With all the new bells and whistles and fonts the upgrade still doesn’t have the most useful feature of a good message board and that feature is the ability to press the back button when you have posted and be taken back to the forum updated with your submission. At the moment you are simply taken back to the Reply box with your post sitting there as if you hadn’t just submitted it, a completely useless page. If you press the back button again you’re returned to the forum you were in but you won’t see your post there. This is bad design.
Another useful feature missing is the Live Preview as on Reddit with the enhancement suite. A box beneath the reply box shows you a preview in real time as you type. It’s an incredibly useful feature. Oh well, maybe the SDMB will get this stuff at some future date.
But the lack of space is the entire reason people don’t like it. It’s rather big, and takes up a significant portion of the text. Combined with the up arrow, it goes up about a quarter of the window height on my screen in landscape mode–which is the best mode for typing.
There are a ton of solutions for having stuff like that on mobile. It could collapse to an icon. It could only show up if you start scrolling up. There’s stuff you can do to provide the functionality without having something cover up so much of the content.
What might be useful is to hand out administrator privileges to the test site to other tech-minded posters to be able to try things out. Maybe even on a second test site, separate from the one your contractors use.
You’re describing how a “back” button is supposed to work, which has nothing to do with this site. A “back” button means “go back to the previous screen, with the previous conditions”. Which is what you’re describing. After I post on this site, I see the updated thread with my post, as it should be. No need for a “back” button.
Perhaps the need you’re describing comes from some weird browser that you’re using.
Not sure those can be easily done. The first is difficult without the second (since every preview is currently a new page, and thus people may want to go back to a previous page of what they wrote–simply pressing Undo won’t work). And the second is far more complicated. Reddit can do it because it uses the open source Markdown, and there is a JavaScript implementation. vBulletin’s BB code is proprietary, and works only on the server end.
There’s already a WYSIWYG mode. But it only works on Firefox and Internet Explorer due to using legacy code. So you can sorta get what you want.
Only an upgrade to vBulletin 4 would make the WYSIWYG editor to work with Chrome/Edge/Opera. But TPTB have decided that the cost (not just financial) of updating to a whole new version is too high.
That said, I’ve been looking off and on for a way to get that feature to work ever since I moved to Chrome. It’s not high priority for me, though, since I don’t really use it.
I’m happy to report I’ve heard back from the theme developer and he confirms it’s possible to configure the SDMB to enable users to toggle between themes. Leaving nothing to chance, I’ve configured our beta site as instructed and invite users to test whether all works as advertised. Go to:
Once you’re in, you’ll have to log in again using your regular username and password. Then navigate to UserCP. In the bottom nav bar at left there’s a dropdown menu showing the current theme; you can then toggle to whatever theme you like.
Please give this a try and make sure all operates as expected and that all problems previously reported have resolved. Then report your results here. If there’s general confirmation that this works I’ll implement it on the production board, although cautious soul that I am I’ll wait 24 hours to see if any problems surface. Please understand that this doesn’t fix anything that was broken in the OLD theme; it just reverts to what we had before.
Thanks so much, Ed! It is a thing of beauty to see the old style back!
As always, of course, nothing is as simple as it seems. Main problem is that the user choice exists only during the login session. Once you log out, it’s back to the default, and stays that way with the next login unless you go to UserCP and make the selection again. It needs to stick, and it has to be in a device-specific way (like with a cookie) or people with both desktops and mobile devices are going to be unhappy.
But so far, in principle, it works!
I notice there is no real content in most forums on the test site, except Elections and Marketplace. I assume this is intentional for the test setup and not a bug.
^^^
I should add, my observation here is about the long term. If you implement this option in the next 24 hours as you suggest, I’m sure most would be thrilled with it!!
Agreed, I was just trying to provide requested feedback – but for me, I would just log in and request to stay logged in with the old theme on all my PCs and devices. Those who like the new theme could just stick with that. The problem would be with those who want the mobile theme always appearing on their mobile devices and the old theme on PCs, but that could be dealt with as a refinement later. People seem to mainly like one or the other everywhere, with a big demand for the original theme, so I say go for it!
I’m not being allowed to login. I keep getting a message that I’ve entered an invalid username or password, and that’s even using the admin/adm20!7 combination. I am perturbed.
Morgyn: Have you changed your password since May? The test site is a dump from back then.
That’s also why the forums seem blank. It’s more than two months ago, so old stuff doesn’t show up. You’ have to change the dropdown as the bottom to allow for older posts.
Crap. Yes, I did, and I don’t think I have the old one anymore. Still, you’d think the admin/adm20!7 would work, yes? Or did I screw that up when I tried to log in as me?
The admin/adm20!7 is for allowing you to view the site at all. The other is your actual login for the board. They’re two separate things.
You can think of it as a clear locked box inside of a building. The admin/adm20!7 is the key to get inside the building. Your board username and password will let you open up the box and pay with what’s inside, instead of just looking at it.
The admin login just gets you into the board. After that you need to log in with your old user ID and password - whatever you were using as of last May. If you don’t remember your old password, email me at edzotti at gmail dot com and I’ll reset it for you. Use the email address we have on file for you so I’ll know it’s you.
