vBulletin vs. IPS, from your average user's perspective.

[Superfluous J]

I thought the far left one was an inline preview mode. I'm almost positive I clicked it once and couldn't turn it off fast enough

I'd go back and check but hey, the old forum's gone.

[Endersmens]

One point I would like to make: The PM system on IPS is wonderful. It is infinitely better than the one we had on vBulletin. It's more of a conversation, instead of a quote-fest. A reply to a message is stored in the same conversation, instead of being a new message with a quote of the other message. It makes reading back through a conversation much easier, and removes the 13127854 quotes you get when you hit reply on vBulletin.

[Bill Phil]

12 minutes ago, Endersmens said:

@Bill Phil, no, there was a button to switch to WYSIWYG mode, where ctrl+b would bold and such. But it was broken as we've both stated, and frustrating to use. Very, very frustrating to use.

Well I had no idea.

And I'm still confused by a lot of BBcode stuff... even the ones I did learn. And I never figured out some features that people used. Not to mention that, at least for me, links wouldn't let me switch to another text mode afterwords.

And BBcode is fine for people who know how to use it. But for those who don't, it's almost a nightmare. Almost. Okay, mostly for me.

Edited December 5, 2015 by Bill Phil

[ferram4]

Honestly, I'd just like the non-WYSIWYG editor back so that I can quickly edit my mod posts and make things consistent in formatting.  The current setup makes trying to get the formatting just so kind of a pain because rather than being able to see the beginning / end of the format blocks I have to try and divine what's going on from what's displayed.  It's also thrown errors when trying to edit already-existing code blocks, and since I have to work with a similar thing to edit links, it doesn't fill me with confidence that I'll be able to update links to mod releases.

My problem with the editor isn't that BBcode doesn't work.  It's that I can't go back to functional BBcode blocks that I can edit simply and quickly without issues on already-existing posts.  WYSIWYG editors always seem to be unnecessarily frustrating to use.

[Harry Rhodan]

I loved the search in vBulletin. The new advanced search seems borked to me. The option to search for content of specific users or tags does nothing and you can't specify forums to search in. Like the editor it simply lacks the granularity and fine control of the older stuff.

[Columbia]

Well, BBCode does work. To an extent.

 

[steve_v]

16 hours ago, Hobbes Novakoff said:

What's so annoying about it? I honestly want to know.

I'd explain, but several others already have.

I never even realised there was a WYSIWYG mode on the old forum, and I would not have used it if I did.

Care to explain what's so annoying about BBCode?

How the hell do I edit this to add another quote? In BBCode this was easy... I guess I'll just copy-paste, but then it does some crazy BS and makes it all bold, WTF?

Witness the awesomeness:

3 hours ago, Harry Rhodan said:

I loved the search in vBulletin. The new advanced search seems borked to me. The option to search for content of specific users or tags does nothing and you can't specify forums to search in. Like the editor it simply lacks the granularity and fine control of the older stuff.

----

Ooh look, everything is bold now, is the "B" button still down? no it's not. Can I see any way of un-boldifying this text? No I can't. <LET ME SEE THE CODE SO I CAN FIX THIS>

-----

Anyway: Yeah, I had no problem with the old search either, but I can't find diddly with the new one.

Edited December 5, 2015 by steve_v

[Van Disaster]

I frequent another Invision forum ( worlds away more usable than this one ) which has a button to toggle between Wizzywig & visible formatting. Have no idea why this installation is missing it. Prime example of need? edit a post full of screenshots.

I've spent so long trying to make this install usable with custom css that I'm burned out on it, I give up. hopefully something will change next year.

[r4pt0r]

Im going to post a link here to a pic of me trying to edit a post just now. for some reason, in the upper left it says "Required" and would not let me save my edit. What was I doing wrong? All I wanted to do was remove the umbrella quote that the 2 smaller quotes were inside of for some reason....

http://i.imgur.com/RwMkf9O.png

Edited December 5, 2015 by r4pt0r

[Tex_NL]

18 minutes ago, Van Disaster said:

... which has a button to toggle between Wizzywig & visible formatting. ...

Exactly! Why don't WE have this option?

Edited December 5, 2015 by Tex_NL

[steve_v]

26 minutes ago, r4pt0r said:

...for some reason, in the upper left it says "Required" and would not let me save my edit.

Seen this too, I gave up at the time as it provided no clues as to what it required.

21 minutes ago, Tex_NL said:

Exactly! Why don't WE have this option?

^ So very much this. It's possible, it's been implemented elsewhere, and there's plenty of indication people want it here... So why do we not have this simple and obvious feature?

[Hobbes Novakoff]

6 hours ago, steve_v said:

Care to explain what's so annoying about BBCode?

Sure. How about literally every single Spacecraft Exchange thread made by a new member contained the phrase "I don't know how to embed pictures." How about that I had to google how to put a strikethrough in my post. (And yes, google it, because the old forum search was horrid.) How about superscript and subscript were non-existent. How about also having to google how to make a spoiler. The list goes on. 

16 hours ago, 5thHorseman said:

Who forced you to learn BBCode?...To do anything useful you had to use BBCode

Seems like you answered your own question there. It was nigh impossible to make nice-looking posts (especially OPs) in the forums unless you memorized twenty different codes.

4 hours ago, r4pt0r said:

Im going to post a link here to a pic of me trying to edit a post just now. for some reason, in the upper left it says "Required" and would not let me save my edit. What was I doing wrong? All I wanted to do was remove the umbrella quote that the 2 smaller quotes were inside of for some reason....

http://i.imgur.com/RwMkf9O.png

You can embed an image, you know. Feel free to criticize the new forum, but don't be childish, like with your signature. Thank God the new forum has an option to hide individual signatures.

Edited December 5, 2015 by Hobbes Novakoff

[Endersmens]

9 hours ago, Columbia said:

Well, BBCode does work. To an extent.

 

That was a pre-migration post @Columbia. You can't make that argument based on the migration issues. If that post was reposted with all the BBcode in the correct format it would work fine. (Besides tables I think)

Edited December 5, 2015 by Endersmens

[steve_v]

40 minutes ago, Hobbes Novakoff said:

stuff...

Not knowing how to use something is not a problem with said thing, it's a problem with your lack of knowledge. I have no issues with providing a lazy tool, I do have issues with providing only a lazy tool, and one that doesn't do what I tell it to at that.

Edited December 5, 2015 by steve_v

[TheCanadianVendingMachine]

BBCode works fine, in my experience

Edited December 5, 2015 by TheCanadianVendingMachine

[n.b.z.]

45 minutes ago, Hobbes Novakoff said:

Sure. How about literally every single Spacecraft Exchange thread made by a new member contained the phrase "I don't know how to embed pictures." How about that I had to google how to put a strikethrough in my post. (And yes, google it, because the old forum search was horrid.) How about superscript and subscript were non-existent. How about also having to google how to make a spoiler. The list goes on. 

[...] It was nigh impossible to make nice-looking posts (especially OPs) in the forums unless you memorized twenty different codes.

Looking back, I'm actually glad we didn't have to encode non-ASCII characters in HTML entities, provide our own font renderer, or mail our posts to the mods on a floppy disk.

[Hobbes Novakoff]

35 minutes ago, steve_v said:

Not knowing how to use something is not a problem with said thing, it's a problem with your lack of knowledge.

Not in this case. It's a glorified text editor, not a 3D modeling program. I should be able to use a text editor, on any website, without having to google anything. Here's an example:

Let's say I'm reviewing something on an online shopping site, "Nozama." I want to post several pictures of the product that I have already uploaded to image-hosting websites. But when I try to post the images, I have to put them in great ugly blocks in the middle of my review. I've seen many other people post albums, but I comb across the interface for fifteen minutes, and I see nothing that looks even remotely like an album. I check every single button on the UI. No luck Frustrated, I give up on writing my review, and tell my story to all of my friends on social media. Too bad, as well. I was going to give their product a five-star rating, accompanied from an in-depth review. I'm frustrated. Nozama loses me and my friends' business, and therefore our money. The company that made the product loses the customers it might have attracted had I posted that review. Everyone else doesn't have as much information about the product. In short, everyone loses. All because the review editing software was impossible to use without looking stuff up.

Edit: @n.b.z. I'm glad about that too. But "at least it isn't <insert historical time period here>" isn't a valid defense of anything. Imagine if you called your water utility because what was coming out of the tap smelled like rotten eggs, and they replied "Well, at least you don't have to draw water from a dirty well!"

Edited December 5, 2015 by Hobbes Novakoff

[Superfluous J]

1 hour ago, Hobbes Novakoff said:

Seems like you answered your own question there. It was nigh impossible to make nice-looking posts (especially OPs) in the forums unless you memorized twenty different codes.

Seems like you cut off an important part of my post in order to make your point, so let me put the entire relevant part here, with the important stuff you neglected to include bolded:

17 hours ago, 5thHorseman said:

Who forced you to learn BBCode? To do anything useful you had to use BBCode, sure, but the same is true now on this forum. Except you don't have the option to.

------------------

1 hour ago, Hobbes Novakoff said:

How about literally every single Spacecraft Exchange thread made by a new member contained the phrase "I don't know how to embed pictures."

When I first wanted to post a picture in BBCode, I had to figure it out. Were I as lazy as "literally every single new member of the Spacecraft Exchange thread," I'd have asked instead of looking it up. Heck, it was so long ago I can't remember if I asked or looked it up. The day this forum was unveiled, I had EXACTLY THE SAME PROBLEM. I couldn't figure out how to post a picture. In similar forums, there was always a "post a picture" button, usually with a little icon of a Bob Ross style painting. I explored and eventually figured it out, but were I as lazy as "literally every single new member of the Spacecraft Exchange thread," I'd have asked instead.

1 hour ago, Hobbes Novakoff said:

How about superscript and subscript were non-existent.

They were existent. You did have to Google for them but sup and sub tags worked. In fact...

_sub and ^sup bbcode tags still work here. But if you type them you'll have a terrible time editing your post.

Edited December 5, 2015 by 5thHorseman

[Hobbes Novakoff]

1 minute ago, 5thHorseman said:

Seems like you cut off an important part of my post in order to make your point, so let me put the entire relevant part here, with the important stuff you neglected to include bolded:

17 hours ago, 5thHorseman said:

Who forced you to learn BBCode? The old forum had a wysiwyg mode. To do anything useful you had to use BBCode, sure, but the same is true now on this forum. Except you don't have the option to.

 

That's fair, and I apologize for cherry-picking somewhat. But the claim that "the same [having to use BBCode] is true now on this forum" is simply not true. There are two things that you cannot do on this forum that you could do on the old. Those are 1) Spoiler titles, which I'd hardly say are necessary anyway and 2) embed Sketchfab models, though I believe that Kasper is looking into that currently. I'd hardly say that you have to use BBCode. If there's something big that I've somehow missed, please let me know. But as far as I can tell, the WYSIWYG is just as capable, and in some cases more capable, than BBcode.

10 minutes ago, 5thHorseman said:

They were existent. You did have to Google for them but sup and sub tags worked. In fact...

Huh, I didn't know that! IIRC, the people in the Science Labs forums were grumbling about superscript and subscript not being a thing on the old forum. Weird.

[Hobbes Novakoff]

13 minutes ago, 5thHorseman said:

When I first wanted to post a picture in BBCode, I had to figure it out. Were I as lazy as "literally every single new member of the Spacecraft Exchange thread," I'd have asked instead of looking it up. Heck, it was so long ago I can't remember if I asked or looked it up. The day this forum was unveiled, I had EXACTLY THE SAME PROBLEM. I couldn't figure out how to post a picture. In similar forums, there was always a "post a picture" button, usually with a little icon of a Bob Ross style painting. I explored and eventually figured it out, but were I as lazy as "literally every single new member of the Spacecraft Exchange thread," I'd have asked instead.

It seems relatively obvious to me. "Insert other media." Huh. Wonder if it lets me insert other media like, y'know pictures. Say, it does! Who would've thought of that?

However, if there was a way to change it to just "insert media," that might make things a little clearer. My two cents there.

[r4pt0r]

All this damage control, they should pay you lol

[Hobbes Novakoff]

9 minutes ago, r4pt0r said:

All this damage control, they should pay you lol

Heh, I wish I got paid to argue with people on the internet. 

[steve_v]

1 hour ago, Hobbes Novakoff said:

Let's say I'm reviewing something on an online shopping site....

Eh, if you're too slack to ask google, I don't think I'd trust your review anyway.
Enough with the Squad-hugging, I see we're not going to agree on this, so how about: You can have the easy mode editor you like, and I'll keep asking to have the knows-how-to-work-bbcode one I like back. Again, no problem with lazy tools, big problem with only lazy tools.

Also, I'm still trying to figure out how to do basic things with this new editor, why is it a bad thing that you have to ask / search / think, but not me?

 

Ed.
Rotary hoe, I have now figured out what's going on with the random-cursor-jumping BS I am experiencing in this unmentionable editor:
Type a line of text, end with an emoticon in bbcode (with no trailing characters), then move the cursor back in the line (with the mouse) and start typing. Hit space and the emoticon suddenly gets parsed, moving the cursor back to the end of the line mid-keystroke.

How is that not annoying?

Edited December 6, 2015 by steve_v
More aggravating anti-features discovered.

[Hobbes Novakoff]

5 hours ago, steve_v said:

You can have the easy mode editor you like, and I'll keep asking to have the knows-how-to-work-bbcode one I like back. Again, no problem with lazy tools, big problem with only lazy tools.

Laziness is just a derogatory word for efficiency. (EDIT: Since some people seem to think that that was actually my response, that was a joke.)  But I also see we're never going to agree on this. So, let's end this debate before one of us says something we'll regret.

Edited December 6, 2015 by Hobbes Novakoff

[steve_v]

30 minutes ago, Hobbes Novakoff said:

I also see we're never going to agree on this.

Or, we can play "gets the last word in" all day, as I already said that. I have the time.
I am not suggesting anyone take away your shiny new toy, I'm asking for my well-loved old one back. What precisely is your problem with that?