Comments (constructive) on the New Forum Software

[Michael GilliganParticipant @michaelgilligan61133]

So I clicked on PDF , which is writ fairly large, and top of the list is an incomprehensible statement about archive issues.

… check the date of posting, vs the date of expiry

MichaelG.

[Ady1Participant @ady1]

Still a soupsong of items to do

1 Latest posts needs to be a single line list – viewable by NOT logging in

2 The leading page needs to lose the blizzard of advertising which is a total waste of everyones bandwidth. Adverts need to be far more subtle and posts more pronounced

The new bandwidth bill must be pretty huge compared to the old site

3 Still pretty slow, but getting there

[Kiwi BlokeParticipant @kiwibloke62605]

‘Last Updated’ shows progress has been made, but it would be more useful to be given the information in terms of how long ago, not a date and time. This is an international forum, and should allow for international time zones, date lines and slow, old brains…

It’s still much slower and more cumbersome than the old software, if all one wants to do is quickly find out if anything interesting has happened recently. Providing the name of the latest poster is far less useful than info about the thread (its title, for instance).

I regret that my enthusiasm for this new format is not increasing with familiarity, or the ‘improvements’, and I’m slowly drifting away…

[JasonBModerator @jasonb]

It is displaying the same info that the old site did – Topic – Forum Heading – Last Poster – Date/time.

Title is the boldest and largest font so that should be more useful to you than the smaller poster’s name and date/time. Just like it was on the old forum

See this post of mine that shows what was displayed and what is hopefully going to be displayed

[Nicholas FarrParticipant @nicholasfarr14254]

Hi, I might be missing something, but both forum headings, Drawing Errors and Corrections, and Subscription Issues and Digital Magazines, are being updated minute by minute, but both the Topic and Post count remain the same and there is no ones name under either of them.

Regards Nick.

[Michael GilliganParticipant @michaelgilligan61133]

I am struggling a little to see why we now have two versions of what might reasonably be seen as the same list:

https://www.model-engineer.co.uk/forums/

Latest Activity

Aside from the ‘user-interface’ confusion … I do wonder if processing both versions might be contributing to the slow response of the site.

 

MichaelG.

.

Edit: __ oh dear! that second link is displaying rather strangely on my iPad

… it should be just another simple URL

Latest Activity

[Michael GilliganParticipant @michaelgilligan61133]

[JasonBModerator @jasonb]

Michael

The “Forums” list only shows the last reply to each heading. Taking the first heading as an example it will not show if there have been several active topics (threads) within that heading.

The “latest Activity” list will show several topics from the same forum heading if they have all been active more recently than say one in another heading

[JourneymanParticipant @journeyman]

I don’t seem to be getting that screen either on desktop or Android tablet. Neither can I get the WordPress embed frame to appear.

This is a frame and I am not seeing the ME logo nor the share icon.

John

[JasonBModerator @jasonb]

Nick

As we currently have the “Constructive Comments” Topic stuck to the top of all forum headings I suspect that is why it is showing a date/time which corresponds to the stuck topic. If you click one of the headings you mention you will see the yellow highlighted sticky topics with the date/time being shown

[John HinkleyParticipant @johnhinkley26699]

I have been visiting the forum off and on without logging in, since it came back on line with, initially, disappointment after the promises of a whizz-bang upgrade.  Now we know that it wasn’t (and isn’t) an easy transition.  However, I’ve stuck with it and appear to be visiting a different site to a lot of the others posting here.  As I have written elsewhere, I do not log in unless I want to comment or avail myself of the other facilities that require it.  My bookmark is set to open a new tab with the address <<model-engineer.co.uk/forums/>> and this takes me straight to the latest post page shown below (resized to fit the comment window) :

I then refresh the page to get the very latest data (instead of the cached data from the last visit) and then proceed to browse the entries by date/time.  Not as easy as previously, but heaps better than when it restarted.  That’s without having to log in.  It works this way on my PC with W11 as well as on the iPad OS 16***.

Maybe I’m just lucky but at least I can live with it as it is and am grateful that we still have a forum within which we can exchange views and submit comments and advice as and when needed.

Browse long and prosper,

John

 

[Nicholas FarrParticipant @nicholasfarr14254]

Hi JasonB, I must be a bit dim this morning, as I’ve looked at what I think you are saying, and after looking through all the pages in both of those forum headlines, I cannot see any yellow highlighted sticky topics on any of them.

Whenever I click on the date and time of the Drawing error one, only two posts asking about a 5 inch gauge charlaton comes up with with just two posts from the same person, with the last one being on 21 June 2023. The one about subscriptions has a few posts about the MEW Archive issue, and the last post in that one is by yourself on 29 March 2023. Again neither of them have any yellow highlights.

Regards Nick.

[Nicholas Farr]

On Nicholas Farr Said:

… Whenever I click on the date and time of the Drawing error one, only two posts asking about a 5 inch gauge charlaton comes up with with just two posts from the same person, with the last one being on 21 June 2023. …

Regards Nick.

I get this when logged in or when logged out. Which is what Jason is talking about.

John

[Nicholas FarrParticipant @nicholasfarr14254]

Hi John, I get the same, but nothing is highlighted in yellow. I though the idea that clicking on the time and date of the latest post column, would take you directly to the latest post, as I say, maybe I’m missing something.

Regards Nick.

[JourneymanParticipant @journeyman]

Ah that was me being slow (don’t function well  in the morning) yes if you click on the time it will take you direct to the individual post rather that the forum topic list. Or something like that

John

[Michael Gilligan]

On Michael Gilligan Said:

On Journeyman Said:

I don’t seem to be getting that screen either on desktop or Android tablet. Neither can I get the WordPress embed frame to appear.

This is a frame and I am not seeing the ME logo nor the share icon.

John

Gents, I commented on this one the other day

The link when it resolves to the White Box shortcut, actually becomes 3 separate hyperlinks contained within the box

Unfortunately many of us are reporting stuff like this on the various comment threads/topics, but we rarely find out if they are already known issues under investigation, or even whether anyone is compiling them for a future investigation.

Bill

[peak4]

On peak4 Said:

… Unfortunately many of us are reporting stuff like this on the various comment threads/topics, but we rarely find out if they are already known issues under investigation, or even whether anyone is compiling them for a future investigation.

Bill

Hence my very serious [but evidently rejected] suggestion that someone should be paid overtime to trawl through the forum posts, and set-up the beginnings of a system for documenting problems reported by forum members.

It needs someone with the aptitude and motivation  to do the graft, and simply populate the first column of a spreadsheet !

MichaelG.

[Journeyman]

On Journeyman Said:

I don’t seem to be getting that screen either on desktop or Android tablet. Neither can I get the WordPress embed frame to appear.

This is a frame and I am not seeing the ME logo nor the share icon.

John

The black frame appears when I press the little group of linked dots, at bottom-right of that frame.

The fact that the forum works differently on various devices and browsers is regrettably attributable to the way the underlying product has been developed.

Open-Source development is a very worthy concept … but rarely is it so rigorously tested as a commercial product would be.

MichaelG.

[Michael Gilligan]

On Michael Gilligan Said:

On Journeyman Said:

I don’t seem to be getting that screen either on desktop or Android tablet. Neither can I get the WordPress embed frame to appear.

This is a frame and I am not seeing the ME logo nor the share icon.

John

 

Open-Source development is a very worthy concept … but rarely is it so rigorously tested as a commercial product would be.

MichaelG.

I have been involved in and working in IT since 1981. This statement is not true. At all.

[Michael Gilligan]

On Michael Gilligan Said:

On Journeyman Said:

I don’t seem to be getting that screen either on desktop or Android tablet. Neither can I get the WordPress embed frame to appear.

This is a frame and I am not seeing the ME logo nor the share icon.

John

The black frame appears when I press the little group of linked dots, at bottom-right of that frame.

The fact that the forum works differently on various devices and browsers is regrettably attributable to the way the underlying product has been developed.

Open-Source development is a very worthy concept … but rarely is it so rigorously tested as a commercial product would be.

MichaelG.

Michael, I think it more or less displays the same for both of us;
When I click the Latest Activity hyperlink within the box, it does indeed take me to Latest Activity.
If I click on the hyperlink embedded in the text to the right of the green spanner in a gear icon, ut takes me to the head of the site.
The three little dots to the right, also take me to the black WordPress box.

It’s obvious to someone with a decent sized screen on a PC, and probably a MAC, that there are three links in there, as the text highlights as you roll the mouse pointer over them; hovering in the middle somewhere doesn’t activate any hyperlink/shortcut.
For someone like me with fat fingers, and using a mobile phone, it’s likely random which of the three links I activate.

Bill

[duncan webster 1Participant @duncanwebster1]

This morning (Saturday) I’m getting kicked out when clicking ‘latest replies’ again. This on Huawei/Android/Chrome. It has worked first time on my desktop computer (W10)

[peak4Participant @peak4]

An experiment;

Latest Activity aside, as most of the above hyperlink queries relate to that specific shortcut.

Lets say I wish to comment in a post about a T slot modification article, as it’s relevant to someone who has raised a query.
I can embed the URL in the text, as above, using the Chain Link icon from the top line of the edit pane, or I can just post the URL as text within this reply, like this with the circled URL to show the text I copy/pasted directly a couple of lines below here, without intentionally converting it to a hyperlink; that has been done by the forum, though it’s not visible in the editing/posting pane.

The above is just a screenshot of the address line of my browser, taken almost full width, so the forum re-sizes it to fit, and thus also reduces its height compared to if I’d only included the actual address

Don’t Do This at Home – A T-slotted Slide for a Mini Lathe

 

The simple URL now resolves to a white box shortcut again, but much clearer in its intention.
There’s a preview of the article header, as well as the two hyperlinks on the green spanner gear icon line.

Bill

[Colin HeseltineParticipant @colinheseltine48622]

The layout on a Window10 PC is a now a lot better on the Latest Replies page.  This does not appear to be replicated on either an Ipad or IOS IPhone which is a shame.

Colin

[JourneymanParticipant @journeyman]

It is interesting to open the iFrame above (in Bill’s post)  in a tab by itself and view the code to see the phenomenal amount of Javascript contained therein.

John

[duncan webster 1]

On duncan webster 1 Said:

This morning (Saturday) I’m getting kicked out when clicking ‘latest replies’ again. This on Huawei/Android/Chrome. It has worked first time on my desktop computer (W10)

Duncan, what happens if you use a different browser on your android device; if you only have Chrome, you could always add a second browser.
I’ve found it useful on various occasions when a website doesn’t work correctly; not just for this one.
Personally I use Chrome, Opera & Opera Touch on my phone; I’ve just also installed DuckDuckGo as an experiment for this forum.
Using DuckDuckGo, for the first time on my phone, I get straight in to this forum, can log-in, and use latest replies OK
Bill

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