Welcome to the new eLynah Forum. I hope to make it as user-friendly, convenient, and useful as possible. Have a look around, try it out, and if there are any features you would like added or removed, let me know and I'll do what I can.
Some new features/features that work now:
- Search works
- Stats at top of page updated hourly
- Threaded message view without using frames
- Signatures
- Automatic web page to link conversion
- More user profile information (optional)
- Smileys :)
- Replies to your messages can be e-mailed to you
- Faster, more stable, better cross-platform compatibility
Age
Thanks, Age. This looks good, but I'll miss the old "place." Sniff, sniff.;-)
Thanks, Age, for putting this new forum together.
It's a bit uncomfortable seeing how it's new...but I know I'll grow into it. More versatile than the old forum, and I like the smilies. They're cute :-D
Just testing. I don't like it because it's different, and I fear change. :-P
Actually, it looks ok. I'm just *really* used to the old forum. It had such a Cornell hockey feel to it.
Thanks so much Age! Oh, I've been meaning to email you about the women's championship belt thing. I'll get around to it eventually. :)
Can't say I care for the fixed width fonts in the messages (incidentally, you should add "monospace" to the end of the font-family list for .PhorumMessage). Presumably the one advantage of using them would be the chance for people to line up ASCII tables, but that still won't work, unless you enclose each message in a <PRE></PRE>
(Stops to try it...)
# Team ECAC Ivy
W-L-T PF-PA-PR GB Pct W-L-T PF-PA-PR Pct
1 Cornell 9-2-1 19-5-20 -- .792 2-2-1 5-5-10 .500
2 Harvard 8-3-2 18-8-18 1 .692 4-2-1 9-5-6 .643
3 Clarkson 5-2-4 14-8-22 2 .636
4 Dartmouth 6-4-3 15-11-18 2½ .577 4-1-1 9-3-8 .750
5 Yale 5-5-2 12-12-20 3½ .500 2-3-1 5-7-8 .417
Union 5-5-2 12-12-20 3½ .500
7 Colgate 5-6-1 11-13-20 4 .458
8 Brown 4-6-2 10-14-20 4½ .417 2-4-0 4-8-8 .333
Princeton 5-7-0 10-14-20 4½ .417 2-4-0 4-8-8 .333
10 St. Lawrence 4-7-0 8-14-22 5 .364
11 RPI 3-7-2 8-16-20 5½ .333
12 Vermont 3-8-1 7-17-20 6 .292
Also, the fixed font sizes in terms of pixels are annoying to folks who have hi-res monitors and larger default fonts.
Is there a way to override the color scheme so it won't be so very, very obvious when I'm blowing off work?
Great site, Age. Thank you -- you really do excellent work.
:-D the stats up top are great. it is gonna take some time to get used to the new forum replacing the old one :´-( but i like it! thanks, age. and the smileys are fun.
Thanks, Age. CHDF was an old friend, but this seems like a great start for a new hockey home.
Ken '71
color schemes...now I know what I was thinking of...the yellow...kinda reminds me of Clarkson...
but overall, I'm starting to like this new board, thanks Age!
I'm sure I'll figure this out at some point but I thought I'd ask...
Why is it (for example, if you go through the people who've posted on this thread), for those with names you can click on, some will direct you to a mailto: and others will go to their profile? Is it something about the information you enter into your profile or are some people special?
As soon as you wrote "Search works" I liked the new forum. I've missed that in CHDF ever since it stopped working after one of Kyle's rewrites.
I agree with JTW about the fonts. Is there any way to make this user customizeable? (Aside from just overriding all fonts in your browser). Also having newer posts at the bottom will take some getting used to - somehow seems like the other way makes more sense to me.
All in all, as long as it works it'll be fine.
If you just fill in the name and e-mail when you post, it's considered an anonymous post. If you actually register and log in, it will show all the other info you want.
you can even have automagic sigs!
Any way to get most recently posted to threads to jump up top?
if you are going to put a web page where it says "web page" in ur profile, be sure to do it as the http://www..... if you do it without the http:// the link will not work :-O
OK, the new arrangement is starting to make sense. Not sure if it's just me that's noticing this, though, but the date and time of the last post, as viewed within a thread, doesn't seem to match the date and time of the last post as shown on the main page. Anyone else have this problem?
To be more specific, the timestamp on the message as seen within the thread is at my local time (EST), but the timestamp on the "last post" in the main view is shown in GMT.
I get the correct timestamp on the topic list (main page), but 5 hours earlier within the thread.
Lowell: I seem to get the threads moving to the top of the list as they are updated.
One feature I would like to see is some annotation to point out the new posts. CHDF had a nice (New) notation so you could pick out what you hadn't read before.
I did a partial update of the software and I can either get one or the other correct. I'll do a full update tomorrow. As for the new messages, it should show "new" next to the threads with new messages and the new messages, but you have to have cookies on.
OK. Cool. I have seen the "new" on the topic list (similar to the old red arrows). I see the "new" notation in the Threaded View, but not the "flat view". My last couple questions: in updating profiles, it seems that "Jabber" fills itself in...any ideas? And any chance of an edit/delete feature being added? That was one of the best features of the old site.
Thanks to Age for his work, and Kyle for years of past service. Forgive all of our stupid questions...we're just in adjustment stage in seeing what features are here and how they work.
This forum is basically a heavily modified version of existing software. Once I get all the bugs ironed out, I'll try to add editing if it hasn't been already. Flat view doesn't show which are new messages, just threaded.
The time stamp problem should be fixed for all new posts.
I don't really like courier font - it is like being repeatedly poked in the eye - and the color scheme takes some getting used to, but it all seems to work well.
I would really appreciate a toggle for the top post between most-recent and first. When I haven't read any of a 30 message thread (say, I was away during a game weekend) it is nice to be able to start at the top and just read. The next time I check in, it is better to have the new posts at the top. I have no idea how easy/difficult this is, though.
All nitpicks, however. Thanks for setting up and hosting the forum, Age.
On my netscape (on Unix platform) the banner at the top comes out looking screwy. The lower Lynah is overwriting the date.
That, and as others mentioned before, being able to edit would be nice.
I always liked the most recent message on top, not on the bottom, too.
That should have kind of fixed it. At least you shouldn't see the logo more than once. I already had to jump through hoops to make it work right in Netscape, IE, Mozilla (and OmniWeb) in Windows, MacOS, and MacOS X. Netscape for Linux wouldn't know what to do with a style sheet if it bit it in the ass, so you'll have to deal. Maybe you and Kyle can make an ASCII forum that you can telnet to with a TRS-80 and host it on some free server using free software run by gnomes and pixies.
You can now enter pre-formatted text by using
[ pre ] and [ /pre ]
(without the spaces)
tags around the text you want formatted. God help you if you don't close your tags.
Now, you see, that sort of rhetoric is how web design holy wars get started. I could counter that if you write for the spec and not the browser, the number of hoops through which you have to jump is greatly reduced, and mention lynx, Mozilla for GNU/Linux, Konqueror, Opera, etc. But then I'd really just be venting my frustrations at secretaries who ask me to send them a word document because they can't read PDF (generated with pdflatex) or websites with whole paragraphs of text converted into GIF images.
But seriously, please don't take the feedback personally; we're just letting you know what does and doesn't work well for the users. Since this forum is new, I think a lot of us are presuming there's still some tinkering to be done.
Incidentally, I think the font customization issue can be handled by defining a user stylesheet, but I don't know if my crappy browser can handle it.
Don't mind me today. I'm having a very bad week.
Yes, there's still a LOT of tinkering to be done.
And I always write for the spec. In fact, I test everything on IE for Mac first, as (at least until recently) it was the most compliant browser out there. And it always pleases me to no end that when I have everything working there and I start testing with other browsers, I find that Netscape can't render a table worth a damn (Netscape introduced the "blank" tag as a workaround for a bug, rather than fix it), Mozilla still has bugs that go back to Netscape 3, and IE for Windows takes shortcuts to render faster that cause no end of trouble. So in the end, you HAVE to make amends for browsers, but not because it starts that way.
So I introduce this forum whose only drawback over CHDF is not being able to edit posts, while bringing a lot more to the table, and 5 people feel it's worse than CHDF. Sure makes me feel warm and fuzzy.
I certainly had no expectation or intent of having to replace CHDF last week, but that's what it came to, and I'm not going to get into the reasons now. Anyway, I'll try my best to address as many of your requests as I can, but it might take a little time.
Age
Of course, the clever title for my email would have been "gnomes and elves". Ah well.
JTW said: "I could counter that if you write for the spec and not the browser, the number of hoops through which you have to jump is greatly reduced..."
John you are absolutely correct, in theory, except that Netscape 4 doesn't adhere to the current standards. God knows that IE for x86 is barely an improvement. Admittedly, self styled "web designers" only make the process worse by designing for IE 8.9 with Shockwave, Flash, Java and javascript, viewed at 1600x1200 on a 3 week old Dell hooking to the backbone via an OC3. As such, they should be taken out back and beaten with a 33.6 external modem.
However, given that content, not design is what really matters, style sheets are a step in the right direction as they allow content to be separated from design. A padded, shimmed traditional table based design is a nightmare in a screenreader browser. Admittedly, eLynah has a slightly different audience as I doubt many blind readers are trying to download hockey video clips but the point remains that style sheets make the web more accessable, not less.
Historically, IE for the Macintosh has been the most standard compliant browser around (other than maybe Opera/x86), which I assume is one of the reasons Age has used it. Yet, netscape 4.x stalwarts, of which I was one for a long time, seem want to blame Apple or Microsoft, for the inability of their prefered browser to follow the current spec.
If the case for Netscape 4.x was set cased in terms of a anti-monoculture argument against MS controlling the browser market, I'd agree whole heartly were it not for the existance of a modern, cross-platform, free, open standards compliant browser. Given the willingness of NS users to readily upgrade to 4.75+ browsers, the barrier to entry for a compliant browser doesn't seem to installing new software.
Of course, I understand that Corporate IS departments, not individuals frequently make software decisions, and as such, users may not have a choice. However, given the nature of the content on this site, I find this argument less compelling than I would for say a maunfacturing b2b site.
I guess what I'm trying to say that although sites should allow a minimum level of access from any browser and designers that defeat this goal by use to javascript browser detection voodoo should be beaten, users of products with known deficiencies should also be understanding that, with limited resources, web designers can only meet the needs of the majority, most the time.
-j
If only every broswer looked like this...
www.elynah.com/elf/omnielf.jpg
Long live OmniWeb...
The Jabber problem should be fixed.
The number of posts in the user profile is fixed.
Lots of font/formatting tweaks.
John: Age and I already had words regarding the finer points of Linux/free software promotion. The forum change basically comes down to a combination of an ideological difference between us and the fact that the old software was feature- and maintenance-deprived and needed to be replaced, with Age having more time to work on it than I. I have no hard feelings, but it unfortunately wasn't the most amicable process. :´-(
Kyle
I don't know if I like this more or less than CHDF yet - too soon to tell (though I ALWAYS have to edit my posts), but if you weren't prepared to hear that some people preferred CHDF, you probably shouldn't have asked the question.
See, upon further review, I probably would have just deleted that last post. :-/
In any event, I am posting again because I can't figure out how to register. Directions, please.
Click Log In, then click the link asking if you need a new account.
Age,
Just wondering if it would be possible to have that "new" tag show up in the flat view. This would make it easy to scroll down to the first message that you haven't seen.
Also, Age, it seems that the "Next Message" link doesn't always take you to the next message (vertically) in the thread as it did in the CHDF. Example:
- Thread 1, Message 1
- Thread 1, Message 2
- Thread 1, Reply to Message 2
- Thread 1, Message 3
If I'm reading Reply to Message 2 and hit "Next Message," it often takes me to a completely separate thread instead of to Message 3.
Beeeej
Age - The site is great. It would be useful (to me, at least) to have a "show topics" link at the end of the last reply in the flat view. I scroll down through the messages and it would be nice to just have a link there on the page to go back to all current topics.
Peter
I second Peter's request.
Easy enough. I'll add that sometime tomorrow. Thanks for the feedback
Age - Works like a charm! THANKS!
Peter