7 days" etc quick-links. I have found the Active Topics for the last 24 hours, which is nice, but I can't do the others. The search engine lets me specify 2 or 7 days but won't let me search with blank search terms.

Apart from that, the new board seems to be working well for me

EDIT - every time I click the "Jump to last unread post" icons I get something like the following -

"We cannot proceed.

Script: /home/drakino/bbs/empegbbs.com/ubbthreads/showthreaded.php
Line#: 786
SQL Error: You have an error in your SQL syntax near 'AND t1.B_PosterId = t2.U_Number AND B_Approved = 'yes' ' at line 6
SQL Error #: 1064
Query: SELECT FROM w3t_Posts AS t1, w3t_Users AS t2 WHERE t1.B_Number = AND t1.B_PosterId = t2.U_Number AND B_Approved = 'yes'

Please use your back button to return to the previous page. "

Any use?

*edit by admin to shorten URL*

there is a dotted line above my signature. I didn't type a dotted line. My signature is designed to look set-off from the post already, I don't need a poor-looking dotted line to set it off like that. I like mine better. Can that be hacked out too?

Ditto.

I too prefer the automatic jump to last unread post. The _vast_ majority of the time I'm not interested in re-reading all the posts. And on the _rare_ occasion that I want to read an earlier post in a thread I have no problem in a couple more clicks. We can always click to Page X on the topic list...

Another quirk that I've just noticed is that now the most recently-posted-to topic of each forum is listed on the forum index page, it takes the most recently posted topic header and not the original topic title. This doesn't make any sense to me. Whilst the ability to modify the topic in a thread may be useful, the original topic title is how we identify each thread, regardless of modifications. I think that the index should reflect that,

I also hate the quick reply thing. We've done a really good job keeping threads threaded properly and I wouldn't want to see that get spoiled. I vote for killing it altogether.

Uhhh... yeah. What he said.

tanstaafl.

Well, it's different from what I'm used to, so it can't possibly be any good.

I want to add my vote for making first unread post the default when opening a thread.

The only other problem I have is probably my own incompetence. I'm pretty sure I used to be able to configure the old bbs so that it did not put the column down the left side of the page showing the posters name, his avatar, etc, and now I can't figure out how to do the same with the new software. I don't like to give up all that screen real estate to (mostly) blank space.

Am I missing something obvious?

tanstaafl.

i remember that one could turn off the displaying of avatars, but i dont recall the ability to turn off the bar completely

My 2 bits.

Having alternating cell backgrounds in the thread listing is greusom, Light-new Dark-new Light-old Dark-old, contrasted with an overall listing ordered by time of last post, Its well... greusom. (same as my spelling)

I can live without the quick reply.

Why do I need the right most folder icons? I'm quite happy glancing down the columns of threads, posts or replys to see that something new has been added. I'd like to see the new counts (#) in orange, as before. They are already a different color from the tally, make them orange to stand out.

The folders and post icons fight each other for attention. Something is lost here... Yes, A quick glance is useless.

This stuff is all small fry. I am truly amazed that all this came together as well integrated as it did.

hmmm... I just hit a quick reply button. It didn't jump to the quick reply box.

Also maybe if it (the quick reply box) was reordered to the bottom of the page.

Why does the stickey thread show on every page of threads? Every time I see the same sticky, my first reaction is that the page didn't change.

One small thing that has bugged me since day one is the time offset. Newfoundland has it's own times zone. It's -3.5 hours from GMT. I can't enter that kind of offset in the settings.

Minor, don't worry about it, but if you are a perfectionist then...

For the stylesheet, two minor color changes will significantly reduce screen clutter:

1. Box around edit/reply/quote/quick reply should be the same as the header color.

2. Borders around quotes can be made the same as the background color.

Before and after examples attached.

(Another post for the second attachment)

While I'm on the subject of stylesheet colors, there are two layers of borders around the main tables, when only one is needed. Changing the outermost layer to black would make the screen look much cleaner.

Hi!

Am I the only one with problems with pages not being updated when I click on Main Index or any particular forum? I had no problem with the old version, but now, when I'm in a thread, when I click on Main Index on the top, the new post counter doesn't get updated. Sometimes, when I'm at the main index, it shows me 3 new topics in a forum and when I click on that forum, I get the old forum index page I read 30 minutes ago, without those new threads.

I tried with Opera and IE (shame on me, but that's what my job want me to use) and this is repeatable on both.

If I remeber well, there's a HTML tag to tell the browser not to cache the page ...


Found it:

<META HTTP-EQUIV="Pragma" CONTENT="no-cache">
<META HTTP-EQUIV="Expires" CONTENT="-1">



I don't know if it would help... Maybe I'm the only one with this problem...


Oh, and some general comments:

-I prefer the way the "new post counter" looked like before: (xx new)

-The rightmost column is too crowded. and not that usefull for me. If there's more than one new post, it's useless..

-I won't use Quick Reply.. I'd prefer to have it removed.

-I prefer the way the links to threads worked before: go directly to the first unread post. It happens a lot more often than reading the whole thread. The small arrow is quite hard to aim ;-)

That's about it!!


Thanks for your time and efforts. I really appreciate it!

Greetings!

A request - the "Jump To" bar at the bottom of the page does not have the forums and items listed in the same order as the Main Index. Can this be adjusted to match?

The new board is way fast, Tom. All in all, a very good upgrade and merge, despite the quibbles.

"Removing" the borders around quotes with "Quote:" looks silly at best and is hard to read at worst. I say no. You could refine them, maybe. Is there some way to only have a left border, like a mail client might show?

The [q] is going to get a makeoevr soon, turn it into a true CSS object, so that things like orange text are only used on stylesheets that make sense for it to use that color. I do think the border can be set to only the left as well, though I don't know what CSS level will be required for that.

Once I get past some of the bug tracking, I'll go more into looks fixes like that.

Oh, and I do hope people like the reduction of the Extra Information bar at the bottom. Still going to tweak that more later. Why the jump option is out or order is beyond me. Looks like it is not loking at group order numbers, the admin area does the same. I'll get a bug posted about that soon.

Oh, lastly, no cache tags added as well. Looks like it was causing problems for a few others as well, could have been part of the new post indicator issues.

PM releated bug.
I had new PM but no flashing envelope, when I clicked on "My Home" it listed the correct total for the number of PM in my inbox but did not list any as un-read.
One I entered my inbox I got the flashing envelope, and "My Home" did have the correct number of un-read PMs....so maybe just a minor DB glitch that little can be done about.

Yeah, I'll confirm that. No unread PM indication.

I've noticed a thread of mine 'disappears', I've got my display prefs set to show 10 threads at a time. My thread happened to be at number 11 but when I moved to the second page it wasn't there. Could this sticky topic be blotting it out? Increasing the displayed posts to 15 shows my thread at a posiition 11 on page 1. Is this a fault or a 'feature'?

I don't seem to be getting emails sent to me when somebody replies to one of my posts. It used to work before the upgrade. Anybody else getting this?

Tom - I think the site's rending/serving pages (not sure which) a _LOT_ faster than the old one.

-Zeke

Quote:
I think the site's rending/serving pages (not sure which) a _LOT_ faster than the old one.

I second that. A _LOT_ faster.

One of the things I have run into today is that it seems that when I switch from my work to home computers, the last read post markers on the threads are not working right. It gets the count wrong of how many posts are unread and it shows me posts that I have already seen. But I tried it again just now and it worked fine, so maybe I imagined it.

Also, I have had a hard time logging in from my home computer, twice now I have hit the "login" button and it just beings me back to the main page and would not allow me to log in. Restarting the browser (Firefox 0.8) fixed it; I think it might be related to cookies. Of course, I have now set the "remember me" checkbox, so that point is probably moot now.