Comments (constructive) on the New Forum Software

[JAParticipant @ja]

Just a very minor comment: When logging in the “remember me” button does not work.

For all the comments this forum does work! You can successful post topics and get a few replies. However it needs a bit of quiet time to address most of the comments made so far. Therefore I am avoiding this topic, not the forum, for a week or so.

JA

[JourneymanParticipant @journeyman]

Another small gripe I’m afraid. The menu bar at the top has some odd (meaningless) wording that needs looking at.

“Building and running miniatures of steam & lots more”  Surely makes no sense (IMHO)

John

[Colin HeseltineParticipant @colinheseltine48622]

Another forum I look at very regularly has just done a similar upgrade at the same time.  It looks as though lots of white/grey is the way things are going.  Again to my mind there is too much of it.

One thing I like was when hovering pver a forum topic it brought up a subpane showing the text of the starting post and an option to view the last post.

If you want to take a look go to

caterhamlotus7.club and go to the Blatchat option.

Colin

[Martin King 2Participant @martinking2]

Hi All,

I always found that the “buttons” at the top of each topic that  stated “first”; ‘last” along with the “previous” and “next” arrows to be extremely useful when looking for earlier parts of any thread.

any chance that these could be implemented please?

good luck with the ongoing updating, I fear that it is going to be hard to please all the peopl all the time…

cheers, Martin

[Colin Heseltine]

On Colin Heseltine said

Another forum I look at very regularly has just done a similar upgrade at the same time.  It looks as though lots of white/grey is the way things are going.  Again to my mind there is too much of it.

One thing I like was when hovering pver a forum topic it brought up a subpane showing the text of the starting post and an option to view the last post.

If you want to take a look go to

caterhamlotus7.club and go to the Blatchat option.

Colin

The Caterham & Lotus 7 Club uses ‘Invision’ to power it’s forum. I doubt the same look and feel will be possible here.

John

[duncan webster 1Participant @duncanwebster1]

I’ve just created a new thread, but it has disappeared into the ether. Surely we don’t have to wait for every post to be moderated, that will put an intolerable load on the Mods.

After logging in, if I then to to latest posts, it then alters the bar at the top asking me to log in again, but it acknowledges that I am logged in. Bit of a quirk here.

[duncan webster 1Participant @duncanwebster1]

Its now appeared, but it is still logging me out capriciously.

[duncan webster 1]

On duncan webster 1 said

I’ve just created a new thread, but it has disappeared into the ether. Surely we don’t have to wait for every post to be moderated, that will put an intolerable load on the Mods.

After logging in, if I then to to latest posts, it then alters the bar at the top asking me to log in again, but it acknowledges that I am logged in. Bit of a quirk here.

Your post is there under ‘General Questions’ Coventry etc. – so things are working albeit slowly.

John

[JasonBModerator @jasonb]

I’ve added to Ketan’s comments on the other thread since he has moved them, got an appointment with some metal that need sturning into swarf so may move it later.

[JasonB]

On JasonB said

I’ve added to Ketan’s comments on the other thread since he has moved them, got an appointment with some metal that need sturning into swarf so may move it later.

Okay, as per your suggestion, adding the related links: LinkA and LinkB

Ketan at ARC.

** Well the Link idea failed for me. Leave it to JasonB to figure out when he is back from making swarf. 🙂

[JasonBModerator @jasonb]

Reply

Reply

I’ve probably had a bit more practice

[Ed DuffnerParticipant @edduffner79357]

Thank you and congratulations on the launch of the new forum software.

 

Ed.

[JasonBModerator @jasonb]

Mention was made of not seeing any improvements over the old forum yet I wonder how much people have looked? I’m still not at all happy with it but people have been asking for years for some of these things that have now been added.

Post numbering asked for repeatably is now there so you can link back to a specific post/reply

Easy inserting of images. How many times have people had problems trying to work out the old album way of doing things or moaning that albums have to be used. Now just drag and drop.

Similar with video 90% of members never worked out how to embed a video so we were left with links that we did not know if the video was worth watching or not or often what it was about. Now it is just copy and paste and you can see an image of what the video is.

Multi Quote is now also possible if you spend  a couple of mins to work it out again something that was almost impossible on the old forum.

So you have got some of what you asked for though all have their price with a few other downsides you have yet to find and the problems since going live don’t help any of those.

Also interesting to see how many posts are back to the usual sort of fare and the ones about the new forum becoming less active. I’d still like to see any issues and feelings posted here as they won’t get picked up unless you post about them.

[Graham MeekParticipant @grahammeek88282]

Hi Jason,

I do not doubt there are things that some people wanted, but to me this site is definitely not easier. Being rather forgetful these days I used to refer to “my posts” to reach a recent topic that I had posted. It was easy, but not so now.

Further there have been times when I have found something on “Images” in Google from a thread posted by another member which was of interest to me. Clicking on that image would automatically take me to the topic page. All this has been lost. If it is lost to me it is lost to everyone else outside the Forum bubble. All I get now are some coloured leggo bricks that lead me to an opening page on the new forum, but not the topic I was hoping for. I cannot search for that topic page as I only had an image to go on.

I shall resist from any further comment as I doubt things will change that much, Oh well back to the wilderness.

Regards

Gray,

[Journeyman]

On Journeyman said

[…]

“Building and running miniatures of steam & lots more”  Surely makes no sense (IMHO)

John

I presume someone has attended a “workshop” and decided we need a “mission statement”

MichaelG.

[DalboyParticipant @dalboy]

Can I ask why does each page I have gone onto that there are 5 banners for the magazines. Yes I appreciate that they need to advertise but when 4 of them are identical adverts this is just OTT and why have one right after the first post.

I try to keep my visits down to one or two minutes at a time due to the screen mainly being white background it sure hurt the eyes.

And as for that stupid first screen why does it need to be as from what I understand there have already been scam ads within the first 24hours so it seems a waste of time

Yes there have been a lot of new things so can understand there will be the odd bug.

[Graham Meek]

On Graham Meek said

…

I shall resist from any further comment as I doubt things will change that much,

…

Regards

Gray,

Don’t despair, I was forced off this afternoon by my normally reliable internet connection failing, twice.  Blamed the forum  because I was moderating at the time.   More likely due to the Openreach man working on the Green Cabinet at the end of my road.

I went into the garden to shovel mud.  Whilst being rained on I decided to try a different browser (Opera), and to switch on Ad-blocking.   Logging in afresh after a couple of hours, I noticed a number of small improvements have been made since this morning.  Nothing spectacular, but a shade slicker.  It is being worked on.

In a hobby where chaps thoroughly enjoy taking 20 years to build a steam loco, it’s surprising we don’t have more patience with others struggling to get things right!

Dave

[File HandleParticipant @filehandle]

Just added a profile image. “cntrl + v” doesn’t work but it was easy to navigate to the file and add and crop it.
Getting to the site did seem a tad quicker, but it is still too slow. Tried it on my Android phone earlier today, but gave up due to speed.
Having used the Internet long before the WWW even existed it was very slow in the early days and needed knowledge to connect to remote computers, but we have got used to the online world being virtually instant now. I remember a time before error checking existed when the precursor of email was very iffy, sometimes you could read a message by guessing the mistakes, other times it read as nonsense.
Having said that, right now my preference would be to go back to the old version. But I think that my patience has reduced as my hair colour has faded.

[JourneymanParticipant @journeyman]

Like Dave I just tried with a different browser (Chromium on Linux Mint) with an Ad Blocker. Seems to run a bit quicker and is definitely much easier to read without all the banner ads. I fear Morton’s may have scored an own goal by placing so many adds on the page.

John

[EmgeeParticipant @emgee]

Anyone using Firefox may like to try an add on called Dark Reader, gives a night screen, dark background with white lettering, only trouble is it will be active on all of your sites.

Emgee

[Robert ButlerParticipant @robertbutler92161]

All features take too long to load and I find the print faint and the white background stark.

Robert Butler

[Paul KempParticipant @paulkemp46892]

Hmmm well I have only just found the new forum as the holding page that appeared when the old site shut down I was expecting to take me to the new one when it was up – but it didn’t.

Read this thread first.  Now I normally browse the forum without logging in as I rarely post.  On the the old one if you were on a thread you wanted to post in there was a log in option on that page which once logged in kept you on that page.  Not so here, I thought I would try posting and to log in had to go to the top of the page and once logged in I was right back on the home page and then had to navigate back to where I was.  Was sooo much easier before.

Understand the latest posts function may be sort of replicated at some point, that would be good as that is all I ever used to see what had happened since I last looked, so a new version would be great.  Also understand this migration was a massive task and it was always going to be different but it’s not intuitive to use for me anyway.

I didn’t really miss the forum when it shut down and ‘wasted’ far less time looking at a screen.  Now it’s back, to be honest, it’s sooo sloooooow for pages to load and without the easy latest post page to keep tabs on what has changed, I don’t think I will be looking at this very often.

Paul.

[Steve NeighbourParticipant @steveneighbour43428]

I guess there will be resistance to change like everything these days, but comparing to some other sites I visit I find the load speed painful, hopefully this will improve as things settle down.

I agree the colours are very ‘stark’ or ‘bland’ the white background basically dominates the whole screen when responding to a member.

Also finding where on earth access to digital magazines had disappeared to was somewhat frustrating (sorted it now) but why is there no direct link via a button ? (or am I missing something ?)

Overall, in my view, it seems somewhat of a backwards move, but I’m sure Mortons had their reasons !!

Steve

[Graham Meek]

On Graham Meek said

Hi Jason,

I do not doubt there are things that some people wanted, but to me this site is definitely not easier. Being rather forgetful these days I used to refer to “my posts” to reach a recent topic that I had posted. It was easy, but not so now.

Further there have been times when I have found something on “Images” in Google from a thread posted by another member which was of interest to me. Clicking on that image would automatically take me to the topic page. All this has been lost. If it is lost to me it is lost to everyone else outside the Forum bubble. All I get now are some coloured leggo bricks that lead me to an opening page on the new forum, but not the topic I was hoping for. I cannot search for that topic page as I only had an image to go on.

I shall resist from any further comment as I doubt things will change that much, Oh well back to the wilderness.

Regards

Gray,

Several points here; I tried to see if I could find an easy way to help Gray with his query about searching for his own posts, or those from others outside the forum.
I know some hairy old guy wrote something about Clarkson Autolock chucks, so as a non forum user, I logged a query with Google.

“model engineers forum autolock peak 4” 

1) I’ve had to include that as a link; I intended to add it as a screenshot, using the same method as I do on most other forums.
i.e. Take a screenshot, and either paste into the relevant post, or upload from my clipboard using the “Insert Image” icon.
Can’t paste it directly in here, which is fair enough, but using the icon – upload images, Drag & Drop, tap, or click, The screenshot is visible, but when I select the image, it fails to load with this error box.
The image could not be uploaded. Please check that it is a valid jpg, png, or gif, and that it is no larger than 8MB.
It is valid and small enough, but just won’t upload.
I then saved the image as a jpg on my desktop 42KB, and it still failed to upload with the same error message; tried again saving as a png 37KB, and still failed to upload. Is this just an issue/bug when using either Quote, or Reply, as other folk have obviously uploaded screenshots; or is it a PC as opposed to mobile issue?

Having failed to insert a screenshot, please try my link above and it becomes obvious that there is/was a post on the old forum as the very first hit.
Mortons Media Group Ltd.https://www.model-engineer.co.uk › forums › postings
Replacing a Clarkson ‘autolock’ chuck with a standard ER …  
23 Oct 2019 — Yes my chuck is like the ones in your link, (Peak4) the collets have the two small ‘lugs’ on the opposite end to the tapered ‘nose’. I am ..

Tapping on that link takes me to The Lego page that Gray mentioned
Annoyingly I still can’t add a screenshot.

Typing this query “Replacing a Clarkson ‘autolock’ chuck with a standard ER” on the Lego page takes me to the forum search page, after a 30 second wait, but no hits.
Even just typing Autolock as a search provides no hits, but I know the posts are here on the forum somewhere.

2) Next Issue, this will be hard to describe without screenshots. (I’m using W10 and Opera browser on a desktop dual monitor setup)
Incidentally, 2a) why do we only have bold and italic highlighting, but no underline?

I wanted to quote Gray’s post, but struggled to start with as when viewing a page full of posts, there is no indication of whether the line including the post number, refers to the post above or below it.
Most other forums I use, add screen spacing between adjacent post in a list to make it more obvious.
There night be a very slight shading, but on my monitor it’s not really visible; the monitor is fully colour calibrated for photo editing.

3) Since I intended to cut and paste screenshots, I right clicked on Quote on Gray’s post and “Open in New Tab“, from the drop down user menu.
It does open in a new tab, but not at the post, just the head of that page;
The address does show the post number, but I need to scroll down the page to find it, and it doesn’t open a quote/reply box.
https:******************forums/topic/comments-constructive-on-the-new-forum-software/page/9/#678736
(edit replaced part of the address above with stars, as the forum did convert it to a hyperlink, but took you to the header for the topic)

On the other hand if I right click on the post number, and “Open in New Tab“, it takes me directly to the post, although the displayed address is the same.

From there, I can then hit the Quote option to get a reply box.

4) only minor, I should have spotted which details line referred to which post, as Jason’s post immediately prior ended  “This reply was modified 1 hour, 38 minutes ago by  JasonB.”
Most other forums I visit use the word “Edited“, to save any misunderstanding between “modified” and “moderated“.
Not to much of a problem on a large monitor, but since the text is small and light, it could easily mislead on a mobile phone.

I haven’t even got to searching for Autolock yet, but I’ll save that for another post in case something crashes and I lose the above typing

Bill

[Steve Neighbour]

On Steve Neighbour said

 

Also finding where on earth access to digital magazines had disappeared to was somewhat frustrating (sorted it now) but why is there no direct link via a button ? (or am I missing something ?)

“Archive” along the thick pale blue bar will get you to the mags.

Pitty they still can’t get it to open the latest issue after more than a year of asking them to sort that out too.

[Author]

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