Exciting changes for Pilots of America (New forum software)

It does not seem to have ported over the "last unread post" state from the VBulletin version of the site.
 
denverpilot said:
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.
Click to expand...

Dude, you don't have to hit that little arrow. You can tap on the red thread title anywhere and it'll take you to the first unread post. At least that's the way it works on both my iPad and droid phone.

On the rare occasion when it doesn't work properly, there's a button at the bottom of the thread page, next to the page numbers, titled "go to first unread." This button too is far larger than the little arrows.
 
denverpilot said:
View attachment 44099 View attachment 44100

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. :)
Click to expand...

@denverpilot

From the "New Posts" page just click on the thread title. It takes you to the first unread post. You don't have to click the arrow.

Also, you made a fine case for Tapatalk. We just don't believe that it's AS important as you've made it out to be. Not a single decision that we've made is final except for using Xenforo (we're not going through that again). That said, we're going to give it a try without and see how it goes. We fully understand your every point. Some are valid. But you have to admit that Tapatalk is pretty damn invasive. They just control too much of the user experience for my taste and make too many decisions about how they flow the users.

We went through our analytics and post counts of those using Tapatalk before deciding. Just make sure that your annoyances are really annoyances before saying you won't visit anymore. Please?
 
Last edited:
Meh, I'm not a fan....I'm still trying to figure out how to get to the last post on the first click.....:confused:
 
Checkout_my_Six said:
Meh, I'm not a fan....I'm still trying to figure out how to get to the last post on the first click.....:confused:
Click to expand...
Last post or first unread post? I'm not sure you could go to the last post in the old software, but maybe I just wasn't aware of it because that's a feature I would't use.
 
timwinters said:
Last post or first unread post? I'm not sure you could go to the last post in the old software, but maybe I just wasn't aware of it because that's a feature I would't use.
Click to expand...
yup....I figured it out. thanks. just click on the last time posted.
 
Keep in mind too that it appears the "First Unread Post" for your account seems to have been reset with the move. (All the threads I know i've read still send me to the beginning the first time I read them, but then after that both the Arrow and Thread Title take me to the first unread)
 
denverpilot said:
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.
Click to expand...
That behavior goes away once you have read the thread. You don't need to hit the red arrow, just the name of the thread. When the forum was reset, all the threads were unread. Mark them all read and see if the behavior is more like you expect. I missed Tapatalk, for an hour or so.
 
A couple of comments:

1) Jason's trick of tapping the "xx minutes ago" link for the last post was new to me as well. It only works when logged in. If you're browsing as a guest that feature doesn't seem to be enabled.

2) Interestingly, browser type makes a difference too.

Consider this link to the most recent post on a thread, which I grabbed from the New Posts view:

http://www.pilotsofamerica.com/community/threads/comanche-v-cherokee-6-300.89654/page-3#post-2023931

In Chrome on iOS/iPhone6 it does NOT scroll to the first post:

image.png

In Safari on iOS/iPhone6 the same link DOES work:

image.png
 
timwinters said:
If you only knew how difficult it is to be a monotheistic entity. As if being omniscient wasn't tough enough, try adding omnipotent and omnipresent to the mix.

A mere mortal like you will never understand. :rolleyes:

:rolleyes2:
Click to expand...

I didn't see OmniPITA in the list LOL
 
I haven't read the entire 7 pages. The one thing that Tapatalk has that I will miss it the participation tab. Sometimes I log in and only want to keep tabs on the conversations I am involved in. Maybe that is available here and I have just missed it.
 
tmyers said:
I haven't read the entire 7 pages. The one thing that Tapatalk has that I will miss it the participation tab. Sometimes I log in and only want to keep tabs on the conversations I am involved in. Maybe that is available here and I have just missed it.
Click to expand...
One way you could do it is, at the top of the page, click "watch thread" (you don't need to post in it to watch it), then click the "Watched Threads" option in the bar, also at the top of the page.
 
Everskyward said:
One way you could do it is, at the top of the page, click "watch thread" (you don't need to post in it to watch it), then click the "Watched Threads" option in the bar, also at the top of the page.
Click to expand...
This! (You don't even have to click watch thread, The Watch Threads link will show you all threads you've participated in)
 
tmyers said:
I haven't read the entire 7 pages. The one thing that Tapatalk has that I will miss it the participation tab. Sometimes I log in and only want to keep tabs on the conversations I am involved in. Maybe that is available here and I have just missed it.
Click to expand...
Everskyward said:
One way you could do it is, at the top of the page, click "watch thread" (you don't need to post in it to watch it), then click the "Watched Threads" option in the bar, also at the top of the page.
Click to expand...
Right. If you "watch" every thread that you participate in you can then just click on "Watched Threads" to see relevant threads.
 
ifly4fun said:
Keep in mind too that it appears the "First Unread Post" for your account seems to have been reset with the move. (All the threads I know i've read still send me to the beginning the first time I read them, but then after that both the Arrow and Thread Title take me to the first unread)
Click to expand...

That must be what I'm really running into. With 100+ threads it'll take a long time to clear all of that out.

That's also why I didn't notice it during the beta.

So yes, it's a real annoyance. On all the old threads.

And why Jason thought I was crazy.

The thread title link doesn't work right on the imported threads you haven't read on the new software yet. Even if you're 100 posts into a 200 post thread. You'll be flipping pages for quite a while to figure out each thread and teach XF where you're really at.

Which is weird, because it knows the thread has new posts. Hmm.
 
denverpilot said:
That must be what I'm really running into. With 100+ threads it'll take a long time to clear all of that out.

That's also why I didn't notice it during the beta.

So yes, it's a real annoyance. On all the old threads.

And why Jason thought I was crazy.

The thread title link doesn't work right on the imported threads you haven't read on the new software yet. Even if you're 100 posts into a 200 post thread. You'll be flipping pages for quite a while to figure out each thread and teach XF where you're really at.

Which is weird, because it knows the thread has new posts. Hmm.
Click to expand...
Ah. That makes sense.
 
Even weirder the arrow works and the title bar doesn't, which is why I was flipping out. LOL. Why in the world would they put different code behind those two if they're intended to do the same thing?!

(I hate software these days. I really do. Someone needs to slap the devs with a herring. Why would you... Arggghhhhh! Idiots...)
 
denverpilot said:
That must be what I'm really running into. With 100+ threads it'll take a long time to clear all of that out.

That's also why I didn't notice it during the beta.

So yes, it's a real annoyance. On all the old threads.

And why Jason thought I was crazy.

The thread title link doesn't work right on the imported threads you haven't read on the new software yet. Even if you're 100 posts into a 200 post thread. You'll be flipping pages for quite a while to figure out each thread and teach XF where you're really at.

Which is weird, because it knows the thread has new posts. Hmm.
Click to expand...
My solution was to click "Mark Forums Read". That clears out all the older threads. Sure I might have missed a few posts from today but if someone else posts in the thread it will show again.
 
Another feature I'm enjoying is the compression of the extremely long quotes, with the option "Click to expand".

It was always a peeve of mine in various forums that someone would quote 100 lines of text just to add one or two lines of comment.


And just saw the "Messages have been posted since you loaded this page. View them?" pop up.... another nice addition.
 
jason said:
Ah. That makes sense.
Click to expand...

I bumped the thread view up to 40 per page. Let's see how that works, folks. It's not individually configurable, so we need to strike a balance. 50 per page is about as high as I'd want to go to keep it okay for mobile users too.

Note that you do have Thread Display Options you can configure in the FORUM views. Scroll way down to the bottom and click "Thread Display Options":

upload_2016-2-24_10-45-24.png​

You can set and then save those and it will remember them. This is good for those that wanted to view threads in reverse order, for example, as was asked about earlier.
 
TangoWhiskey said:
I bumped the thread view up to 40 per page. Let's see how that works, folks. It's not individually configurable, so we need to strike a balance. 50 per page is about as high as I'd want to go to keep it okay for mobile users too.

Note that you do have Thread Display Options you can configure in the FORUM views. Scroll way down to the bottom and click "Thread Display Options":


You can set and then save those and it will remember them. This is good for those that wanted to view threads in reverse order, for example, as was asked about earlier.
Click to expand...

40 seems more manageable....that's my vote.
 
Missing some frequent posters. Unless they do a search they may not find the new POA. Anyway an email can be sent out to let them know the old link won't get them here?
 
mscard88 said:
Missing some frequent posters. Unless they do a search they may not find the new POA. Anyway an email can be sent out to let them know the old link won't get them here?
Click to expand...

The link is the same. www.pilotsofamerica.com or pilotsofamerica.com. The old "new posts" bookmark format has been coded to redirect to here as well (thanks, @AggieMike88, for noticing it was broken).
 
Great! It wasn't working that way last night. Thanks!
 
It doesn't display the page count without mouseover for threads. That's the first thing I look at for most threads. If there is already more than a page of answers to a simple or common question, I'm not going to chime in.

Not a big deal in the grand scheme, just something I noticed that isn't in my preferences.

Overall I think the site is functional and looks good. I'm getting used to where all the stuff is now located.
 
TangoWhiskey said:
I bumped the thread view up to 40 per page. Let's see how that works, folks. It's not individually configurable, so we need to strike a balance. 50 per page is about as high as I'd want to go to keep it okay for mobile users too.

Note that you do have Thread Display Options you can configure in the FORUM views. Scroll way down to the bottom and click "Thread Display Options":


You can set and then save those and it will remember them. This is good for those that wanted to view threads in reverse order, for example, as was asked about earlier.
Click to expand...

@TangoWhiskey , I'm not seeing a config/preference choice labeled "Forum Views"... can you post a screen shot with an arrow pointing to it for us blind folk?
 
I like the new software, especially now that I'm getting used to where everything is. The color scheme is a little soft, but that's just the style software is going these days.

Thanks to all the admins/volunteers for the hard work of migrating over to the new software.
 
Everskyward said:
My solution was to click "Mark Forums Read". That clears out all the older threads. Sure I might have missed a few posts from today but if someone else posts in the thread it will show again.
Click to expand...

I knew about what time I had last read my subscribed threads on the old forum, so before clicking on "Mark Forums Read," I just opened and read the followed threads that had been posted to after that time.
 
tmyers said:
I didn't see OmniPITA in the list LOL
Click to expand...

Hey watch it Myers! Don't forget, I might be working just a few miles down the road from you in a few weeks. Don't make me bring a 55 gal barrel of azz whoop up the road a piece!
 
Everskyward said:
My solution was to click "Mark Forums Read". That clears out all the older threads. Sure I might have missed a few posts from today but if someone else posts in the thread it will show again.
Click to expand...

I did the same...

And you can alway use the "recent post" button short term.
 
One thing I just noticed when I posted the below in Ed's dog thread:

timwinters said:
Kaiser is pretty gentle. I think you'd be fine, Ed.

View attachment 44143
Click to expand...

I don't see where we can access past attachments that we've posted. I occasionally used that feature and pulled up an old attachment that I wanted to use again instead of uploading a second copy of it to save your storage space. I had posted this photo of Kaiser and Buddy playing before.

Is the attachment list somewhere and I'm not finding it?
 
timwinters said:
One thing I just noticed when I posted the below in Ed's dog thread:



I don't see where we can access past attachments that we've posted. I occasionally used that feature and pulled up an old attachment that I wanted to use again instead of uploading a second copy of it to save your storage space. I had posted this photo of Kaiser and Buddy playing before.

Is the attachment list somewhere and I'm not finding it?
Click to expand...

@timwinters : It's there. Right click on "View attachment 44143" and "copy URL" or "copy image address" or whatever your browser calls it: http://www.pilotsofamerica.com/community/attachments/cropped-jpg.44143/

Then when you post a new image, use that URL (click the picture icon in the toolbar, and paste in the url).

upload_2016-2-25_10-59-20.png


Here is me re-using Ed's image:

cropped-jpg.44143
 
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