Forum Update - April 6, 2010 » Forum Post by GunslingerBara

Forum Update - April 6, 2010

By GunslingerBara on April 6, 2010 12:17:25 PM from

Hello everyone,

The forums were updated today (April 6, 2010) to fix some long-standing bugs, add a few new features, and make some minor changes. The change log is as follows:

Note: If you notice any of the below features are not available or not working properly, please do a hard refresh (hold CTRL and press F5) to retrieve the latest javascript and css files.

1. "Flattened forums" option now available.

The flattened forums option is simply another way of viewing the forums. The layout and design won't change, but what posts you see will. What it does is "flatten" all of the posts in a specific forum so that it includes the posts in all of its sub-forums. For example, the Stardock Games forum on the ImpulseDriven.com would include all of the posts in its sub-forums, such as Indie Games, Stardock Games, and Ubisoft Games.

This means that when you click on a forum now (with this option enabled), it will display many more posts than usual, and you can "dig deeper" into more specific topics by clicking on sub-forums.

You can turn this option on and try it for yourself by going to the My Account Options page.

2. Built-in spellchecker in the editors.

There is now a spellchecker icon in the new post/reply editor, which will scan your content and highlight mis-spelled items, as well as provide proper spelling options.

After you type out your post, click on the spellchecker icon and it will scan the contents of the post and highlight mis-spelled words. Left clicking on any mis-spelled word will provide a small popup with suggestions for the mis-spelled word.

The regular Firefox spellchecker is still a bit finicky about how it wants to work in the editor, so you may find that sometimes it works, and other times it doesn't.

3. Auto-resizing editor.

This feature may be more annoying than useful, so if enough of you find it annoying I'll disable it. Basically, it auto-resizes the editor (vertically) when writing long posts.

4. Preview button in editor.

This allows you to preview your post before submitting to see what it looks like. For those of you who do a lot of formatting to your posts, this will help to save a lot of time without having to edit and re-edit to get it just right.

5. Many other minor additions, changes, and bug fixes.

These include the following:

Temporary removal of RSS feed icons in the forum listings. This is because RSS feeds are not working properly and we are looking into a new solution for them. We are thinking of removing RSS support for all forums except for specific ones that are important (such as Impulse Announcements or Elemental Dev Journals). This will reduce the overhead of having these RSS feeds, will make implementing them much easier, and will provide more up-time for these feeds as we don't have to manage hundreds of different feeds.

Your password is now required if you try to change your username or existing password in your My Accounts page.

A "Return to Top" link was added at the bottom of every page (just above the timestamp) to quickly return to the top of the page.

Removed the custom right click menu on the editor, so it now uses the browser's default right click menu.

Bug fixes, karma fixes, CSS fixes, etc.

Note: If you notice any of the above features are not available or not working properly, please do a hard refresh (hold CTRL and press F5) to retrieve the latest javascript and css files.

As always, if you notice any bugs or problems, please let me know by posting in the Forum Issues forum or contacting me via PM.

Bara

+165 Karma | 101 Replies

Quoting Frogboy,

reply 50

One thing that drives me crazy is responding to a post and my response not showing up right away.

So say we all to that.

Well I'll be damned, the page refreshed after I posted, and this post was there right away!

Quoting Frogboy,

reply 50

One thing that drives me crazy is responding to a post and my response not showing up right away.

Yeah I get that too.

So umm...are there any plans to fix this whole caching thing that Bara mentioned?

Oh and I can see the "that I frequent" phrase you posted on #46 reply. Italicized and all.

well, glad you can, I guess its a bug for the poster only then.

One thing that drives me crazy is responding to a post and my response not showing up right away.

Me too..... Craaaazy.

vStyler, on the other hand, I cant see the image you posted though

Comedy of errors?

I suppose posting a screenshot of the screenshot on the page isn't going to help then ?

Bugger it, I'm off to bed.

well, glad you can, I guess its a bug for the poster only then.

I can't see it either.

I see the screenshot....IE8

Probably you twits using FF....

I see the screenshot....IE8

Probably you twits using FF....

I'm in FF

Beyond the realm of possibility that its a forum bug, just maybe?

no really..

I have leaned to use EditPad to do all my text imput and Ctrl-C then Ctrl-V into the Quick Reply box. I would say 80-90% of the time, if I type into the box and hit submit, the button grays out and several minutes later the page will refresh, but the post will not be there. I then do the Ctrl-F5 to force a clean refresh. About 20-30% of the time the post will be there. I have since been using the text editor and it has helped up the odds to around 50-60% on the first try.

Using FF 3.6 on Win7 32 bit.

Edit:
It only took two attempts for this post. Things might be getting slightly better...

Quoting Jafo,

reply 57

I see the screenshot....IE8

Probably you twits using FF....

No, it's not only IE twats who sees it, 'cause I see it too - in FF.

Quoting Jafo,

reply 57

I see the screenshot....IE8

Probably you twits using FF....

No, maybe his link was bad or something. Or maybe the page needed a refresh.

Anyway, I can see the pic just fine now.

No, maybe his link was bad or something. Or maybe the page needed a refresh.

Anyway, I can see the pic just fine now.

It's a database/cache issue.....always been the same....refresh fixes it...

Am I on my own in thinking the wide blue gradient on either side is overbearingly bright and saturated?

No....I'd kill for just a dark gray gradient background instead of the blinding baby blue.

vStyler and Bebi, in which forum you're posting?

Wincustomize.

Just tried using the Stylish addon to change the background to gray and unfortunately it also changed the color of the editor textbox as well.

Quoting Mumblefratz,

reply 44

It was as if my KB stopped working. I had to click outside the box and back in to get KB control back.

What seems to be happening is that at some points the editor goes wild trying to insert a bunch of html code.
If you're editing in normal mode you of course won't see the bogus html but your cursor will act strange and not sequence smoothly over text. Also the delete key and/or the backspace key will no longer function. If you go into the html screen you'll see some bogus html code related to something MCE with span definitions and a whole bunch of other stuff that makes no sense to me, table definitions and <div> and the like.

If you delete the garbage html then things seem to start working better in the normal screen. Actually I've been noticing stuff like this happening a lot recently. Edits don't seem to take but if you go into html mode (when there's otherwise no reason to) and do the edits there then everything seems to "stick" better. You do have to enter in your own <p> and </p> tags but otherwise it's straightforward. It does seem like the editor is trying to "help" you and intuit and insert html code when you think you're just entering normal text.

Thanks for the explanation

Yes a spellchecker!

I will be using it for every post

Quoting Bebi Bulma,

reply 65

Wincustomize.

Just tried using the Stylish addon to change the background to gray and unfortunately it also changed the color of the editor textbox as well.

I asked you because you said you would like a gray background, and the Demigod forums are sort of like you describe...kinda

Bug fixes, karma fixes, CSS fixes, etc.

What about the Library was it fixed? What about the medals was it fixed? I am looking for my custom race to show up in Metaverse but never has. How about new Icons for example: bird icon, fish icon, tiger icon. What was fixed on the Karma? What does the secret etc. fix?

I know you all have help me in the past and I am very happy on quick responses. I just want to say that you doing a most excellent job in the time and pressure you are given.

edit: Copy and past is different now, this use to be in Papyrus, font 12 and in orange? How to get this back?

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

“There is no such thing as a plea of innocence in my court.

A plea of innocence is guilty of wasting my time. Guilty.”

Inquisitor Lord Draco of Adepta Sororitas

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Threads are still not "bubbling up" for me anyway.

In http://forums.stardock.com/forum/171, the Stardock games forum on the Stardock site, I should see replies to threads in http://forums.stardock.com/forum/162, the GalCiv II forum which is a subforum of the Stardock games forum on the Stardock site. However I don't.

Bara said earlier that he did. It's not that I don't believe him but there must be some difference in his access versus mine.

I've done ctrl-F5, I've cleared my browser cache, cookies, history and everything else I could clear and still no joy.

Has anyone else tried this and are either seeing it work properly or not?

I just tried to check it for ya but it seems every time I hit "save changes" it removes the check from the box. Is your check staying when you hit save?

Edit:NM I went back and it took after hitting save a few more times. Now I just need to see if it's working

ReEdit: I just checked using your links Mumble and I can't see the posts from the sub in the main either. I'll do some more checking though.

I'll just do another post. I just tried it with the off topic section of GC2 forums. and I can't see anything from it's four subforums. That's how it's supposed to work right?

Quoting vStyler,

reply 31

Right click spell check, not working for me either - latest FF version. Win 7 X64

Security issue for right click copy paste? It works in every other forum I've ever been to, why not here? Some of us never use keyboard shortcuts. not being able to right click copy and paste is a huge drag.

Question 3 was.. Is there any way we can get the lighter part of the blue gradient on either side of forums toned down to something closer to the blue at the very top or bottom? or just a flat blue, no gradient would be far easier on the eyes, less distracting, classier etc.

Right click spell check doesn't work because that's using the Firefox spellchecker, which as stated before can be finicky. Try clicking on the spellcheck button in the editor instead.

The security is half-related to the TinyMCE editor used in these forums and half to Firefox. Firefox does not allow javascript to access the clipboard. TinyMCE has a custom right-click menu with a Paste option, which uses javascript to access the clipboard. On every browser that's ok, on Firefox that's a security issue in their eyes.

For question 3, may I ask what forum you're looking at specifically?

Quoting Mumblefratz,

reply 34

I just tried it and "Starting near Agressive..." does show up in both forums for me, AND in the Stardock Games forum as expected. Have you tried hard refreshing? Can you check it now to see if it's updated?That's not what I said.
I was looking at the GalCiv II forum and checking for threads from forums that are "below" the GalCiv II forum. Those would be the other 5 links that I provided. None of these threads are appearing in the GalCiv II forum and they should be.

Note that I'm accessing these from the GalCiv2 site *not* the Stardock site. However I checked from both the Stardock site *and* the GalCiv2 site and it works from neither site.

Both http://forums.stardock.com/forum/162 and http://forums.galciv2.com/forum/162 show the same list and *neither* of these lists show any threads from forums that are subforums of the GalCiv II forum.

Also if I try to replicate what you said I don't see that either.

If I go to the Stardock Games forum on the Stardock site http://forums.stardock.com/forum/171 I *don't* see the "Starting near Agressive..." thread.

Here's what I see on Home > Stardock Games on the Stardock site.

Reduced 54%Original 945 x 802

So it looks like we're seeing different things. Can you login as a "normal" user and check it out.

BTW what's a "hard refresh"? I have flushed my browser cache if that's what you mean. Still no joy.

I've fixed the problem. The wrong query was being called in the database. You should see the proper posts now.

Quoting Frogboy,

reply 39

I just checked too. It's working but the listing isn't real-time. I'd like to see it real time.

The listing of posts? It's as realtime as the regular post listing (non-flattened). The total posts, total replies, and last post info on the forum index aren't realtime (they're delayed by about 10 minutes) but I don't think that matters as much.

Quoting vStyler,

reply 46

"Every other forum" doesn't replace the context menu with a javascript version

Well, guess i should have said every other forum that I frequent, I have never seen right click copy\paste blocked as it is here but if its that big of a deal I can check Bebi's suggestion for a fix, I'm not gonna die or anything like that, was just hoping to see it working on the new site is all.

I could possibly remove the right click menu from the editor entirely. This means when you right click in the editor you'll see the default right click menu from Firefox, which I believe does work when clicking Paste.

Quoting Frogboy,

reply 50

One thing that drives me crazy is responding to a post and my response not showing up right away.

I'm searching for reasons as to why this might happen. Even having Q&A do some testing to try and reproduce it consistently. It's a bit hard to track down...

Quoting GmOOnii,

reply 69

Bug fixes, karma fixes, CSS fixes, etc.
What about the Library was it fixed? What about the medals was it fixed? I am looking for my custom race to show up in Metaverse but never has. How about new Icons for example: bird icon, fish icon, tiger icon. What was fixed on the Karma? What does the secret etc. fix?

I know you all have help me in the past and I am very happy on quick responses. I just want to say that you doing a most excellent job in the time and pressure you are given.

edit: Copy and past is different now, this use to be in Papyrus, font 12 and in orange? How to get this back?

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

“There is no such thing as a plea of innocence in my court.

A plea of innocence is guilty of wasting my time. Guilty.”

Inquisitor Lord Draco of Adepta Sororitas

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I have not updated the Metaverse, and I don't have plans to in the near future. The "etc" is mostly minor stuff that is back-end.

Bara

Yep the other spellchecker works great, just wasn't 'gettin' it before. Cheers.

For question 3, may I ask what forum you're looking at specifically?

The main page on Wincustomize and all the new WC forum pages. I realize its designed to sorta match the banner somewhat but for me and others just seems very bright and not very ergonomic for a forum. a flat slightly darker blue would rock imo.

I think that would be an excellent idea.

Rock on Bara.

How does everyone else feel about removing the custom right click menu?

Also, I've reverted the new WC skin back to the old one in the forums. The new one isn't supposed to apply until the new WC site launches.

Bara

The Forums Are Now Closed!

The content will remain as a historical reference, thank you.

Forum Update - April 6, 2010