THE FORUM UPGRADE

stubbsO posted:

OGR Ad Man posted:

Stubbso....you already have the ability to do what you are requesting.  Take a look at the last post on any page and note that you can set the number of replies per page of up to 200.  I believe the default is 40.  Just click on 200 and the posts will go all the way to the bottom of the page.....

Not on the topics page I can't! RTFP!

it does not matter whatever you set it too will just go back to 40. and in a post several days ago rich said hoopla will not be changing that anytime soon. weird.

sounds good

Having given some time for things to settle down, and to get used to things, I haven't noticed anything that would cause me grief with the change at this point.  However, there are some small things that would be nice to address.  also some comments on the trouble some others are having.  As a note my experience may be different to that of other users, I primarily read the forums on Mac with Safari.

#1  Three bars vs. the full menu at the top of the page:

This one isn't really a problem, but could be confusing for some users.  The software detects the width of the window you have open, so if it is wide enough, ex. full screen, you will see the full menu bar. On the other hand if the window is not wide enough, ex 3/4 the width of the screen or less, it will show the three white bars.  This is pretty much the standard symbol for a menu on mobil devices, but pretty uncommon to see on full sites for display on a computer.  It isn't a problem, but may take getting used to for some folks.

Screen shot with wider window:

Screen shot with window slightly narrower:

As a side note to this, if the window is not wide enough, the drop down menu for 'Forum List' still cuts off whatever does not fit. This seems to happen because the menu 'drops down' aligned to the right side if the 'forum list' heading, so the box doesn't fit on the screen. 

#2:  No next/previous buttons on each forum page's listings:

I mentioned this one a while back, but didn't see any comments on it, so I'll drop it in again.  it's not a particularly big deal, but just seems awkward to have only the page numbers and no next page/previous page buttons on the forums when you are looking through the topics.  they are there in an individual thread, but not on the list of all the threads in a given forum.  

#3 No indication of what forum a post was made on in recent posts side bar:

This one has been mentioned by others, and I seem to recall that it was being looked into.  That said I bring it up again because of a slight annoyance it has caused.  It seems since the update went live there are many more people commenting on posts in the specialized forums such as tin plate or 2-rail scale that do not look to see that the question posed is specific to that particular group, and holds a much different meaning when asked about tin plate versus o-gauge as a whole.  I think folks are clicking on a recent topic, reading the post and commenting, without consideration that their answer has nothing at all to do with the specialized nature of that particular sub-forum.  It is also annoying when you click on what seems an interesting topic only to find it is a For Sale post.  

Thanks for your time, and all the hard work to resolve everyone's issues.  

JGL

Getting kicked off the net using a Samsung Tab2-7. Seems OGR times out?

Using my Nexus 7 tablet, I had the same sort of troubles yesterday. I had to keep closing out and coming back in which meant it took around 3 tries for every post I tried to make. Prior to yesterday, I did not have any problems at all. 

 Tom 

note...please do not take this comment as criticism or bashing of the forum in any way, shape or form...it was suggested i post this comment here as well...it was originally posted on switcher saturday this weekend...

...Good morning switcher saturday fans...

My two cents...I'm a techno dinosaur...and thought this may have been all my fault...but now it doesn't sound like I'm alone...

since the upgrade...my iPhone and iPad don't seem to like the change either...so I may have to seek professional help...and try to get around the "diesel filter"... :-)

Howard...

bigdodgetrain posted:

stubbsO posted:

OGR Ad Man posted:

Stubbso....you already have the ability to do what you are requesting.  Take a look at the last post on any page and note that you can set the number of replies per page of up to 200.  I believe the default is 40.  Just click on 200 and the posts will go all the way to the bottom of the page.....

Not on the topics page I can't! RTFP!

it does not matter whatever you set it too will just go back to 40. and in a post several days ago rich said hoopla will not be changing that anytime soon. weird.

I think you guys are missing the point! When I hit a forum, doesn't matter which one, just pick one! The discussions will only go to about 1/2 to 1/3 of the way down the page, then a bunch of space to get to the bottom of that page. Go there and there's nothing about changing thread count. BUT, on any topic in any section, at the bottom of the page you can change it there and that's it! Get it now?

Not sure what I need to do, but when using my IPhone6 , I only see the items listed in the center column of the Forum main page.  The recent posts aren't visible no matter how I orient the phone or swipe the image.  Is this to be expected when using an IPhone? 

Allegheny posted:

The recent posts aren't visible no matter how I orient the phone or swipe the image.  Is this to be expected when using an IPhone? 

Yes...this is how it works on  an iPhone. The iPhone screen is too small to show everything there. I cannot imagine trying to read and post on this forum using an iPhone! It's WAY too small.

I'll see if I can rearrange the main page so the recent posts are seen instead of the ad in the center widget.

Allegheny posted:

Not sure what I need to do, but when using my IPhone6 , I only see the items listed in the center column of the Forum main page.  The recent posts aren't visible no matter how I orient the phone or swipe the image.  Is this to be expected when using an IPhone? 

Interesting...  Santa Claus brought me an iPhone 6Plus... and if I hold the phone in landscape mode, the Recent Post column appears to the right.  However in portrait mode, there is no Recent Post column.  With my old iPhone4, I could never see a Recent Post column, which essentially made browsing the forum an exercise in futility on that phone.  At least with the iPhone 6Plus, I can stay in touch with things here while I'm on the go.  But I still don't use it for posting.

David

In a web site like this one, built with Responsive Design, what you see on the screen is dependent on the size and aspect ratio of the screen itself. Every device on the internet now reports its screen size to the web server. The server then determines how to format the screen and display the data, based on that information.

The smaller screen size of the iPhone 4 did not allow room to display the Recent Posts column. The larger screen if the iPhone6+ has room for it, so it gets displayed. That's how Responsive Design works.

Gary, I have no idea how the forum points system works.

I have said before that if I could shut if off, I would. Much ado about nothing...

OGR Webmaster posted:

Gary, I have no idea how the forum points system works.

I have said before that if I could shut if off, I would. Much ado about nothing...

Hi Rich - Got it, I just want to fix my artwork. You know I like to make simple art on the OGR Forum. This has the open "e" fixed....... & made smaller. This is a artwork test. to match the gray colors up & collapse attachment procedures. 

Rich

I noticed on iPads when inserting a link into a line of text, it is difficult to see the color difference between the link and standard text. Is there any way of making the link color stand out more?

I like the forum and the fact that the OGR team is working to make the experience even better. Running on all sorts of hardware with many different browser for tablets, cell phones, desk tops and Surface pro's is not an easy accomplishment. 

OGR team keep up the good work. This is "not" a marginal product.

K

MartyE posted:

I noticed on iPads when inserting a link into a line of text, it is difficult to see the color difference between the link and standard text. Is there any way of making the link color stand out more?

I think so. I'll have to dig into the CSS in the theme to find the right font color to change.

The thing I like most of all is not having to double click.  About 50% of the time, a single touch on the iPad does it.  The rest of the time it can take three or four touches before I get a response, and on a couple of occasions no amount of touching works.  I should get some Windex.

I suppose another nice thing is I can no longer post photos.  Everybody tried to help me, but to no avail.  I can still post photos on all the other forums I visit. OGR has seen all of my photos, so it is a win-win.

I do like the way it looks.

I have no problem at all posting photos from my iPad.

me either 

Works for me. 

Now that is one of the cleanest power supply stations I have every seen.

Just want to add my comments about the look of the new forum upgrade.

I had not been on OGR since way last spring, and had no idea that the format had changed when I logged on just before Christmas. Noticed right away that it looked considerably different, but I liked it immediately! It's clean, straightforward, and user friendly. Everything is pretty much where it should be and works as you would expect it. I have spent about the same amount of time on both the I-pad and the desktop, and both work equally well. The desktop of course wins out with content in a single screen, but both get the job done.

All in all a definite thumbs up Rich!

Rod

You CANNOT upload photos or links if you're using a cell for using links to photo hosting sites. You can't do any format changes either and there's no option to use the desktop option on a cell.

Hate that.

Rich, not a big deal, but I get a box with an X in it where it says The Track Planning and Layout Design Forum is sponsored by on when viewing the main P&L forum page. Looks like it's a thumbnail link to RCS.

OOh.  I like the lines between threads.  

JGL

I do too, John. Small change, but much nicer when scrolling thru.

p51 posted:

... and there's no option to use the desktop option on a cell.

Hate that.

Me too.  We've been told it's all tied to this "responsive design" programming, where the software "best determines" the screen layout based on your device.  Unfortunately, we often don't agree with the decisions software is making nowadays, and I always prefer when a manual override is available.  But we don't have that option.

Having said that, I will say that since I've been using an iPhone 6+... If I orient the phone in landscape mode, it gives me a display that populates more information -- similar to what I might see on my desktop PC.  So at least I have access to the RECENT POSTS section if I hold the phone that way.  But know way I can get that when holding the phone in a vertical orientation.  With my older iPhone4, I couldn't see the RECENT POSTS section no matter how I held the phone.  It was very frustrating.

David

bob2 posted:

The thing I like most of all is not having to double click.  About 50% of the time, a single touch on the iPad does it.  The rest of the time it can take three or four touches before I get a response, and on a couple of occasions no amount of touching works. 

...

With an iPad2 I've been experiencing these same inconsistencies.  Even more frustrating with the iPad2 appears to be the swiping motion to scroll information is VERY inconsistent -- with the result being it feels as if the software just isn't working with me when scrolling.  At times an entire vertical swipe will move the screen content a full page -- which is what I would expect.  But more times than not, that full-screen vertical swipe only moves the content an inch or two.  When it behaves that badly, I just bag it all together.

Bottom line... it appears those of us with "legacy" devices -- (no relationship to Lionel's Legacy system which is why Lionel should NEVER have named it that way to begin with!!! ) -- will experience operational issues as software begins to use newer programming application interfaces available to the latest software programs.  Unfortunately, today's developers don't have the discipline to warn the user community about these inconsistencies beforehand.  They just blindly forge ahead and let the user community discover these nuances as we limp along.

At this point, I'm reasonably happy with the forum's operation on my desktop PC.  That's the ONLY environment that I would rate as truly ready-for-prime-time now.  And much of that is due to Rich's hard work to make the new forum software much more friendly than the way HoopLa delivered it.  For those of us who were here on Dec 2nd when HoopLa made the software changes... well, let's just leave that in the past.

Now that I have a more "up-to-date" iPhone 6+ (vs. my former iPhone4), the forum software "plays nice" on that platform.  Great to view forum content, but I still don't post content on that device.

And as far as the iPad2 goes... let's just say I'm not about to upgrade that device to a newer iPad just so the forum software will play nice with it.  To date, there's no other software app on my iPad2 that misbehaves like the HoopLa forum software.  So whatever they did in the software re-write, they're using new API's or whatever that play nicer with more up-to-date hardware platforms but give users of older devices some serious bouts of frustration.  Fortunately, a critical mass of apps I'm running on my iPad2 works just fine.  So I have no plans to upgrade that device in the near future.   And I just don't use this forum on my iPad all that much anymore.

David

I have noticed this hesitant scrolling issue on my iPad 2, but I'm not sure it is the fault of the iPad itself or this forum. I've seen this same behavior on other web sites. I think it is a page loading problem. Here's why I think this way...

Today's web server/web browser relationship is a little different than it was even a year ago. And I think it is this difference that causes the scrolling issue.

Not too long ago, when you visited a web page, the entire page loaded as soon as you got to the page. Even the portions of the page that were off screen loaded as soon as you hit the page. Recently, things changed. Now when you visit a web page, only the portion of the page that is visible on your screen actually loads. The remainder of the page doesn't load until you scroll down to it! On my iPad, this shows up as hesitant scrolling when scrolling down the page for the first time. However, once I have scrolled to the bottom of the page and the entire page loads, then the page scrolls smoothly. I've seen this same behavior here, on YouTube, on trainorders.com and a couple of RV forums which I visit.

David, would you do me a favor and test this on your iPad? Load this page (it's a long page!) scroll through the entire page to this post at the bottom. That will load the entire page. Then scroll around the page and let me know how the scrolling behaves.

Rich, excuse me for asking this question as I've looked around on the previous pages and couldn't locate a response to the following question.  Are there any plans to again have the read posts highlighted from the ones that I haven't read? 

Otherwise the upgrade is functioning just great as I do not have any usage issues.

I'll second that request. It is one feature I really miss. It is much easier to differentiate posts that I have already looked at. I know  you said it is not used as much elsewhere on the web, but I like it on other sites I visit, also. For example, on similar items on ebay, I know which ones I have already looked at.

DoubleDAZ posted:

Rich, not a big deal, but I get a box with an X in it where it says The Track Planning and Layout Design Forum is sponsored by on when viewing the main P&L forum page. Looks like it's a thumbnail link to RCS.

Thanks for the heads up. I fixed this.

Rocky Mountaineer posted:

p51 posted:

... and there's no option to use the desktop option on a cell.

Hate that.

Me too.  We've been told it's all tied to this "responsive design" programming, where the software "best determines" the screen layout based on your device.  Unfortunately, we often don't agree with the decisions software is making nowadays, and I always prefer when a manual override is available.  But we don't have that option.

Having said that, I will say that since I've been using an iPhone 6+... If I orient the phone in landscape mode, it gives me a display that populates more information -- similar to what I might see on my desktop PC.  So at least I have access to the RECENT POSTS section if I hold the phone that way.  But know way I can get that when holding the phone in a vertical orientation.  With my older iPhone4, I couldn't see the RECENT POSTS section no matter how I held the phone.  It was very frustrating.

David

I have a Galaxy 5 and it doesn't work in either mode.

Is anybody working on the Samsung Android Tablet scrolling problem previously reported by several of us?

Bill

WftTrains posted:

I apologize if this issue has already been discussed but I have been having problems using the Forum on my Samsung Tab2 10” Android tablet ever since the Upgrade.  The Forum opens up fine and it works fine for awhile but usually after scrolling up or down a few times it freezes up, crashes and goes back to my “desktop” screen.  It has Android version 4.2.2.  I don’t have any problems using the Forum on my new Android phone, a Samsung S6 with Android version 5.1.1.  And it also works fine on my Windows 7 laptop.

Is anyone else experiencing this problem?  Do I need to upgrade the software on my tablet?

Bill

 

Had the exact same problem with that exact same tablet.

Only way I found to correct that issue is go to the app store and download the free Dolphin browser. After you download it you'll have a choice of which browser to run .   I use it for this site only.    Have not had any problems since..

Joe. 

Sorry, but here's a silly one.  If someone posted it already I missed it.

With all the selections that pop up under our name when we hover over it when logged in, why is "pending posts" important, but not the much more useful "posts" (or whatever we want to call posts not under review by a moderator).

It would seem for 99.9% of the population, most posts are not pending moderator review.

I know how to get there by going to my actual profile, then clicking the Activity selection, but with all the single click shortcuts included, this seems odd to omit.

-Dave

OGR Webmaster posted:

I have noticed this hesitant scrolling issue on my iPad 2, but I'm not sure it is the fault of the iPad itself or this forum. I've seen this same behavior on other web sites. I think it is a page loading problem. ...

David, would you do me a favor and test this on your iPad? Load this page (it's a long page!) scroll through the entire page to this post at the bottom. That will load the entire page. Then scroll around the page and let me know how the scrolling behaves.

Rich, that was a good hunch, but I don't think that's the culprit here.  I've tried loading a couple of different long threads (including this one) for a couple of days now, and I can't seem to get a consistently pleasant scrolling behavior with the iPad2 for long threads -- even after scrolling through the entire page so content and photos could be populated.  Still feels like the forum software isn't working with me.  That's the best way I can describe it.  I don't experience this to the same extent on my desktop PC or iPhone 6+, whereas the iPad2 seems strained.

David

Still not working for me on Samsung Note 10.1.  I did manage to draft a reply the other night, but then the post now button didn't work.

Rocky Mountaineer posted:

Rich, that was a good hunch, but I don't think that's the culprit here.  I've tried loading a couple of different long threads (including this one) for a couple of days now, and I can't seem to get a consistently pleasant scrolling behavior with the iPad2 for long threads -- even after scrolling through the entire page so content and photos could be populated.  Still feels like the forum software isn't working with me.  That's the best way I can describe it.  I don't experience this to the same extent on my desktop PC or iPhone 6+, whereas the iPad2 seems strained.

Well...darn. I was sure this would be it.

If I load a long page (like page 20 of this thread) on my iPad 2 and attempt to scroll it, it goes hesitantly on my first pass through the page top to bottom. However, after I have scrolled the entire page once and the whole page has downloaded, then it will scroll just fine, up and down.

Back to the drawing board...

JC642 posted:

WftTrains posted:

I apologize if this issue has already been discussed but I have been having problems using the Forum on my Samsung Tab2 10” Android tablet ever since the Upgrade.  The Forum opens up fine and it works fine for awhile but usually after scrolling up or down a few times it freezes up, crashes and goes back to my “desktop” screen.  It has Android version 4.2.2.  I don’t have any problems using the Forum on my new Android phone, a Samsung S6 with Android version 5.1.1.  And it also works fine on my Windows 7 laptop.

Is anyone else experiencing this problem?  Do I need to upgrade the software on my tablet?

Bill

 

Had the exact same problem with that exact same tablet.

Only way I found to correct that issue is go to the app store and download the free Dolphin browser. After you download it you'll have a choice of which browser to run .   I use it for this site only.    Have not had any problems since..

Joe. 

Joe:  I will give that Dolphin browser a try.  Thanks for posting.

Bill