Naked Science Forum
General Discussion & Feedback => Guest Book => Topic started by: daveshorts on 14/06/2006 12:29:20
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I would appreciate it if you could have a look at the new forum design I have changed it to be fairly similar to the present design.
If there is anything that doesn't make sense or doesn't work, it would be good to fix it now rather than when it is live.
http://www.kellaton.org.uk/forum
The only main difference to how it works is that it will only class topics that you have actually read as read, rather than posts since your last login.
It is working on a database that is about a week old, so most people should be able to log in fine.
Any posts you make will be deleted when we convert the forum over so don't put anything up that is important.
cheers
Dave
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Just had to brief look at present.
1)Minor peculiarity – when I logged on, a string of text very briefly popped up in the browser (too quick to properly note down, but looked like it may have been a hex or escaped url string), before reverting to the site. When I did log on, I was not taken back to the page from which I came, but went to the main forum page (I was viewing my profile when I entered my logon details, and I would have expected to return to that page).
2)When viewing http://www.kellaton.org.uk/forum/index.php?topic=4188.from0#new, in the middle, I see Carolyn's weight loss details, but no message next to it – what is this doing here?
3)Not sure that removing the table border between the poster name and the posed message in any way improves the readability of the posts.
4)Very minor point, but given what I commented on in another post about not hero worshipping, to now be classified as a 'hero' member seems uncomfortable – but I'll live with it – it is, after all, just another meaningless word.
5)When you view a forum, you see the number of 'views' that a topic has received, but when you view the topic, you see the number of 'reads' the topic has received – this is inconsistent.
6)You have replaced the present FAQ with a new Help. While this may be a very detailed description of how to navigate the site, it lacks, what to me, is the most important feature of the FAQ, the list of markup codes and smilies you can insert into the text. Have you hidden this somewhere else?
7)When I click on 'reply with quotes', I get a momentary popup of a small browser window which then quickly disappears – what is happening here?
8)Tried out the 'report to moderator' function. No moderators available (not surprising on a test site). Is one line of comment really sufficient for a report – would you not wish a TEXTAREA rather than an INPUT TEXT field here. Also, given the seriousness of this entry, would you wish the auto-submission to occur in response to a carriage return (this would not be a problem in a TEXTAREA field)?
9)Don't see anything akin the the range of search facilities we have in the present site. I would have liked an extension of those facilities, not a withdrawal of them.
10)I like the idea of sending personal messages without exposing the email address, but the use of wild cards in the address field sounds very dangerous. Also, I would have though allowing you to send emails to outside recipients is also very dangerous, and will probably very quickly lead to this site being blacklisted by spam blacklists.
11)Your statistics show 'Total Time Spent Online' – this seems to me to be a meaningless value, since the HTTP protocol cannot say how long someone has been on line – I can stay 'logged on' for days at a time, it does not mean that I am actually on line, or even that my PC is switched on for that length of time.
12)I cannot find any longer any site statistics – has this feature been removed?
George
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13)The new site, as is the case with the existing site, uses alternate background colours for each message so that one can easily identify the boundary between messages. On the new site, some of the very long messages will break this, and you find the background colour changes, possibly several times, within a single message. Have a look at the message from Ariel at http://www.kellaton.org.uk/forum/index.php?topic=3633.0, or from Karen W. at http://www.kellaton.org.uk/forum/index.php?topic=4188.15.
14)Messages are valign=bottom – this can be very confusing for short messages that are at the bottom of the area allotted to them.
15)When I entered a new message, I was given (quite reasonably), three options, to 'Reply with quote', or to 'Modify', or ' Remove'. The trouble is that there was no delineation between the text showing the three options, so it just looked like one continuous run of text saying 'Reply with quote Modify Remove'. You should put a thin border, or some other indicator, to show that these are three separate groups of words.
George
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16)I see the signature is not appearing on the posts (it is still in the profile).
George
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17)Went to view UKMicky's profile. Then went to view his most recent posts (http://www.kellaton.org.uk/forum/index.php?action=profile;u=1444;sa=showPosts). Each post has above it a row using class titlebg2 (not looked at the CSS yet). This shows on my browser as a pale blue link against a black background (the link turns to red when hovered over). The overall effect is very low contrast.
George
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18)One thing that would be nice to have (I know, I should have asked this earlier), is that each post would display next to it the message number (ideally, the full url) for that particular message, so that one can easily copy a link to the specific message (rather than just a link to the topic0 when quoting it elesewhere.
George
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19)I note that all of the smilies are surrounded by square brackets. Is this a feature, or an oversight? Looking some more at this issue, it seems to be a transition issue, since it seems on the new site the smilies are not denoted with square brackets around them, while on this site, they do have square brackets around them, so the new site sees those square brackets but does not believe they form a part of the smily.
20)When you type a response to a post (at the bottom of a topic), you have two buttons, one for submit, and the other for preview. The preview button does not really show you a preview (unlike the preview button on the present site), but takes you to a more comprehensive edit page.
George
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21)It would be nice if the edit page for creating/editing posts would have some tooltips to explain the plethora of icon buttons.
George
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22)I note that you allow the uploading of attachments, including executables. Interesting, if possibly a bit dangerous.
George
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23)The font size options ([ size = nn ]) is accepted by the input, and is clearly parsed, but does not seem to have any effect.
24)Interesting use of the font option – although the button on the edit screen only set font=veranda; in fact, it seems you can set any font that may be displayed.
George
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25)You have the option to include a message icon – where should this appear?
26)Also, interestingly, when you post a message, it allows you to change the title of the topic you will be posting to – or at least, it pretends to give you that option, but quite sensibly, that option does not work.
George
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27)http://www.kellaton.org.uk/forum/index.php?action=profile;u=2334;sa=forumProfile has an empty <select> group (named “cat”). This is a bit untidy. Would it not be better to remove the select group if there are no options to display? (or, as with the select group called “file”, set it to “display:none”)
George
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27)Some topics have a button marked 'new', while others are missing this.
http://www.kellaton.org.uk/forum/index.php?board=6.0 shows 'DIARY ENTRIES & GENERAL CHAT (Ver 2)' without, 'Offensive Nasty Posters !' without, 'HOW TO POST PICTURES TO THIS SITE' with, 'Test topic ' (my new test topic) without, 'Computer Help...keeping an eye on kids !' without (I had added some test posts to this topic), and most of the rest with.
It seems as if the logo 'new' is attached to old topics. What is it supposed to mean?
George
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Thankyou George, that is great.
I will work through them ;)
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27)The new is a bit like the purple folder, which works slightly differently to this forum - it means that you haven't read the topic, because the old forum doesn't keep a track of this it doesn't think you have read anything - I could just remove it, or try and set all old topics to read.
Maybe I will jut remove it
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OK, I've found where the site stats are – so that issue is solved.
28)Looking at the most recent topics (http://www.kellaton.org.uk/forum/index.php?action=recent), and the following issues have come up:
29)Firstly, colour coding again. The “catbg” class uses a blue background, but has green links – not very good contrast again.
30)There is no control over what is considered to be 'recent'. The present site allows me to view topics that have been added to over the last 15 minutes, last 2 hours, last 12 hours, etc.. (depending upon what my own time window that I wish to see a snapshot for is). This does not seem possible on the new site.
31)The list of messages contains the full message text. This may be fine if one only has a small number of messages; but if you have a lot of traffic, and are really only interested in what might be happening in a hand full of topics, then it is a lot of information to wade through. The present system only shows topic headings that have changed, and you can then drill down into the topic if that looks like it is a topic you might be interested in.
28)Now, you know I said that the new system pretended to allow you to change the topic title (even when the topic is not yours), but then ignores the change. It seems I was wrong. It may ignore the change when listing the topic in the forum, but the modified topic title is the one shown with the message when you list the recent messages (look at the message I put in http://www.kellaton.org.uk/forum/index.php?board=6;topic=4188.19#msg35162).
George
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quote:
Originally posted by daveshorts
Maybe I will jut remove it
27)Probably tempted to agree – there is quite enough information already there, and little enough space to put it in.
If you want to colour code the topics according to whether they have been read, it might do the same job with less clutter.
That having been said, it sound like to maintain this data you are going to have to create a database of cross reference of every topic by every user, so that you know which users have read which topics. That sounds like it could end up becoming quite a big database. Is it worth having that large a database just for that slight increment of functionality?
George
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32)Just out of curiosity, had a look how the site would look under Lynx.
The site requires JavaScript to function (and Lynx does not have JavaScript), but not only is there no support for scriptless browsers, there is no <NOSCRIPT> block that would pop up a message to say that the site won't work without JavaScript, so all you are left with is wondering what is happening.
Probably this is enough for you to be getting on with for a while – let me know when you've caught up and want me to look further. In the meantime, maybe someone else can have a look for problems.
George
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can you get it to work now? he he
What you do speaks so loudly that I cannot hear what you say.
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Hi Dave
33) On the topic/active topics page the old software allowed us to delete,edit,and lock the topics without entering the individual topic as we had icons at the end of the line just after the replies, read,and last post boxes, can we have them back please :)because as we can now split topics it will save us from deleting replies one by one when the time comes to slim down some of the subjects like "can you guess what this" "Zetacap and General weight loss - 2" etc .
Thankyou.
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Also little thing. The icon at the end of the line " Split Topic - Select posts to split" is missing.
Michael
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34)One other piece of functionality that has gone missing is that on the present you have a right arrow icon ((https://www.thenakedscientists.com/forum/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.thenakedscientists.com%2Fforum%2Ficon_lastpost.gif&hash=265fe3f27eb6cf231b8238b2c38604ed)), which if clicked upon, will lead you to the most recent message in the topic. I can see links to the most recent page, but it seems to lead you to the top of the most recent page, and not to the most recent message.
George
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Don't know if this is technically an error, although it is certainly not strictly correct either.
If you set your profile to hide your online status, then rather than actually hiding your online status, it merely declares that you are permanently offline. I have not saught to demonstrate what this might do to the various stats you hold about online status (i.e. time of day when online, total number of hours online, etc. - but then, I rather suspect these stats are rather dubious in quality anyway).
George
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35) OK, after having said that we have lost much of our search functionality, I see it is more a matter of it being hidden somewhere rather than actually not there.
Apparently there should be a menu option for search that allows an advanced search. You have a help page for it (as well as an optional calender function), as well as direct access to through http://www.kellaton.org.uk/forum/index.php?action=search, but I cannot actually see where the menu option should be. Am I just blind, or is there a link that has gone missing?
------- further comment -----
OK – found the link now – it is the small anonymous icon on the left of the search box. Having the big search entry box, and the big text button to the right of the entry box, it was not immediately apparent that the small icon on the left actually was a totally separate option.
George
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quote:
Originally posted by Hadrian
can you get it to work now? he he
A quote from the web page for the software they are using to set up the new site:
http://www.simplemachines.org/
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Simple Machines Forum - SMF in short - is a free, professional grade software package that allows you to set up your own online community within minutes.
[:p][}:)][:D]
George
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http://www.kellaton.org.uk/forum/index.php?action=profile;u=2334;sa=showPosts;start=1200 has got the best contrast of all – black text on black background for class “catbg3“. Not yet sure where the style for this is defined, since I cannot find the class defined in http://www.kellaton.org.uk/forum/Themes/naksci2/style.css. No doubt I'll find where you've hidden it (or have you not yet defined it?).
George
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I noticed in the statistics page which i love by the way that the new forum software has the abillity to run polls but i have been unable to find the feature will it as well as spellcheck be turned on in the future.
Michael
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37)One of the profile options in http://www.kellaton.org.uk/forum/index.php?action=profile;u=2334;sa=theme is to change the quick-moderation setting to check boxes. Doing this puts a single check box, without any idea what it is meant to do, in the final column of forum topics list in http://www.kellaton.org.uk/forum/index.php?board=6.0. Setting the profile to show icons places two icons in the column, and the tooltips for these icons are 'Remove topic' and 'Lock topic'.
George
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I have numbered the points so as to keep some kind of tracibilty ;)
35) Yeah, you can get to it from the little search icon next to the search box, this isn't very obvious. It may be ok if I can get it to change colour when you hover over it, the DHTML is being intransigent atm, or it is just 2am...
The reason why lots of funtionality is different is that we have moved away from Snitz as it was running on an Access Database which kept dieing and was causing the server to fall over. We have moved to Simple Machines
37) Cheers fixed it.
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http://www.kellaton.org.uk/forum/index.php?action=recent – could you possibly increase the left and right padding or margin a bit – having the text running to within a pixel of the borders may seem like economic use of space, but is not good for the eyesight, and having a little bit more white space to the left and right of it might make it more readable.
Conversely, http://www.kellaton.org.uk/forum/index.php?action=profile;u=2334;sa=showPosts;start=1140 has a bit too much white space around the text, but in part that is no doubt to allow room for the menu at the top left of the page.
On the other hand, the selection of pages for this screen is somewhat cumbersome. My own posting history runs to 81 pages, but I cannot choose to go to page 41, I can only select one of the next or immediately preceding few pages, and in this manner incrementally step through the history. In reality, it will probably be unusual that I would ever look back more than the most recent few pages, and anything further back than that I would probably use the search facility to locate, but the facility is theoretically there to go through this route as well, but is made the more cumbersome by the way it is presented.
George
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re 37) Cheers george, dave ,sorted.
Michael
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Back to the checkbox options for the quick-moderation selection in the profiles (as mentioned in 37 above).
If you select checkboxes, these boxes also turn up on the messages within the topics (at least, on those messages that I own). If I switch to using icons, no icons are shown – it is as if I had selected the 'don't show' option.
George
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Another couple of cosmetics that would be, in my view, minor improvements.
You have the last edited timestamp on the bottom of the message. This is fine, but could you change the text colour, or put a border around it, or in some other way separate it from the main body of the text.
The creation timestamp is on the left column of the message list. There is good logic in it being there, but it is too cramped, and, at least on my screen, tends to wrap. Could you possibly move this to being above the text, in line with the 'reply' link, but well to the left of it, and like the edit timestamp, set in different colour or with a box to separate it from the text around it.
George
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Back to pint 10 – mea culpa – the wild cards are only for searching, not for the actual recipient address, so you cannot send to just anyone.
Sorry, I'm still getting the hang of the new system, and am clearly jumping the gun on some of these.
George
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16) I think the signature is appearing now, but I may be wrong. There was a problem that it was appearing twice, as Snitz appended it to the message itself, whereas smf (the new software) adds it in dynamically. I fixed this by grepping through the post for the signature and if it appears not displaying it a second time. It may be finding false positives.
18) It is now displaying the messageID at the left. You can make a link to it by going [message=2345]My cool message[/message]. It was done in a bad and wrong way as there is no built in functionality for finding a message without a topic, but now works. I will try and find a more elegant (or at least robust) way of implementing it in the morning.
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Looking a bit more at the mail function.
When you set up a search function to search for a user by name, and you use wild cards, you only shown 7 names at a time, and the names are not sorted in any alphabetical order, and like with the multi page message lists, you can step through the pages, but cannot jump straight to a given page number (although, since the names are not in alphabetical order, it is unlikely you would be able to judge to which page to jump to).
I have changed my user name to be a different visible name from the underlying name (the underlying name remains “another_someone”, but the visible name was changed to “another me”. When I search for my name in the list of mail recipients, it brings up “another me”, but when I insert the name into the recipient list, it shows as “another_someone” - i.e. the visible name changes to the underlying name. The delivery still works, but it is both confusing, and arguably a breach of security.
George
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quote:
Originally posted by daveshorts
16) I think the signature is appearing now, but I may be wrong. There was a problem that it was appearing twice, as Snitz appended it to the message itself, whereas smf (the new software) adds it in dynamically. I fixed this by grepping through the post for the signature and if it appears not displaying it a second time. It may be finding false positives.
Yep, I am seeing it now – at first I thought that I was going insane, and it had been there all along, but then I realised you had made other changes also, so it must be you fixing problems as I go back to look at the bits again.
Yes, I know I had to be careful with Snitz in that when I used to edit the message I would have to be careful not to accidentally delete the signature. It would be nice if this no longer remains a problem.
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18) It is now displaying the messageID at the left. You can make a link to it by going [message=2345]My cool message[/message]. It was done in a bad and wrong way as there is no built in functionality for finding a message without a topic, but now works. I will try and find a more elegant (or at least robust) way of implementing it in the morning.
Yep, I saw that – thanks.
I thought you would make a link from it, so that I could simply right click and copy the link, and then paste it into the message, but I'm not sure that has any real advantage over the way you have done it (except maybe that the topic remains part of the link, and so anyone who wants to edit that link, just to look at the topic, can do so – but not many will be worrying about doing that).
George
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22) Good point - I have disabled executables. Whether we want any attachments is possibly debateable - I guess we can try it and see if it gets silly.
6) I have put a link to the BBCode stuff on the posting page
26) I think the title is because the forum has the ability to show posts in a tree form (which would be particularly useful for this thread ;) and It is a hang over from this - I think I will just make the input hidden.
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On the message InBox (http://www.kellaton.org.uk/forum/index.php?action=pm;f=inbox;l=-1), you use the same colour scheme as on the topics message list. This is fine.
You use the same alternate background colour for each alternate message – this is fine.
You do not use the alternate background colour for the signature, so the signature is on a white background on each and every message, even as the rest of the message is only on a white background on every other message.
George
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quote:
Originally posted by daveshorts
22) Good point - I have disabled executables. Whether we want any attachments is possibly debateable - I guess we can try it and see if it gets silly.
My own instinct would be to the negative – it is a risk, and I don't see that it is pertinent to the kind of fast moving discussion group we have here. It may be more relevant if this was some kind of self-help group, where people may want to load up some software or other supporting material in response to some support request, but that is not what we do here.
In any case, the only justification for making it an attachment, rather than inline, is either if it was non-text (e.g. an executable), or it was very big (e.g. a large document someone may wish to download). The latter is a possibility, but also carries risks (Microsoft word documents, or Excel documents, can carry malicious code; and zip files can contain almost anything).
George
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20) I think the more sophisticated edit screen has the preview above the editor... it may need to be made more obvious somehow - I have added a couple of blank lines before the preview to stop it looking like part of the tree above.
25) Aaah that makes sense - the message icon should appear in the topic list. In the column I deleted as I couldn't work out what it was there for. I don't think it really adds much, I will get rid of it completely.
Thankyou again for the testing, the feedback is brilliant. However I think I will go to bed now to avoid passing out on the keyboard, I will continue tomorrow.
Cheers
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22) Yeah, I am tending to think that way. But it may be worth restricting it to just pictures as it would simplify the picture upload process a lot. May have copyright implications, I will check with Chris.
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Another issue with the messages InBox.
You have the same information repeated twice.
At the top, you have a summary of the messages in the InBox (just status, date, subject, and recipient), and beneath, you have the full text and details of each of the messages.
I could understand the need for the summary list if you then had to drill down to the detailed messages, but if you are in any case listing the full messages, then why do you also list the summary?
George
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37) At the bottom of the list of topics there should be a couple of drop down boxes that give you options to apply to the topics that you have selected with the checkboxes. This would be really useful for the 'urbanhotlist' bot that keeps posting adverts...
- Do you think this needs to be clearer in any way?
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Just come back to this, and tried to have a look at the new forum. I assume you have taken it down for a short while, since I am not currently able to get to it.
George
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quote:
Originally posted by daveshorts
37) At the bottom of the list of topics there should be a couple of drop down boxes that give you options to apply to the topics that you have selected with the checkboxes. This would be really useful for the 'urbanhotlist' bot that keeps posting adverts...
- Do you think this needs to be clearer in any way?
Still unable at this time to go back and look at it, as you currently have a template error – no doubt you are attending to this.
My own view is that as far as time allows you to do so, every clickable field, of any kind, should either have a tooltip or should display a message on the status line.
George
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It was actually because I had accidently added a '/' in the middle of the code, and for some reason all syntax error messages are being eaten by my host and it took me ages commenting out code to find it ... ;)
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Am working on this again at http://typo.nakeddiscovery.com/forum/
There are a couple of new features:
-You can upload images, and insert them into your text where you want them.
-You can insert chemical structures written as a SMILES string using the [chem] tag.
I will work through the issues previously mentioned - if you notice any more please tell me.
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1)Minor peculiarity – when I logged on, a string of text very briefly popped up in the browser (too quick to properly note down, but looked like it may have been a hex or escaped url string), before reverting to the site. When I did log on, I was not taken back to the page from which I came, but went to the main forum page (I was viewing my profile when I entered my logon details, and I would have expected to return to that page).
Was just some debugging info, has been removed
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2)When viewing http://www.kellaton.org.uk/forum/index.php?topic=4188.from0#new, in the middle, I see Carolyn's weight loss details, but no message next to it – what is this doing here?
I think this was an issue with signatures, which has been fixed
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5)When you view a forum, you see the number of 'views' that a topic has received, but when you view the topic, you see the number of 'reads' the topic has received – this is inconsistent.
Views/read is now consistently views
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7)When I click on 'reply with quotes', I get a momentary popup of a small browser window which then quickly disappears – what is happening here?
this is a perculiarity of how the software inserts stuff into the quick reply at the bottom without reloading the whole page. We will probably have to live with it.
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8)Tried out the 'report to moderator' function. No moderators available (not surprising on a test site). Is one line of comment really sufficient for a report – would you not wish a TEXTAREA rather than an INPUT TEXT field here. Also, given the seriousness of this entry, would you wish the auto-submission to occur in response to a carriage return (this would not be a problem in a TEXTAREA field)?
This is a case of a moderator volunteering to receive the notifications. I will try and remember how I volunteered last time.
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9)Don't see anything akin the the range of search facilities we have in the present site. I would have liked an extension of those facilities, not a withdrawal of them.
This is a case of going to the advanced search page
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10)I like the idea of sending personal messages without exposing the email address, but the use of wild cards in the address field sounds very dangerous. Also, I would have though allowing you to send emails to outside recipients is also very dangerous, and will probably very quickly lead to this site being blacklisted by spam blacklists.
There is a limit of sending messages to 5 people at a time as long as you are not a moderator, so it shouldn't be too bad.
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12)I cannot find any longer any site statistics – has this feature been removed?
There is a link at the bottom
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13)The new site, as is the case with the existing site, uses alternate background colours for each message so that one can easily identify the boundary between messages. On the new site, some of the very long messages will break this
Fixed I think
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14)Messages are valign=bottom – this can be very confusing for short messages that are at the bottom of the area allotted to them.
I don't think this does it now.
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15)so it just looked like one continuous run of text saying 'Reply with quote Modify Remove'. You should put a thin border, or some other indicator, to show that these are three separate groups of words.
I have replaced them with nicer images so it should be ok.
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16)I see the signature is not appearing on the posts (it is still in the profile).
I think it is fixed.
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17) blue link against a black background
Was a css problem, think it is fixed.
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18)One thing that would be nice to have (I know, I should have asked this earlier), is that each post would display next to it the message number (ideally, the full url) for that particular message, so that one can easily copy a link to the specific message (rather than just a link to the topic0 when quoting it elesewhere.
Done
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19)I note that all of the smilies are surrounded by square brackets. Is this a feature, or an oversight?
Oversight - fixed now. I think I have imported all the snitz smileys so it should be backwards compatible.
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20)When you type a response to a post (at the bottom of a topic), you have two buttons, one for submit, and the other for preview. The preview button does not really show you a preview (unlike the preview button on the present site), but takes you to a more comprehensive edit page.
There is a preview at the top, is this not obvious enough?
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21)It would be nice if the edit page for creating/editing posts would have some tooltips to explain the plethora of icon buttons.
Done.
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22)I note that you allow the uploading of attachments, including executables. Interesting, if possibly a bit dangerous.
Good point is now just images.
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23)The font size options ([ size = nn ]) is accepted by the input, and is clearly parsed, but does not seem to have any effect.
I had disabled it and hoped noone would notice - some chance ;)
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24)Interesting use of the font option – although the button on the edit screen only set font=veranda; in fact, it seems you can set any font that may be displayed.
I could try and do it as a dropdown, but what fonts are available is always going to be a dodgy thing.
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25)You have the option to include a message icon – where should this appear?
You don't any more ;)
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26)Also, interestingly, when you post a message, it allows you to change the title of the topic you will be posting to – or at least, it pretends to give you that option, but quite sensibly, that option does not work.
Again you don't any more.
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27)Some topics have a button marked 'new', while others are missing this.
I have altered the way this works to make it more like the old forum, unread messages now appear as purple
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27) cont - the new button had a nice feature which meant that if you clicked on it it would take you to the first new message. I have integrated that into the purple folder on the left.
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I love it !!
You could try harder though dave !!! [;)]
Men are the same as women, just inside out !
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The 'General Science' piccy is missing !!
Men are the same as women, just inside out !
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yeah, I haven't found a good one yet. Can anyone think of a picture that neatly sums up the whole of science in 60x60 pixels of goodness?
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How about this !!
Looks fine to me
(https://www.thenakedscientists.com/forum/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fimg.photobucket.com%2Falbums%2Fv286%2Fneilneil%2Fscience.jpg&hash=d9ee40f02c58cfcbdcf14d8497307973)
[:)]....sorry dave !!
Men are the same as women, just inside out !
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What about one of these ?
(https://www.thenakedscientists.com/forum/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fimg.photobucket.com%2Falbums%2Fv280%2Fwithdrawnmist%2Fscienfce.jpg&hash=fb7f1726092164eae4bef66f63b2a2e7)
'
'
'
'
'
'
'
(https://www.thenakedscientists.com/forum/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fimg.photobucket.com%2Falbums%2Fv280%2Fwithdrawnmist%2Findustry.jpg&hash=aefeb291091604b81212f55936df6adf)
from here !! http://www.trios.de/
Men are the same as women, just inside out !
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quote:
Originally posted by daveshorts
Am working on this again at http://typo.nakeddiscovery.com/forum/
Very brief look – nothing obviously broken – maybe have to spend a little longer to find your deliberate mistakes this time. Some issues though.
Don't see any way at present to go to the last message of a topic. Is it simply that I have not looked in the right place.
You retain the advanced search icon – and I now know what it is – but there is neither and legend near it, nor any tooltip to tell you what it is. There is more than enough room under the current search button to place a clearly labelled 'advanced search' button.
Generally, very pretty, but too much real estate used by things that are not immediately useful, thus requiring more scrolling to read what is important. In particular, the side bar that remains there even when you are deep down in the topics means that you are losing space for the topic information – which is what you really want to read.
It might also maybe useful is a border was placed around to text area in the topics (it is placed around the quotes, with a change in background area) so that is is clearly separated from the surrounding context information (i.e. author, date, etc).
It looks like the borders around the quotes are in the same colour as the default colour for the text. Would it not be better to use a different colour in order to easier visually separate the borders from the text? (particularly confusing when you have a cascade of quotes)
George
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BTW, one clear difference in behaviour between the old and new forum:
The old forum, when you reply to a topic, you remain in the topic, in the new forum, when you reply to a topic, you then exist the topic and go back to the section.
George
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It seems the search facility allows you to search the body of the messages, but I do not see how you search by topic header (thus is possible in the current forum).
George
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Another anomaly – maybe I just don't understand something properly.
I take an existing topic, and split it. Of I do a search for words within both the old and new topic, they are both there, but if I look at the index for the topics, only the old topic is visible (even if I use search to bring up the newly split topic, and then select the link to the parent index, it is missing from the parent index – at least in the recent topics list, and this is even though the time of the message of the new topic is only 20 minutes after the start of the original topic).
George
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The topic index, the 'Started by' column seems to be fixed width – or, at least, it is very easy to overflow the column width for long names as you scale up the fonts (FireFox ctrl/+).
George
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quote:
Generally, very pretty, but too much real estate used by things that are not immediately useful, thus requiring more scrolling to read what is important. In particular, the side bar that remains there even when you are deep down in the topics means that you are losing space for the topic information – which is what you really want to read.
The reason we have done it is to make the naked scientists podcast and site less seperate form the forum, I will be doing more integration in the future, so you automatically get discussion topics based around questions asked on the show for example.
How about now - if you are logged in the sidebar is abbreviated enough for the forum stuff to fit underneath, giving you the full width to play with, but guests will see the full thing so find out about us. Is this too confusing or ugly? Should I have it as an option in profile instead?
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quote:
Originally posted by daveshorts
How about now - if you are logged in the sidebar is abbreviated enough for the forum stuff to fit underneath, giving you the full width to play with, but guests will see the full thing so find out about us. Is this too confusing or ugly?
That looks a lot better - thanks.
George
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Mark as read button consistently returns a “Session verification failed. Please try logging out and back in again, and then try again” - even if I log out and log back in.
George
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Still not sure what the tick boxes, either on the thread index, or on the messages within the threads, are meant to do.
Tried to report to moderator function – again, not sure what that is meant to do, since no messages entered my inbox (and I am supposed to be a moderator).
Still a problem that report to moderator returns you to message index, so if you want to report several messages within the thread, you will have to drill down the thread again.
Still a limitation that you only have one line of text for the report to moderator function – this is not a lot in which to describe why you have reported the message to the moderator.
George
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Set up a poll.
I have no problem voting in the poll.
No problem removing the vote.
When I have voted, the I can see the current voting results.
If I have not yet voted, or have deleted my vote, then the current results do not appear (this is not a problem). But what does appear is a button that says 'View results' – but that button does not seem to do anything.
George
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A slightly misleading error message. I tried to register a new user, logged out, and register a second user, and I get the message “Sorry, but you're not allowed to register multiple accounts at the same time from the same computer”.
In fact I can register as many users as I like from the same computer – I simply cannot register them from the same session – i.e. I have to close down the browser and open it up again in order to register a new user.
There are in fact some good reasons why a user would want to register more than one user from the same computer (e.g. more than one family member using the same computer).
George
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The registration process states it requires a valid email address – in fact, it only requires a valid domain name on the email address.
The only way to actually validate an email address is to send an email to the address (which would not be a bad idea, but clearly you are not doing this, but merely doing a DNS lookup on the name, or allowing a valid non-local IP address).
If you fill out the registration, you need (not unreasonably) to click on the 'I agree' tickbox before the 'Register' button is enabled. Problem is that if an error occurs in the registration, you are then taken back to the registration entry apge, with the password fields cleared, but all other fields left as they were. This includes the 'I agree' tickbox remains ticked, but the 'Register' button is disabled. You actually need to untick the 'I agree' box, and tick it again, before the 'Register' button is enabled again.
George
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Tried to click on the 'notify' button in the 'Chemistry' forum. Then created a new topic within the forum. Did not see any notification.
Do not see where there is any indication of whether notification is active or not.
BTW, I notice that you have removed the list of moderators from the topics list. This is good, since it used up real estate, and few people actually need to know who the moderators are – they just need to be able to contact the moderators (e.g. by the 'notify moderator' option).
On the other hand, the moderators themselves might like to know which topics they are moderators for – how would they find this information out?
George
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I was given the understanding that in the new forum moderators would have more power over individual users (i.e. to delete or lock users, not only their messages). Was this understanding in error – I see no way of managing users in the forum?
Incidentally, when I have the members list up, I have the search option at the top (not the 'search members' button, but in the heading area, the same search option that exists everywhere else). This is a little confusing in this context, since that option is still searching the topic messages, even though I am not in a topic context. I would expect the only search facility to be available when viewing members information is a search of members, not a search of topic. I would advise either removing the field when viewing members information, or changing it to search the members records, to at least to relabel to 'Search topics' so that it is clear that the function is not context dependent.
George
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BTW, I don;t see anyone else posting much here. Am I a 1 man testing team, or are others sending responses through direct email, or otherwise less visible means?
George
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The new members list actually contains less information than on the existing site.
The members list does not contain the date of the most recent post, or the country of the member.
George
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Sorry have been away for the weekend
quote:
I was given the understanding that in the new forum moderators would have more power over individual users (i.e. to delete or lock users, not only their messages). Was this understanding in error – I see no way of managing users in the forum?
Sorry I think I had not goven you enough permissions. I have now made you a global moderator, and I think you should have an admin option at the top within which you should be able to do this.
quote:
Spellcheck
After an exciting exercise in recompiling PHP and Apache we now have a spellcheck option when posting messages.
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YAAAAAY!! I LOVE SPELL CHECK!!!
Karen
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quote:
Originally posted by Karen W.
YAAAAAY!! I LOVE SPELL CHECK!!!
Karen
lukerlee ..eye downt kneed shpell chek !!
Men are the same as women, just inside out !
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Since most responses I compose in a wordprocessor before copying onto the web page, I already have been using a spellchecker most of the time.
George
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YOU DO SO, SIR!!!! YOU ARE SO.... BAD, But so am I when I get sleepy your lucky if I can spell anything!!!
Karen
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quote:
Originally posted by Karen W.
YOU DO SO, SIR!!!! YOU ARE SO.... BAD, But so am I when I get sleepy your lucky if I can spell anything!!!
Well you spelt 'anything' correctly this time - so he must be lucky [:D]
George
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quote:
On the other hand, the moderators themselves might like to know which topics they are moderators for – how would they find this information out?
At the moment it is listed on the front board index page, as there is plenty of space there I thought it wouldn't hurt.
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quote:
Still not sure what the tick boxes, either on the thread index, or on the messages within the threads, are meant to do.
There should be a little form (a couple of dropdown boxes) at the bottom of the list of messages/topics with lots of moderation options, these will be applied to all the selected posts, this means you can delete loads of posts/topics at once.
If you prefer the old system there is an option in your profile to change it back. In look and Layout, change 'Show quick-moderation on message index as' to your prefered option.
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quote:
Mark as read button consistently returns a “Session verification failed. Please try logging out and back in again, and then try again” - even if I log out and log back in.
I think I fixed this as a byproduct of fixing something else, is it working now for you as well as me?
quote:
A slightly misleading error message. I tried to register a new user, logged out, and register a second user, and I get the message “Sorry, but you're not allowed to register multiple accounts at the same time from the same computer”.
In fact I can register as many users as I like from the same computer – I simply cannot register them from the same session – i.e. I have to close down the browser and open it up again in order to register a new user.
There are in fact some good reasons why a user would want to register more than one user from the same computer (e.g. more than one family member using the same computer).
Yes it does only work on the session, I think it is to try and discourage incompetent spammers who would make lots of accounts and post spam from them. I think it may annoy more people than it will stop, maybe I will disable it.
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Ok I think I am getting there, have just spent ages adding a little box to the 'Unread posts' page so it will show you all the posts since a date, like the present one. Does this now behave in a relatively logical way to you guys now?
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My first look in three weeks and its looking good Dave i'm well impressed ,i cant wait for it to go live.
I cant see many problems apart from the missing icon from the last post box and when you place the mouse over the UNREAD box a popup box appears and says logout in error .
Some of the forum title's are in bold while some arn't.
I will hunt a bit more deeper.
ps
Dave where's me and neils global moderator status [:)]
Michael
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I apologise Michael and Neil, your global moderator status is now assured.
I will look at other stuff on Friday, I have a couple of exciting days of recording in between...
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I want more than ' global ' I want 'Interdimensional ' [:)]
Men are the same as women, just inside out !
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Read icon missing from PM messages window.(must have a mesage to see it)[:)]
Michael
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Ok, In the new forum below your name and messages sub, it says, Show new replies to your post. when I hit this it says Data base error, please try again! Report error to administration after trying again if this takes you to error message again! Yes it takes me there every time never where it is supposed to. Balls in Your court, is this the right place to report it?
Karen
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quote:
Ok, In the new forum below your name and messages sub, it says, Show new replies to your post. when I hit this it says Data base error, please try again! Report error to administration after trying again if this takes you to error message again! Yes it takes me there every time never where it is supposed to. Balls in Your court, is this the right place to report it?
Sorry, I am not quite sure what you mean, which screen are you on where you see the link? As I don't think you should be able to see "Show new replies to your post" anywhere, which means I'm obviously confused somehow.
cheers
Dave
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Use your link here to enter new forum, then sign in password ect. new screen pops yp and displays which messages you have or don't have, on the upper left hand side there are two links one shows unread posts since last visit , other shows new replies to your posts,like this!
__________________________________________________________________________
Hello Karen W. August 24, 2006, 12:43:33 AM
you have 8 messages, 0 are new.
> Show unread posts since last visit.
> Show new replies to your posts. (This is the one that keeps showing the error, I cut and pasted this one!)
Total time logged in: 7 hours and 8 minutes.
Hope this helps!
Karen
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My first look in three weeks and its looking good Dave i'm well impressed ,i cant wait for it to go live.
I cant see many problems apart from the missing icon from the last post box and when you place the mouse over the UNREAD box a popup box appears and says logout in error .
Some of the forum title's are in bold while some arn't.
I will hunt a bit more deeper.
ps
Dave where's me and neils global moderator status [:)]
Michael
-
I apologise Michael and Neil, your global moderator status is now assured.
I will look at other stuff on Friday, I have a couple of exciting days of recording in between...
-
I want more than ' global ' I want 'Interdimensional ' [:)]
Men are the same as women, just inside out !
-
Read icon missing from PM messages window.(must have a mesage to see it)[:)]
Michael
-
Ok, In the new forum below your name and messages sub, it says, Show new replies to your post. when I hit this it says Data base error, please try again! Report error to administration after trying again if this takes you to error message again! Yes it takes me there every time never where it is supposed to. Balls in Your court, is this the right place to report it?
Karen
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quote:
Ok, In the new forum below your name and messages sub, it says, Show new replies to your post. when I hit this it says Data base error, please try again! Report error to administration after trying again if this takes you to error message again! Yes it takes me there every time never where it is supposed to. Balls in Your court, is this the right place to report it?
Sorry, I am not quite sure what you mean, which screen are you on where you see the link? As I don't think you should be able to see "Show new replies to your post" anywhere, which means I'm obviously confused somehow.
cheers
Dave
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Use your link here to enter new forum, then sign in password ect. new screen pops yp and displays which messages you have or don't have, on the upper left hand side there are two links one shows unread posts since last visit , other shows new replies to your posts,like this!
__________________________________________________________________________
Hello Karen W. August 24, 2006, 12:43:33 AM
you have 8 messages, 0 are new.
> Show unread posts since last visit.
> Show new replies to your posts. (This is the one that keeps showing the error, I cut and pasted this one!)
Total time logged in: 7 hours and 8 minutes.
Hope this helps!
Karen
-
My first look in three weeks and its looking good Dave i'm well impressed ,i cant wait for it to go live.
I cant see many problems apart from the missing icon from the last post box and when you place the mouse over the UNREAD box a popup box appears and says logout in error .
Some of the forum title's are in bold while some arn't.
I will hunt a bit more deeper.
ps
Dave where's me and neils global moderator status [:)]
Michael
-
I apologise Michael and Neil, your global moderator status is now assured.
I will look at other stuff on Friday, I have a couple of exciting days of recording in between...
-
I want more than ' global ' I want 'Interdimensional ' [:)]
Men are the same as women, just inside out !
-
Read icon missing from PM messages window.(must have a mesage to see it)[:)]
Michael
-
Ok, In the new forum below your name and messages sub, it says, Show new replies to your post. when I hit this it says Data base error, please try again! Report error to administration after trying again if this takes you to error message again! Yes it takes me there every time never where it is supposed to. Balls in Your court, is this the right place to report it?
Karen
-
quote:
Ok, In the new forum below your name and messages sub, it says, Show new replies to your post. when I hit this it says Data base error, please try again! Report error to administration after trying again if this takes you to error message again! Yes it takes me there every time never where it is supposed to. Balls in Your court, is this the right place to report it?
Sorry, I am not quite sure what you mean, which screen are you on where you see the link? As I don't think you should be able to see "Show new replies to your post" anywhere, which means I'm obviously confused somehow.
cheers
Dave
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Use your link here to enter new forum, then sign in password ect. new screen pops yp and displays which messages you have or don't have, on the upper left hand side there are two links one shows unread posts since last visit , other shows new replies to your posts,like this!
__________________________________________________________________________
Hello Karen W. August 24, 2006, 12:43:33 AM
you have 8 messages, 0 are new.
> Show unread posts since last visit.
> Show new replies to your posts. (This is the one that keeps showing the error, I cut and pasted this one!)
Total time logged in: 7 hours and 8 minutes.
Hope this helps!
Karen
-
Ok, In the new forum below your name and messages sub, it says, Show new replies to your post. when I hit this it says Data base error, please try again! Report error to administration after trying again if this takes you to error message again! Yes it takes me there every time never where it is supposed to. Balls in Your court, is this the right place to report it?
Karen
-
quote:
Ok, In the new forum below your name and messages sub, it says, Show new replies to your post. when I hit this it says Data base error, please try again! Report error to administration after trying again if this takes you to error message again! Yes it takes me there every time never where it is supposed to. Balls in Your court, is this the right place to report it?
Sorry, I am not quite sure what you mean, which screen are you on where you see the link? As I don't think you should be able to see "Show new replies to your post" anywhere, which means I'm obviously confused somehow.
cheers
Dave
-
Use your link here to enter new forum, then sign in password ect. new screen pops yp and displays which messages you have or don't have, on the upper left hand side there are two links one shows unread posts since last visit , other shows new replies to your posts,like this!
__________________________________________________________________________
Hello Karen W. August 24, 2006, 12:43:33 AM
you have 8 messages, 0 are new.
> Show unread posts since last visit.
> Show new replies to your posts. (This is the one that keeps showing the error, I cut and pasted this one!)
Total time logged in: 7 hours and 8 minutes.
Hope this helps!
Karen
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Karen, just out of interest are you looking at:
http://www.kellaton.org.uk/forum/
or
http://typo.nakeddiscovery.com/forum/
the second one is the more recent version of the new forum.
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quote:
Read icon missing from PM messages window.(must have a mesage to see it)[:)]
Cheers, got that one now.
Have also reduced the number of available symbols significantly as loads of them don't show up on some windows boxes.
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Yep thats the one!Oh I was in the old one? Have to check out newer version, I am Bad!
Karen
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Hi Karen you will like the new one ,i do its got pictures[:)]
Michael
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Seems to move faster and it is much brighter and more cheerful!Yaay! I like the spell check and personal mess. Very cool alot more privacy!!
Karen
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Do you need help with the zeta thread today? Be glad to help if you do!
Karen