Features of Vb I miss

[ZooNamedGames]

I know some might get annoyed I'm going back to wax on about the past but there are a few things vB got right that this new forum lacks which irks me all the time.

For one; if a thread if over 6 pages long (which they often are) if I want to go to the first or last page I have to go to the top and click the box and manually type in "1" or whatever the last page happens to be. A lot of effort considering those are the most frequently visited locations. With vB it had page 1,2, the middle pages, then the last two pages. Now it let you search for a specific page like this software does, but you rarely need it in comparison to this new forum.

Another thing is going to new topics. If I find a thread with activity and click on it, it often takes me to the OP. Which unlike the point above, is annoying since I might already have seen the beginning of the post. So I have to manually go to the top and experience problem one just to get an update on the thread.

My last issue I can think of right now is the fact that using the web browsers "Back" button to go back a page doesn't work like it should. This forum is very weird in how it "loads" pages for you within the website itself. Kind of odd to me... rather just have the webpage managed normally but maybe there's an explanation behind it, but still, I'd like to go back to the last page I visited when I use the back button. Maybe I want to read the OP of a thread and then go back to read the most recent posts. However that doesn't work anymore. So the forum forces you to use it's search feature because using the back button usually reverts to the same page.

Just my thoughts...

Edited September 16, 2016 by ZooNamedGames

[Red Iron Crown]

8 minutes ago, ZooNamedGames said:

For one; if a thread if over 6 pages long (which they often are) if I want to go to the first or last page I have to go to the top and click the box and manually type in "1" or whatever the last page happens to be. A lot of effort considering those are the most frequently visited locations. With vB it had page 1,2, the middle pages, then the last two pages. Now it let you search for a specific page like this software does, but you rarely need it in comparison to this new forum.

There are buttons to jump to the first or last page if you are mid-thread, shown here:

8 minutes ago, ZooNamedGames said:

Another thing is going to new topics. If I find a thread with activity and click on it, it often takes me to the OP. Which unlike the point above, is annoying since I might already have seen the beginning of the post. So I have to manually go to the top and experience problem one just to get an update on the thread.

There's a button to click to jump to the first unread post, too:

It will appear as a star instead of a circle if you have posted in the thread.

8 minutes ago, ZooNamedGames said:

My last issue I can think of right now is the fact that using the web browsers "Back" button to go back a page doesn't work like it should. This forum is very weird in how it "loads" pages for you within the website itself. Kind of odd to me... rather just have the webpage managed normally but maybe there's an explanation behind it, but still, I'd like to go back to the last page I visited when I use the back button. Maybe I want to read the OP of a thread and then go back to read the most recent posts. However that doesn't work anymore. So the forum forces you to use it's search feature because using the back button usually reverts to the same page.

Agree, that can be annoying at times.

[ZooNamedGames]

1 minute ago, Red Iron Crown said:

There are buttons to jump to the first or last page if you are mid-thread, shown here:

There's a button to click to jump to the first unread post, too:

It will appear as a star instead of a circle if you have posted in the thread.

Agree, that can be annoying at times.

That's what those arrows do? I assume they skipped to the next page. That's good to know.

Well it's usually when using the front page or any of the main directories.

[Red Iron Crown]

6 minutes ago, ZooNamedGames said:

Well it's usually when using the front page or any of the main directories.

You can jump to first page, last page, or first unread post from the main index, too:

[ZooNamedGames]

6 minutes ago, Red Iron Crown said:

You can jump to first page, last page, or first unread post from the main index, too:

Nonono, I mean like these...

[Red Iron Crown]

But....there's no threads listed there aside from the last one bumped. What were you looking for exactly?

[ZooNamedGames]

Just now, Red Iron Crown said:

But....there's no threads listed there aside from the last one bumped. What were you looking for exactly?

The ones on the right should take you to the most recent post, not the OP.

[Red Iron Crown]

Just now, ZooNamedGames said:

The ones on the right should take you to the most recent post, not the OP.

Click the timestamp.

[ZooNamedGames]

For example on the second image, under Spacecraft Exchange you see my most recent post for my "Saturn Shuttle Collection". If I click it, it should take me to the most recent post within that thread, not to the OP of that thread.

5 minutes ago, Red Iron Crown said:

Click the timestamp.

That seems to be the trick. Seems I've got nothing to say anymore but the 3rd point :| .

[katateochi]

58 minutes ago, ZooNamedGames said:

My last issue I can think of right now is the fact that using the web browsers "Back" button to go back a page doesn't work like it should. This forum is very weird in how it "loads" pages for you within the website itself. Kind of odd to me... rather just have the webpage managed normally but maybe there's an explanation behind it, but still, I'd like to go back to the last page I visited when I use the back button. Maybe I want to read the OP of a thread and then go back to read the most recent posts. However that doesn't work anymore. So the forum forces you to use it's search feature because using the back button usually reverts to the same page.

I agree, this is odd behaviour.  If you click on a multi-page thread by clicking on it's title then you end up on an address like this.
http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/index.php?/topic/147449-12-kerbnet-antenna-dish-range-makes-no-sense/

Then when you go to any of the other pages it appends &page=x to the url
But if instead of clicking on the title of a thread, you click on the numbered links for page 1 to the right of the title then you end up with this url:
http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/index.php?/topic/147449-12-kerbnet-antenna-dish-range-makes-no-sense/&page=1
And from now on the browser back functionality will work as expected.  If you go on to page 2 and then click back, you will come back to page 1 and then back again will take you back up to the subforum you started in (as expected). 

The fix is really simple (if you have access to the code) and just requires taking every link on a sub-form page and appending &page=1 to it. 
If this bit of JS was injected into each subforum page it would fix it.

$('.ipsContained').find("a").each(function(i,e){ $(e).attr("href", $(e).attr("href") + "&page=1") })

(might need to put more effort than the 1 minute I put into making sure that the parent class was unique to thread title links, but basically that's it).  I don't know who is able to make changes to the code though.
edit - obv. that's a monkey patch, and doesn't fix the underlying problem of why not having the page number specified causes the problem.

 

Edited September 16, 2016 by katateochi
typo

[ZooNamedGames]

1 minute ago, katateochi said:

I agree, this is odd behaviour.  If you click on a multi-page thread by clicking on it's title then you end up on an address like this.
http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/index.php?/topic/147449-12-kerbnet-antenna-dish-range-makes-no-sense/

Then when you go to any of the other pages it appends &page=x to the url
But if instead of clicking on the title of a thread, you click on the numbered links for page 1 to the right of the title then you end up with this url:
http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/index.php?/topic/147449-12-kerbnet-antenna-dish-range-makes-no-sense/&page=1
And from now on the browser back functionality will work as expected.  If you go on to page to and then click back, you will come back to page 1 and then back again will take you back up to the subforum you started in (as expected). 

The fix is really simple (if you have access to the code) and just requires taking every link on a sub-form page and appending &page=1 to it. 
If this bit of JS was injected into each subforum page it would fix it.

$('.ipsContained').find("a").each(function(i,e){ $(e).attr("href", $(e).attr("href") + "&page=1") })

(might need to put more effort than the 1 minute I put into making sure that the parent class was unique to thread title links, but basically that's it).  I don't know who is able to make changes to the code though.

 

Would be nice if one of the forum operators could take a look into this though.

[legoclone09]

1 hour ago, ZooNamedGames said:

Would be nice if one of the forum operators could take a look into this though.

Yep, it's a hassle going back a page on my iPad and iPhone. I'd love that to be changed!

[adsii1970]

I understand that the new forum stuff is not perfect but for one, I will say there are many features I do like about the new forum. From what I have read about the new forum software here and on the web, there is a lot of flexibility designed into the platform. I do not expect them to fully accommodate a lot of our cosmetic wants, as this stuff with pagination seems to be. I do have some recommendations that I miss from the old forum that actually had some practicality:

I'd like the ability to have whom we follow have a place on our profile as the old forum did.

Now, as far as new features, I would like a little more personalization ability on our profile page.

[Red Iron Crown]

1 minute ago, adsii1970 said:

I'd like the ability to have whom we follow have a place on our profile as the old forum did.

Not sure if I'm parsing what you want correctly, is this similar? http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/index.php?/followed/&type=core_member&change_section=1

[adsii1970]

12 minutes ago, Red Iron Crown said:

Not sure if I'm parsing what you want correctly, is this similar? http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/index.php?/followed/&type=core_member&change_section=1

Yup, but before it was on the profile page. Nice and easy for everyone else to see as well.

And about the Blue Iron Crown thing...that was back when I had to recreate my profile after the great purge of 2012. That was before I standardized my profile name across a number of platforms, including Steam, Curse, KerbalX, etc...

Edited September 16, 2016 by adsii1970

[monstah]

It's a tiny thing, but I liked when you posted a follow-up to your own post, and it would merge with a little grey "-------update------" line. Now posts just merge as if you posted the whole thing at once.

49 minutes ago, adsii1970 said:

And about the Blue Iron Crown thing...that was back when I had to recreate my profile after the great purge of 2012. That was before I standardized my profile name across a number of platforms, including Steam, Curse, KerbalX, etc...

Mixing up threads, mate?  

(There. It just merged the quote. Doesn't bother telling people it was an addendum. So rude.)

[ZooNamedGames]

17 minutes ago, monstah said:

It's a tiny thing, but I liked when you posted a follow-up to your own post, and it would merge with a little grey "-------update------" line. Now posts just merge as if you posted the whole thing at once.

Mixing up threads, mate?  

(There. It just merged the quote. Doesn't bother telling people it was an addendum. So rude.)

Yeah I miss that too. Allows people to know its a followup rather than part of the original post.

Granted, now I abuse that and don't always fully complete my thoughts and use it to just post any second after I post thoughts.

[monstah]

20 minutes ago, ZooNamedGames said:

Granted, now I abuse that and don't always fully complete my thoughts and use it to just post any second after I post thoughts.

..which is great for being ninja'd mid-argument

Honestly, I don't remember missing anything else, this new forum is actually quite good. I took some time to re-learn how to use the following lists, but it's all goot now  

[Superfluous J]

I miss the title of the thread being above every post. Especially on mobile it's a pain to scroll up all the way to the top to see the name of the thread, when you open multiple threads in multiple tabs.

[monstah]

I just remembered something: the old reputation system, where you gave rep to the user instead of the post. I don't mind liking a specific post, what I miss are the popups where you could write a message that would be sent to the user. The anonymity was a bonus; I even remember someone (@Alshain, I think?) complaining that they wouldn't give rep anymore so as not to have their name shown in the "*** like this" snippet. (tho, to be fair, that information was always available even in the old version, but it was buried in some obscure pages)

[Superfluous J]

35 minutes ago, monstah said:

I just remembered something: the old reputation system, where you gave rep to the user instead of the post. I don't mind liking a specific post, what I miss are the popups where you could write a message that would be sent to the user. The anonymity was a bonus; I even remember someone (@Alshain, I think?) complaining that they wouldn't give rep anymore so as not to have their name shown in the "*** like this" snippet. (tho, to be fair, that information was always available even in the old version, but it was buried in some obscure pages)

Just replying to say I didn't 'like' this as a joke I miss that feature too.

[ZooNamedGames]

4 minutes ago, 5thHorseman said:

Just replying to say I didn't 'like' this as a joke I miss that feature too.

Yeah, what he said.

[Red Iron Crown]

1 hour ago, monstah said:

I just remembered something: the old reputation system, where you gave rep to the user instead of the post. I don't mind liking a specific post, what I miss are the popups where you could write a message that would be sent to the user. The anonymity was a bonus; I even remember someone (@Alshain, I think?) complaining that they wouldn't give rep anymore so as not to have their name shown in the "*** like this" snippet. (tho, to be fair, that information was always available even in the old version, but it was buried in some obscure pages)

It was still given to a post rather than the user themselves, but the comments were very enjoyable, both to give and receive.

[ZooNamedGames]

18 minutes ago, Red Iron Crown said:

It was still given to a post rather than the user themselves, but the comments were very enjoyable, both to give and receive.

Indeed.

[monstah]

1 hour ago, Red Iron Crown said:

It was still given to a post rather than the user themselves

True, but it didn't feel like that with the "who liked what" information hidden from plain sight...

1 hour ago, Red Iron Crown said:

but the comments were very enjoyable, both to give and receive.

Oh, how I liked coming up with witty responses only the author would read, and getting those myself!