Updated Forum Now On Line. Give it a go...

[Allan]

Much better but it still uses nearly half the screen on an iPad before anything useful appears. The banner could be smaller if the word Forum was moved to the right of the logo and there is a substantial white space below the banner.

Clearing cache is all very good but I don’t know an option to clear it just for one site. So it destroys all my other site histories and cookies. Can you not force the latest version I.e. tell it not to use cache. At least until development is finished.

What is the limit on image size, I tried to upload a fairly small one and it told me that it was too big.

My comments are intended to help, not criticise, your work is truly appreciated

[russell]

I might be missing something but I don't see any clear indication of which topics have unread posts or is it just my eyesight?

FYI I'm viewing the forum on an HP laptop using Firefox running under Linux Mint.

Russell
P.S. Just spotted it. The blue circle changes to red but is not very visible. Could the background of that circle change colour perhaps?

[russell]

Just checked on my Android phone and it is much more readable than the old version. Well done.

Russell

[Madeleine]

Thank you for sorting the look of PMs. Please could you do the same with the User Control Panel Menu e.g. Inbox, Sent Messages are in black with no writing visible. Look is OK on a PC but not on iPad or iPhone.

I tried to load a screenshot but using an iPad I could not see the "place inline" tab in attachments.Screenshot.jpg But works OK on PC.

This should not now be happening as I sorted it out yesterday. You need to clear cache on the Ipad or just bear with it until the cache clears itself.

I might be missing something but I don't see any clear indication of which topics have unread posts or is it just my eyesight?

FYI I'm viewing the forum on an HP laptop using Firefox running under Linux Mint.

Russell
P.S. Just spotted it. The blue circle changes to red but is not very visible. Could the background of that circle change colour perhaps?

I could recolour all of the images like this

forum_unread.gif

Or an alternative is to look at unread posts on the "Quick Links" menu.

Much better but it still uses nearly half the screen on an iPad before anything useful appears. The banner could be smaller if the word Forum was moved to the right of the logo and there is a substantial white space below the banner.

Clearing cache is all very good but I don’t know an option to clear it just for one site. So it destroys all my other site histories and cookies. Can you not force the latest version I.e. tell it not to use cache. At least until development is finished.

What is the limit on image size, I tried to upload a fairly small one and it told me that it was too big.

My comments are intended to help, not criticise, your work is truly appreciated

Hi Allan,
The IPad has been set to use the same header as a desktop, so it shouldn't be too large. I've cleared cache at the server level after each change, but browser caches will need to be cleared to see the changes. I understand your reluctance to do so on the IPad but there is no alternative.
The image size limit was 256kb, I've now upped it to 500kb.

[martyn94]

One small point. The site used to say whether you actually had any (unread) private messages, and if so how many. It was quite useful: considering how much flak I have sometimes attracted on the forum, I used to expect lots more as PMs. But in the event I have almost never had them. But I have had the odd pleasant PM, which I would often have missed had I not been reminded to look once every few weeks.

But maybe all will come good when the footprint shrinks a bit. I wait and hope: I wouldn’t know how to clear the caches on my iPad to save my life (except that if I did actually have to save my life, I would probably be able to find out, given time and an internet connection: it would make a good end to one of those films where Tom Cruise or someone saves us all from Kingdom Come with 00.1 seconds left on the timer of the anthrax bomb).

[Madeleine]

One small point. The site used to say whether you actually had any (unread) private messages, and if so how many. It was quite useful: considering how much flak I have sometimes attracted on the forum, I used to expect lots more as PMs. But in the event I have almost never had them. But I have had the odd pleasant PM, which I would often have missed had I not been reminded to look once every few weeks.

But maybe all will come good when the footprint shrinks a bit. I wait and hope: I wouldn’t know how to clear the caches on my iPad to save my life (except that if I did actually have to save my life, I would probably be able to find out, given time and an internet connection: it would make a good end to one of those films where Tom Cruise or someone saves us all from Kingdom Come with 00.1 seconds left on the timer of the anthrax bomb).

Hi Martin,
This shows you how to clear your cache on an iphone or ipad: https://www.macworld.co.uk/how-to/iphon ... e-3609079/. The downside is that there is no way to do it selectively. It will also delete all cookies and browsing history. The footprint changed 2 days ago, all design tweaks are now finished with the exception of the "unread" posts icon which I was waiting for some feedback on.
You should receive a notification if there are any unread PMs. The notification panel is on the right of the Quick Links navbar.

[Allan]

Having cleared my iPad cache, the banner is still different from the PC version and their is no search box.
I have a link on my iPad that takes me directly to new messages and that has a substantial area of blank space above the Go to advanced search link. Having said that, I see the same blank space on the PC site.

There looks to me an unnecessarily large space between lines, I appreciate that readability is important but spreading the pages out so much makes using a mobile device less attractive.

Sorry to sound like I am nit-picking, I am just trying to help.

[Madeleine]

Sorry to sound like I am nit-picking, I am just trying to help.

Don't worry about "nit-picking". I thought you were still looking at the old one. I don't have an Ipad so can't check on mine, but this is what I get with the simulator

ipad.jpg

I think your large space must be because you are not showing the time and date and your last visit, but the design is still leaving the space for it. I can change the break points so that the "FORUM" moves up and the search bar reappears as per the version when you turn the IPad the other way and the desktop.
Alternatively I can lose the search bar to make it more streamlined

2018-10-25_1209.png

[Helen]

On my very old iPad 2 the display looks like this in portrait..... but even in landscape it includes more of the forum than either of the images above

[Helen]

But I also meant to add that I seem to intermittently lose some of the options from the Quick Links Drop Down menu - both on iPad and macbook. Sometimes they're all there, and sometimes they're not - only the last four options show i.e. from Active Posts downwards.

Or do you have to be logged in to get access to all 8 options?

[Madeleine]

Yes, it needs to know who you are to be able to show unread posts as it is only the ones that you've not read.

[Anthea & Tim]

Hi Madeleine,
Thanks for the feedback and the prompt responses.
I have cleared the cache on the iPhone but User Control Panel is still difficult to read, but OK on PC or laptop

86FC0DE3-C183-47A7-B088-1634A0FC8DA2.png

[Madeleine]

I have cleared the cache on the iPhone but User Control Panel is still difficult to read, but OK on PC or laptop

Whoops, sorry about that. There was a piece of code where I wasn't expecting it to be that was throwing it out. It should now be displaying in line with the rest of the site.

[Anthea & Tim]

User Control Panel now works OK on iPad/iPhone, thank you Madeleine.

[Madeleine]

User Control Panel now works OK on iPad/iPhone, thank you Madeleine.

[martyn94]

One small point. The site used to say whether you actually had any (unread) private messages, and if so how many. It was quite useful: considering how much flak I have sometimes attracted on the forum, I used to expect lots more as PMs. But in the event I have almost never had them. But I have had the odd pleasant PM, which I would often have missed had I not been reminded to look once every few weeks.

But maybe all will come good when the footprint shrinks a bit. I wait and hope: I wouldn’t know how to clear the caches on my iPad to save my life (except that if I did actually have to save my life, I would probably be able to find out, given time and an internet connection: it would make a good end to one of those films where Tom Cruise or someone saves us all from Kingdom Come with 00.1 seconds left on the timer of the anthrax bomb).

You should receive a notification if there are any unread PMs. The notification panel is on the right of the Quick Links navbar.
[/quote]

The virtue of the old system is that it just told you if you had any new PMs on the page I first hit. I don’t see myself checking the ““Quick Links” navbar” every time I visit (or ever at all), even if I could translate it into English. Two key-strokes rather than none is a deal-breaker for me when they will aImost always come up with nothing. I will rarely if ever mind if I miss a PM, but the person who wrote it might.

[martyn94]

One other question. Has anything happened to improve the Search function (particularly as regards posts predating the update)? The only times I’ve tried it, it was pretty much a lemon. This is not meant to be a criticism: it would just be worth knowing whether it’s worth bothering with any more than it has been in the past.

[Madeleine]

The virtue of the old system is that it just told you if you had any new PMs on the page I first hit. I don’t see myself checking the ““Quick Links” navbar” every time I visit (or ever at all), even if I could translate it into English. Two key-strokes rather than none is a deal-breaker for me when they will aImost always come up with nothing. I will rarely if ever mind if I miss a PM, but the person who wrote it might.

Hi Martin,
It should just show that you have a notification at the top of your screen when you log in, unless your settings are not right. They could have got scrambled in the conversion. They should look like this:

notification settings.jpg

Regards,
Madeleine

[Madeleine]

Don't know about the search settings. I've just used the standard ones in the package but they may well have improved as we're now on version 3.2.3 of the software and the old one was 2.0 which was obsolete over 10 years ago.

[PatrickF]

Yipee, back in and enjoying the forum.

[Helen]

Has anything happened to improve the Search function (particularly as regards posts predating the update)?

Remembering the problem before the update, when much historical data seemed to have been lost, I decided to try a few searches. It's certainly accessing posts made way back in time - scary to see posts I'd written well over 10 years ago! Where has all that time gone?

[Gus Morris]

Works fine for me. Functionality unimpaired from my perspective. Display OK on my laptop (Windows 10) and classic PC (Ubuntu) with 1680 x 1050 monitor.

Gus