@AceCo55 said:
I was just testing something with no intention of posting.
Now I cant find a way to back out of a "draft" message.
I can Preview / Save Draft / Post Comment
I don't want to do any of those - I want to cancel
I did the same thing a few days ago. Don't have an answer.
Does deleting it "go away" after time?
Hi Mike
I cant find a way to delete it?
Aaaah ... post it - then try and delete it?
No I didn't try that - I just turned it into a post I wanted to make after three days of the preview just sitting there.
Will look into that now.
Just tried to see if I could find a delete setting for this post ... I'm afraid not.
I just get an "edit" option which ironically DOES contain a "Cancel" option!!!!
My opinion does not necessarily make it true. What you do with my opinion is entirely up to you. www.acecootephotography.com
Yeah, this is a bit of an annoyance. The autosave never goes away and there's no way to clear it other than to select all and delete, then start typing the post you actually want to make. In a rational world, there would be a cancel button that clears the text as well.
My initial reaction to the forum is nice ... except for the color choice. I would also like to have a dark text, white background option ... my eyes are already, after 3-4 minutes, starting to feel strained.
@Richard said:
If we disabled auto-save (but still permitted manual draft saving), would that be better?
That would work for me
Personally I think this whole issue is overblown - so what, it never goes away. Want it to go away, select it and type X, it almost goes away.
I suspect people will find it much more annoying when they type a long, thoughtful reply one day, go to post it, and something bad happens and it is just gone.
A cancel button would make sense. I don't expect it to change my life either way, but getting rid of it seems a bit like finger amputation for a hang nail.
@Richard said:
If we disabled auto-save (but still permitted manual draft saving), would that be better?
That would work for me
Personally I think this whole issue is overblown - so what, it never goes away. Want it to go away, select it and type X, it almost goes away.
I suspect people will find it much more annoying when they type a long, thoughtful reply one day, go to post it, and something bad happens and it is just gone.
A cancel button would make sense. I don't expect it to change my life either way, but getting rid of it seems a bit like finger amputation for a hang nail.
Well I'm glad it works for you ... that's all there is to it then ... silly me for trying to improve the forum in a way which is reflected in every forum I visit, except this one.
I'm sorry I didn't recognise how irrelevant the issue was.
My opinion does not necessarily make it true. What you do with my opinion is entirely up to you. www.acecootephotography.com
@Richard said:
If we disabled auto-save (but still permitted manual draft saving), would that be better?
That would work for me
Personally I think this whole issue is overblown - so what, it never goes away. Want it to go away, select it and type X, it almost goes away.
I suspect people will find it much more annoying when they type a long, thoughtful reply one day, go to post it, and something bad happens and it is just gone.
A cancel button would make sense. I don't expect it to change my life either way, but getting rid of it seems a bit like finger amputation for a hang nail.
Well I'm glad it works for you ... that's all there is to it then ... silly me for trying to improve the forum in a way which is reflected in every forum I visit, except this one.
I'm sorry I didn't recognise how irrelevant the issue was.
It is perhaps every forum you visit, but there are a number out there I visit which have this same "issue" of retaining what you draft. My point is that for some people this bug is a feature in the true not perverse sense of the word, and trying to bring a bit of that other perspective to it, while also pointing out there are much larger issues even with just this forum.
This would be a lot easier if there was an ANSI standard against which to measure forums but there isn't; some work one way, some another. We all have preferences. I think it's a much more effective argument to pursue why it matters to the user experience than just "because every other forum I visit works that way".
And as a point of fact I find the behavior of the permanently retained draft with no clear cancel feature a bit annoying as well. The point of my post wasn't to say I agree with it, but I guess the point was badly phrased. Sorry.
@Allen said:
I need indications not notifications. I need to scan a forum and read the post titles. I do not want to have open every post listed in the notifications to find a specific post.
@gazoo said:
It would be absolutely groovy if you could go to the home page and, without clicking on anything else, tell if there have been new posts in a/any form. You know - like it was before.
Hitting the "discussions" button at the top and seeing all the threads from all forms intertwined is ridiculous.
Seriously, why crippling things? I do like the new format of the forum, new styling, etc. But what's the point of upgrading to something new and better if a very important productivity feature is missing? What cam be more simpler than that: you land on the front page, the Categories page, and you see, at glance, immediately, indicators that show if a particular forum has new posts? Why do you want me to bookmark things? Why do you want me to setup email notifications? Why do you want me to go to Discussions list and see all the posts together, not broken down by sections? It's easy, seriously... visitor lands on the entry page, you show indicators as others have mentioned right there, right on the page where discussions are logically categorized by topics. Can you do that?
@gazoo said:
It would be absolutely groovy if you could go to the home page and, without clicking on anything else, tell if there have been new posts in a/any form. You know - like it was before.
Hitting the "discussions" button at the top and seeing all the threads from all forms intertwined is ridiculous.
I completely agree with this one. Too many extra clicks now. As they say, "three clicks and you're out..." And as Alan (and many others) said it's really, really difficult to see what you've read/not read. What I miss is the distinction between "new posts since your last visit" and "not new but still unread". The bolded text in the vBulletin version made it very easy to distinguish between read and unread. Maybe it's useful for others but I personally do not need to know exactly how many posts are new since I last visited a thread.
> And (caution, RANT alert!) when, oh when will we be rid of the "Started by" and "Most recent" avatars on the Discussions page? They suck up valuable vertical space and cause no end of visual distraction. If they must be present, could they at least be made smaller?
> Is there anywhere to see total number of views now that it's been taken out of the Discussions forum?
@AceCo55 said:
I thought it used to be possible to get some idea of what a thread was about by hovering my mouse over the thread title.
A popup box would show the first few lines of the text? (unless I'm mistaken which happens more and more!)
Very useful as I didn't have to see what the thread was about by guessing from the title or having to open up the thread.
I'm missing this feature as well.
**
Is there any chance that the "Recent Activity" and "Best of..." pages will ever be used for something useful? For example perhaps one could go directly to the category "Support". It just seems so senseless not to have a usable menu at the top of the page. **
Lastly in spite of the visual things I can't stand about the new software, I would like to say a big word of thanks to the DGrin team for the hours and hours of hard work and the rapid response to our many requests. It's easy for us to complain but I know that the organization and execution of this project was a mammoth amount of work!
I'm feeling ever-so-slightly perturbed because I have the feeling that this discussion is now being avoided like the plague by SmugMug staffers. With the exception of one brief reply from Aaron (leftquark) none of the issues seem to be being addressed and questions are not being answered. What's the scoop?
I'm also curious about the story behind the "Popular Tags" section on the Categories page. Where do these tags come from? Are they from keywords in pictures? How is one determined to be "popular"?
Ben and I and one of our engineers are doing our best to keep up but we're also trying to build amazing products at SmugMug and spend time with our families. I've been hoping to have more time to tackle these issues but I came down with a bit of a bug and have been trying to recuperate. We'll get to the remaining improvements as soon as we can (and some of them are waiting on Vanilla engineers getting back to us).
@sarasphotos said:
I'm also curious about the story behind the "Popular Tags" section on the Categories page. Where do these tags come from? Are they from keywords in pictures? How is one determined to be "popular"?
I can answer this one, Sara. When you start a discussion, there is a box at the bottom for you to add tags, which are like keywords. We had this feature on the old software, but it wasn't used very frequently. I am skeptical that it will be any more useful now and would prefer to eliminate it. It's ugly, IMO.
@leftquark Aaron, I'm sorry to hear you've been sick! As we say here in Germany "Gute Besserung" (get well quickly). Now that I realize the time and energy constraints I understand some of the delays. What might help us Grinners however would be a post that explains the current status of affairs or at least acknowledges which issues are true bugs and which are "features" that are being worked on. This could perhaps help stop us from endlessly complaining about the same points...
@Richard Thanks for the explanation - I also don't find this use of tags particularly functional or attractive.
In other words Vanilla is just a blog software, hence the nomenclature "Categories" and "Discussions", neither of which I find necessarily pertinent to what Dgrin is about. It's like we're trying to make a lot of square pegs fit in round holes.
In other words Vanilla is just a blog software, hence the nomenclature "Categories" and "Discussions", neither of which I find necessarily pertinent to what Dgrin is about. It's like we're trying to make a lot of square pegs fit in round holes.
I would have been vastly surprised if they took the time to write their own custom software. And disappointed as they have lots of other programming I'd like to see!
Though I am still interested in knowing what pushed a change at all (features, security, etc); was there some killer issue, or just cumulative desire for change?
@sarasphotos said:
What might help us Grinners however would be a post that explains the current status of affairs or at least acknowledges which issues are true bugs and which are "features" that are being worked on. This could perhaps help stop us from endlessly complaining about the same points...
The list of questions I have out to Vanilla is quite long, but there's also the issue of having a lot of posts on here, which are very easily missed. But....
The major issue of old links not redirecting has been fixed. Old DGrin links will now redirect properly to new DGrin links
I'll look into disabling the avatar icons, as I also thought they only added extra clutter
We're looking into seeing if we can get the " new" sticker added on the Categories page, so you can see if a forum has any new posts.
@Ferguson said:
Though I am still interested in knowing what pushed a change at all (features, security, etc); was there some killer issue, or just cumulative desire for change?
A few things:
A more modern piece of software, that's regularly getting updated
A much more secure piece of software (dGrin is now properly on https)
Much lighter load on our operations team, since Vanilla has dedicated support
I like the STYLE of the the new system, but I'm coming to hate the functionality and implementation. I know a lot of boards are going to this: https://xenforo.com/, which is a dream compared to Vanilla.
@dberthia said:
I like the STYLE of the the new system, but I'm coming to hate the functionality and implementation. I know a lot of boards are going to this: https://xenforo.com/, which is a dream compared to Vanilla.
agreed.
my most favorite board turned into meh overnight.
On the Categories page "last post" means nothing for anyone and should only be shown if there are no new posts.
What everyone needs to see is an indicator of new posts plus the link the first unread post.
@Allen said:
On the Categories page "last post" means nothing for anyone and should only be shown if there are no new posts.
What everyone needs to see is an indicator of new posts plus the link the first unread post.
I appreciate the passion, but can we chill with the hyperbole a bit? Not only is it inaccurate, but it's insulting to people who have different preferences than you do when you say things like means nothing for anyone and What everyone needs. Most of these latest tweaks are matters of preference. Things like Avatars on the forum display were added because people asked for it. Then they were removed because people asked for it. There is no absolute answer, and there never will be.
We've added more information on the Categories due to requests, and then removed some of that due to similar requests. We continue to make tweaks and improvements. And we'll continue doing that long after everyone has worn in their groove here and forgets about what has changed. We continued to tweak the old Dgrin for a decade as well.
For what it's worth, I would personally hate to lose the "last post" on the categories page because I often see something that sparks my interest. There's almost always new posts, but I often see an interesting thread title I hadn't read through... or see that someone interesting has commented on a thread. Surfacing this information exposes visitors to more content.
@dberthia said:
I know a lot of boards are going to this: https://xenforo.com/, which is a dream compared to Vanilla.
We went to xenforo on a sister forum of ours and it was far from a dream. It took the users there months to get used to Xenforo, and we're still suffering through some things on there. So far Vanilla has been a much better migration.
I've moved the profile information for the poster to the left of the post; previously it was above the post. This makes it more like the old dGrin and easier to read posts without having to visually skip over the profile information. If I broke anything, please let me know and I'll tweak the customization.
I've moved the profile information for the poster to the left of the post; previously it was above the post. This makes it more like the old dGrin and easier to read posts without having to visually skip over the profile information. If I broke anything, please let me know and I'll tweak the customization.
I like it. The past date/time over in the sidebar really really needs to be lighter shade of gray though. Moving it to a lighter gray background made a difficult low contrast situation even worse.
Comments
Hi Mike
I cant find a way to delete it?
Aaaah ... post it - then try and delete it?
No I didn't try that - I just turned it into a post I wanted to make after three days of the preview just sitting there.
Will look into that now.
Just tried to see if I could find a delete setting for this post ... I'm afraid not.
I just get an "edit" option which ironically DOES contain a "Cancel" option!!!!
www.acecootephotography.com
Yeah, this is a bit of an annoyance. The autosave never goes away and there's no way to clear it other than to select all and delete, then start typing the post you actually want to make. In a rational world, there would be a cancel button that clears the text as well.
If we disabled auto-save (but still permitted manual draft saving), would that be better?
That would work for me
www.acecootephotography.com
My initial reaction to the forum is nice ... except for the color choice. I would also like to have a dark text, white background option ... my eyes are already, after 3-4 minutes, starting to feel strained.
this is a bdely spelled word> @AceCo55 said:
Personally I think this whole issue is overblown - so what, it never goes away. Want it to go away, select it and type X, it almost goes away.
I suspect people will find it much more annoying when they type a long, thoughtful reply one day, go to post it, and something bad happens and it is just gone.
A cancel button would make sense. I don't expect it to change my life either way, but getting rid of it seems a bit like finger amputation for a hang nail.
If I have notify me with popup checked, do I have to have Dgrin open to see it?
If I don't go in until days later, do I see it?
My Website index | My Blog
I'd prefer to leave Auto-Drafts set to ON. You can always delete drafts by hitting this URL: http://dgrin.com/drafts
Former SmugMug Product Team
aaron AT aaronmphotography DOT com
Website: http://www.aaronmphotography.com
My SmugMug CSS Customizations website: http://www.aaronmphotography.com/Customizations
That's fine with me. Autosave is like backups--a pain in the ass generally, but can really save your hide when you need it.
Well I'm glad it works for you ... that's all there is to it then ... silly me for trying to improve the forum in a way which is reflected in every forum I visit, except this one.
I'm sorry I didn't recognise how irrelevant the issue was.
www.acecootephotography.com
Hey guys--it's just a minor aspect of the editor on a small photo forum. First world problem, for sure. Let's not take ourselves too seriously, OK?
It is perhaps every forum you visit, but there are a number out there I visit which have this same "issue" of retaining what you draft. My point is that for some people this bug is a feature in the true not perverse sense of the word, and trying to bring a bit of that other perspective to it, while also pointing out there are much larger issues even with just this forum.
This would be a lot easier if there was an ANSI standard against which to measure forums but there isn't; some work one way, some another. We all have preferences. I think it's a much more effective argument to pursue why it matters to the user experience than just "because every other forum I visit works that way".
And as a point of fact I find the behavior of the permanently retained draft with no clear cancel feature a bit annoying as well. The point of my post wasn't to say I agree with it, but I guess the point was badly phrased. Sorry.
Seriously, why crippling things? I do like the new format of the forum, new styling, etc. But what's the point of upgrading to something new and better if a very important productivity feature is missing? What cam be more simpler than that: you land on the front page, the Categories page, and you see, at glance, immediately, indicators that show if a particular forum has new posts? Why do you want me to bookmark things? Why do you want me to setup email notifications? Why do you want me to go to Discussions list and see all the posts together, not broken down by sections? It's easy, seriously... visitor lands on the entry page, you show indicators as others have mentioned right there, right on the page where discussions are logically categorized by topics. Can you do that?
tailoredportraits.com
> And (caution, RANT alert!) when, oh when will we be rid of the "Started by" and "Most recent" avatars on the Discussions page? They suck up valuable vertical space and cause no end of visual distraction. If they must be present, could they at least be made smaller?
> Is there anywhere to see total number of views now that it's been taken out of the Discussions forum?
I'm feeling ever-so-slightly perturbed because I have the feeling that this discussion is now being avoided like the plague by SmugMug staffers. With the exception of one brief reply from Aaron (leftquark) none of the issues seem to be being addressed and questions are not being answered. What's the scoop?
I'm also curious about the story behind the "Popular Tags" section on the Categories page. Where do these tags come from? Are they from keywords in pictures? How is one determined to be "popular"?
Ben and I and one of our engineers are doing our best to keep up but we're also trying to build amazing products at SmugMug and spend time with our families. I've been hoping to have more time to tackle these issues but I came down with a bit of a bug and have been trying to recuperate. We'll get to the remaining improvements as soon as we can (and some of them are waiting on Vanilla engineers getting back to us).
Former SmugMug Product Team
aaron AT aaronmphotography DOT com
Website: http://www.aaronmphotography.com
My SmugMug CSS Customizations website: http://www.aaronmphotography.com/Customizations
I can answer this one, Sara. When you start a discussion, there is a box at the bottom for you to add tags, which are like keywords. We had this feature on the old software, but it wasn't used very frequently. I am skeptical that it will be any more useful now and would prefer to eliminate it. It's ugly, IMO.
@leftquark Aaron, I'm sorry to hear you've been sick! As we say here in Germany "Gute Besserung" (get well quickly). Now that I realize the time and energy constraints I understand some of the delays. What might help us Grinners however would be a post that explains the current status of affairs or at least acknowledges which issues are true bugs and which are "features" that are being worked on. This could perhaps help stop us from endlessly complaining about the same points...
@Richard Thanks for the explanation - I also don't find this use of tags particularly functional or attractive.
In other words Vanilla is just a blog software, hence the nomenclature "Categories" and "Discussions", neither of which I find necessarily pertinent to what Dgrin is about. It's like we're trying to make a lot of square pegs fit in round holes.
I would have been vastly surprised if they took the time to write their own custom software. And disappointed as they have lots of other programming I'd like to see!
Though I am still interested in knowing what pushed a change at all (features, security, etc); was there some killer issue, or just cumulative desire for change?
The list of questions I have out to Vanilla is quite long, but there's also the issue of having a lot of posts on here, which are very easily missed. But....
A few things:
Former SmugMug Product Team
aaron AT aaronmphotography DOT com
Website: http://www.aaronmphotography.com
My SmugMug CSS Customizations website: http://www.aaronmphotography.com/Customizations
Thanks, Aaron. I really appreciate the information!
Avatars are gone but the names of the "created by" and "last replied" are still shown.
Former SmugMug Product Team
aaron AT aaronmphotography DOT com
Website: http://www.aaronmphotography.com
My SmugMug CSS Customizations website: http://www.aaronmphotography.com/Customizations
I like the STYLE of the the new system, but I'm coming to hate the functionality and implementation. I know a lot of boards are going to this: https://xenforo.com/, which is a dream compared to Vanilla.
Can the Discussions and Comments counts columns be removed from the categories screen? They don't add any useful information.
Musings & ramblings at https://denisegoldberg.blogspot.com
agreed.
my most favorite board turned into meh overnight.
My Site
My Facebook
On the Categories page "last post" means nothing for anyone and should only be shown if there are no new posts.
What everyone needs to see is an indicator of new posts plus the link the first unread post.
My Website index | My Blog
I appreciate the passion, but can we chill with the hyperbole a bit? Not only is it inaccurate, but it's insulting to people who have different preferences than you do when you say things like
means nothing for anyoneandWhat everyone needs. Most of these latest tweaks are matters of preference. Things like Avatars on the forum display were added because people asked for it. Then they were removed because people asked for it. There is no absolute answer, and there never will be.We've added more information on the Categories due to requests, and then removed some of that due to similar requests. We continue to make tweaks and improvements. And we'll continue doing that long after everyone has worn in their groove here and forgets about what has changed. We continued to tweak the old Dgrin for a decade as well.
For what it's worth, I would personally hate to lose the "last post" on the categories page because I often see something that sparks my interest. There's almost always new posts, but I often see an interesting thread title I hadn't read through... or see that someone interesting has commented on a thread. Surfacing this information exposes visitors to more content.
We went to xenforo on a sister forum of ours and it was far from a dream. It took the users there months to get used to Xenforo, and we're still suffering through some things on there. So far Vanilla has been a much better migration.
Former SmugMug Product Team
aaron AT aaronmphotography DOT com
Website: http://www.aaronmphotography.com
My SmugMug CSS Customizations website: http://www.aaronmphotography.com/Customizations
I've moved the profile information for the poster to the left of the post; previously it was above the post. This makes it more like the old dGrin and easier to read posts without having to visually skip over the profile information. If I broke anything, please let me know and I'll tweak the customization.
Former SmugMug Product Team
aaron AT aaronmphotography DOT com
Website: http://www.aaronmphotography.com
My SmugMug CSS Customizations website: http://www.aaronmphotography.com/Customizations
not sure if its just me but posts are extending to the right and not wrapping to a new line all of a sudden
www.cathausphotography.com
@leftquark said:
I like it. The past date/time over in the sidebar really really needs to be lighter shade of gray though. Moving it to a lighter gray background made a difficult low contrast situation even worse.