[daveshorts (OP)]

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.

[another_someone]

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

[daveshorts (OP)]

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?

[another_someone]

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

[another_someone]

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

[daveshorts (OP)]

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 ...

[daveshorts (OP)]

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.

quote: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

quote: 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

quote: 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

quote: 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.

quote: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.

quote: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

quote: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.

quote:12)I cannot find any longer any site statistics – has this feature been removed?

There is a link at the bottom

quote: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

quote: 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.

quote: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.
 

quote: 16)I see the signature is not appearing on the posts (it is still in the profile).

I think it is fixed.

quote: 17) blue link against a black background

Was a css problem, think it is fixed.

quote: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

quote: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.

quote: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?

quote: 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.

quote:  22)I note that you allow the uploading of attachments, including executables. Interesting, if possibly a bit dangerous.

Good point is now just images.

quote:  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

quote: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.

quote:  25)You have the option to include a message icon – where should this appear?

You don't any more

quote: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.

quote: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

[daveshorts (OP)]

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.

[neilep]

I love it !!

You could try harder though dave !!! []

Men are the same as women, just inside out !

[neilep]

The 'General Science' piccy is missing !!

Men are the same as women, just inside out !

[daveshorts (OP)]

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?

[neilep]

How about this !!

Looks fine to me




[]....sorry dave !!

Men are the same as women, just inside out !

[neilep]

What about one of these  ?


'
'
'
'
'
'
'





from here !! http://www.trios.de/





Men are the same as women, just inside out !

[another_someone]

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

[another_someone]

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

[another_someone]

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

[another_someone]

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

[another_someone]

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

[daveshorts (OP)]

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?

[another_someone]

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