ELynah Forum Update

[CowbellGuy]

Welcome to the updated ELynah Forum. It's been about three years since the last real software update so there are a bunch of new features, as well as a slightly altered interface. If you encounter any bugs or display issues, please post here with OS, browser, and problem, or if you have any comments about the layout (about anything other than menubar placement) feel free to post them here, as well.

Appearance Changes

• User control bar at the top of page shows who is logged in, log in/out, control center, private messages, PM alerts, etc. This stuff used to be lumped in with forum controls and is now in a more logical, separate area.
• Page title area underneath the user control bar. Now that there are multiple active fora, it makes more sense to show the current forum name. Also shows the thread title or page name ("Start a New Topic", "Search", etc.)
• Forum/thread/navigation/moderation bars now have a more logical layout and moderation, in particular, is cleaner and takes up less space.
• List View now shows original author under subject and the thread views have been moved to their own column. Moderation links moved from under subject to their own column.
• To the left of the subject is a thread icon signifying whether it's a regular thread, whether a thread has unread posts (red flag which can be clicked to go directly to oldest unread post), or is a sticky/announcement. More functionality may be added to this icon in the future.
• Inline images will automatically be scaled down to a reasonable size and can be clicked on to view full size.
• In Read View, the private message link is now next to the author's name in each post rather than in the navigation links.
• There is now a Hybrid View which will show like flat view, but with entire message blocks indented to show threading. It's not especially usable (IMO) so the "Switch View" link on the read pages ignores this view, but you can still select it in the Control Center if you choose.
• Control Center, Private Messages, and Search have had cosmetic updates.
• iPhone users will automatically be redirected to an iPhone template for simplified, low-bandwidth use.

Functional Changes

• You can mouse over a thread (or reply in threaded view) subject to see a preview of the message. If it's unread, you can control-rightclick or shift-control-rightclick to mark the message or thread read, respectively (there's a tooltip)
• ELynah Live section automatically refreshes every minute.
• Additional spam hurdles implemented, including CAPTCHA for new accounts.
• Users can create polls in their posts.
• Moderators can see change histories for edited posts.
• No more intermediate page when searching.
• Faster performance.
• All modifications done through mods and templates for easier update path in the future.
• Other minor changes I'm forgetting.

Known Bugs

• Poll not working
  
• Post preview has major display issues
  
• Timezones still not working correctly for countdown script. (jtw?)
• Change tracking seems to have stopped working
  
• Need to do CSS for polls

[Rosey]

Yaay: no yellow. :-)

[Jim Hyla]

Wow, how to surprise a guy at the end of a work day. And it even says hello to me. The smileys are presented vertically, can they go back to the old way? I assume that's not browser related, being seen on Windows with both Firefox and IE.

[Beeeej]

There's no "new" link next to the thread title, so I have to click on the thread before I can see what new posts have been added.

[CowbellGuy]

The red flag to the left of the subject indicates new messages. You can click the flag to go straight to the newest post. In flat view, new posts will have "new" after the subject.

[CowbellGuy]

I made the popup wider.

[Beeeej]

The red flag to the left of the subject indicates new messages. You can click the flag to go straight to the newest post, and new posts will have "new" after the subject.

I see the red flag now, but apparently new posts only also have the red flag, not "new" after the subject.  At least not on my screen.

[Jim Hyla]

Thanks for the smiley change, I like the sticky, too.

[CowbellGuy]

You're correct, for the threaded view. The "new" tag only appears on flat view (where there are no icons for the messages). I'm not inclined to change that behavior since the flag should more than suffice.

[RichH]

I'll get used to most of the changes, like the new location of the "new" flag.  Not a big deal.

Two things I dislike that I've noticed in my brief time looking at it:

1) the relative timestamp on the message list.  i.e. "Seventeen Hours Ago."  I would much rather see the absolute time stamp.  I don't like to do math when I don't have to.  "12:26 am" means I don't have to think about when the last message in a topic came in.  "Seventeen Hours Ago," I do.  Also sorta dislike the spelling out of the relative times.  "Eleven minutes ago" instead of "11 minutes ago."

2) Putting the original author of the thread on a 2nd line beneath the subject.  I rarely care about the number of "views" so I don't care if their location is a minimal note at the end of the thread title like it had been or in a column like in the new software.  The author column worked well.  Basically my complaint is that having 2 rows of text for every topic expands the forum vertically.  If I want to skim the topics quickly on a "message list" page, now I have to selectively jump over the Author line.  blah.

Other than that, it looks good.

[CowbellGuy]

Re: Readable times, it's all very granular. I've turned off the spelled out numbers and lowered the threshold to the last two hours. It might end up just being an hour or something.

Re: Authors under titles, maybe I didn't mind the change so much because my moderating links used to be there so it just replaced one thing with another. I guess I could get rid of it, or maybe make a mod to make it user-configurable, but I kind of like it. Anyone else have an opinion?

[Ronald '09]

I think it would be nice if the window was the proper width for a Blackberry screen.  Other than that it loads great on my Tour and looks exactly as it does on the computer. The countdown clock even works without refreshing.

[Chris '03]

Re: Readable times, it's all very granular. I've turned off the spelled out numbers and lowered the threshold to the last two hours. It might end up just being an hour or something.

Re: Authors under titles, maybe I didn't mind the change so much because my moderating links used to be there so it just replaced one thing with another. I guess I could get rid of it, or maybe make a mod to make it user-configurable, but I kind of like it. Anyone else have an opinion?

I don't mind the names below too much. I preferred the old way but that's probably mostly out of habit and not true preference. I find the views column distracting though. At the very least, it'd be better to the right of the posts column. I care much more about how many posts are in a thread than how many views it's gotten.

[RichH]

Re: Readable times, it's all very granular. I've turned off the spelled out numbers and lowered the threshold to the last two hours. It might end up just being an hour or something.

I like those changes already.  Thanks.  I can live with relative times if the threshold is an hour.

Re: Authors under titles, maybe I didn't mind the change so much because my moderating links used to be there so it just replaced one thing with another. I guess I could get rid of it, or maybe make a mod to make it user-configurable, but I kind of like it. Anyone else have an opinion?

I think I can adjust, if you and others like it.  What makes it bearable is that the topics are in a larger and much heavier (or bolded) font than the author line.  I think I can train myself to just skim the heavy text.

I like the improvements on the "search" feature.

Are there any other icons we should look for besides the speech balloon, the flag, and the sticky notes?

[CowbellGuy]

Re: icons, that's a fine question. There are a bunch of icons in the CSS that I haven't seen used yet. It'll be a surprise! I actually changed the sticky icon because it was originally a bell.