Exciting changes for Pilots of America (New forum software)

Hank S said:
For those of us who haven't been around that long, what feature did we miss? And he's, I've spent some time in the beta site, the biggest changes I saw were:
  • Colors are different
  • Quoted text is much smaller
  • Date & time of post are at the bottom of each post, small enough that they are useless for reference
It'll be nice, though, to pick up reading a thread where I left off.
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I'm being ornery. We used to have a reputation system. I have routinely begged for it to come back ever since it left.

Now, we will have likes. Not quite the same, but close enough
 
I played with the beta on my iPad this morning. I certainly have no beef with tapatalk going away. The new site works very well in Safari on the iPad.

John
 
Hank S said:
I've spent some time in the beta site, the biggest changes I saw were:
  • Quoted text is much smaller
  • Date & time of post are at the bottom of each post, small enough that they are useless for reference
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Fortunately, font sizes and types are very easy for us to change with the new forum. If people report it to be too small, we can fix that.
 
SkyHog said:
I will never understand the need for a thread ignore feature. I get user ignores, as they can troll threads that are otherwise useful, but if you don't care about the thread at all? Just move on.
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Case in point.

Just now I was looking for a particular post of Jason's so I clicked on "find all posts by Jason" in his profile. His last post was when he locked the "Child Support nightmare from hell" thread.

I had forgotten all about that thread because I had put it on ignore in the first day or two. It was easy to see where it was heading. And holy ****...did it indeed head there! :yikes:

Almost 400 posts and two months later it's locked. Thankfully, I didn't have to see it near the top of the list every day when I logged on and clicked on "new posts" (which is my normal routine).

That's what the ignore thread feature is for!

Handy!
 
timwinters said:
Case in point.

Just now I was looking for a particular post of Jason's so I clicked on "find all posts by Jason" in his profile. His last post was when he locked the "Child Support nightmare from hell" thread.

I had forgotten all about that thread because I had put it on ignore in the first day or two. It was easy to see where it was heading. And holy ****...did it indeed head there! :yikes:

Almost 400 posts and two months later it's locked. Thankfully, I didn't have to see it near the top of the list every day when I logged on and clicked on "new posts" (which is my normal routine).

That's what the ignore thread feature is for!

Handy!
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I had been ignoring that thread since day one. Not software ignoring, but just not clicking on it. It's a good thing I did that too. Seeing a suddenly locked thread is a great indicator of many entertaining posts at the end of the thread. If I had software ignored that thread, I never would have seen the dust up!!
 
Anymouse said:
I had been ignoring that thread since day one. Not software ignoring, but just not clicking on it. It's a good thing I did that too. Seeing a suddenly locked thread is a great indicator of many entertaining posts at the end of the thread. If I had software ignored that thread, I never would have seen the dust up!!
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Yup, some people like to slow down and rubber neck at every wreck! ;-) :yes:
 
TangoWhiskey said:
Yup, some people like to slow down and rubber neck at every wreck! ;-) :yes:
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The first part of that (i.e., slowing down at the scene of a wreck) is actually necessary for safety.
 
Another vote here for TT support if it isn't too much trouble. On my Galaxy Note 5 the mobile site is good but any mobile site in a browser can't match how well TT renders threads for mobile viewing. Also it's nice to get notifications on my favorite threads and have all forums I frequent in one well designed app.
 
Hank S said:
For those of us who haven't been around that long, what feature did we miss? And he's, I've spent some time in the beta site, the biggest changes I saw were:
  • Colors are different
  • Quoted text is much smaller
  • Date & time of post are at the bottom of each post, small enough that they are useless for reference
It'll be nice, though, to pick up reading a thread where I left off.
Click to expand...

@Hank S : we used a larger font in the quotes during our port over to the site than was previously used during the open beta. Hope it's better! We can bump it up to be the same size as the main text, but the contrast with a font size 1 point smaller than the normal text was subtle yet effective.
 
Test. Hey, looks like it worked.

Hats off to Jason, Troy, and Mari on this one. I literally did basically nothing.
 
Small item for the final clean up list... The mini icon that shows up in the browser tab needs to be PoA-iced.
 

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Checking multiple image insertion from iPad/Chrome browser.

Works.... And much simpler than old site (due to naming of file as it was chosen on the pad)

One tweak requested... Thumbnail insertion is ALWAYS at first line/character of post. Not where the insertion icon is actually blinking.
 
Is it possible to add a user control to increase the size of displayed text? My couch ate my reading glasses (again) and a slight bump in size reduces fuzziness when read on mobile devices.
 
jason said:
Do a hard refresh
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Working on iPad tonight... Still shows what I attached after dumping cache, clearing history, and tossing my cookies. And hard booting tablet.

Likely it will sort itself out in its own.
 
AggieMike88 said:
Working on iPad tonight... Still shows what I attached after dumping cache, clearing history, and tossing my cookies. And hard booting tablet.

Likely it will sort itself out in its own.
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Mike is right... Safari bookmark of site on iPhone 6 Plus is likewise showing XenForo logo, not the new FavIcon the desktop browser shows.
 
I'm pretty certain that there is a way to set that. I'll research tomorrow.
 
Smiley insertion also needs tweak... Gets put at beginning of post and not where insertion bar is currently located.
 
And liking the "draft saved" feature... A few times I left a post unfinished, exited, returned, and found what I had started waiting on me to complete. H arty golf clap to the developers who thought of that.
 
AggieMike88 said:
And liking the "draft saved" feature... A few times I left a post unfinished, exited, returned, and found what I had started waiting on me to complete. H arty golf clap to the developers who thought of that.
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It even works between devices. If you start a post on your ipad you can pick it up on your desktop (or vice versa). I think it auto saves every 30 seconds.
 
AggieMike88 said:
And liking the "draft saved" feature... A few times I left a post unfinished, exited, returned, and found what I had started waiting on me to complete. H arty golf clap to the developers who thought of that.
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jason said:
It even works between devices. If you start a post on your ipad you can pick it up on your desktop (or vice versa). I think it auto saves every 30 seconds.
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Now THAT'S definitely a useful feature. The internet at work will log you off after a set time with no notice. If I try to submit a replay after it logs me off, I get a screen to login instead. The history of what I wrote is gone. Can't even use the back button.
 
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Well I begged and thought I made a pretty good case for Tapatalk, and it got chopped apparently.

I'll show with a photo why I won't be visiting much anymore unless the mobile version can be tweaked a bit. It's a UI problem on phones and tablets.

I came to the new site and clicked on "New Posts". Looks great.

Then I tried to do what I do on TT simply by selecting a tab called "unread"...

... read all new posts starting from the latest posts, not the beginning of the thread.

To do this, on XF, one must click the little arrow next to the thread title.

Please note the size of the arrow to my thumb, on a freaking iPhone 6+ even.

This isn't exactly a small screen. My thumb in the photo is as close to the screen as I can get it without actually touching it.

Sorry guys, but that's not gonna cut it on the "mobile" interface.

Is there some other way to have a human finger sized button in mobile mode that takes you to the first *unread* post in a thread? I keep hitting the thread title and that takes me to post number one. Or I hit the icon of the avatar and get the person's info in a pop up.

I've posted the photo of the TT interface (albeit on iPad... I had to switch just because it was driving me nuts on the iPhone) for comparison. That's a real mobile interface for a tablet based browser. You can see that it's clearly built around hitting it with a finger or thumb.

That tiny arrow is genuinely useless on a phone and almos useless on an iPad mini sized tablet. You try hitting that thing in a repeatable way with a finger or thumb. Ain't happening. That arrow thingy ain't good. Not good at all.

I missed it completely in the beta, but probably because I figured Tapatalk would be available for a sane phone UI to fall back to. Sysadmin brain... Never dump a UI without a backup, was what I thought. Well, honestly I never used the old site web UI anywhere but on a desktop either.

Oh well. Off to go read something that doesn't make me do three pixel target practice with my fat thumbs to see the latest posts. I had high hopes for XF, but never noticed that horrible design decision for the size of the button I use the most, on real threads that last many pages. Test threads were short and I guess I just scrolled when I hit the title bar instead. Not going to work on a multi page thread.

That clearly should be a button big enough to hit, and isn't.

I'll beg one more time for the thing that provides a UI built for phones and tablets. Tapatalk.

Or a way to make that thing actually large enough to hit with a thumb. In fact make everything on mobile big enough to hit with a thumb on a phone.

Or a way to have hitting the thread title jump you to the first unread and not the first post...

Please.

Will check in later for thoughts. Kinda want to go read the rest of the new stuff, but I'm not going in the upstairs office just to have a mouse. Plus as you can see, I have stuff to go read on my RV forum. :)
 
SkyHog said:
Doesn't the new posts link do the same thing?
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No. That takes you to the thread title page you see in the photo. The arrows next to the thread name take you to the first unread post.

I do now see a button at either the very top or very bottom of a page once you're in the thread that says "Go To First Unread" It's still incredibly tiny compared to a thumb and barely useable, but it's there.

The only thing that makes it even possible to use it is the white space around it, since it's in the tiny font of the Page Numbers bar. And I'm looking at it on iPad right now. I suspect it's physically smaller on iPhone but I'll have to check. I left it downstairs when I about threw it across the room trying to hit the stupid arrows.
 
iPhone went dead. It's on the charger so I can't shoot real photos showing the size of that text vs size of a human thumb, but that's the deal... Grab any iOS or Android device and hold a thumb over anywhere on the screen in the mobile UI.

Anywhere a thumb press in the center of a clickable link or widget will not fit and will likely press two, three, or four things... That's not mobile UI done correctly.

The buttons in the toolbar on top of the edit box are unholy small on mobile for s thumb, too... But I can just barely tap very carefully with the tip of the thumb and get the one I want. Bold, italics, whatever. But not easily. Those can mostly be ignored for most posts, but they're way too small for a thumb driven interface, overall.

Edit, Delete, Report and Reply in the bottom row of a signature area are also incredibly small bu usable because of the unclickable white space around them. A signature with a link in it would make the left three difficult to hit.

Buttons like Post Reply, Upload a File, and More Options are about big enough to call them truly usable with a thumb. "New Posts" is much smaller but again surrounded by white space so maybe usable.

The easiest thing to hit on the whole page is the avatars, the least used " button" so to speak. They're thumb sized.
 
Well playing more, the two click method works to go from the New Posts page into the thread and then to the Last Unread button... kinda. It's the difference between two clicks for every thread and both have to be a lot more careful clicks than in a real mobile interface.

Generally annoying after using an interface designed for thumb sized use that requires a single tap for the whole shebang that also always has navigation depth controls at the top of the screen at all times and isn't a page worth of posts scrolling up or down to get to them.

Maybe the powers that be can grab their iPad and tweak stuff to thumb sized. I dunno. I'm gonna go read my RV forum, gun forums, other aviation stuff, and truck forums in Tapatalk now. "Annoying interface" isn't on my to-do list tonight.

Wish I had noticed it during the testing or paid more attention because TT was going away. I'd have noticed it a lot sooner. I did most of the testing on the desktop assuming TT would still be around on mobile.

G'night.
 
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