THE FORUM UPGRADE

DoubleDAZ posted:

OGR Webmaster posted:

The narrow left column issue with Internet Exploder has been fixed.

Will one of you who have been having this problem check and see if it works OK now? I don't have access to a computer with IE at the moment. 

It's fixed in IE on Windows 10.

EXCELLENT!

OGR Webmaster posted:

Since we only have a Facebook account and nothing more, I trying to find out if I canget rid of all those social media buttons except FB. I agree that they are a monumental waste of screen real estate.

If I knew more about css and how to use/modify it, I could probably do it. But that gets out to the edge of my technical knowledge envelope.

Rich, you've certainly taken on a TON of work to get the forum looking the way it does now with all the improvements as compared to the way it looked when Hoopla activated the new forum software.  I don't know anything about editing CSS code, but I'd think much of what I'm talking about needs to be done at the Hoopla level.  Just a gut feel though 'cause I'm no longer a bits-and-bytes computer guy.  But in my day, I was quite the crack assembly language programmer!!!    Does anyone know what that is anymore??? 

Thanks for all the tremendous work you've put into the forum over the past two days.

David

I never wrote code in assembly language, but I did write a lot of COBOL code back in another life when I was in the cable TV business. I'll bet few know what that is, too.

To comment on having to scroll down, I don't know what the big deal is.  I've been scrolling down through a full screen of banner adds and another screen full of half a dozen-plus sticky threads for years now every time I come here.  Annoying, sure, but it hasn't hurt my fingers to swipe down twice in that time.  

On the other hand, placing all that information on the side would make it far more likely to be noticed, rather than carelessly skipped past without a second thought.  I'm sure the paid advertisers would prefer their ad to have a better chance of being seen.  this is why most websites disposed of banner ads in the 90's and switched to ads that are place beside the content where people are actually looking.  For example, as I type this, 1/3 of my screen is blank grey.  It could just as easily have 8-10 of the ads listed in that space, giving the advertisers a better chance for hits and thus making the forum a more profitable place to advertise.  

JGL

Rich the narrow column feature is fixed. Thank you.

One small thing, my videos on the super detailing the cab forward thread are all upside down now . 

I also wrote cobalt and Fortran many many years back.

Ron H posted:

Rich the narrow column feature is fixed. Thank you.

One small thing, my videos on the super detailing the cab forward thread are all upside down now .

Where are your videos hosted, here or elsewhere?

Hi Rich, all is great on my pc but is anyone using an android and having problems?. I have an htc phone. I can get to the site but as soon as I go to read  a post I get booted, all day long I have been trying with no luck. I was all over the net and no problems with any site I visited but this one. PLEASE HELP !!!!!

And I see I had it set to 200 posts per page but as soon as i posted it came back to 40? Is this some kind of default setting?

It sure would be nice to see all the pictures in one response by scrolling through them, like we used to. Now you have to open and close each picture individually.

Maybe that made the pictures all load at the same time and someone complained about the time that took.

I don't know anything about how this works, so some changes that make it less convenient for me might have had a really good reason. I only mention it if it turns out to be an omission and hopefully an easy fix.

OGR Webmaster posted:

I never wrote code in assembly language, but I did write a lot of COBOL code back in another life when I was in the cable TV business. I'll bet few know what that is, too.

I've done some programming in hex. Those were the early daze!

If I have contributed to a thread, is there a way to highlight the thread, or put an icon by it, or some other indication that I have commented on that thread. I like to keep track of the ones I'm engaged in and it can be easy to forget which ones they are. 

On the Studebaker forum, an icon appears by the title of the threads I am commenting on.

I have to say things are much improved from the initial release.   Rich I for one made a few criticizing comments publicly and now I am apologizing publicly,  I should have been more patient and given things time to develop.   Thank you for all of your efforts to improve this for all of us.   

OGR Webmaster posted:

I never wrote code in assembly language, but I did write a lot of COBOL code back in another life when I was in the cable TV business. I'll bet few know what that is, too.

I spent the first 2/3 of my career reading and writing in Univac assembler. Occasionally a bit of Cobol and Fortran too. Anybody know what SSG is?

What Luke said, and I quote "The new format is great! Very user friendly and easy for older eyes to read! Great job!"

That's a fact!  You may have upgraded for the more modern devices, but it is darn nice on my ole' desktop PC

Thank You!

Ed

The new forum is very unstable on my Verizon Samsung Galaxy Tablet 2.0. Locks up while scrolling and boots me off. Have plenty of ram. Very frustrating. Works ok on my Motorola Droid smartphone.

Any suggestions?

As I said many posts above....all we asked is for a little time to fix and adjust!  Rich took your suggestions and did a fantastic job in making the forum presentation much better than what was handed to us.  He went to work right away and is still making changes.  Thanks goes out to all of you that made constructive posts which helped Rich know what needed to be done...

Thanks!

Alan

Here's a complaint I haven't seen from anyone.   The list of emojis hasn't changed!  Obviously not a big deal (or even a little one!) but the trend these days is to add more and more.  I wonder if the list is the Hoop.la default or supplied by OGR?  And on the plus side I just found out that pasting from the clipboard now works for me.  It was hit or miss before.

I for one would like to thank Rich for his responsiveness to the roll out issues.  I was a large financial firm IT exec for years and I've seen many a roll out where the customers screamed long and loud about the changes.  It's not fun scrambling to make everyone happy and Rich has done a great job responding to issues/requests.  And to all the folks who screamed that they are through with the forum due to the changes....Bye, Bye!

Rocky Mountaineer posted:

When forums and bulletin boards first started, the "more typical" protocol was to first post the excerpted quote and THEN follow that with one's commentary.  I always found prefixing  the excerpted quote with one's comments causes some minor confusion, because readers don't always know what the post is referring to until seeing the original excerpted quote later.    Only then does the poster's commentary make sense.  I know a few folks prefer prefixing excerpts with their comments, but I think the majority are still very accustomed to the older way of posting the excerpt, then posting one's thoughts afterwards.

David

I know this is a few days old now, but I'd have to agree (IMO, of course).

I'm also hoping the new format makes fewer people embed their added comments within the quote itself. That is always a challenge to decipher what's been added since there is no way to discern whether text is original or new.

(Is there any way the formatting within the quoted text can be set so that it's different than the default look of text in a post(color, italics, etc) ?  I realize that's probably not possible since any formatting applied to the quote would likely just pick up if people started typing within the quote, but since we are asking about new pie in the sky capabilities.... )

Hopefully the sharp line of the box that now surrounds the quote will help people, but at least once in this thread there is a quote with nothing else added, so maybe it won't.

The updates since Wed evening do look a bit better, so thanks for the hard work Rich.

-Dave

E-UNIT-79 posted:

Hi Rich, all is great on my pc but is anyone using an android and having problems?. I have an htc phone. I can get to the site but as soon as I go to read  a post I get booted, all day long I have been trying with no luck. I was all over the net and no problems with any site I visited but this one. PLEASE HELP !!!!!

I'm using my Samsung Galaxy Note 5 now without any problems navigating or reading with Chrome.

OGR Webmaster posted:

Since we only have a Facebook account and nothing more, I trying to find out if I canget rid of all those social media buttons except FB. I agree that they are a monumental waste of screen real estate.

If I knew more about css and how to use/modify it, I could probably do it. But that gets out to the edge of my technical knowledge envelope.

Rich,

Those buttons are actually useful.  For example, it I want to send an email to a fello OGR'er, I click on the brown envelope button and it opens a page where I can send the page in an email.....or share it on Google plus, Reddit, etc.

OGR doesn't need a presence on Reddit, Twitter, Pinterest, etc. for the button to be useful.

Ed

Dave45681 posted:

(Is there any way the formatting within the quoted text can be set so that it's different than the default look of text in a post(color, italics, etc) ?  I realize that's probably not possible since any formatting applied to the quote would likely just pick up if people started typing within the quote, but since we are asking about new pie in the sky capabilities.... )

Do you mean like this?

Hopefully the sharp line of the box that now surrounds the quote will help people, but at least once in this thread there is a quote with nothing else added, so maybe it won't. 

I've also noticed some comments ending up in the quote, but that is operator error where someone edited the quote and didn't notice that their comment was inside the box. I don't think there's much you can automatically do about that.

The quoted text is already smaller and in a darker box. Some people enter comments in the quoted part so their comments will be near what they are commenting on, especially if the posts contains a lot of topics. I think Rich did that using Red in one of his replies to someone. However, you can't automatically overcome laziness if commenters don't take the time to turn Bold/Italics on, change the text color, etc. see my insert above.

Thanks Rich I think you did a great job and the sight really works great and seems to be updating faster,//Great job and thanks from all the forum guys that appreciate all the hard work and time consuming hours it takes to make the sight work so great and ease of searching and reading all the great forum ideas we all have!

Thanks Alan

Rich, is there any way to add some color back into these reply window icons?  It used to be really easy to recognize these, but now they'd much less recognizable.  Not only are they not in color, but they're smaller as well.  With all the extra space things take, perhaps these could be made a little more recognizable?

eddiem posted:

eddiem posted:

Rich,

Any way to add the forum that each RECENT POST is in, so it would look like this?

THE FORUM UPGRADE

1 minute ago [in the Hi-Rail, O27 and Traditional 3-Rail O Gauge Forum]

That would be very helpful and probably just needs a field added in the Recent posts subroutine...

Ed

Fingers Crossed.......

Still hoping.....

I have not read every comment on this upgrade.  That said,I appreciate the work that went into this so called upgrade.  However,it remains that the topics  are really hard to read.  There still needs to be more contrast.  Perhaps another color to highlight topics would improve things.  

Norm

DoubleDAZ posted:

Do you mean like this?

 

That's exactly what I mean, you have it 100% correct.  I don't think most people who do it are doing it intentionally, I suspect they didn't realize they were doing it.  Then again, this topic has already brought out a few ideas that show we all may think a bit differently (like posting our thought before or after the quote), so maybe they were intentionally doing it (or just lazy sometimes).

If I'm reading replies to a thread, I'm very interested in reading others' thoughst on the topic and I appreciate they may relate to a previous post.  What I don't enjoy is trying to decrypt what may be new within a block of the quoted text.

-Dave

RoyBoy posted:

It sure would be nice to see all the pictures in one response by scrolling through them, like we used to. Now you have to open and close each picture individually.

Maybe that made the pictures all load at the same time and someone complained about the time that took.

I don't know anything about how this works, so some changes that make it less convenient for me might have had a really good reason. I only mention it if it turns out to be an omission and hopefully an easy fix.

I noted in a post with a single picture that when I hovered my mouse over the edges of the picture, the system overlayed a somewhat transparent arrow on the edge of the pic (presumably if there were more pics, clicking would cycle through them).

This is on a PC.  Don't know what happens on a phone/tablet/smart watch/etc. 

I just used PaperTRW's for sale post with a fair number of pictures in it to confirm.  Clicking on one image and then hovering on the edge shows a clickable arrow that then advances to the next pic when you click it.

The CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) which control the colors, fonts, etc. are difficult for me to understand. I'm not an expert in this by any means, but I'm learning. I am looking for the proper code to change to make some of the color changes several of you have asked for. The Hoopla-generated css is very cryptic and "geeky" so it's not easy to understand. I can't do a lot of work on this today. I am the "Yardmaster" at the North Pole for the Cuyahoga Valley RR Scenic Railroad's Polar Express trains tonight.

eddiem posted:

Those buttons are actually useful.  For example, it I want to send an email to a fello OGR'er, I click on the brown envelope button and it opens a page where I can send the page in an email.....or share it on Google plus, Reddit, etc.

OGR doesn't need a presence on Reddit, Twitter, Pinterest, etc. for the button to be useful.

Good point, Ed. I had not considered that those buttons could be useful in other ways. I don't see a way to make them go away, anyway. I've looked and come up empty so far.

OGR Webmaster posted:

....... code to change to make some of the color changes several of you have asked for. ......

I'm not sure if this is the same color issue others are asking about, but I noted when trying to color code some text in a reply that some of what I would consider basic colors for text formatting are missing from the drop down.   I'm thinking like brighter reds, greens, purple, orange, etc.

Maybe that's intentional, as I have had other people tell me that these colors can be too much on the eyes (I'd agree if a whole post was written with them).

Hoopla colors: (seem a bit muted to me, many being similar - I'd consider all 6 in the green column "olive")

Some of what Word calls "Standard colors" below capture a few I am referring to: (and of course being a SW package, the options are understood to have more flexibility there, that I am not suggesting we need here)

-Dave

Dave45681 posted:

RoyBoy posted:

It sure would be nice to see all the pictures in one response by scrolling through them, like we used to. Now you have to open and close each picture individually.

Maybe that made the pictures all load at the same time and someone complained about the time that took.

I don't know anything about how this works, so some changes that make it less convenient for me might have had a really good reason. I only mention it if it turns out to be an omission and hopefully an easy fix.

I noted in a post with a single picture that when I hovered my mouse over the edges of the picture, the system overlayed a somewhat transparent arrow on the edge of the pic (presumably if there were more pics, clicking would cycle through them).

This is on a PC.  Don't know what happens on a phone/tablet/smart watch/etc. 

I just used PaperTRW's for sale post with a fair number of pictures in it to confirm.  Clicking on one image and then hovering on the edge shows a clickable arrow that then advances to the next pic when you click it.

 

Thanks Dave. I saw that today on my PC.

The trend today is to use more muted colors rather than 100% red, blue or whatever. That's a Hoopla thing and I can't change that. The CSS color coding I have to deal with looks like this:

/* apply custom font color to the title image: */
header.widget-header h3 { color: #ffffff; font-size:1.0rem; font-weight:400; }
.h-widget-body { padding:10px;}

This is just one of hundreds of commands like this buried throughout the code.

Rich,

Overall I love the upgrade.  I primarily use my iPad mini to read and post.  I checked it on my MacBook Pro with a 21 inch external monitor, and it looks great there as well.  The best part is now being able to use my iPhone 6 to access the forum.   Before the upgrade, I found the forum too hard to use on my iPhone, but now it is great.  The great thing about being able to use my iPhone, is that it is so much easier to ask questions and read posts while I am working on the layout  

Thanks for all your hard work on this.  It is much appreciated. 

Chris

I note that, on my iPad:

Photos no longer can be posted by copying a Photobucket URL.  Apparently the old method, using the scenery button, is again required.  I have long since forgotten how to do that.

The button sending me to the last unread post no longer works reliably.

When typing a reply, if I need to edit, sometimes the little thingie that shows where to type gets stuck.

I am amazed that you take the time to read all of these posts.  How do you stay current in the King Air?  I am off to ferry a Stearman.

Had trouble loading on one laptop  , no problem on my wife's, so all is well.

Will get used to the new format, like it? Don't matter, it is what it is and I am sure when help is need, OGF members will help.

Brent

OGR Webmaster posted:

The narrow left column issue with Internet Exploder has been fixed.

Will one of you who have been having this problem check and see if it works OK now? I don't have access to a computer with IE at the moment. 

It is all working properly here now. I tried everything I could think of and all is well.

OGR Webmaster posted:

Since we only have a Facebook account and nothing more, I trying to find out if I canget rid of all those social media buttons except FB. I agree that they are a monumental waste of screen real estate.

Just a thought, I don't use social media either, but it would be nice if they could just move these buttons (or what ever they leave) to the right of the 'Like this Topic' and 'Follow this Topic' buttons which is just blank space.

Rich,

This has to do with the number of posts per screen selection, 20, 40, 100... which I know has been reported, but this is a different problem which I have not seen (although I could have missed it?).

I just replied to one of your earlier posts about the social media buttons. I used the 'Take Action' 'Reply with Quote' selection. Before replying I had 100 posts per screen selected, after posting the reply it reverted back to 40 posts per screen. 

Here's a glitch I ran into today while trying to post here with my iPhone4 (using Safari) when I was out at a local train store...

Seems I was typing a long post that scrolled outside the defined text box for my response.  Didn't think anything of it, since I thought the text just scrolled off to the top.  However, I couldn't scroll back to access it and re-read the whole post before hitting "post reply".  But here's the real glitch... when I tapped the "post reply" button NOTHING would happen.  Whether I tapped, or left my finger on the button for awhile... NOTHING.  The button blinked as I tapped it, but nothing got processed.  Very strange... and frustrating.  All I could do at that point was bag it.    Another reason I think I'll just use my desktop to access the forum.

When I returned home, I was able to post my response using a desktop PC (Mac Pro with Firefox V42)... no problem.

David

I have alerted Hoopla Tech Support about the relies per page always defaulting back to 40. No answer yet.

David, are you using an iPhone 4 or a 4S? It could make a difference.