What would you change about the new SFN?

[Cap'n Refsmmat]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but SFN runs on the principle of rule by a minority.

 

Regardless, there is now a SFN Blue style available in the style switcher. It looks very boring.

[Genecks]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but SFN runs on the principle of rule by a minority.

 

Regardless, there is now a SFN Blue style available in the style switcher. It looks very boring.

 

Thanks. I think it looks excellent.

It's takes part of the past color scheme and applies it in a new layout.

[michel123456]

Question: is it possible to customize the "new content" by inputting the date & hour of our choice? for example "new content from 2 days ago" or something like that.

[Cap'n Refsmmat]

Unfortunately, no. However, there is an option for View New Content that you may like:

 

http://www.scienceforums.net/index.php?app=core&module=usercp

 

Under "View New Content Method" you can choose to have it work by your last visit time or by tracking which threads you have and have not read. The latter option will have it show old threads if you haven't read them, even if they haven't been updated since your last visit. It should be very handy for people who don't read everything in New Content every time they visit SFN.

[Klaynos]

There is also a new content in the last 24h link at the bottom of the main forum page.

[ParanoiA]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but SFN runs on the principle of rule by a minority.

 

 

Oddly enough, my libertarian sensibilities are not at all offended by this minority ruling class of SFN. Probably because that same minority seems to be doing all the heavy lifting around here. Thanks for the hard work, Cap'n and company.

 

 

I would like to mention something weird I've noticed though. When I'm browsing, reading posts and such, if I highlight some text the page becomes unresponsive for several seconds, and any scrolling happens like a delayed effect. In general it does have this weird delayed feeling using the site.

 

I will say though, I didn't vote for that SFN logo - but it looks damn good. It's grown on me already.

Edited July 21, 2010 by ParanoiA

[Cap'n Refsmmat]

What web browser are you using? (If it's Internet Explorer, what version?)

 

If you're not sure about the specific version details, just visit What's My User Agent? and copy and paste the user agent string here.

 

In terms of webserver performance, we're nearly as fast as we can get. Half of our response time is simply the time it takes to get to the datacenter in the UK and back. I suspect some of the slowness is down to the style we're using and how it renders in webbrowsers.

[ParanoiA]

Well that's weird, I'm using IE 7.0, here at work, but I just had to click that link:

 

Your User Agent: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0; Windows NT 5.1; ATT; .NET CLR 2.0.50727; .NET CLR 1.1.4322; .NET CLR 3.0.04506.648; .NET CLR 3.5.21022; MS-RTC LM 8; ATT; ATT)

 

 

Mozilla?

 

 

Anyway, it's not a terrible issue or anything. Just something I've noticed that I just thought was odd. I figured if I'm scrolling, clicking inactive areas and highlighting text - or as I like to call it, eFidgeting - then there would be no back and forth messaging going on in order to experience a delay or whatever. I guess there's more to it than that.

Edited July 21, 2010 by ParanoiA

[Cap'n Refsmmat]

The "Mozilla" reference is a leftover from the old days. Some sites use user-agents to tell what features browsers support, and back when Netscape (internally called Mozilla) was dominant, Internet Explorer called itself "Mozilla" in user-agent strings so sites would think it supports fancy features, instead of giving IE a degraded version of the site.

 

Something like that.

 

There indeed should be no back-and-forth communication when you're highlighting and scrolling and so on. We don't get to keep records of your eFidgeting so we can send targeted marketing data to Ritalin manufacturers. It's possible that the way the HTML is structured makes it difficult for some browsers to scroll it. I'll have to experiment on my Windows machine.

 

I just realized that I had put the Google Analytics code in completely the wrong place. It's fixed now. Perhaps that has been causing some of the speed problems. Anyone notice a change?

[ParanoiA]

Hmm, maybe so. I'm at home now and my eFidgeting is quite responsive. Thank goodness...

[michel123456]

There is also a new content in the last 24h link at the bottom of the main forum page.

 

Thanks. That's what I was looking for.

 

The next improvement could be to make a forum that anyone can customize entirely, like a desktop, with shortcuts at whish & all sort of backgrounds & customizable colors a.s.o.

 

For example I find frustrating not to have the ability to move the "today's active content" next to the "new content" in each page of the forum.

Edited July 22, 2010 by michel123456

[D H]

I'll try to be nice: The search tools in this new setup are awful. (Whew, no curse words. Told ya' I'd try to be nice.)

 

• The "View New Content" button has a rather random view of what is new. How do I find the posts made in the last day? The last two days?
• How do I find posts made by a particular user? Going to the user's profile and clicking "posts" shows the full text of the last two or three posts made by the user.
• Want to search for content? Doing a search forums gives random nonsense. Doing a google search on "<content> site://scienceforums.net" is much more likely to find what you are searching for.

 

 

Edit: I now see that you have the merge working

But it doesn't show a separator between the merged posts.

 

Another issue: Touch a post, even 5 seconds after you post it, and you get "This post has been edited by ..." displayed at the bottom of the post. Any way to make that only show up if there is some reasonable lag between the initial post and the edit?

Edited August 12, 2010 by D H

[Cap'n Refsmmat]

Point-by-point:

• View New Content gives you whatever has been posted since you last visited the site. If you want the last day's worth of posts, you want "Today's Active Content," in the blue bar near the bottom of the forum index. (Yeah, that location sucks.) Or, you can hit My Settings in the top right, and scroll to Search Settings. You can opt to have it track everything you've read, and show you all unread posts regardless of when you last visited.
• "Find My Content" on the left-hand side of their profile.
• Well... the search works exactly the same way as vBulletin's old search, so I'm not sure what I can do. What's particularly randomly nonsensical about it?

Also, unfortunately I have no option for a merged posts separator or an edit time limit. I'm stuck with the default behavior there.

[D H]

Point-by-point:

• View New Content gives you whatever has been posted since you last visited the site. If you want the last day's worth of posts, you want "Today's Active Content," in the blue bar near the bottom of the forum index. (Yeah, that location sucks.)

OK, thanks for that. And yes, the location sucks. When the underlying software thinks I have last visited seems quite random. Sometimes it will thinks I last visited 8 minutes ago, other times, two days ago. The appearance is that it just pulls a number out of the hat.

 

• Well... the search works exactly the same way as vBulletin's old search, so I'm not sure what I can do. What's particularly randomly nonsensical about it?

Does it really? I got completely random results when I tried to search for 41,000. The old search tool had lots of options. I could make it search only in selected subfora, look only for posts by a particular user, have it report results either as posts or as threads. I can't even find an advanced search tool with this new scheme.

 

 

Another complaint: The underlying formatter is both too smart and too stupid at the same time. Heck, it is worse than Microstuff's Word, which is saying a mouthful. It is very easy to get mixed fonts when cutting and pasting. It is very easy to get stuck in a list. Where is the Make plain text button?

Edited August 12, 2010 by D H

[Cap'n Refsmmat]

OK, thanks for that. And yes, the location sucks. When the underlying software thinks I have last visited seems quite random. Sometimes it will thinks I last visited 8 minutes ago, other times, two days ago. The appearance is that it just pulls a number out of the hat.

It's hard to track last-visited times. If I could make it default to properly tracking your unread posts -- as vBulletin did -- I would. I'll check over on the IPB support forums, actually. And I'll see about moving Today's Active Content to a more reasonable location...

 

Does it really? I got completely random results when I tried to search for 41,000. The old search tool had lots of options. I could make it search only in selected subfora, look only for posts by a particular user, have it report results either as posts or as threads. I can't even find an advanced search tool with this new scheme.

That's because the Advanced Search is hidden behind an obtuse little icon. See the little gear next to the search box? Yeah, that's it.

 

I like our new look, but some things are rather hidden. I'm going to register some complaints on the company's website; they actually listen to complaints, surprisingly.

 

Another complaint: The underlying formatter is both too smart and too stupid at the same time. Heck, it is worse than Microstuff's Word, which is saying a mouthful. It is very easy to get mixed fonts when cutting and pasting. It is very easy to get stuck in a list. Where is the Make plain text button?

There's no button to jump back and forth, but you can go to My Settings and uncheck "Enable visual (RTE) editor?"

[jackson33]

I'm sure this is something trivial, but in looking up a new member, seen earlier (newest member)and know his work well (DrmDoc) to send a welcoming message to (accomplished), the page number option did not work. I place a number in the box, entered and it went back to page one. If there is no cost involved, you might consider having a user name option on page one, where a poster can enter and go directly to that poster, either in the members list or directly to the profile...

[Cap'n Refsmmat]

That's interesting. For some page numbers, it works. For others, it doesn't. I may have to submit a support request about that.

 

You can use "Use advanced filters" to search by name and so on in the mean time.

[Cap'n Refsmmat]

Does it really? I got completely random results when I tried to search for 41,000. The old search tool had lots of options. I could make it search only in selected subfora, look only for posts by a particular user, have it report results either as posts or as threads. I can't even find an advanced search tool with this new scheme.

 

You know, now that you mention it, I'm going to install a new search system that promises to make search results actually sorted by relevancy, instead of the usual sorted-by-date crapshoot where you get every topic where your search words were posted in completely different posts on four different pages.

 

Hope it works.

[Pantaz]

I really miss the topic preview on mouse-hover. Yes, I know about the hidden-until-mouse-over "click for preview" icon -- took me a while to discover that, by the way. That extra click for a preview just annoys me. Every other forum I visit regularly has a hover for preview feature.

[iNow]

In the search results (like View New Content), can the characters allowed for thread titles be increased? You did this in the old version, and it was very helpful, but we're again experiencing truncated titles in the search results since the upgrade. Thx.

[divagreen]

Can we have a "jump to: /insert forum here" somewhere on the page? I see a thread search but not a "jump to" section that would enable the user to navigate the forums without having to jump to the main forum page...it would be a time saver.

[Cap'n Refsmmat]

When viewing a topic, go just below the last post and just above the Fast Reply box, on the right in the light blue bar. There's a drop-down forum chooser there.

[divagreen]

I see it...thank you!

[ewmon]

I wish for a "View Latest Content" function, maybe replacing the "View New Content" function — or maybe a "View ??? Content" and pick Latest, Unread, etc from a menu.

[Mr Skeptic]

Well there's the "active content", all the latest posts of the day. Hard to find though, it is way at the bottom. Or, you can log out, click view new content, and then log in or bookmark the page.

 

Yes, we do need better lists of our content.