Is improvement work on this forum/website still ongoing?

[Neil WyattModerator @neilwyatt]

On Windows use the windows key and  ‘.’  also described as, I think,  <windows>+<.>

This brings up a ‘smiley (icon) menu.

😎

Should be even easier on phones…

Neil

[Michael GilliganParticipant @michaelgilligan61133]

Oh yippee … we can have the new forum littered with the things !

MichaelG.

[JasonBModerator @jasonb]

Now look what problems you have created for the active moderator, everyone and their dog will need their posts approving due to the system not liking too many emoji 👌 And that is not an OK sign.

 

I’ll not approve it for a while until Neil has seen it, might be a couple of weeks until we see him again tough

[JasonBModerator @jasonb]

And the knock on is that the poor layout isn’t able to cope with the longer text which doe snot wrap and that throws the position of the buttons out. Not that they were properly lined up in the first place

[Ian PParticipant @ianp]

Jason, its all very well pointing out particular items that dont work properly but if nobody responsible for correcting the problems is listening then the ‘incremental less dramatic’ work Neil mentioned, probably means this site will not be finished until Christmas 2024😢

Ian P

[JasonBModerator @jasonb]

I do let them know, for instance, the three bar problem and not getting the reply box to show I am told have now been sorted after I let them know and chased a few times. But agree they should be following what is being said here and what has been said as feedback from the start of testing.

[KEITH BEAUMONTParticipant @keithbeaumont45476]

Out of curiosity, I have just had a look at Mortons Boating and Flying Forums. Flying is a different format to ME, but Boating is the same as this one. Trying out a few posts, I am ceratain it is faster than this one and there are not many complaints about its performance ,that my brief look showed up.

Keith.

[JourneymanParticipant @journeyman]

I’m afraid the emoji’s are available in Linux as well if you have ‘Emote’ or similar installed. just use Ctrl Alt E and it brings up this:-

You can then put emojis all over the place 🤔

John

[JasonB]

On JasonB Said:

I do let them know, for instance, the three bar problem and not getting the reply box to show I am told have now been sorted after I let them know and chased a few times. But agree they should be following what is being said here and what has been said as feedback from the start of testing.

What I was trying to say is that its all very well fixing some of the detail items but the fundamental problems remain.

For examples, the poor readability for anyone with less than perfect eyesight, poor font choices and font colour on backgrounds only two shades different, too many different sizes of fonts for absolutely no reason. I cannot read some of the smaller text without zooming in (I have never before on any, website needed to change zoom factor whilst on the same website).

I am not in the ‘use it and you will get used to it’ group, we were promised a new better and we have been given a dog’s breakfast of a site.

Ian P

 

there are still masses of white space

[Michael GilliganParticipant @michaelgilligan61133]

For a breath of fresh air … have a look at this [it’s the only other forum that I use]

https://www.microbehunter.com/microscopy-forum/search.php?search_id=active_topics

 

It’s far from perfect, but !!

MichaelG.

[Michael GilliganParticipant @michaelgilligan61133]

Right … one last whinge before I go to bed !

I recently put a 4.4 MB png image in my gallery, for the benefit of those who want to demonstrate some geometry … I have just opened it from the gallery, and saved a copy:

.

.

 

What is the ******* point of giving me a place to upload big images ?

MichaelG.

[JasonB]

On JasonB Said:

Now look what problems you have created for the active moderator, everyone and their dog will need their posts approving due to the system not liking too many emoji 👌 And that is not an OK sign.

 

I’ll not approve it for a while until Neil has seen it, might be a couple of weeks until we see him again tough

Mea culpa, just delete it.

[Nigel Graham 2Participant @nigelgraham2]

It is quicker than it had been, but I too sometimes hit that frustrating log-in failure.

On the other hand I seem to have escaped some of the gripes other have with the advertisements, and the horrible rapid-fire ones have been toned down.

Are a lot of problems ones of compatibility? I see people do mention their systems.

For what it’s worth mine runs on MS Win-11 (a horror of its own) on a DELL PC, on broadband, not a wireless instrument.

[JasonBModerator @jasonb]

Model boats is on a different server so runs faster, and don’t ask me why this one can’t be moved to it.

Regarding galleries the old forum used to resize when you loaded something to it and since we have had this new forum apart from testing I have not used the galleries as it is quicker to just drag and drop into a reply. I believe storage space costs money hence the resizing and size/number limits on this forum. These limits were far less to start with but I had them increased considerably.

Ian P there is a reply of mine in the original “constructive comments” topic, if I have time I’ll link to it for you.

[JasonB]

On JasonB Said:

[…]

Regarding galleries the old forum used to resize when you loaded something to it and since we have had this new forum apart from testing I have not used the galleries as it is quicker to just drag and drop into a reply. I believe storage space costs money hence the resizing and size/number limits on this forum. These limits were far less to start with but I had them increased considerably.

[…]

 

Thanks for trying, Jason … but the point is:

each ‘Participant’ has an allowance of Gallery space, which is ‘metered’ … and I have plenty of space remaining.

We are permitted to upload individual image files of up to 10MB.

It seemed reasonable [*] to upload my 600dpi scan into my gallery, specifically because there is no need to put big images on the the forum pages.

… but it shows as 900×900 pixels.

MichaelG.

.

[*] __ a particularly inappropriate word in the context of this forum.

.

[JasonBModerator @jasonb]

For Ian P

[Michael Gilligan]

On Michael Gilligan Said:

We are permitted to upload individual image files of up to 10MB.

.

My guess is that 10MB is the largest the system is set to take in and process but not what it will actually store and display.

Anyway high res or lower res even with the packaging removed it’s easy enough to see that there are big differences in the hole spacing. This 15KB snip of the image in your gallery is good enough to see that

[Michael GilliganParticipant @michaelgilligan61133]

My guess is that the Dog’s Breakfast is now making  its way through his Alimentary Canal, and will soon hit the fan.

The reduction in my remaining space was commensurate with the big file that I uploaded, but it is nowhere to be seen.

MichaelG.

[Michael GilliganParticipant @michaelgilligan61133]

[Michael GilliganParticipant @michaelgilligan61133]

I think I will be out of here soon … ^^^

MichaelG.

[JasonBModerator @jasonb]

Interesting Michael as I uploaded 4 images of a total of 7.2MB ( 4 x 1.8MB) before posting my earlier replies which is 5.6% of 128MB yet it still shows that I have 97% to use?

If things carry on as normal with your dog it will turn out to be what I said somewhere and it needs a hell of a lot of polishing

[duncan webster 1Participant @duncanwebster1]

😢

[JasonB]

On JasonB Said:

For Ian P

I don’t recall reading that post at the time, (it was 7 weeks ago) but it seems your prediction has come true!

You wrote that not much more than speed and latest posts were likely to be addressed

However it did not stop users reporting problems they found and hoping/expecting they would be fixed. TBH I did not bother making replies about the items I thought needed attention because they mostly duplicated what was already reported by others.

Ian P

[Colin BishopModerator @colinbishop34627]

Model boats is on a different server so runs faster, and don’t ask me why this one can’t be moved to it.

I don’t think it is that Jason. My understanding is that the Model Boats Forum has only a fraction of the data and number of users as this one. The reason it is on a different server is that when the initial changeover took place issues with this forum were dragging down server performance and affecting both forums alike. Once MB was moved it made less demand on the WordPress system and server which struggled to cope with the much bigger ME forum so moving this one over won’t solve the problem.

In fact I’m told that Mortons are not happy with running MB on a separate server and intend transferring it back once(!) the outstanding issues on this Forum, in particular speed, have been resolved. As per other comments above, I’m not sure what priority is being given to this at the moment though.

Those on this forum who know about WordPress have speculated that the configuration used for ME/MEW needs to be scaled up to process the greater data processing demands than those which occur on MB.

MB speed is generally acceptable but not brilliant. I find this forum usable but the lag is irritating. My members welcone the much better image handling facilitie over the old forum.

Colin

Model Boats Moderator

 

[Ian PParticipant @ianp]

I have not used the new gallery features yet but the ability to drag/drop (even massive) image files into a reply or gallery is a good. It is completely normal for website software (e.g. on forums, eBay etc) to automatically reduce the filesize.

If I uploaded a large image file into the ‘files’ section (if we have one now) then I would expect it to be treated as would a PDF or DXF and not compressed or altered.

Ian P

[Author]

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