Tm1 forum upgrade

[Martin Ryan]

I'm about to upgrade the forum. Because this will be a full point release I have to delete everything and start again.

All going to plan I expect to have the main part of the forum back up in about an hour. I'll re-instate the mods (automatic emailing and RSS feed) on Thursday night NZ time.

[Martin Ryan]

All seems to have gone to plan. The new look might take a bit of getting used to.

[Paul Segal]

Hi Martin,

My email notifications from the forum have taken on a slightly more threatening mien than normal since the upgrade:

"You are receiving this notification because you are watching the topic "TM1
View problem" at "TM1 Forum". This topic has received a reply by Alan Kirk
said: . No more notifications will be sent until you visit the topic - or
Martin fixes the mod."

Regards

[Alan Kirk]

Hi Martin,

My email notifications from the forum have taken on a slightly more threatening mien than normal since the upgrade:

"You are receiving this notification because you are watching the topic "TM1
View problem" at "TM1 Forum". This topic has received a reply by Alan Kirk
said: . No more notifications will be sent until you visit the topic - or
Martin fixes the mod."

That's basically it. The message that you're getting at the moment is the standard one. I don't think it's intended to be menacing, just a tad socially inept. It's well meaning though; the intent is that you won't keep getting bombed with "there has been a new post" messages when those messages don't contain any useful information (unlike the mod's messages, which contain the contents). Consequently when you're notified once it won't notify you of further posts to that thread until you visit it, because you already know there's been at least one new post.

Does anyone have any thoughts on the update? The Notifications drop-down at the top seems quite neat, the inclusion of the last topic posted on the main page also. The Private Messages count now shows unread messages rather than just messages that have come in since you last visited your inbox. The Quick Links at the top left is more similar to an Android menu which seems to be the way things are going.

I'm not sure how I feel about the fixed width, though I suspect that this was intended to work in conjunction with the mobile format; if anyone has looked at the Forum on a mobile it appears to be a lot more mobile-friendly than the old one was.

We're still missing a logo, but there are other fish to be fried.

All of the other functionality should be more or less the same.

[Paul Segal]

OK, although I liked getting the full email notifications with content rather than having to go to the forum to view the topic (unless I wanted to view the whole thread on the forum or reply or somesuch). So for example:

You are receiving this notification because you are watching the forum
"Cognos TM1" at "TM1 Forum". This forum has received a new topic by AliUgur
since your last visit, "TM1 View problem". You can use the following link
to view the forum, no more notifications will be sent until you visit the
forum.

http://www.tm1forum.com/viewforum.php?f=3

If you no longer wish to watch this forum you can either click the
"Unsubscribe forum" link found in the forum above, or by clicking the
following link:

is less informative than the previous version's email which would give me the content of the post as well.

[BrianL]

I'm still poking around, but here's my initial impression:

I like the notifications drop-down. It seems much easier now to visit the site and find exactly what's new since the last visit.

I dislike the new emails. It essentially just tells me there's new content, go visit the site to see it. I used to watch entire conversations in my email and only visit the site to participate, take advantage of (much) better formatting, or see the full thread if there are a significant number of new posts. This is now a complete workflow change for me.

Can't say I've used the mobile site before, but at a first glance it looks nice and usable.

Just my $.02.

[lotsaram]

I have never used the email notification and don't think I ever will, I seem to get sufficient volumes of Spam already.

Usually I "consume" the forum via RSS reader and click through to comment only when a topic piques my interest. So my 2c is please get the RSS back up and running!

Supplemental 2c is that I'm liking the forum in a full web browser, it seems a bit quicker and snappier to render new pages. But really hating the mobile version which I would occasionally look at on the train during my commute. Another case of built in "smarts" reducing the content to fit the screen, but in so doing cuts out things that are relevant. Would be good to have an option to "display full website" rather than dumbed down mobile version.

I did try to post a screenshot of the mobile site to illustrate that point but it looks like file attachment and display in line isn't yet working. So to round it up to 5c, would be good to fix the attachments!

[jim wood]

I did try to post a screenshot of the mobile site to illustrate that point but it looks like file attachment and display in line isn't yet working. So to round it up to 5c, would be good to fix the attachments!

Interesting. I was able to do this yesterday before the site went down.....

Filter by Attribute.PNG (722 Bytes) Viewed 12361 times

It seems to be working for me know, so either there was an issue with the file or it's a security issue. Could you please try with a different image?

[lotsaram]

Hmm seems to be working now. Did you just do something?

it's working now

test.png (150.53 KiB) Viewed 12356 times

[jim wood]

Hmm seems to be working now. Did you just do something?

I didn't do anything. I'm not sure if anybody else did. Something to keep an eye on for sure.

[Martin Ryan]

Nope, haven't done anything for a few hours. Glad it fixed itself.

Yeah, the email messages you're getting now are the default ones that phpBB ship with. I know where to make the change, but it seems they've changed the tag names, so that's tonight's job.

RSS is on the list too, though from the last upgrade (about two years ago) I think user base for that can be counted on one hand.

I'll see if I can do anything about the white space, but as it's not actually broken I'll only fix it if it's just a setting somewhere. My CSS isn't good enough to re-write the template.

I'll see about the full site on mobile - I tried it this morning and thought it worked ok. Certainly a bit easier to click on the correct links than the old version. Try Googling "phpBB full site on mobile" or something to see if there's a parameter you can stick in the URL or something, otherwise I'll take a look tonight.

[hyunjia]

Great Work , Thanks so much for your effort . The new face is very nice

[Martin Ryan]

Yeah, the email messages you're getting now are the default ones that phpBB ship with. I know where to make the change, but it seems they've changed the tag names, so that's tonight's job.

Got that one fixed. Took a lot longer than I expected (not sure the glass of whiskey helped, but it made it more enjoyable) so haven't had a chance to look at the other jobs yet. Probably be next week before I get to them. Sorry RSS lovers.

[Martin Ryan]

I'll see if I can do anything about the white space, but as it's not actually broken I'll only fix it if it's just a setting somewhere. My CSS isn't good enough to re-write the template.

I made it a bit wider, though I went as far as I have and found that making it any wider made it harder to scan from one row to another, so I stopped at 1300 px.

[Alan Kirk]

I'll see if I can do anything about the white space, but as it's not actually broken I'll only fix it if it's just a setting somewhere. My CSS isn't good enough to re-write the template.

I made it a bit wider, though I went as far as I have and found that making it any wider made it harder to scan from one row to another, so I stopped at 1300 px.

It still compresses inwards, so if this is too wide for anyone they can easily shrink the width that way. (At home I run 2560*1440, so I for one never have a browser open full screen anyway unless I'm looking at large photographs.)

The change doesn't seem to have impacted the new look for mobiles; it is still "fit width to screen". I think the only way that Lotsa's request could be fulfilled is via an alternative user selectable style. But that would take some testing since I doubt anyone would want to flip back and forth between a mobile style and a full browser one. (And I'm not aware of any setting which would automatically adjust it.) But I'm actually not sure about this bit:

Another case of built in "smarts" reducing the content to fit the screen, but in so doing cuts out things that are relevant.

I'm not sure what those are. I just looked through a long post that I knew contained a fair few graphics and while those were obviously reduced in size I found that on my mobile's browser I was still able to zoom in to see the details more clearly. Same thing with code. About the only things I see missing in the mobile one are the posters post count, bio and contact details, etc. Of those, only the version field (if filled in, and filled in correctly) are really important. But perhaps there was something else?

[Paul Segal]

Thanks for the email fix Martin - much appreciated.

[hardstep]

Hi Guys
My RSS newsfeed seems to have stopped working since the forum upgrade...is there a new URL for this ?
Cheers
Nick

[Alan Kirk]

Hi Guys
My RSS newsfeed seems to have stopped working since the forum upgrade...is there a new URL for this ?
Cheers
Nick

Hi Nick,

Take a look at Martin's most recent posts in this thread.

[hardstep]

Thanks Alan
Didn't spot that comment from Martin !... My bad !
N

Hi Guys
My RSS newsfeed seems to have stopped working since the forum upgrade...is there a new URL for this ?
Cheers
Nick

Hi Nick,

Take a look at Martin's most recent posts in this thread.

[Martin Ryan]

Turns our RSS is now included out of the box, so I just needed to turn it on - which I've now done.