Feedback On NewForum Software

[Steve St.Laurent]

I can't really argue "many people foget their passwords and this caused us a support headache therefore, our default will be to ecourage people to forget their passwords. " I'll make a last point out that this is counter to the standard Windoze paradigm of "Do you want Windows to remember this password?" and drop this thread.



You guys do a great job and provide a valuable resource. I'll continue to use the forum, just with a greater agitation level.



Steve

We're going to give this a try since two of you requested it - we'll see how it goes. My guess is that it's going to be a support nightmare but we'll see.

 

[Byershome]

I don't know if anyone has noted this yet but the main drop down menu background is the same as the main page background and makes reading it difficult. A little color there would help distinguish the list from the background text. What happened to the spell checker? This will get ugly for me

 

[Steve St.Laurent]

The spell checker will be added back in down the road. I want to be sure that everything is working ok before I put that in place and complicate support issues. I did say something about that in the announcement at the top of this forum and linked to at the top of every forum page btw - PLEASE read those.

 

[Philip]

There are 11 different color options - you don't like any of them?



If you come to the forums and have a PM you should get a popup window that will take you straight there. If not there will be a flashing red banner near the top that will also take you right there. You can also click on "private messages" at the upper right. There are several ways to get there.

I have picked that light gray color for now. It is the least annoying of the others in the list.



When I get email notice of a PM I most of the time do not go to the forums. I would hit the front page and user controll panel button to get to it. So most of the time I did not see or use the flashing banner. Now I have to click on discussion forums and fight small sized wording.



Widen the discussion forum drop down menu out. I mean downword or make the words taller. Drop down menu's and little words make it annoying to pick the area you want to go.

 

[Steve St.Laurent]

There is a link to PM's on the front page just like there always was - no difference. You can also click on Private messages in the upper right of any of the forum screens. The easiest way since you said you go there based on the email notifications is just to click on the link in the email notification - it will take to straight there! I can't widen the discussion forum drop down menu. As it is it is too wide. On an 800 x 600 screen the right edge of the words expands off of the screen and causes a horizontal scroll bar to appear. I already increased the font 1 size based on user feedback - which caused that problem, I don't want to make it any worse.

 

[Philip]

Why has the Ctrl+scroll function not working to increase or decrease sizes? I go to other sites using VB3 and that function works there.

 

[Steve St.Laurent]

Are you sure they are running vB3? IE has a bug in it that will not allow fonts to resize when you are using a . css style sheet - which is how vB3 formats it's screens. It works fine in Netscape and all other browsers - it's solely an IE issue. If you have the address of some let me know and I'll contact the webmaster there and see if they have found a fix for it. Thus far there are no fixes for it on vBulletin's support site or on their hack site.

 

[Byershome]

Yeah I should have checked there first. I think it all looks good except for the drop down menus being hard to pick out. Changing background colors was my first thought but it only changes the border and the drop down menu text still fades into the text of the main page. All we want is perfection... ... no pressure :-laf

 

[Yo Hoot]

So far I'm lovin the new stuff. No real showstoppers. Oo.



Would like to see more... happy smiley type smilies. It would promote happiness :-laf

 

[Philip]

Here is a site with VB3. 0. It doesn't have the full range of motion like the VB2 does. But I can move the sizing around some with the ctrl+scroll function.



http://hardforum.com/index.php

 

[Steve St.Laurent]

The only thing resizing that I can see there is the username and date/time on the forum lines. That's because he hard coded that particular template and isn't using the style sheets. That's not a practical way of fixing the problem because I would have to do that in about 200 different templates and have to redo it every time there was an upgrade of the software - we're talking 20+ hours of work each time. The real answer is for Microsoft to follow the spec and have it's browser behave the way it's supposed to - there is a lot of call for it from webmasters, we'll see if they step up, I doubt it.

 

[CUMINNTSTRKN]

steve



it is now keeping my password thanks.



jim

 

[dresslered]

I sure like the downloadable mailbox feature! If this wasn't a feature before, it is a great addition. I can now easily retain good notes between members while clearing out my mailbox.



Great, now even my engine block number appears in the upper right hand corner.

 

[Steve St.Laurent]

For you Mac guys having problems scroll down to the bottom of any of the forum screens and in the lower left change your style to "Mac test style". This is a temporary fix that seems to be working. The problem is with the pull down menus at the top of the screen. On the Mac test style I have replaced those pull down menus with the old style menus. That will work only on the forums though - the rest of the site still has the drop down menus. I have an email into the menu generation software company that I used to generate those menus to try to find a solution for the drop downs.

 

[John - K5AWO]

Small Sized Wording Fix for IE users

..... Now I have to click on discussion forums and fight small sized wording... ... [/

QUOTE]



For IE 5. 5+, IE 6. x users, you can fix the size of the fonts. I have to do that too. The default fonts are way too damn small for me to see them.



Click on TOOLS, OPTIONS, ACCESSIBILITY



Put a check mark in the two lines for:

. Ignore Font Styles

. Ignore Font Sizes



Save the changes.



Now you have control over how it looks.



1) If you have a roller wheel mouse, hold down left-control and roll the roller to make fonts bigger/smaller.



2a) ALT-V, X, G (gives largest font)

. L=next largest, S, M, A, will progressively get smaller.



2b) Use the mouse and click on VIEW, TEXT, SIZE you want.



Caveat- Isn't there alwyays one?



Some web sheets will have the text overlaying areas it should not when the font sizes are in the larger fonts. If this is bothersome for a particular page, change back to the small font for a few minutes.



I do it now without even thinking about it. Just hold down control and roll the mouse wheel and go on... .



Happy reading... .



Here is what it looks like from here...

 

[Leon R]

What happened to the "GO TO FIRST UNREAD POST" feature? I used that all the time before. Is there another way of doing that now? In case I missed it somewhere in all of the explanations going on I apologize. Thanks.

 

[Steve St.Laurent]

It's the down arrow right before the title of the thread. Just click on that arrow instead of the title and it'll take you right there.

 

[DLausche]

It's the down arrow right before the title of the thread. Just click on that arrow instead of the title and it'll take you right there.

I don't see the down arrow anywhere on any thread.



-Deon

 

[DLausche]

An idea...

At the top of each thread page, there are the 4 drop-downs for "Thread Tools", "Search this Thread", "Rate... ". It would be nice to have these at the bottom of each thread page as well. This way one doesn't need to scroll all the way to the top to subscribe, search, or rate the thread.



-Deon

 

[CORed]

Thanks for your work Steve. As a website developer myself, I appreciate your efforts. You've been very open to suggestions as well which is sometimes difficult.



Anyway, just a couple of nits... the Quick Reply icons were very difficult to find at first - took me several visits to finally find it. The picture of a typed page next to the Quote button had me confused. I thought they were one in the same. Maybe an icon with the label "QR" would be more quickly understandable. Or add more space in between the two images. Also, I still don't understand what benefit it provides me. The quick reply area was always enabled before, now it isn't. It's an extra click just to enable it that I wasn't required to do before. Just enable it all the time and the little icon can just serve one very simple purpose... take me immediately to the bottom of the page if I choose to use it.



I also miss the buddy list of users online. If it is around still, I can't find it. I can find my buddy list, but nowhere can I find a list of who is online or offline like before.



And the numerical links in the upper right hand of each reply just pops up a window with that one reply in it. What's the point? For printing maybe? If so, it still includes all the graphics and such. If it was just the text, that may be usable for printing. I wonder if removing it altogether would help provide performance improvements as I too, have noticed a slightly slower response... and I'm on a T1 or Broadband connection.



There are many things I like too. Thanks!!