A log of my posts across the forums.
Published on April 6, 2010 By GunslingerBara In Forum Issues

Hello everyone,

The forums were updated today (April 6, 2010) to fix some long-standing bugs, add a few new features, and make some minor changes.  The change log is as follows:

Note: If you notice any of the below features are not available or not working properly, please do a hard refresh (hold CTRL and press F5) to retrieve the latest javascript and css files.

1. "Flattened forums" option now available.

The flattened forums option is simply another way of viewing the forums.  The layout and design won't change, but what posts you see will.  What it does is "flatten" all of the posts in a specific forum so that it includes the posts in all of its sub-forums.  For example, the Stardock Games forum on the ImpulseDriven.com would include all of the posts in its sub-forums, such as Indie Games, Stardock Games, and Ubisoft Games.

This means that when you click on a forum now (with this option enabled), it will display many more posts than usual, and you can "dig deeper" into more specific topics by clicking on sub-forums.

You can turn this option on and try it for yourself by going to the My Account Options page.

2. Built-in spellchecker in the editors.  

There is now a spellchecker icon in the new post/reply editor, which will scan your content and highlight mis-spelled items, as well as provide proper spelling options.

After you type out your post, click on the spellchecker icon and it will scan the contents of the post and highlight mis-spelled words.  Left clicking on any mis-spelled word will provide a small popup with suggestions for the mis-spelled word.

The regular Firefox spellchecker is still a bit finicky about how it wants to work in the editor, so you may find that sometimes it works, and other times it doesn't.

3. Auto-resizing editor.

This feature may be more annoying than useful, so if enough of you find it annoying I'll disable it.  Basically, it auto-resizes the editor (vertically) when writing long posts.  

4. Preview button in editor.

This allows you to preview your post before submitting to see what it looks like.  For those of you who do a lot of formatting to your posts, this will help to save a lot of time without having to edit and re-edit to get it just right.

5. Many other minor additions, changes, and bug fixes.

These include the following:

Temporary removal of RSS feed icons in the forum listings.  This is because RSS feeds are not working properly and we are looking into a new solution for them.  We are thinking of removing RSS support for all forums except for specific ones that are important (such as Impulse Announcements or Elemental Dev Journals).  This will reduce the overhead of having these RSS feeds, will make implementing them much easier, and will provide more up-time for these feeds as we don't have to manage hundreds of different feeds.

Your password is now required if you try to change your username or existing password in your My Accounts page.

A "Return to Top" link was added at the bottom of every page (just above the timestamp) to quickly return to the top of the page.

Removed the custom right click menu on the editor, so it now uses the browser's default right click menu.

Bug fixes, karma fixes, CSS fixes, etc.

Note: If you notice any of the above features are not available or not working properly, please do a hard refresh (hold CTRL and press F5) to retrieve the latest javascript and css files.

As always, if you notice any bugs or problems, please let me know by posting in the Forum Issues forum or contacting me via PM.

Bara


Comments (Page 7)
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on Apr 07, 2010

As far as Italicized text not showing, at least in my post, it hadn't been copied from anywhere, just a straight post.

As in the post Xiandi showed.

 

But as bara said

After a bit of research I found the problem. Turns out it's a problem with the CSS behind the new wincustomize style. Tomorrow's update will fix this issue.

on Apr 08, 2010

How do I copy and paste my Burnt Orange Papyrus Font 12 because I can't do it now? See?

Saint Mina of Ophelia VII of Order of the Bloody Rose of Orders Militant of Adepta Sororitas

I have a banner that shows what it looks like.

AdeptaSororitas

on Apr 08, 2010

GmOOnii
How do I copy and paste my Burnt Orange Papyrus Font 12 because I can't do it now? See?

Saint Mina of Ophelia VII of Order of the Bloody Rose of Orders Militant of Adepta Sororitas

I have a banner that shows what it looks like.

Don't rely on the copy and paste to do it for you as some of the HTML is now stripped out when pasted into the editor.  Instead, use the editor's tools to get it looking the way you want and/or use the HTML view to get more control over the look and feel of your post.

Personally, I would rather have all posts and replies use the same font, color, size, etc. to keep the forums consistent.

Bara

on Apr 08, 2010

Double post!

Ok, forum update has been pushed.  Change log is as follows:

1. Fixed CSS issues for the new Wincustomize skin that made some posts hard to read due to "invisible" text.

2. Removed right click menu from the editor, now uses the default right click menu for whichever browser you're using.

3. Possibly fixed the "reply doesn't show" bug.  Since I was unable to reproduce the bug I need to know if any of you notice it again.

Bara

on Apr 08, 2010

1. "Flattened forums" option now available.
This appears to be working for me now with one minor exception. It seems that if a thread is "pinned" then it will not appear in the superior forum list.

For example this thread on the GalCiv2 site does not appear in the Off-topic forum but the wincustomize thread does even though both are in the Forum Issues forum which is a subforum of the Off-topic forum on the GalCiv2 site.

This is not that big a deal but if it can be fixed then that would make it consistent.

on Apr 08, 2010

Personally, I would rather have all posts and replies use the same font, color, size, etc. to keep the forums consistent.

Indeed. It gets a little frustrating when you read the Stardock forum and see unreadable pale yellow text against a white background. If you hadn't visited the Sins forum you would never know why

on Apr 08, 2010

Personally, I would rather have all posts and replies use the same font, color, size, etc. to keep the forums consistent.

Color consistency, definitely, and I also have no use for arty fonts when I'm trying to read quickly (Arial is hard to beat for online readability).

Body text of a consistent size is also a good idea, as long as it wouldn't exclude the ability to do some multi-level headings for really rich OPs like Wintersong's Elemental for Dummies.

p.s. to Bara: I broke the above two sentences into separate paragraphs after drafting them and that removed the spell-check flags, but spell-check flags are 'working' again in this chunk. Fascinating.

on Apr 08, 2010

2. Removed right click menu from the editor, now uses the default right click menu for whichever browser you're using.

Right on Bara.. one less source of aggravation for me on a daily basis, cheers mate.

on Apr 08, 2010

GunslingerBara
Double post!

Ok, forum update has been pushed.  Change log is as follows:

1. Fixed CSS issues for the new Wincustomize skin that made some posts hard to read due to "invisible" text.

2. Removed right click menu from the editor, now uses the default right click menu for whichever browser you're using.

3. Possibly fixed the "reply doesn't show" bug.  Since I was unable to reproduce the bug I need to know if any of you notice it again.

Bara

Whoa! I didnt except you to update the forums again so quickly. Kudos to you Bara

And thanks a lot for the right click menu removal Classic right click menu FTW!

Really, good work

p.s. After this update, the "flatten forums" is working now for me.

on Apr 08, 2010

Update: The fix for the "reply doesnt show" bug didnt work. I just posted a reply, and it didnt show up in the thread, even though I know it got posted, because I click "My Replies" and it says I have the last post. I know that it will appear after 1-2 minutes, but it is annoying anyway.

Just reporting, so Bara can be aware of it

on Apr 12, 2010

Mumblefratz

1. "Flattened forums" option now available.This appears to be working for me now with one minor exception. It seems that if a thread is "pinned" then it will not appear in the superior forum list.

For example this thread on the GalCiv2 site does not appear in the Off-topic forum but the wincustomize thread does even though both are in the Forum Issues forum which is a subforum of the Off-topic forum on the GalCiv2 site.

This is not that big a deal but if it can be fixed then that would make it consistent.

This was done on purpose.  Some forums have many pinned posts, and others have few (but they might be important).  

At the moment, we are limiting each forum to 10 pinned posts.  If the Stardock Games forum, for example, had 3 pinned posts that were important, they would get drowned out due to the number of pinned posts it's sub-forums have.  Since pinned posts are generally deemed important and are specific to a forum, I felt it was ok to keep these "unflattened."  If you disagree, feel free to suggest a solution

I don't see there really being an easy fix for this...

GM-morpheas768
Update: The fix for the "reply doesnt show" bug didnt work. I just posted a reply, and it didnt show up in the thread, even though I know it got posted, because I click "My Replies" and it says I have the last post. I know that it will appear after 1-2 minutes, but it is annoying anyway.

Just reporting, so Bara can be aware of it

Thank you.  Brad (Frogboy) also reported that it is still broken.  Investigation is ongoing

Bara

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