IMPORTANT: Forum Software Upgraded

[craigr]

The forum software was upgraded tonight. Please post here if you have any problems.

Now features:

Tapatalk integration for mobile users
Better editor
More customizations to themes
More ways to waste your time hanging out on internet forums

[MediumTex]

I think it looks great.

It's like going from a Soviet-era interface to something that looks more modern.

I'm anxious to try it out on my iphone and see how it looks with Tapatalk.

[Greg]

I like the new format. The only thing I don't was I lost my stars and now I have a boring polygon. I liked having 5 stars, it made me feel like Eisenhower (i.e. last 5-star U.S. general)

[MachineGhost]

I dont like the new format at all, especially when reading conversations.  Its harder to see the borders between different aspects because of the color scheme.

There doesn't appear to be a way to change the awful color scheme at all.  Any ideas?

[Pointedstick]

Gotta say, I'm not a huge fan of the visual changes either. Everything's bigger and seems to have more wasted padding and whitespace. Is there a green theme? I feel like green would go better with the new style than blue does. And it's irritating that it constantly bugs me to download their stupid app whenever I browse the site on my iPhone.

[l82start]

[glow=red,2,300]i am still[/glow]getting used to it.... now what do all these new buttons do[shadow=red,left] [/shadow] [suspicious]whats a suspicious viewer?[/suspicious]

other than some of the print for the links like "show unread posts" being smaller and harder to read, i like it so far

[Dieter]

I like the new format. The only thing I don't was I lost my stars and now I have a boring polygon. I liked having 5 stars, it made me feel like Eisenhower (i.e. last 5-star U.S. general)

I thought Bradly was the last 5-star (too lazy to look up right now)

[AgAuMoney]

I think I'm default theme, and I like the new look and find the various parts very distinctive. 

I must say the little blocks instead of stars are kind of boring...  Why is everything going to the melted/rounded look these days?

While such aerodynamic treated is needed for some things (like my carry piece), it's totally optional or even harmful for others.  (what good is a 'melted' shuriken?)

Overall, the new look is great.  And it sounds like the new functionality is great also even if I don't immediately see any benefit, at least I also see no harm. 

[gizmo_rat]

Can't seem to find the blink tag, but "Hide enclosed from from Suspicious Visitors" seems apt for this forum.

The quote style is now comfortably readable on my mobile, which was driving me a bit potty before.

[MediumTex]

I like the new format. The only thing I don't was I lost my stars and now I have a boring polygon. I liked having 5 stars, it made me feel like Eisenhower (i.e. last 5-star U.S. general)

It looks like that one has been resolved, Mr. 5 star forum poster.

[craigr]

I will load some new themes up to see if the colors work better for all you picky readers! Maybe I can find a gold theme just for that sub forum.

[MediumTex]

I tried it on Tapatalk and it looks good.

Much easier to read if you're on your phone.

[Greg]

I like the new format. The only thing I don't was I lost my stars and now I have a boring polygon. I liked having 5 stars, it made me feel like Eisenhower (i.e. last 5-star U.S. general)

I thought Bradly was the last 5-star (too lazy to look up right now)

You are correct Dieter. Bradley was the last. (I learned something then). Eisenhower was then just the last president to be a 5-star general.

[rickb]

There's an annoying window width issue (at least in Firefox on a Mac).  With a perfectly reasonable window size there's some horizontal elemental with a fixed width that forces horizontal (not vertical) scrolling. 

And, any chance we can now get an "ignore this thread" feature?  I'm fine with y'all discussing how many micrograms of navel lint you all have, but there are some topics I really don't care to keep up on.

[t-bear52]

Same horizontal issue with Chrome browser on a Mac.
And the font size is so small it's difficult to read. Too much eye strain.

[Gumby]

If you don't like the new look, you can simply revert to the original layout.
profile>modify profile>look & layout>current theme>change>core theme>use this theme

I don't seem to have permission to change my own theme.

In any case, the issue is a layout bug, so it should be fixed.

The problem is that the ad that appears in between the posts is set to 728x90 (known as a "Leaderboard"), which is way too large for the inner post area in this theme. The inner post area really needs a "Full Banner" ad, which is 468x60.

Turns out you can fix the layout yourself by installing an Ad blocker, but I'd much rather just see the ad fixed so that we can support the site!

[MediumTex]

We will get all of this sorted out.

Please keep making the suggestions.

rickb, we will see about the ignore feature.

Thanks.

[clacy]

I have not seen any horizontal scrolling with Firefox.

Overall I like the new look, but it would be easier to read if there could be a little more color contrast between posts in each thread. I'm sure that's an easy fix.

[craigr]

Ok ads are now smaller to fix the format problem.

We'll play with some themes to see how they look.

The ignore topic mod isn't working. I had to pull it.

Please check the them mods again. I'm sure you can change it. If not, please PM me and I'll look into it.

[MachineGhost]

If you don't like the new look, you can simply revert to the original layout.
profile>modify profile>look & layout>current theme>change>core theme>use this theme

Hallelujah!

The glare is now somewhat less intense, but the spacing between avatars and posts is way too wide.  I'm also seeing the horizontal bar in Firefox on some threads.  Its as if the text wrapping doesn't work.

[MediumTex]

If you don't like the new look, you can simply revert to the original layout.
profile>modify profile>look & layout>current theme>change>core theme>use this theme

I'm also seeing the horizontal bar in Firefox on some threads.  Its as if the text wrapping doesn't work.

The horizontal bar problem occurs when someone links an image into the post that has not been sized to fit. Although this wasn't a problem before the software update, it can be mitigated if images are sized to a maximum of (help me here, idk the limits) so that they fit into the post without creating a horizontal bar in the individual post which is making the whole page of that thread messed up.

The old package provided a scroll bar in the individual post if an image was too wide.  This one doesn't (at least not yet).

Keep the feedback coming.  We will address as much of this stuff as possible.

[MediumTex]

The horizontal bar problem occurs when someone links an image into the post that has not been sized to fit. Although this wasn't a problem before the software update, it can be mitigated if images are sized to a maximum of (help me here, idk the limits) so that they fit into the post without creating a horizontal bar in the individual post which is making the whole page of that thread messed up.

The old package provided a scroll bar in the individual post if an image was too wide.  This one doesn't (at least not yet).

Keep the feedback coming.  We will address as much of this stuff as possible.

MT, That is not true. The horizontal scroll bar is also in the individual post with the oversized image, but somehow that messes up the formatting for the whole page. It's a glitch in the software.

It would be nice if people sized their images regardless, especially graphs, as that would make the viewing experience better. Does anyone know what the maximum size is before triggering the horizontal bar?

I posted a large image yesterday and it had no scroll bar on the bottom of it and it messed up the formatting of the whole page.

I am using Firefox, so I don't know what is happening in other browsers.

[craigr]

I added this forum's url to my signature, and it has been filtered out in the post.

Yep. We get forum link spammers and the first thing they do is put a link in their signature. So links are turned off for now and probably will remain that way for security reasons.

We have also implemented brute force hacking modules to protect user accounts. Plus much heavier user filtering on the backend to check for spammers. We've been good about keeping them off, but they have gotten especially more aggressive the past few months according to the logs. We need to keep a step ahead.

I shrunk the ad images down to no longer cause the form problems. We'll get some more themes uploaded to test out. I did find a nice World of Warcraft theme for instance.

[Pointedstick]

I think I found a bug/security hole. If you start a post with a "@", then it gets posted, but you receive an error message stating:

An Error Has Occurred!
Wrong value type sent to the database. Array of integers expected. (tag_ids)

I could probably inject some nasty code in there if I was a mischievous person.

[dualstow]

I missed most of this thread because I was caught in the storm (Sandy).
Looks like most of the issues have been resolved. In any case, the forum looks great on my Mac using Chrome and a big 22" monitor.

I can't wait to get back to talking about whether or not we should remove those little sticks from dress shirt collars or keep them*, and perhaps even about stocks, bonds, cash and gold.

*("collar stays")