"First new post" isn't new at all
By
Angry_Citizen,
Posted on: 2009-08-14 07:02 in CoH and CoV General Discussions
I'm not having any problems. Sucks for yall.
I'm not sure what they did to break them. I moderate a VBulletin board and it works wonderfully.
I do agree with the rest. Fix the jump to first unread and fix it where once I have read it it STAYS READ! Freaking annoying that I mark a board read, come back to it and poof! It's got three day stale posts as unread.
Tech Support Rule #1 - They will lie to you. Usually intentionally.
Dev Digest problem solved
First new post problem solved At least I haven't experienced it yet with the arrow links. And as a bonus...a much more familiar look!
No, I didn't make either, just found them posted by others on the boards. I love this community 
Craft your inventions in AE!!
Play "Crafter's Cafe" - Arc #487283. A 1 mission, NON-COMBAT AE arc with workable invention tables!
Zombie Man's skin does NOT solve the issue being discussed here. It's a problem with the board software (or a setting in the software, as Calash indicates), and even if he were trying to do so, ZM couldn't solve it with CSS manipulation.
http://www.fimfiction.net/story/36641/My-Little-Exalt
*shrug* guess I've just been lucky. Enjoy the link to Zombie man's skin, anyway
Craft your inventions in AE!!
Play "Crafter's Cafe" - Arc #487283. A 1 mission, NON-COMBAT AE arc with workable invention tables!
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Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow
OK, I've had about as much as I can take of this nonsense. I try to be a reasonable person, when my first reaction to the new boards software was "What the hell, man! What the hell!" I thought I'd keep my cool and just give myself time to adapt. New forum software, new interface, a lot of stuff to learn. It'll be all good, right? Wrong. Not when a basic functionality such as going to the first unread post completely and plainly doesn't work.
What should "Go to first new post" do? Well, judging by its name, it should take me to the first post made into a thread since I last checked it. Fat chance. Not only does it not take me to a new post, it actually counts posts I made as new. Um, hello! They're not news to me. I made them. But, OK, technically they are new, so I can roll with that. But even that aside, this still doesn't work. Here's how the forums have been working for me all day: I haven't logged in for around a week, so when I logged into the forums today, there were a lot of new threads and a lot of old threads with new replies in them. I used the microscopic little triangle to go to the first new post in them and, lo and behold, it took me where it was supposed to. So I posted in a few threads, took a stroll around the house while the windows in my living room were being replaced, came back to the forums and decided to check out what had happened in the past half hour. You'd think the posts made AFTER I posted would be new, but no! The little triangle thing kept taking me back to the OLD posts that had been newest when I first came online today, but were no longer newest or unread. I read them. In fact, I quoted them. It's kind of hard to quote someone if you haven't read his post. The "Quote" button is right next to each post, so I have to at least have had the post drawn on my screen. But no, that's still undread and the damn function keeps bringing me there, so I have to scroll down, flip through the pages and manually find the last post I read. Well what the HELL is the point of having an option to take me to the first new post if it doesn't take me to the first new post but some random location in the thread so I have to manually look for the REAL first post? At that point, I may as well start from page one. I tried to give these forums a chance, I really did. But it's just one thing after another. The colour scheme sucks, the functionality is down the toilet for the most basic stuff, direct-poster replies and multi-level quotes are gone... And now I'm finding that the most basic functionality of any forum - finding where you left off a thread - isn't working right. Oh, and the Dev Digest is still gone, to the point where players are having to make their own. Now, I'm grateful to the many people who have rigged up versions of the digest, but come on! What did this forum shuffle fix that was worth breaking practically everything? I'm sorry. I just finally feel fully justified in being very loudly indignant. This is an absurd, embarrassing step down from what we had before, and it's only getting worse. *edit* And for the love of pi, where did the link to the official game site go? The old forums had a link to the effect of "Go back to City of Heroes" which brought you back to cityofheroes.com. No such thing exists now, and even clicking the banner up top brings me to http://boards.cityofheroes.com/index.php, the root of the forums (for which a link already exists) rather than back to the official site. Since I don't have any tabs with it open right now, the only way to check the server status is to open a brand new tab and write in the url by hand. Why was this functionality removed? Was it a problem to have a basic link of convenience? |
Just to be a complete wisearse and purely for simplistic (But somewhat extensive) humor, I'm quoting this without reading it...
Okay... Now I am going back and reading the rest of this.
By the way... am I the only person that constantly gets taken to new posts way past previous new posts that I have not yet read when clicking on the little triangles? Everyone's always complaining that they get taken to posts they've seen already... But I get taken past several posts (Sometimes pages) further than I've yet to read. It's kind of like a hyper-active fast forward button. I then have to scroll up, up, up for a while until I finally find a post I've already seen!
EDIT: And let me tell you that this shooting too far forward in threads has killed a lot of suspense and enjoyment in reading these things. It ruins it when I know that the debates about whether AE is killing the game and/or whether GR is Issue 17 or not aren't going to come to a resolution in the previous replies I'm having to scroll up to read... Okay... carry on ;op
@Zethustra
"Now at midnight all the agents and the superhuman crew come out
and round up everyone that knows more than they do"-Dylan
and round up everyone that knows more than they do"-Dylan
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This has happened three more times since I made this post.
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Originally Posted by Dispari
Hitting "first new post" for this thread just took me to the OP.
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Originally Posted by PRAF68_EU
Dispari has more than enough credability, and certainly doesn't need to borrow any from you.
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I hope this doesn't make me sound like a jerk, but the fact that it bothers you guys does actually make me feel a little better |
Originally Posted by Castle
You have NO IDEA how much I've yelled over this particular issue. All I can say is, we're working on it...and it CANNOT possibly be fixed fast enough for my own tastes.
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Not because I like you being bothered, no, no, no! But because it does reassure me that this IS a real problem and it IS being worked on with some priority. And knowing that is good enough for me. I can wait for a solution to the problem, and with the player-made Developer's Digest, the boards are just about usable.When developers come over to the boards and share our problems, well... One of the things I liked about the original forums was how much the developers themselves felt like an integral part of the community and how approachable they were as people. Gathering around a common problem so we can hate it together sort of reminds me of that, and it makes me feel better
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Originally Posted by Arcanaville
Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.
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Okay, okay, whoah slow down there people. Before we get all DOOMY around here, let's see what we can do to try to help fix the problem.
Yes, I ALSO had the problem with the "new post" link not working correctly, it was irritating as hell, so I found a solution that has worked for myself and for others, please try it out.
As for your avatar "disappearing"? That only happens when you do a quick reply to a thread, and it ONLY happens ON that quick reply when it pastes it on to the page. When you hit refresh, the avatar will be back. It's because the forums are actually posting your reply instantly into the same window without refreshing, that's why your avatar doesn't load right away.
So, I'm going to go back through this thread again, and see if I can find any more problems that I can de-DOOM-ify.
Man, I should get paid for this stuff, it's WORK!
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Originally Posted by Angry_Citizen
I'm more upset that I can't just scroll through all the subforums with the sweep of a mouse wheel and see if there's been any activity. I miss the old board.
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Try out the New Posts button at the top of the forums Angry, that should show you everything new. And it seems to sort it by THREAD, not by post, so you won't see like 50 gajillion listings for the Hero Draft in there, just ONE for the latest post in that thread.
I heartily concur with the OP and many of the other points. I use other fora driven by vBulletin and none of them are as big a dogpile as this.
The implementation of these forums has gone badly badly wrong - technically, stylistically and in terms of content organisation. Finding relevant information is next to impossible.
The claimed advantage of bringing the "community" together is laudable but frankly fails
Thelonious Monk
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The new search feature, however, IS a lot better than the old one! It's a lot easier to find old info than it used to be!
| The implementation of these forums has gone badly badly wrong - technically, stylistically and in terms of content organisation. Finding relevant information is next to impossible. |
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That is your perogative and your choice.|
Originally Posted by Jack_Power
1) I don't want to do that. There's a remeber me function.
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| 2) It doesn't really work either. If I remember I missed something and re-log it still takes me to posts I have read. |
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Sam, you should REALLY consider getting into the habit of right clicking your text input field and choosing Select All and then Copy.... I've been doing it even BEFORE the new forums because the old forums ate my posts just as much. Now it's habit, I copy EVERYTHING before sending.| Funny thing, that. Since the new forums were introduced, I've seen them spaz out and load for hours, and on the very first day of their introduction, I lost more posts than I've lost since I switched to Firefox three years ago. On the old forums, you could back up, reload, even close the tab and Firefox would remember what you wrote. On this one, the script "knows" what to put in the text box at startup, usually a full-scale quote, so if you write something and reload, what you wrote is wiped out and replaced with what the initial value of the script was. The lazy man's guide to losing posts - buy a mouse with a back button on it. Oops! |
Then, if I 'lose' it, I just have to paste it and hit Send again. Works every time, nothing lost.
Frankly, all the issues raised in this thread are entirely secondary to me, since the damn boards ask me 3-8 (my record so far) times in a row to log in, and each time I enter my details (involving two excess mouse clicks for 'europe' and 'remember me'), I get 'welcome, Canine', then bounced back to the same page I left, where I'm not logged in <seethe, fume, naughty words etc.>
So the OP's a step ahead of me on that count, at least.
And since the board seems unable to understand that 'remember me' might actually mean it should remember that I'm logged in, my desire to post and/or actually use these boards has been more than a little curtailed.
And yes, I've been through all the faff on clearing cookies, deleting cookies.sqlite and associated files in my profile directory etc.
<shrug>
Warning:
The above post may contain Cynicism, sarcasm and/or pessimism. If you object to the quantities contained, then tough.
What browser and OS are you using, Canine?
To everyone, yes, there are some problems, and they stem from 3 sources:
- Actual bugs with the boards - like the fact that the signature image option is there but doesn't actually work and you have to "hack" it by putting the picture in your normal signature text. Just as an example, but there ARE bugs that SHOULD be worked on.
- Change. This IS a different forum, and as such, some things WILL be different from the way that you're used to, which brings me to...
- People's fear of or resistance to change. Yes, MOST people have at least a resistance to change. But you do have to change your habits to a certain degree to meet the situation.
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I do that after I'm finished writing a post and before I submit it. However, all the posts I lost, I lost them mid-writing. At work, I have a mouse with a Back button on the side. Grabbing the mouse to move it causes me to accidentally squeeze the back button with my thumb, and unlike the old forums where I could just hit Forward and my post would still be there, if I hit Forward here, I get taken back to the original quote with nothing I wrote remaining.|
Originally Posted by PhiloticKnight
Sam, you should REALLY consider getting into the habit of right clicking your text input field and choosing Select All and then Copy.... I've been doing it even BEFORE the new forums because the old forums ate my posts just as much. Now it's habit, I copy EVERYTHING before sending.
Then, if I 'lose' it, I just have to paste it and hit Send again. Works every time, nothing lost. |
I can't copy things to the clipboard as I'm posting before I'm done, either. I'm usually copying things from other posts to quote, copying links or copying numbers to reference. I'm also often switching between tabs. Posting about numbers, say, has me simultaneously looking at Red Tomax's City of Data, what local notes I have, Arcanaville's guide to defence, Iakona's power standardization charts, Mid's Hero Designer and the Windows Calculator. It's very easy to accidentally load a new page in an old tab, and being that I can't just back into it without losing my post, that is a significant danger.
The old forums allwed Firefox to remember what's in my text box. The new forums do not.
*edit*
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| People's fear of or resistance to change. Yes, MOST people have at least a resistance to change. But you do have to change your habits to a certain degree to meet the situation. |
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Originally Posted by Arcanaville
Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.
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Originally Posted by PhiloticKnight
What browser and OS are you using, Canine?
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...And after 5 logins, I can actually reply.
Firefox 3.5.2 on both XP Pro (desktop machine) and Eeebuntu Standard 3.0. (on my EeePC 901)
All fully patched, both versions of firefox with Adblock Plus and NoScript installed, but turning those addons off makes no difference.
The problems with Firefox seem to be, not exactly 'common', but not unknown, either. I'm not the only one with this issue on Firefox. From what I can tell, it's likely to be a cookie issue, but not being a forum admin/software specialist, pretty much all all I can do is post it in the Official Forum Bugs thread (which I have) and keep mentioning it occasionally in threads that are a) vaguely applicable and b) seem likely to get some dev attention.
<shrug>
It just means I end up treating the new combined boards like the old US boards - a read only resource.
Warning:
The above post may contain Cynicism, sarcasm and/or pessimism. If you object to the quantities contained, then tough.
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Your analogy is specious.|
Originally Posted by PhiloticKnight
To everyone, yes, there are some problems, and they stem from 3 sources:
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The fora were merged to make life easier for all concerned. It's not about "newness" or resistance to change. It's about a bad implementation of this particular software.
I've said already I am pretty familiar with vBulletin and other forms of forum software - I run a number myself, and whilst most forums have their own way of doing things, this is clunky, difficult and has not enhanced the gaming experience.
Thelonious Monk
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If France lands on me, I would hopefully be killed upon impact.|
Originally Posted by PhiloticKnight
If France lands on you, you need to start learning French... instead of just speaking English.
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Otherwise I'd be stuck under all of France (under an undetermined amount of land mass/rubble) without the promise of a rescue team. Although, France is kind of a big place so I suppose I wouldn't be the only one crushed, so they may have a lot of people trying to unearth everything to get to us. Even then there's no promise I'd get rescued before I ran out of air or starved. That's assuming my lungs weren't crushed and fill with blood or something.
Then again, even if I did survive and was saved, it would only be to meet my inevitable end as whatever caused France to rocket across the planet and land on Texas would also probably cause polar shifts in the planet and possibly the melting/incineration of the planet as it's thrown off balance and thrust into the sun.
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Originally Posted by PRAF68_EU
Dispari has more than enough credability, and certainly doesn't need to borrow any from you.
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HAHA |
Originally Posted by Dispari
If France lands on me, I would hopefully be killed upon impact.
Otherwise I'd be stuck under all of France (under an undetermined amount of land mass/rubble) without the promise of a rescue team. Although, France is kind of a big place so I suppose I wouldn't be the only one crushed, so they may have a lot of people trying to unearth everything to get to us. Even then there's no promise I'd get rescued before I ran out of air or starved. That's assuming my lungs weren't crushed and fill with blood or something. Then again, even if I did survive and was saved, it would only be to meet my inevitable end as whatever caused France to rocket across the planet and land on Texas would also probably cause polar shifts in the planet and possibly the melting/incineration of the planet as it's thrown off balance and thrust into the sun. |
*hands Dispari a very sturdy umbrella, just in case*
Okay... SO, seriously...
Am I the only one here that the "go to next unread post" rockets way past where I last left off (And not where to somewhere I've already read)?
@Zethustra
"Now at midnight all the agents and the superhuman crew come out
and round up everyone that knows more than they do"-Dylan
and round up everyone that knows more than they do"-Dylan
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Ever since I created this thread and walked away from the computer, "First new post" has been taking me to a post I believe three or four down made within the first couple of hours after I originally posted. For three days I've been coming here and it always keeps sending me back to the first page. Hell, using the player-made Dev Digest to find Castle's post here took me farther ahead than the "new" post did, and the "First new post" thingy STILL takes me back near the beginning of the thread.|
Originally Posted by Electric_Knight
Okay... SO, seriously...
Am I the only one here that the "go to next unread post" rockets way past where I last left off (And not where to somewhere I've already read)? |
There's a reason I keep calling it "worthless."
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Originally Posted by Arcanaville
Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.
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I hated the new forums... at first.
Then I started getting more familiar with them, thanks in part to getting a new job that lets me sit on the forums for 6 hours a day.
Now, I'm kinda on the fence. I still prefer the old boards but there are features to the new one I enjoy as well.
My biggest complaint is along the lines of yours. It's Ultra frustrating to have to search thru endless pages just to find where I left off.
I'd like it to take me to my last post, if I've posted in a thread. So I can read everything said after I posted.
I can't tell if it's taking me to the 1st new post because I instantly start scrolling up looking for my last post, essentially were I stopped reading, making the 1st post after mine the "newest' post for me...
Maestro Mavius - Infinity
Capt. Biohazrd - PCSAR
Talsor Tech - Talsorian Guard
Keep Calm & Chive On!
What should "Go to first new post" do? Well, judging by its name, it should take me to the first post made into a thread since I last checked it. Fat chance. Not only does it not take me to a new post, it actually counts posts I made as new. Um, hello! They're not news to me. I made them. But, OK, technically they are new, so I can roll with that. But even that aside, this still doesn't work.
Here's how the forums have been working for me all day: I haven't logged in for around a week, so when I logged into the forums today, there were a lot of new threads and a lot of old threads with new replies in them. I used the microscopic little triangle to go to the first new post in them and, lo and behold, it took me where it was supposed to. So I posted in a few threads, took a stroll around the house while the windows in my living room were being replaced, came back to the forums and decided to check out what had happened in the past half hour.
You'd think the posts made AFTER I posted would be new, but no! The little triangle thing kept taking me back to the OLD posts that had been newest when I first came online today, but were no longer newest or unread. I read them. In fact, I quoted them. It's kind of hard to quote someone if you haven't read his post. The "Quote" button is right next to each post, so I have to at least have had the post drawn on my screen. But no, that's still undread and the damn function keeps bringing me there, so I have to scroll down, flip through the pages and manually find the last post I read. Well what the HELL is the point of having an option to take me to the first new post if it doesn't take me to the first new post but some random location in the thread so I have to manually look for the REAL first post? At that point, I may as well start from page one.
I tried to give these forums a chance, I really did. But it's just one thing after another. The colour scheme sucks, the functionality is down the toilet for the most basic stuff, direct-poster replies and multi-level quotes are gone... And now I'm finding that the most basic functionality of any forum - finding where you left off a thread - isn't working right. Oh, and the Dev Digest is still gone, to the point where players are having to make their own. Now, I'm grateful to the many people who have rigged up versions of the digest, but come on! What did this forum shuffle fix that was worth breaking practically everything?
I'm sorry. I just finally feel fully justified in being very loudly indignant. This is an absurd, embarrassing step down from what we had before, and it's only getting worse.
*edit*
And for the love of pi, where did the link to the official game site go? The old forums had a link to the effect of "Go back to City of Heroes" which brought you back to cityofheroes.com. No such thing exists now, and even clicking the banner up top brings me to http://boards.cityofheroes.com/index.php, the root of the forums (for which a link already exists) rather than back to the official site. Since I don't have any tabs with it open right now, the only way to check the server status is to open a brand new tab and write in the url by hand. Why was this functionality removed? Was it a problem to have a basic link of convenience?
I am experiencing the exact same thing, and i HATE it. The new forums are great for WRITING threads, embedded images etc, but for READING them they suck AND blow at the same time, badly on my desktop and appallingly on my iPhone.
Thhhhrrrrrpppp to the new forums.
Eco.
PS link to official CoH site is at the bottom of the screen, which is also stupid IMO.
MArcs:
The Echo, Arc ID 1688 (5mish, easy, drama)
The Audition, Arc ID 221240 (6 mish, complex mech, comedy)
Storming Citadel, Arc ID 379488 (lowbie, 1mish, 10-min timed)