IPB Update July 2013 (to version 3.4.5)

[xper]

Thats the way RTE works.

[LoneCrusader]

Thats the way RTE works.

So, in other words, this is something "broken" by the upgrade? All of those controls worked before, even though the editor worked in plain text mode.

Essentially it won't allow us to insert those formatting controls (tags) unless the method of "viewing" them in finished form is turned on?

[tomasz86]

When you hover a username with mouse you get this window:

but the problem is that there's no way to use it with a touchscreen device. Tapping on a username just redirects you to the user profile. On the old board instead of mouse hovering there was a small button next to the username so it so it was possible to use it without a mouse too.

[bphlpt]

OK, the BBCode mode button is now visible and working.

One thing I really hate about the way this new version works is that the helpful editing buttons, insert link, bold, underline, etc, are ONLY available in WYSIWYG mode. In BBCode mode you have to do all of that manually. The old version had those buttons available in BBCode mode, and yes I know that the old version didn't have a WYSIWYG mode at all, I just liked the old version better. This comment is not directed at the MSFN staff, but just a complaint about the way that IPBoard messed up something that was working perfectly well already.

EDIT: looks like LoneCrusader already made the same complaint. LOL

EDIT2: Another complaint is that in BBCode mode word wrap does not function in the edit box, at least not when using any version of Chrome. This is a known problem that the IPBoard folks say is a problem with Chrome, not with the IPBoard software, but I have a hard time believing that.

Many thanks for all your hard work xper!

Cheers and Regards

Edited July 13, 2013 by bphlpt

[jaclaz]

@xper

The "default posts per page" has changed from 20 to 25.

This is not normally an issue, but it will create some minor quirk where the page where a post was is mentioned (like in the "monster 7200.11 thread" often happens) and has a serious issue with rounding (or whatever ).

A post link (which was perfectly "legal" and working) such as:

http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showtopic=128807&st=2352

which point(ed) evidently to post #2353 now resolves to:

http://www.msfn.org/board/topic/128807-the-solution-for-seagate-720011-hdds/page-96

i.e. to post #2376

Cannot say if it can be solved, at the times of the reboot.pro update, the IPB guys didn't even manage to understand (or want to understand) the issue.

JFYI:

http://reboot.pro/topic/16746-a-new-issue-with-the-board/

http://community.invisionpower.com/resources/bugs.html/_/ip-board/post-offset-disabled-on-new-version-r37167

Easy way to reproduce.

The post by bphlt just above is #51 in this thread.

I would refer to it (and it has ALWAYS worked like this since the dawn of time) as:

http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showtopic=163450&st=50

while last post on previous page by tomasz86, which is #50 would be referred to as:

http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showtopic=163450&st=49

Now BOTH links lead you on http://www.msfn.org/board/topic/163450-ipb-update-july-2013/page-3

jaclaz

[xper]

http://www.msfn.org/board/topic/163450-ipb-update-july-2013/?p=1044591

http://www.msfn.org/board/topic/163450-ipb-update-july-2013/?p=1044589

I don't see problem here

[CharlotteTheHarlot]

Forum Topics no longer have a subtitle, all the previous ones got wiped?

The topic description was actually removed years ago. The key reasons were because 1. They were either never used, and 2. They were redundant topic titles when used. As a fellow webmaster who also used this board software, I agree completely with the decision to remove them. Both of their points were very valid.

IMHO neither of those are great points because (1) they were in fact sometimes used and (2) they would not be "redundant" unless they repeated the title. Most often they add a little extra flavor to the name of thread, some extra info or even humor. It is a trivial little thing yes, but neither of the things you mentioned IMHO.

Only shows 20 comments per page and no settings to change it. This is my #1 problem at the moment. I also hope this change didn't mess up all the URLs in links somehow.

How exactly is this a problem? You've got the default settings.

( NOTE: since this post originally appeared, the # posts per page has changed from 20 to 25 ) This is a user preference, so trying to explain it to someone who apparently has another personal preference is a fools errand. But I can tell you how it can be very useful. Mine has always been set to maximum which I believe was 150 posts per page. Consequently when participating in a forum thread you can press CTRL-F and instantly search the page ( 150 posts which likely cover a substantial large period of time ) for earlier posts, links, information, whatever. Finding something earlier would mean clicking the previous page which gives 150 more posts, and so on. When saving the current page you wind up only having 24 pages to archive 3600 posts. It also cuts down on repeat posts or similar scenarios where something we should have seen has scrolled off the current page, for example on an active thread, 20 posts might be one or two days and an ongoing conversation likely spans several pages.

Now on the other hand, this trendy nonsense all around the Internet of displaying a handful of posts at a time results in so many extra page loads it is ridiculous. I suppose it might run up the page views for ad purposes but it is a pain nonetheless. The worst part I believe is that we lose sight of the difference between a technical forum and an instant messenger or Twitter type thing, the former is beloved by techies and the latter by short attention span consumers. Neither is right or wrong and this is precisely why having the choice of # posts per page is accommodating. So, can we have an option for 150 posts per page again?

Getting to My Control Panel is not easy. I can get there sometimes and then wind up outside it looking at my profile like any other member with no way back in.

Yes it is... Click your Username at the top right and then click My Settings.

You mean Top Left? And this did not work yesterday. Specifically, if you clicked on your picture, then you got sent to your profile page ( as if you were another member viewing your page ), but at this point you could not get back inside your profile, to "My Settings". It was kind of locked out. But I understand it is in transition, and I think this one is now FIXED.

There appear to be only 2 selectable themes and they both suck. Is IP also on a suicide watch? Look at SevenForums ( yes it's different boardware ) and see all the themes they provide.

xper just made these upgrades. Give him time. If you don't like the theme you could also try to make one and submit it.

Yes, I got that. Read my Post #6. Let me clarify ... this thread is not about impatience! It is merely about explaining and listing bugs and things! Most of all, it is not aimed at Xper or MSFN. What you said about creating a theme is intriguing though! Can you please elaborate? Doing such a thing now while in transition would be impatient, but after a period of time it might be an idea. Can you come back later with some example themes? Is it merely a style sheet?

The theme appearance, while admittedly subjective, is IMHO pretty lame. What is it with the blaring white? Are we expected to wear sunglasses? Also, the quote style is icky rotten gray, retro 1993, and is frankly rather unprofessional. The classy, big superimposed double quote marks are now gone, replaced with a cute little word Quote. Someone over at IPB is apparently a MetroTard.

Nothing at all wrong with the default theme. It's crisp, clean, and has a nice professional look. It's also much lighter so that it will load faster and perform better.

I really don't understand why you're complaining and nitpicking so excessively much over changes that help the website overall. Less things to load means faster page loadtimes and less stress on the server. Many things are styled with CSS and look better than png/gif images.

( NOTE: there have been substantial changes since yesterday, the current theme is far from the one I described in the top post ) First of all, please don't confuse feedback with "complaining and nitpicking", which is the defensive stance taken by someone who feels they are personally under attack. That's the kind of thing I expect from NuMicrosoft these days. We're strictly talking about IPB here, not MSFN or Xper, or you. Now, the sudden jarring visual change ( the one seen yesterday ) may very well appear crisp and clean and professional to you, but it is obviously very subjective! The inverse that this opinion would seem to imply is that MSFN as seen two days ago must have been less-crisp and dirty and unprofessional? I'd argue it was none of those things!

All kidding aside, this love affair with blaring white, and proto-HTML gray is dumbing down the public. Back then it really was all about page load times and reducing burdens but things have changed just a bit in 20 years. I fully agree that "Many things are styled with CSS and look better than png/gif images." it is my main point. Using CSS can make a great visual page but it begs the question, why are so many webslingers screwing it all up? Also, I'm not sure if anyone else can confirm this but right at this moment, pageloads are much slower than previous days and weeks. So on the face of it, this new lightweight theme has not in fact proved its mettle.

In the forum threads I see a lot of generic user Icon / Avatars. Maybe I'm misremembering but I thought more people used something. UPDATE: yes I was mistaken. I just looked at a saved page from yesterday and the members had a generic thing and it just looks different now. Their badges and things like "sponsor" and "developer" have changed a lot so that also contributes to it.

These badges will come back. xper's working on it.

Looks like that is already FIXED as well.

( continued ... )

[CharlotteTheHarlot]

From glancing at previous posts, user specified comment formatting has been butchered by the conversion. Items such as Font and Size were lost in the conversion and changed to something different.

These tags still work. Can you instead name a post where you're seeing this issue so that the staff can try and reproduce it? That would be much more helpful.

I'll focus on this later when Xper is done tweaking. But for now there is still a problem with font sizes, and it appears as a rendering difference between the old boardware and the upgrade. The old method, e.g., SIZE=5 is now rendered at just a bit larger than SIZE=3 used to be. SIZE=7 is just a tad larger than what SIZE=5 used to be. In summary, SIZE=5 is too small, etc.

Secondarily, the editor now uses PT size in the dialog and then inserts a translated BBcode into the post. I'm not sure why they are using PT size in the dialog, but it is a disconnect from the old way so three mental calculations now must be done. First decide on the PT size, then use a table to decide what it will be inserted as in BB, and finally what it will look like in today's style.

Here is the Editor to BBcode Translation ...

Font Dialog - BBcode... 08 pt ... size=1... 10 pt ... size=2... 12 pt ... size=3... 14 pt ... size=4... 18 pt ... size=5... 24 pt ... size=6... 36 pt ... size=7... 48 pt ... size=8

Now this is hard to determine. Using a non-Scientific first glance it looks like an old SIZE=5 ( pre-upgrade ) would require a SIZE=6.5 today to appear the same. I already tried and that fractional will not work. This will need more research I'm afraid.

The Style Sheet they supplied is in dire need of tweaking by someone who isn't clinically blind. Look at this bullet list just for starters, it is packed too tightly which turns it into an impenetrable wall of text which defeats the entire purpose of a bullet list! There seems to be no line height or spacing control and if you add a CRLF then you get a blank line with a bullet! Even ancient HTML 3 before style sheets had sufficient spacing for legibility in UL and OL. CSS added "padding" for fine tuning. Have these IPB forum software programmers ever heard of it? UPDATE: I accidentally found a work around. See below.

I can't really comment much on this since a custom theme is in use. Try clearing your cache to allow for any fixes to get applied.

Well the issue there was in bullet list line spacing and it created a wall of text. You know how you normally tweak the CSS for UL or OL ( or anything else ) by adjusting the padding-top or bottom? It looked like the default was set to a -negative value. Anyway, it is a moot point because Xper is on the job and already added padding. Please examine post #2.

EDIT: word wrap was fine, I had no spaces between chars, so they didn't line break. Anyway, the spacing issue in bullet lists is still a problem. I believe Xper adjusted line height instead of padding-top or bottom.

There seems to be no option in the comment editor for code view rather than output view.

It's there, it's the < > icon in the editor. Hover it and you'll see it says Code.

You misunderstood or I was unclear. I mean BBcode view versus WYSIWYG! Now, as it turns out there is also an icon to toggle between BBcode and WYSIWYG. It appears in the editor at the top left. However, as this is one icon WITHOUT a flyout help I completely missed it! Consider this one FIXED.

The editor has bugs. Start typing a sentence, click bold and type a word, now click bold off and try to continue typing that sentence. You should wind up somewhere near the top left corner.

No issues here. Where the cursor blinks is where you're supposed to stay when you type. It's not supposed to go to the top left...

Are sure you tried this? Go into a full editor reply box. Hit ENTER a couple of times to make some blank lines. Cursor up a few times and make sure you are at column 1 in the middle of the blank post ( this is just to rule out anything else as a problem ), now do this ...

type: test

click bold

type: test

click bold

type: test

where are you typing?

The editor appears to take liberties with CRLF blank lines near the end of the post ( some kind of blank line management ). I can't fully describe it yet but it appears you have to keep a careful eye on the bottom of the comment being edited. UPDATE: there appears to be some bugs in that it doesn't display all CRLF in the editor and then they surprise you in by showing up in the preview.

I'm having no issues with the editor here at all. Everything is working fine. Perhaps you should tell us what you're running if you're having all these problems.

Running Opera. And it's not "all these problems". I'm just documenting bugs, I'll get more specific and detailed as time permits, please be patient ;-)

It appears that the editor is adding in extended ISO HTML entities xxx; at the end of blank lines, but I lost the exact code. It appears as double or triple blank lines instead of one, and worse, it seems each time you hit preview it does a pass through the code and reformats it. Sorry for a less than optimal report at the moment, but I will get back to this.

Anyway, these are just a few quick observations, probably a lot more to come. I'm also keeping my eyes out for positive changes from the IPB programmers. Is anyone aware of any?

Be patient. An upgrade just happened. You have to remember that people run these forums and it takes time to upgrade and resolve any issues that may appear.

Yes, I know and remember that! Thank you. And for yourself Tarun, please don't mistake nuisances, bug reports, complaints about IPB or suggestions as impatience, bcause none is implied!

Edited July 13, 2013 by CharlotteTheHarlot

[tomasz86]

What you said about creating a theme is intriguing though! Can you please elaborate? Doing such a thing now while in transition would be impatient, but after a period of time it might be an idea. Can you come back later with some example themes? Is it merely a style sheet?

You can change everything through CSS. I've just applied some custom CSS settings in Firefox for MSFN and the forum looks like this:

Also, I'm not sure if anyone else can confirm this but right at this moment, pageloads are much slower than previous days and weeks. So on the face of it, this new lightweight theme has not in fact proved its mettle.

CSS =/= speed

CSS can be very slow too, especially if it's bloated or poorly written.

[jaclaz]

http://www.msfn.org/board/topic/163450-ipb-update-july-2013/?p=1044591

http://www.msfn.org/board/topic/163450-ipb-update-july-2013/?p=1044589

I don't see problem here

Xper, please , don't be like the IPB developers .

The syntax for linking to a specific post has been since the very early days that of:

http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php?showtopic=137119&st=20http://www.msfn.org/board/index.php? <- base addressshowtopic=137119 <- topic/thread number&st=20 <- offset to post #

This syntax does not work properly anymore.

ALREADY POSTED LINKS in that form (that has always been valid) even at the time of the previous Board update (for which at the time I wrote temporarily the converter, which obviously now doesn't work anymore because of the newish "page" syntax):

http://www.msfn.org/board/topic/137119-broken-links-or-forum-issue/

are now "botched".

jaclaz

Edited July 13, 2013 by jaclaz

[bphlpt]

@Charlotte, you might be interested in looking over this thread over at WinCert that documents some of these same types of IPBoard problems, particularly the ones regarding the edit box, that occurred as WinCert updated their version of IPBoard to I think the same one that we are now using here. Some of the annoyances still exist, even after over six months of complaints and problem reports posted over at IPBoard..

Cheers and Regards

[Tarun]

I'm not seeing this. What do I do to switch back and forth between the two modes, ie Code and WYSIWYG? Can you show me a screenshot?

And is there a reason that it no longer shows who and when the quote is from? (such as the one from Tarun above)

Cheers and Regards

I'll type it out and bold where code is on the editor: B I U S X₂ X² Unordered Ordered Link Unlink Image Code Quote Twitter... (etc...)

As far as not showing quotes, things are still being upgraded and fixed, so it was probably a hiccup.

The topic description was always available on the older board version as far as I remember... At least I used them in several of my topics. Now those descriptions are gone

The older one was cleaner though:

http://web.archive.org/web/20130530085213/http://www.msfn.org/board/

Yes, it was available on the older version. As I mentioned though, IPS removes this based on how there was a high lack of usage. Now you have something far more useful. Topic tags.

The older theme may have looked cleaner, but it really was not. The new one is designed to be more friendly, load faster and be more Web 2.0. It's also better for the site overall when spiders crawl the site. It won't try to get all the images that were in the previous one because most everything is styled with CSS and uses lightweight, optimizied and very small png images.

So, in other words, this is something "broken" by the upgrade? All of those controls worked before, even though the editor worked in plain text mode.

Essentially it won't allow us to insert those formatting controls (tags) unless the method of "viewing" them in finished form is turned on?

You can still insert them just fine. You can even type them out like so: (code)my code(/code), etc. and the editor will convert it on post. Remember, this is a much better editor, a WYSIWYG editior.

IMHO neither of those are great points because (1) they were in fact sometimes used and (2) they would not be "redundant" unless they repeated the title. Most often they add a little extra flavor to the name of thread, some extra info or even humor. It is a trivial little thing yes, but neither of the things you mentioned IMHO.

The thing is that next to no one really used the topic descriptions. They were replaced with the far more useful tag system so that people can also find posts related to their interests. I've been using the tag system on my forums since it was introduced and it's really so much nicer than the descriptions. I honestly forgot all about the descriptions until it was mentioned here.

( NOTE: since this post originally appeared, the # posts per page has changed from 20 to 25 ) This is a user preference, so trying to explain it to someone who apparently has another personal preference is a fools errand. But I can tell you how it can be very useful. Mine has always been set to maximum which I believe was 150 posts per page. Consequently when participating in a forum thread you can press CTRL-F and instantly search the page ( 150 posts which likely cover a substantial large period of time ) for earlier posts, links, information, whatever. Finding something earlier would mean clicking the previous page which gives 150 more posts, and so on. When saving the current page you wind up only having 24 pages to archive 3600 posts. It also cuts down on repeat posts or similar scenarios where something we should have seen has scrolled off the current page, for example on an active thread, 20 posts might be one or two days and an ongoing conversation likely spans several pages.Now on the other hand, this trendy nonsense all around the Internet of displaying a handful of posts at a time results in so many extra page loads it is ridiculous. I suppose it might run up the page views for ad purposes but it is a pain nonetheless. The worst part I believe is that we lose sight of the difference between a technical forum and an instant messenger or Twitter type thing, the former is beloved by techies and the latter by short attention span consumers. Neither is right or wrong and this is precisely why having the choice of # posts per page is accommodating. So, can we have an option for 150 posts per page again?

Not sure why they got rid of the option or if there's a way to bring it back. I used to use something a bit higher years ago but then just stopped caring and went with the defaults because it made things a bit easier. Especially if someone referenced something on another page without quoting it.

You mean Top Left? And this did not work yesterday. Specifically, if you clicked on your picture, then you got sent to your profile page ( as if you were another member viewing your page ), but at this point you could not get back inside your profile, to "My Settings". It was kind of locked out. But I understand it is in transition, and I think this one is now FIXED.

Obviously it changed between when I posted the fix and when you read it.

Yes, I got that. Read my Post #6. Let me clarify ... this thread is not about impatience! It is merely about explaining and listing bugs and things! Most of all, it is not aimed at Xper or MSFN. What you said about creating a theme is intriguing though! Can you please elaborate? Doing such a thing now while in transition would be impatient, but after a period of time it might be an idea. Can you come back later with some example themes? Is it merely a style sheet?

But what point is there listing off bugs when things are still being worked on and fixed? I say this because you've already commented on how the theme had changed for example. Sometimes it's best to wait a few days for the dust to settle while keeping notes of what may have been a one time bug.

pageloads are much slower than previous days and weeks. So on the face of it, this new lightweight theme has not in fact proved its mettle.

That's because of the built-in SEO now added into the forums. So all the web spiders are crawling and updating the page metadata and more. It'll be like this for a bit, but the loads are faster.

Looks like that is already FIXED as well.

See? xper just needs time to fix these things in the upgrade.

Running Opera. And it's not "all these problems". I'm just documenting bugs, I'll get more specific and detailed as time permits, please be patient ;-)

It appears that the editor is adding in extended ISO HTML entities xxx; at the end of blank lines, but I lost the exact code. It appears as double or triple blank lines instead of one, and worse, it seems each time you hit preview it does a pass through the code and reformats it. Sorry for a less than optimal report at the moment, but I will get back to this.

I noticed it was adding the codes as well last night. That was a minor hiccup where we lost usage of the editor completely along with dropdown menus and other script items. It's been fixed since.

Also, I had no issues with bold on/off. But I'm on Firefox. Perhaps it's related to Opera?

Yes, I know and remember that! Thank you. And for yourself Tarun, please don't mistake nuisances, bug reports, complaints about IPB or suggestions as impatience, bcause none is implied!

Yeah it's all good. Feedback and bugs reports are great, just need some time for the dust to settle.

CSS =/= speed

CSS can be very slow too, especially if it's bloated or poorly written.

True. If the pageloads are slow right now it's because the previous version of the forum software we were using here did nothave the SEO integrated yet. Now it does so the spiders are crawling the pages and updating a lot.

[Tarun]

@Charlotte, you might be interested in looking over this thread over at WinCert that documents some of these same types of IPBoard problems, particularly the ones regarding the edit box, that occurred as WinCert updated their version of IPBoard to I think the same one that we are now using here. Some of the annoyances still exist, even after over six months of complaints and problem reports posted over at IPBoard..

Cheers and Regards

Ahh way back in February, I know what versions of the forum software they were on then. Most likely we're on the latest, which means a majority - if not all - of those issues have been fixed. IPS made a massive number of fixes to the editor and the issues that people reported. It was a huge bugfix for just the editor alone so that post on Wincert may not even be relevant at all considering how it's from February and this release we're on now came out around the start of June.

[LoneCrusader]

I'm not seeing this. What do I do to switch back and forth between the two modes, ie Code and WYSIWYG? Can you show me a screenshot?

I'll type it out and bold where code is on the editor: B I U S X₂ X² Unordered Ordered Link Unlink Image Code Quote Twitter... (etc...)

I believe he is referring to the lack of a "plain-text" style editor like we had before, not a "Code" box.

The topic description was always available on the older board version as far as I remember...

Now you have something far more useful. Topic tags.

IMHO neither of those are great points because (1) they were in fact sometimes used and (2) they would not be "redundant" unless they repeated the title. Most often they add a little extra flavor to the name of thread, some extra info or even humor. It is a trivial little thing yes, but neither of the things you mentioned IMHO.

The thing is that next to no one really used the topic descriptions. They were replaced with the far more useful tag system so that people can also find posts related to their interests. I've been using the tag system on my forums since it was introduced and it's really so much nicer than the descriptions. I honestly forgot all about the descriptions until it was mentioned here.

Subjective. I disagree. The fact that topic descriptions were "rarely" used does not make a "tag system" "better." If you want it as an option, great, but we prefer the option of having the descriptions instead.

The older theme may have looked cleaner, but it really was not. The new one is designed to be more friendly, load faster and be more Web 2.0. It's also better for the site overall when spiders crawl the site. It won't try to get all the images that were in the previous one because most everything is styled with CSS and uses lightweight, optimizied and very small png images.

More friendly? Once again subjective. A matter of opinion. I disagree.

So, in other words, this is something "broken" by the upgrade? All of those controls worked before, even though the editor worked in plain text mode.

Essentially it won't allow us to insert those formatting controls (tags) unless the method of "viewing" them in finished form is turned on?

You can still insert them just fine. You can even type them out like so: (code)my code(/code), etc. and the editor will convert it on post. Remember, this is a much better editor, a WYSIWYG editior.

Better? LMAO! Rubbish!

Why would I want to type them out when before I could just click to add them? "WYSIWG" is useless if you actually want to break up a quote to address specific points, or to trim extraneous text to keep down unnecessary repetition. Please elaborate on how this "new" version is supposedly better, when it has removed a feature that worked in the older version?

[xper]

Isn't this thread about update bugs? Thread is real mess and I just can't figure out what is broken or not. RTE editor is here and will stay that way.