Everyone,

We've obviously changed the software the Forge runs on. My apologies for the current looks of it. It's all unintegrated and wacko. Give me a day or two to finish, but feel free to go ahead and use the software as is right now.

I miss the "Recent Topics" search link from the older forums. Does SMF have a similar feature?

Selene wrote:
I miss the "Recent Topics" search link from the older forums. Does SMF have a similar feature?

Seriously, is this thing faster? It feels like I'm driving a race car over here.

Well, I've got a wierd problem.  I'm using Firefox under Linux.  When I view a thread, I scroll with the mouse wheel like I'm sure everyone else does.  However now, I'll get basically past the first message and hit a dead zone, where I can't scroll at all.  So I have to manually pull down from the side.  I went over to Simple Machines community forum and have the same problem.  In researching and setting it up, did you run across anyone else having this problem at all Clinton?

Note my scroll wheel works just fine everywhere else and actually works at the forge outside of viewing a thread.

Uzzah wrote:
Well, I've got a wierd problem.  I'm using Firefox under Linux.  When I view a thread, I scroll with the mouse wheel like I'm sure everyone else does.  However now, I'll get basically past the first message and hit a dead zone, where I can't scroll at all.  So I have to manually pull down from the side.  I went over to Simple Machines community forum and have the same problem.  In researching and setting it up, did you run across anyone else having this problem at all Clinton?

Note my scroll wheel works just fine everywhere else and actually works at the forge outside of viewing a thread.

Clinton wrote:
Happens to me too - here and at Gmail. It's something about the way they make the search text boxes - Firefox totally gets trapped in them. However, since I've seen it at several websites (including my own weblog, not Gmail. But whatever...) I'm totally putting that one off on Firefox.

Hey Clinton,

Did we lose the "saved messages" section of private messages?

Paul

Also, I seem to be missing several recently received private messages.

Paul

Paul wrote:
Also, I seem to be missing several recently received private messages.

Paul

On the private message issue: saved messages are still there, but they're integrated into your other private messages now. No one should be missing any private messages according to my accounting, but I could be wrong.

I will look into finding an extension for the forum software that allows for saved private messages in a separate queue.

Wow.  VERY interesting.  I know you're gonna be adjusting here and there for a bit.  Just wanted to say that I like the current color scheme. 

Still, it's gonna take my brain a while to adjust. 

Clinton,

Just so you know, old posts don't seem to be accessible. I can't reach the posts listed in "The Infamous Five."

Yes, the forum feels much faster- at least on my end. Go go gadget Clinton! :)

Miskatonic wrote:
Clinton,

Just so you know, old posts don't seem to be accessible. I can't reach the posts listed in "The Infamous Five."

Ack! [glow=black,2,300]I'm an idiot![/glow] The default sort order for private messages is reversed. The ones I came looking for this morning, and couldn't find, were at the bottom of the page.

Paul wrote:
Ack! [glow=black,2,300]I'm an idiot![/glow] The default sort order for private messages is reversed. The ones I came looking for this morning, and couldn't find, were at the bottom of the page.

I'm very much liking the new format. However...

Am I totally blind, or is the Favorites feature no longer around. I had a bunch of threads that I had saved as favorites, and I'd hate to have to search for them everytime I want to reread them. However, being a librarian, I will certainly search for them everytime if I have to--it's not really that big a deal.

joshua wrote:
Am I totally blind, or is the Favorites feature no longer around. I had a bunch of threads that I had saved as favorites, and I'd hate to have to search for them everytime I want to reread them. However, being a librarian, I will certainly search for them everytime if I have to--it's not really that big a deal.

Clinton wrote: It's currently not present. The data is preserved, and will be restored with a new format. I decided to do all this yesterday, so we're not completely to where we're going yet.

Just a navigation question within topics...

At the bottom and top of the threads the word "Page" is listed followed by each numbered page.

Will there be a "next page", "previous page", "last page", "first page" option available?

btw... what new software is this.  It's actually kind of exciting; although I was a bit flummoxed when I first signed on.

Asrogoth wrote:
btw... what new software is this.  It's actually kind of exciting; although I was a bit flummoxed when I first signed on.

I could have sworn that the "time adjust" profile setting in the previous software was based on GMT. The currect software's base time is Pacific time. Took me a while to figure out how everyone was posting in the future.

Look ma! I don't have to pester Clinton if I want my display name changed!

Say, links to Essays and Bookshelf and all that will be returning at some point, yes?

Hey, I like the new code.  I've only got one little quibble with it.  The icons to the left of the Threads that indicate whether something has been read, unread, etc are difficult to distinquish from each other at a glance.  Is there any way to make the colors of those icons contrast a little more?

Other than that, I really like everything.

Larry wrote:
Say, links to Essays and Bookshelf and all that will be returning at some point, yes?

Gaerik wrote:
Hey, I like the new code.  I've only got one little quibble with it.  The icons to the left of the Threads that indicate whether something has been read, unread, etc are difficult to distinquish from each other at a glance.  Is there any way to make the colors of those icons contrast a little more?

Change is good. Yay, Clinton!

Heya,

I like how the forum sections are all collapsable. It's easier to navigate now and really find what I'm looking for.  Nice work, Clinton.

EDIT: The only problem I seem to be having is when I click a link in a post to another thread, the popup window is just the Forge home site.  Specifically in this thread: http://www.indie-rpgs.com/forum/index.php?topic=15974.msg170305#msg170305

Peace,

-Troy

Oh, and where are the articles and reviews?

Peace,

-Troy

Troy_Costisick wrote:
EDIT: The only problem I seem to be having is when I click a link in a post to another thread, the popup window is just the Forge home site.  Specifically in this thread: http://www.indie-rpgs.com/forum/index.php?topic=15974.msg170305#msg170305

Heya,

In that thread, when I click on the "Plagiarism. good plagiarism" link, it just takes me back to the Forge home page.  I'm using IE with all the most recent patches, so I don't think it's my browser. :(

Peace,

-Troy

How do I access and use Moderator features?  (particularly sticky threads.)

yrs--
--Ben

I have verified the issue Troy is having.

Larry wrote:
I have verified the issue Troy is having.

Clinton wrote:
Seriously, is this thing faster? It feels like I'm driving a race car over here.

Yep, it is fast. It also renders much nicer on my phone with the images turned off than the previous code did. Partly because more of the buttons have alt text, so it's much more user friendly in that regard, but also in other ways. The text in the tables wraps better, so I don't have to do that pain-in-the-ass back-and-forth horizontal panning to read a line of text. I'm liking it.

And a question: is there any way to set my profile so my signature doesn't always appear? Where I have to check a box when I post if I do want it to appear?

Paul

Paul wrote:
Yep, it is fast. It also renders much nicer on my phone with the images turned off than the previous code did. Partly because more of the buttons have alt text, so it's much more user friendly in that regard, but also in other ways. The text in the tables wraps better, so I don't have to do that pain-in-the-ass back-and-forth horizontal panning to read a line of text. I'm liking it.

And a question: is there any way to set my profile so my signature doesn't always appear? Where I have to check a box when I post if I do want it to appear?

Is there something that can be done about the font used? I find the text very
difficult to read follow and concentrate upon (maybe because it's sans-serif?) - especially in large posts, which are not rare at the Forge. It's really turned reading this site from a pleasure into a chore, I'm afraid.

I'm reading this in Firefox if that matters.

Clinton wrote:

Larry wrote:
I have verified the issue Troy is having.

I have just fixed it. Good call.

Nick wrote:

I'm still having problems clicking on links to old threads. They all take me to the [glow=red,2,300]Forge[/glow] home page. (Using IE6 with all patches, natch).

Heya,

In my most recent forum read I've been getting weird text wrapping issues (I noticed in this thread and have seen it since then in most other threads). I keep my browser window at about 3/4 the width of my display, and it looks like it cuts off the last couple letters of some lines. If I expand my window all the way they appear. I'm browsing with Firefox 1.0.3 on a Powerbook. If it's a browser issues, that's fine, but if not...

Clinton,

Am I overlooking a delete post button function? Thor posted a duplicate post in the Chimera Creative form, and I can't figure out how to delete the duplicate.

is just me, or are there no more Announcement or Sticky options for Moderators?

thanks,
-Luke

Luke,

Click "Additional options" when you post. Sticky's there. Announcement's gone and is just sticky.

Love the new software, Clinton. Thanks for all your hard work getting it up and running. I'm not crazy about the font, but you can't please everyone. I do find quote boxes all but unreadable now, though. They're black text on dark purple at what appears to be 4 pixel type. Yeah... I know... bitch bitch bitch. :-)

I second John's post ;)

There's just another thing I really miss from the old forum: the fact that you could log in from any machine and the unread threads where still correct. Here the last time visited seems to be stored in a cookie on each individual machine.

Trains my memory... :)

[edit: Didn't notice the "mark read" button... so actually there's no problem at all!]

John wrote:
Love the new software, Clinton. Thanks for all your hard work getting it up and running. I'm not crazy about the font, but you can't please everyone. I do find quote boxes all but unreadable now, though. They're black text on dark purple at what appears to be 4 pixel type. Yeah... I know... bitch bitch bitch. :-)

A minor gripe, I know, but I find the colour of visited links hard to distinguish from body text, any chance of a more distinct colour?

Also, could we have unread threads names in bold?

Am I missing something? When I go into a forum, it's easy to see which threads have new posts, but when I go into the thread itself, I see no indicator of the new posts, so I have to try and remember what I last read.

Frank

I can't tell which threads are new. Am I missing something?

Warning: this post consists of pure enthusiasm.

I just ran into the "someone has posted since you last read this topic" message, and it's totally awesome. What a fantastic feature. Thanks Clinton!

If you haven't seen it yet, when the page comes up to reply to a thread, if someone posted something between when you loaded the thread to read it and you clicked Reply, a message in big red letters comes up telling you so. Totally Awesome.

Andrew wrote:
I can't tell which threads are new. Am I missing something?

Hey Clinton,

I'm seeing some properly html-coded anchors/links looking like they didn't convert over properly. Check the one in my post here:

http://www.indie-rpgs.com/forum/index.php?topic=7317.msg77440#msg77440

Paul

Nathan wrote: For me, all new topics have a little box next to the thread title on the right-hand side that says "new".

Clinton wrote: If someone has a better suggestion for fonts, I'll take it. (Note: not if it's serif, so drop that issue.)

Read before posting any further in this thread.

This is not a "demand a new feature we didn't have before" thread. I'm looking for technical issues. Not seeing unread posts? Awesome. I'll work on that.

Don't like the fonts? Fixed it once to look a lot like the older Forge. That's that.

I mean, I'm a nice guy. Feel free to suggest things. That's cool. If I see something about my "prejudices," again... well... come on. Did you really intend to come off like such a jerk?

Haven't any of you guys heard of "thank you?"

(By the way, on the font tip: it's the policy of the Forge, set long ago by Ron and I, that there would be a unified user experience. That policy would have to change before we went making all sorts of "have it your way" changes. The sans serif bit is part of that: all studies show that sans serif fonts are easier to read on a computer screen. Also, there's this thing called Greasemonkey you can use with Firefox. That'll do the trick for you.)

Thank you Clinton!

-Eric

Thanks for addressing the font issue, Clinton. Especially the quote boxes. Much, much easier to read now.

Sadly, all the fonts look good now, except the body copy of a post. It's being rendered in this strange way that I have not seen before, which makes me think it is trouble on my end (though no other webpages display this way). The font appears "dotty" for lack of a better term. But as far as I can tell, it's just Verdana. Bizarre.

Here are some images to show what I mean:

Forge font (image):
[img]http://www.onesevendesign.com/forge_1.jpg[/img]

Text from 20x20 Room (image):
[img]http://www.onesevendesign.com/forge_2.jpg[/img]

The second looks very crisp. Anyone know what's causing this? Is it just me? I'm running Firefox on Windows XP and I installed the font Clinton suggested.

John wrote:
Sadly, all the fonts look good now, except the body copy of a post. It's being rendered in this strange way that I have not seen before, which makes me think it is trouble on my end (though no other webpages display this way). The font appears "dotty" for lack of a better term. But as far as I can tell, it's just Verdana. Bizarre.

Here are some images to show what I mean:

Forge font (image):
[img]http://www.onesevendesign.com/forge_1.jpg[/img]

Verdana from 20x20 Room (image):
[img]http://www.onesevendesign.com/forge_2.jpg[/img]

Anyone know what's causing this? Is it just me? I'm running Firefox on Windows XP.

Clinton wrote: I mean, I'm a nice guy. Feel free to suggest things. That's cool. If I see something about my "prejudices," again... well... come on. Did you really intend to come off like such a jerk?

Here's what I'm going to do on the font issue. All fonts will be set up to use your default sans-serif font first, and then your default serif font. If you really hate sans-serif fonts, you can set your default sans-serif font in your browser preferences to be a serif font. (Really, you can.) Thusly, everyone picks their own font to look at the site in and hopefully you won't all flip out.

None of this indicates Shreyas' comments above were appropriate in any way. They were not, and I would appreciate it if the tone around here got cleaned up a bit.

When I select "Show unread posts since last visit" I get a list of the unread posts. But, unlike before, once I have read a thread and click back to the list of unread posts, the one I just looked at is gone from the list. While this does make more sense for a list of unread posts than the old version, I'd gotten used to it, and actually prefer it.

Also, on the "unread posts" page, I usually have two pages listed, but when I click on the second page, it takes me back to the fist page, which no longer shows a second page.

On the main page, the green yin/yang vanishes if I just look in that forum, even if I don't read any of the threads.

Awesome, Clinton! That fixed the font issue completely. Crystal clear and readable now. Thanks a lot.

Yee-haw -- we can now search on hyphenated words! 

Julie

jrs wrote:
Yee-haw -- we can now search on hyphenated words! 

Julie

Hey Clinton,

I noticed that I can no longer click on the large image of the Forge logo to go back to the main listing of forums.  No biggie, but it is something that I miss (and I keep clicking on the image with no response.)

Julie

Are the little 'new' icons working for other people? I get them next to every last topic.

Jack wrote:
Are the little 'new' icons working for other people? I get them next to every last topic.

That worked, thanks Selene.

Clinton,

Your post in http://www.indie-rpgs.com/forum/index.php?topic=15966.0 seems to be misformated after the change.

Sorry about taking so long to reply, but yes, thank you for the font changes. It's still sans, but it's a lot more readable now

Thank you.

Clinton,

I seem to no longer be moderator of my company's forum.

Other than that, I'm slowly growing used to the new software.  I hate change, but it WORKS so much better.  ;)

I don't think this has been addressed already. . . . Any word on when the Resource Library will be up? I'm currently getting a 404.

Has the link for bringing up the most recent unread topics been removed?  Or relocated and I can't find it? 

('cuz I really like that link!)

-Eric

Technocrat13 wrote:
Has the link for bringing up the most recent unread topics been removed?  Or relocated and I can't find it? 

('cuz I really like that link!)

-Eric

Hey, X, you have 270 messages, 0 are new.
Total time logged in: 22 hours and 33 minutes.
Show unread posts since last visit.
Show new replies to your posts.
July 21, 2005, 07:20:30 AM

Using Mozilla with the prefer local color settings option I can't see the action buttons. (HOME HELP ... LOGOUT)

John

Clinton wrote:
Top of the page:

Hey, X, you have 270 messages, 0 are new.
Total time logged in: 22 hours and 33 minutes.
Show unread posts since last visit.
Show new replies to your posts.
July 21, 2005, 07:20:30 AM

Ah!  The arrow!

I knew that stuff was there the other day...

Thanks Selene.

-Eric

All the links on the resource page (at least, all the ones I tried) go right back to resource page.

First, thanks for all your hard work converting to the new software, and being so responsive to user feedback!  I appreciate it.

I notice my bookmarks for the old Forge of the form http://www.indie-rpgs.com/viewtopic.php?p=164648 now just take me to the Forum home page, although bookmarks by topic/thread (?t=#) still seem to be fine.  Is there some alternate URL I can use to reach post 164648?  Any help would be greatly appreciated!

--
Carl

First of all, thanks! Looks better, works smoother, yay!

Second, though: When I click "Show new replies to your posts", sometimes some of the threads aren't there. Right now I'm getting "Sweet Dreams Cover" (http://www.indie-rpgs.com/forum/index.php?topic=15834.0;topicseen) as the newest one, although that one hasn't been posted to since July 1.

Some weird behavior I noticed today: at the main page, all the forums with posts I have not yet read show the green symbol. Yet when I click on "Show Unread Posts", the page pops up empty, telling me there are no unread posts. I can go right back to the main page, however, and find forums that indicate recent posts I have not read.

Jack wrote:
Your post in http://www.indie-rpgs.com/forum/index.php?topic=15966.0 seems to be misformated after the change.

I'm getting scroll bars appearing on some of the posts, they don't seem to follow any sensible pattern though and just clip off the last line or two.

Example: http://www.indie-rpgs.com/forum/index.php?topic=16124.0

I used the search feature today, and it was returning entire posts, even though I had that box unchecked, and had checked "topics only."

Thanks for the hard work, Clinton.

Here's a tough question: does the new format at all impact any of the rules/protocols around here? In particular, I've noticed that the first page has fewer threads on it. That, combined with the increasing member base here, means that when I come back after a week there are (to me) new posts, a week or less old, on the second page. The old protocol was always that you don't post to threads that drop off the first page, but since the first page is so very much shorter is that modified?

I'm going to post to at least one second-page thread in RPG Theory today, because someone addressed a question specifically to me that has not been answered, and waiting a week for the answer only compounds the problem. However, I will watch for an update on that policy for future reference.

As an aside, I note that there is nothing to distinguish the "stickies" anymore. It was rather confusing on the Site Discussion board where there are several of these, the software is marking everything "new" that I haven't seen since the software change, and the dates of some are confusing. If there's a way to change that, it would probably be helpful.

--M. J. Young

I know this thread's getting a little on the stale side, but I really just wanted to say thanks.  The new three-dot image that lets me know that I've posted to a thread already is really groovy for me. 

I mean, five minutes after I finish reading and posting to a thread I may not remember what the title of the thread was.  So that obvious image, nearly stark alone in it's column, helps me out a lot.

Thanks.

-Eric

Kudos and thanks for the continued efforts, particularly the new sticky icon (very nice, very clear to my mind). I also like the dots, now that I know what they are.

--M. J. Young

This thing is turning into a real beaut.

Thanks
SR
--