Author Topic: New NSF Feedback Thread  (Read 375335 times)

Offline WulfTheSaxon

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Re: New NSF Feedback Thread
« Reply #660 on: 05/07/2016 12:40 am »
Well, if you want to keep the border, it means nothing will change, I can as well just live with it. :(

The width is limited to 1080 pixels to make it easier for your eyes to track between lines. Of course, optimum line length is defined in degrees or minutes of arc rather than centimeters – much less pixels.

It would make more sense to assume that the user of the monitor did choose the monitor with width that suits his reading habits/abilities.

But people choose widescreen monitors for watching videos/playing games, and rotating your display back and forth between landscape and portrait orientations when switching content type isn’t exactly commonplace with monitors (or laptops!) like it is on smartphones and tablets.

I’m curious – what size is your monitor? (The actual viewable diagonal size, not the size including the bezel that manufacturers sometimes cite.)

Offline Arb

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Re: New NSF Feedback Thread
« Reply #661 on: 05/08/2016 10:19 am »
Well, if you want to keep the border, it means nothing will change, I can as well just live with it. :(

The width is limited to 1080 pixels to make it easier for your eyes to track between lines. Of course, optimum line length is defined in degrees or minutes of arc rather than centimeters – much less pixels.

It would make more sense to assume that the user of the monitor did choose the monitor with width that suits his reading habits/abilities.

But people choose widescreen monitors for watching videos/playing games, and rotating your display back and forth between landscape and portrait orientations when switching content type isn’t exactly commonplace with monitors (or laptops!) like it is on smartphones and tablets.

I’m curious – what size is your monitor? (The actual viewable diagonal size, not the size including the bezel that manufacturers sometimes cite.)
Related...

Being a grumpy-old-gitTM with tired-old-eyes I run applications full-screen and zoomed-in; always. In the case of NSF on a 1366x768 laptop (MS Windows 7, Google Chrome) my preferred zoom is 150%. Unfortunately that invariably means that a character or two are cut off by the right border (see red circle in Figure 1 below); so every new page requires a small movement of the horizontal scroll bar. Te-di-ous.

My first thought was that it's an accident, perhaps caused by the leftmost border being overlooked in the sizing calculation (see red oval in Figure 1 below). However, going up a zoom level disabuses that notion as now much more text is beyond the right border. This most definitely breaks the W3C Web Content Accessibility Guidelines.

My personal preference is for a more "responsive web" approach whereby, at a sufficiently large zoom, all boarders are dispensed with and all text appears in a single, borderless window; adverts be dammed. Having said that, in NSF the left border holds important information so would need to be retained; but it is horribly wide at these zoom levels. Perhaps there are ways to shrink it; user name seems to be the driver so smaller font and move the online/offline indicator to another line - small changes that would have a significant impact.

Edit: Add Figure 1
« Last Edit: 05/08/2016 10:26 am by Arb »

Offline Arb

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Re: New NSF Feedback Thread
« Reply #662 on: 05/08/2016 11:25 am »
But people choose widescreen monitors for watching videos/playing games, and rotating your display back and forth between landscape and portrait orientations when switching content type isn’t exactly commonplace with monitors (or laptops!) like it is on smartphones and tablets.
Well that's certainly one reason people choose large monitors. Another is to be able to enlarge text because tired-old-eyes (per previous post). It's one of those things that can be very hard to grock unless one suffers from it or lives with someone who does.

As an example, my screen for lean-back-feet-up desk-top use is a 28" 1920x1080 ViewSonic (contrast the hunch-over 1366x768 laptop mentioned in the previous post). I zoom this to 125%. Works for me and eliminates the blue borders.

The width is limited to 1080 pixels to make it easier for your eyes to track between lines. Of course, optimum line length is defined in degrees or minutes of arc rather than centimeters – much less pixels.
It would make more sense to assume that the user of the monitor did choose the monitor with width that suits his reading habits/abilities.
I'm with GoSpaceX on this one.

It's the one place where the W3C standards just seem weird.

There may well be an optimum line length but given all the variables involved (physical screen size and resolution, window height and width selected by the user, distance of users eyes from the screen; this one in particular being unknowable to software) it's kind of academic. And not the web designers problem.

Best you can do IMHO (and I've been out of the business for a few years so may be out of date) is to ensure that the content box width is all visible in the window; hence no horizontal scrolling necessary.

Offline Chris Bergin

Re: New NSF Feedback Thread
« Reply #663 on: 05/08/2016 12:21 pm »
So in an ideal world the forum should be Customizable. My concern is changing things based on the preference of a few people impacting everyone else who may like the current regime.....but personal customization would solve that.

I *think* some of that can be done via "Profile" "Modify Profile" "Look and Layout" - although I'm not sure if that's because of my admin level (have a look if you're reading this).

For everyone else, don't know if it can be done, but that's what I'll add to the wish list for NSF Forum MkII (which I've always said will look, feel and work the same as what we're all used to here - hate it when sites completely change to a new format)...but where members can set their own settings via the "themes" and such, and even remove the adverts if they are a L2 member (was always a wish on my part to offer that option although we keep the ads really on the low down here.)
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Offline Arb

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Re: New NSF Feedback Thread
« Reply #664 on: 05/08/2016 03:43 pm »
For information, here's Modify Profile as it appears to regular users. Doesn't seem like there's anything germane to this discussion.

NSF is still far and away the best forum. Ever.

Niggles be damned.

Offline Arb

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Re: New NSF Feedback Thread
« Reply #665 on: 05/08/2016 04:00 pm »
Which reminds me...

Made enquiries at the SMF Forum re enlarging the Ignore List (per an earlier conversation here).

User Arantor says at http://www.simplemachines.org/community/index.php?topic=545630.0:
Quote
It requires changing the members table to widen the column that if I remember correctly is called pm_ignore_list but this has ramifications for performance which is why it isn't done in core SMF.

My son (who is also in the business) posits that "has ramifications for performance" is often the get-out-of-jail-free of choice when not wanting to do something :) But it might equally well be true (I have no reason whatsoever to doubt Arantor). Be interesting to hear the NSF techies take.
« Last Edit: 05/08/2016 04:05 pm by Arb »

Offline Eagandale4114

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Re: New NSF Feedback Thread
« Reply #666 on: 05/11/2016 05:28 am »
So in an ideal world the forum should be Customizable. My concern is changing things based on the preference of a few people impacting everyone else who may like the current regime.....but personal customization would solve that.

I *think* some of that can be done via "Profile" "Modify Profile" "Look and Layout" - although I'm not sure if that's because of my admin level (have a look if you're reading this).

For everyone else, don't know if it can be done, but that's what I'll add to the wish list for NSF Forum MkII (which I've always said will look, feel and work the same as what we're all used to here - hate it when sites completely change to a new format)...but where members can set their own settings via the "themes" and such, and even remove the adverts if they are a L2 member (was always a wish on my part to offer that option although we keep the ads really on the low down here.)

For V2 one way to solve the borders is to implement something similar to what www.macrumors.com does. If you scroll to the bottom, it shows 4 different layouts. Fluid HD scales pretty well on that site. (Im running a 17" 1900x1200 display for reference). For those who want something like what we currently have, their fixed version works. The site also implements responsive site design. Go to a forum subsection and resize it and watch the layout of the threads to see what I'm talking about. Something like that would be real cool.

Offline Sesquipedalian

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Re: New NSF Feedback Thread
« Reply #667 on: 05/12/2016 05:01 pm »
I've written before about the problems with the Like system, but here is one of the clearest examples yet.

Compare Eagandale4114's post here with TheTraveller's post here, seven posts later.  Both convey the same information.  (In fact, the intervening six posts are all part of a conversation thread that Eagandale4114 started.)

Yet, despite posting first and providing a link, Eagandale4114 received 0 likes (excluding mine just now, 11 days later) while TheTraveller received 4.

Offline the_other_Doug

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Re: New NSF Feedback Thread
« Reply #668 on: 05/17/2016 05:05 pm »
Hmm... noticing an odd behavior in forum navigation.  Unfortunately, it's intermittent, which makes it difficult for me to test against variables.

What I'm seeing is that, on occasion, when I navigate to an index page at any level (be it the main forum index, a sub-index of index pages, or an index page listing the actual discussion threads), the page loads and then immediately drops me down to the very bottom of the page.

For example, if I were inside the SpaceX Missions index page and clicked on the "NASASpaceFlight.com Forum" link near the top or the bottom of the index list, instead of navigating to the main forum page and showing me to the top of the page (which is the L2 content), it suddenly jumps me down to the very bottom of the main forum index page, at the bottom of the "Users Online" list of active members currently logged in to the site.

It's not a killer, it's just annoying to have to scroll back up to the top of the page.  And it only happens occasionally, so I can't identify any triggering events or situations.  It's acting exactly like some of the navigation links have a tag like "#bottom" or something appended to them, forcing this navigation error.  But again, I'm not seeing the html coding anywhere and, since it's intermittent, I can't see if it only happens after you post, or only if you don't post, or what.

Also, I've only been using Chrome version 50.0.2661.102 m, and so I can't tell you if it's happening also in any other browsers.  And I don't use Tapatalk, so I don't have any info as to whether or not a similar glitch might be happening through that interface.

I started seeing this behavior about three or four weeks ago -- I'm pretty sure it was before my emergency surgery and the beginning of my recovery period, here, and the surgery was three weeks ago this Thursday.  It stopped happening for about a two-week period (i.e., I don't recall seeing it since I got home from the hospital two weeks ago), and I just noticed it happening again this morning.

Just wanted to let y'all know...
-Doug  (With my shield, not yet upon it)

Offline rosbif73

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Re: New NSF Feedback Thread
« Reply #669 on: 05/25/2016 06:11 am »
This is an UPDATEs thread. Not a DISCUSSION thread. Plenty of posts here belong on the DISCUSSION thread.
Perhaps you don't understand how to do this.
Hit QUOTE on the post you'd like to respond.
Type in your answer just like you'd normally do. Don't hit the Post button.
The copy everything into the clipboard. Close the page without a Post.
Go into the DISCUSSION thread, hit REPLY, and paste the whole thing and post it there.
Voilla, your reply is now on the DISCUSSION thread.
Only post here if you have relevant information.
Even a QUESTION about an UPDATE, really belongs on the DISCUSSION thread.
If your question prompts the UPDATE post to be improved, then the mods/original poster can come on the UPDATE thread and improve it.

(Sorry if this has been suggested and/or answered before...)
Is there any way that the site software can be customised to add a "Reply to discussion thread" button in updates threads?

Offline Lar

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Re: New NSF Feedback Thread
« Reply #670 on: 05/25/2016 01:57 pm »
OxCartMark and I were talking about the update/discussion dichotomy. This is from him, posted here with his permission. (the link goes to PMs so that might not work very well unless you are me...)

I think it's a great idea but I wonder whether it's even possible...

Regarding the below (and the general tendency to discuss in an update thread)...  I have an idea that could reduce the tendency for this to happen.  If its technically possible, which is a big if.  In threads flagged (is there a flag?) as an update thread when someone quotes and is ready to post there should be two buttons a) "Post to Update Thread" and b) Post to Discussion Thread".  Or perhaps one post button which then brings up a pop-up window which says "Do you really want to post this in an update thread or should it go into the discussion thread"


This is an UPDATEs thread. Not a DISCUSSION thread. Plenty of posts here belong on the DISCUSSION thread.
Perhaps you don't understand how to do this.
Hit QUOTE on the post you'd like to respond.
Type in your answer just like you'd normally do. Don't hit the Post button.
The copy everything into the clipboard. Close the page without a Post.
Go into the DISCUSSION thread, hit REPLY, and paste the whole thing and post it there.
Voilla, your reply is now on the DISCUSSION thread.
Only post here if you have relevant information.
Even a QUESTION about an UPDATE, really belongs on the DISCUSSION thread.
If your question prompts the UPDATE post to be improved, then the mods/original poster can come on the UPDATE thread and improve it.


What he said.

I just split off a bunch of stuff. If it didn't have "congratulations" in it, looked like a question or a discussion, and didn't have a link to an external site or an image, it got moved to the discussion thread http://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=33778
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Offline Sesquipedalian

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Re: New NSF Feedback Thread
« Reply #671 on: 05/25/2016 04:43 pm »
Yes, it would be possible.  But you'd have to create additional buttons (reply to discussion, quote to discussion), write code to determine whether the post is part of an update thread (which could be as simple as examining the subject for the word "update"), and write code to reroute the new post to the discussion thread.  Medium difficulty and a nontrivial amount of PHP coding.

Offline mtakala24

Re: New NSF Feedback Thread
« Reply #672 on: 05/25/2016 06:13 pm »
Yes, it would be possible.  But you'd have to create additional buttons (reply to discussion, quote to discussion), write code to determine whether the post is part of an update thread (which could be as simple as examining the subject for the word "update"), and write code to reroute the new post to the discussion thread.  Medium difficulty and a nontrivial amount of PHP coding.

And also maintain those code changes when the forum software gets updated. Plugin is a way to go, but still a bit of a kludge.

Online catdlr

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Re: New NSF Feedback Thread
« Reply #673 on: 05/25/2016 07:05 pm »
Could someone check do a  "Search"  please.  I notice that whatever I type in doesn't return any results.  Thanks,  Tony D.
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Offline Lar

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Re: New NSF Feedback Thread
« Reply #674 on: 05/25/2016 07:07 pm »
what were you searching for?

Can you find it with Google? (restricting to site:forum.nasaspaceflight.com) That's often a good check...
"I think it would be great to be born on Earth and to die on Mars. Just hopefully not at the point of impact." -Elon Musk
"We're a little bit like the dog who caught the bus" - Musk after CRS-8 S1 successfully landed on ASDS OCISLY

Online catdlr

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Re: New NSF Feedback Thread
« Reply #675 on: 05/25/2016 07:09 pm »
what were you searching for?

Can you find it with Google? (restricting to site:forum.nasaspaceflight.com) That's often a good check...

I'm trying to see if the Search function is working.  I tried searching for some of previous COTS posts and or Scott Kelly post and could not get any results.
Tony De La Rosa, ...I'm no Feline Dealer!! I move mountains.  but I'm better known for "I think it's highly sexual." Japanese to English Translation.

Offline WulfTheSaxon

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Re: New NSF Feedback Thread
« Reply #676 on: 05/25/2016 08:13 pm »
It appears the forum software is already most of the way to being able to handle quoting update threads in discussion threads. If you copy a quote link and swap the topic parameter for a different thread number, it works fine. As a quick-and-dirty solution, all that’s needed is a bit of JS to generate a button. It could even be implemented as a userscript for testing, although it would have to use a hard-coded list of update-discussion thread pairs. Obviously a permanent solution would rely on a meta tag in the update thread.

For example, this thread is http://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=32793.0. The quote button on macpacheco’s last post in the JCSAT-14 update thread links to http://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?action=post;quote=1538748;topic=39843.300;last_msg=1538757. Combine those to get http://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?action=post;quote=1538748;topic=32793.0 and it will quote that post from the update thread here in the feedback thread.

Edit: Yep, works.
Edit 2: Changed post subject to avoid possible confusion.
« Last Edit: 05/26/2016 08:04 pm by WulfTheSaxon »

Offline Lar

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Re: New NSF Feedback Thread
« Reply #677 on: 05/25/2016 08:30 pm »
what were you searching for?

Can you find it with Google? (restricting to site:forum.nasaspaceflight.com) That's often a good check...

I'm trying to see if the Search function is working.  I tried searching for some of previous COTS posts and or Scott Kelly post and could not get any results.

me either. It was "working"[1] a few weeks ago when I said it was "pants" and now it's not returning anything at all.. there ARE posts with Scott Kelly in them..

https://www.google.com/search?q=Scott+Kelly+site%3Aforum.nasaspaceflight.com

There is a server upgrade coming later today, perhaps asking after that happens, as I expect the server admin folk are busy on that just at the moment??



1 - returned every single post that had Scott or Kelly in them
"I think it would be great to be born on Earth and to die on Mars. Just hopefully not at the point of impact." -Elon Musk
"We're a little bit like the dog who caught the bus" - Musk after CRS-8 S1 successfully landed on ASDS OCISLY

Offline Chris Bergin

Re: New NSF Feedback Thread
« Reply #678 on: 05/25/2016 08:48 pm »
Search has always been a bit "pants" to be fair. I find it does the job in the section heads, but the main search in the forum top bar is "pants".

Server backbone - that's in work.
Then it'll be functionality - next.
Then it'll be appearance - after.

We'll be crowdsourcing the talent in the community when we get to that point (server backbone already has Mark and some talent working on it).
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Offline Lar

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Re: New NSF Feedback Thread
« Reply #679 on: 05/25/2016 08:50 pm »
well.... right now it's not working at all. The searches I tried a few weeks ago that returned many things now return nothing. Try it...  go to
http://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?action=search
put in "apollo 16"

when I posted this post  http://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=32793.msg1525370#msg1525370

I got pages and pages and pages of returns. Now, not one thing.  Something changed.

NOTE: I'm not like demanding you fix it or anything!!!! just clarifying.
« Last Edit: 05/25/2016 08:53 pm by Lar »
"I think it would be great to be born on Earth and to die on Mars. Just hopefully not at the point of impact." -Elon Musk
"We're a little bit like the dog who caught the bus" - Musk after CRS-8 S1 successfully landed on ASDS OCISLY

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