@Ferguson said:
Or... if there ARE a set of documented rules, can someone share?
You may have already seen this, but in case you haven't... @Ben pointed to this Markdown Cheatsheet earlier in this thread.
Sure, I've used Markdown for years, including there on hithub.
What this forum does is just plain weird in comparison, and based on some experimentation a while back (not sure if anything was fixed), i think it is just plain broken.
I don't really remember precisely, but the examples in that look a bit different from my vague memory so some work may have been done, but it just seems... wrong.
Ok, I have no idea how to do this--- had shoulder surgery a couple months ago & just getting back to computer use, so..oyyy.. it's the first I've seen the new forum. So, 2 questions so that I can even begin to look around:
I'm not finding any display options such as we had in the past. I'm seeing white text on dark charcoal bkgrd, & it's extremely hard on my eyes. Please tell me there's another option. I used to use a medium shade bkgrd, until we no longer even had that option & I had to go with the sort of ochre color.
I can barely see what I'm typing in this text box. It's bright white bkgrd (again, horrible on the eyes especially when I've been staring at charcoal to read the other posts) And the text I'm typing is such a light grey I can barely see it. Please don't make me need to change a color & text size & all that in order to simply see what I'm writing. Ughh. (Let's hope I can find responses as Idk how that works either)
Now that I posted the above questions, I also cannot see the text to my numbered questions. My opening statements are white text. But the questions, number 1 and 2, are in such dark grey text that they're barely readable. If I highlight them to try to read them, it's even worse. Gosh, I sure pray there are other display options. They're not in settings, so idk where they'd be.
@WinsomeWorks said:
Now that I posted the above questions, I also cannot see the text to my numbered questions. My opening statements are white text. But the questions, number 1 and 2, are in such dark grey text that they're barely readable. If I highlight them to try to read them, it's even worse. Gosh, I sure pray there are other display options. They're not in settings, so idk where they'd be.
I too have to highlight the numbered text. Please changed the colors.
MIke, I can't figure out a way to quote or reply to a comment. But dk if you meant I should change the colors or SmugMug should. I"m not finding any "edit" button either. I sure hope there is one somewhere. But for now I guess we're stuck with no one being able to read my questions. The other things I can't do are: find reaponses (this came up by accident; I couldn't find any when I looked). And switch my display so that new things are first. Why would I want to scroll down to the end of a forum to see new stuff?
@WinsomeWorks said:
MIke, I can't figure out a way to quote or reply to a comment. But dk if you meant I should change the colors or SmugMug should. I"m not finding any "edit" button either. I sure hope there is one somewhere. But for now I guess we're stuck with no one being able to read my questions. The other things I can't do are: find reaponses (this came up by accident; I couldn't find any when I looked). And switch my display so that new things are first. Why would I want to scroll down to the end of a forum to see new stuff?
To quote or reply to a comment click the blue icon below the comment:
There is not another display option - I asked for black text on a white background a while back. Apparently Vanilla only has the option we are seeing.
There is a problem with text in numbered lists. I think if you change the text to only text, not a numbered list, that it will be readable.
You won't have to scroll to the end of the forum to see new stuff once you start reading. A thread opens on the latest post that you haven't yet read - but since all of the posts that came over from the old version of dgrin are new posts here you will need to scroll to the bottom the first time you open an old thread. This is very annoying at first but it works it's way through the system.
One of the first things I did when I started using the new forum was to click MARK ALL VIEWED to turn off the new indicators on all of the threads. Then only the posts and thread that were new after I cleared the "all viewed" show up as new.
Thanks Denise-- somehow found your reponse. OMg I can't believe there's only white on black. This is terrible. it's hard enough for me to type right now anyway. I hate black on white though too. They just need some neutral (beige or a medium shade of blue or something) with dark text. But the box you write in is even worse. Bright white with nearly invisible grey. I guess what I was trying to say is that posts are in pages from one to whatever (14 in this case) with the oldest first. In the old forum we could reverse it so it was ordered from newest down to oldest (with newest being on top of page 1 * oldest being at the bottom of p. 14 or whatever) ). I don't see a way to do that. It's also extremely unhandy to have no post numbers!
I could've maybe seen the "quote" icon if the icons were simply larger. SUre I can see the icons, but can't see what's on them. And the quote icon has no hover-text. They also need to make "edit" obvious.
@denisegoldberg said:
There apparently is a problem with text in numbered lists. I think if you change the text to only text, not a numbered list, that it will be readable.
@denisegoldberg said:
There apparently is a problem with text in numbered lists. I think if you change the text to only text, not a numbered list, that it will be readable.
Also, I asked Vanilla to fix the date format. You'll now see all posts given in "Month, Day, Year" format. The downside is that we lost the time (hour/minute) if the post was today. This seems to be an acceptable trade-off. We could experiment with other, more detail formats, but it would require some work to make it all fit appropriately, and I think this format is "good enough".
@leftquark said:
Also, I asked Vanilla to fix the date format. You'll now see all posts given in "Month, Day, Year" format. The downside is that we lost the time (hour/minute) if the post was today. This seems to be an acceptable trade-off. We could experiment with other, more detail formats, but it would require some work to make it all fit appropriately, and I think this format is "good enough".
We didn't lose the time completely. If you hover over the date, the time of day will show as a tool tip.
My Smugmug
"You miss 100% of the shots you don't take" - Wayne Gretzky
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua.
Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur.
Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum.
The source looked like this:
* Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua.
* Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur.
* Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum.
The text is still light gray. Looks like they need the same CSS fix with ul replacing ol.
The preview still had no bullets markers and is flush left.
Unordered lists without spaces between lines can be quirky:
Item 1
Item 2
Item 3
Here's the source on this one.
* Item 1
* Item 2
* Item 3
It seems to be the case that sometimes the Markdown-to-HTML converter wraps the list entries in p tags and sometimes it doesn't, and the CSS hasn't caught up with that.
@leftquark said:
Also, I asked Vanilla to fix the date format. You'll now see all posts given in "Month, Day, Year" format. The downside is that we lost the time (hour/minute) if the post was today. This seems to be an acceptable trade-off. We could experiment with other, more detail formats, but it would require some work to make it all fit appropriately, and I think this format is "good enough".
We didn't lose the time completely. If you hover over the date, the time of day will show as a tool tip.
Well that's neat -- thanks for pointing that out!
@Jtring said:
So let's try unordered with spaces between lines:
The text is still light gray. Looks like they need the same CSS fix with ul replacing ol.
Done! Those should be fixed. Thanks for hunting down these
@Jtring said:
The preview still had no bullets markers and is flush left.
It seems to be the case that sometimes the Markdown-to-HTML converter wraps the list entries in p tags and sometimes it doesn't, and the CSS hasn't caught up with that.
Previewing should be fixed now. I think I've tackled all the obvious ones you guys have identified. I'm sure there's more to clean up as we find em but thank you!
Preview view shows bullets, not numbers. No margin below entries as with the unordered list.
Suggest a little more SM testing after a good night's sleep, but this is really minor stuff.
Final display is fine.
Preview view shows bullets, not numbers. No margin below entries as with the unordered list.
Suggest a little more SM testing after a good night's sleep, but this is really minor stuff.
Final display is fine.
I had a feeling I broke that but Vanilla is so weird with how it handles Markup that I couldn't get it to actually do an ordered list and I gave up. And this is just me fiddling with the CSS after hours ... hopefully you don't hold it against me for sloppy CSS
@WinsomeWorks said:
Ok, I have no idea how to do this--- had shoulder surgery a couple months ago & just getting back to computer use, so..oyyy.. it's the first I've seen the new forum. So, 2 questions so that I can even begin to look around:
I'm not finding any display options such as we had in the past. I'm seeing white text on dark charcoal bkgrd, & it's extremely hard on my eyes. Please tell me there's another option. I used to use a medium shade bkgrd, until we no longer even had that option & I had to go with the sort of ochre color.
I can barely see what I'm typing in this text box. It's bright white bkgrd (again, horrible on the eyes especially when I've been staring at charcoal to read the other posts) And the text I'm typing is such a light grey I can barely see it. Please don't make me need to change a color & text size & all that in order to simply see what I'm writing. Ughh. (Let's hope I can find responses as Idk how that works either)
I would also prefer a dark background with near-white text. Someone wrote earlier that the white box is like a spotlight. While it doesn't exactly blind me, I do find it distracting, especially when the thread opens at the last post and I don't intend to respond.
There is a workaround for those who genuinely have trouble reading or writing in the existing color scheme.
If you look in the upper right corner of the text editor window, there is an icon to switch to full screen:
The full-screen version will open with a white background, but there is an icon that flips the background to black:
The text seems to be the same light gray, not white, but some people will find it easier on the eyes. I know I do. It would be nice if that background toggle were available without going to full screen and even better if we could just set it once and for all as a preference.
I just noticed that when you switch to full-screen it remembers your previous setting for background color, so it looks like you only have to flip it once. That makes it a little easier. It doesn't appear to remember the setting for editing an existing post, but you can flip the background yourself for that case.
Well... I find the new Vanilla forum awful. Though I rarely post, I used to get enjoyment from lurking. Please correct me if I'm wrong on these points:
1. I can no longer select which forums which interest me.
2. I can no longer hit one button which allows me to read all the new posts in those forums.
3. There's no date/time stamp on each post.
I prefer more information to whitespace (which seems to have been expanded greatly). I also prefer customization, which seems to have all but disappeared.
I've tried reading it several times since the changeover, and I just can't get into it. My "workflow" for the site has been nerfed.
Just my thoughts. Good luck!
On the home page I muted every forum I'm not interested in. Click the little gear to right of forum name and select "mute".
Once all non-interested forums are muted click "discussions" at top. This will give you a page that has every new post except those from the "muted" forums.
BTW, you can always go into any forum and read "new" posts.
Hi Chris, point #3: Yes, each post has the date on them. On the left under the poster's avatar a few lines down. If you hover over the date, the time shows up. Same for the "Discussions" tab on the top. Each listed thread there has the date and time the thread was started, and the date and time the last post was made. Again, you can hover over the date and the post time shows as a tool tip.
Hope that helps.
My Smugmug
"You miss 100% of the shots you don't take" - Wayne Gretzky
@ChrisJ said:
I also prefer customization, which seems to have all but disappeared.
Chris,
Most of your complaints were answered above. I just wanted to point out the notifications preference panel, which you can get to via the notifications icon next to your user name at the top right. It takes a little getting used to--and I still prefer the way email notifications worked on the old forum--but I've found that by fine tuning the notifications, muting some forums, and selectively using bookmarks I have pretty good control over accessing the stuff that interests me while ignoring stuff that doesn't. I rarely look at the categories page, as it's easier to follow what I want from the discussions page. When I want to see a particular sub-forum, I can usually get to it by clicking on its name in a post on the discussions listing.
Hey @leftquark --
Didn't we used to see the OP's name on each thread listed in the Discussions display? It seems to have gone missing and I would like us to bring it back.
EDIT: I see the problem now--something has changed which causes columns to be hidden when you reduce the browser width. It just truncates without putting up a horizontal scroll bar. It's happening in FF, Chrome and Safari.
I find that is true with some web pages also.
I have bookmarked the threads that i am interested in and those threads are bookmarked in the URL I use to get to the Forum. I don't know if you could do that with the general topics or not.
“"..an adventure is an inconvenience rightly considered." G.K. Chesterton”
EDIT: I see the problem now--something has changed which causes columns to be hidden when you reduce the browser width. It just truncates without putting up a horizontal scroll bar. It's happening in FF, Chrome and Safari.
A lot of responsive sites (i.e. ones that adapt to the size of the screen) do that, as scrolling is problematic on many mobile devices. A huge percentage of design work now done is aimed at mobile; I often wonder if developers even run them any more on a desktop.
We who have desktops, big monitor screens, and work with all 10 fingers instead of just thumbs are dinosaurs. Beware the asteroid; it's coming.
@Ferguson said:
We who have desktops, big monitor screens, and work with all 10 fingers instead of just thumbs are dinosaurs. Beware the asteroid; it's coming.
Well, I already knew I was a dinosaur but I thought I still had a few years left. If this is "for my convenience" I want no part of it. Bah, humbug.
Thanks, guys! It's still not optimal, but Is better. Having the mute/unmute on a configuration panel would more logical to me. Also, even when I have marked all as read, everything still shows up when I click discussions (instead of disappearing). If I've read it (or marked it as such), it takes my brain extra cycles to process. I don't understand why the timestamp can't be included with the date.
Anyway, I'll see how it works in "real" use for a while. Thanks for the help!
Comments
Sure, I've used Markdown for years, including there on hithub.
What this forum does is just plain weird in comparison, and based on some experimentation a while back (not sure if anything was fixed), i think it is just plain broken.
Here's one prior discussion: https://dgrin.com/discussion/260195/unordered-lists
I don't really remember precisely, but the examples in that look a bit different from my vague memory so some work may have been done, but it just seems... wrong.
Vanilla fixed a bug with Advanced Search, so i've now enabled it. Please let me know if you see any issues.
Former SmugMug Product Team
aaron AT aaronmphotography DOT com
Website: http://www.aaronmphotography.com
My SmugMug CSS Customizations website: http://www.aaronmphotography.com/Customizations
Ok, I have no idea how to do this--- had shoulder surgery a couple months ago & just getting back to computer use, so..oyyy.. it's the first I've seen the new forum. So, 2 questions so that I can even begin to look around:
I'm not finding any display options such as we had in the past. I'm seeing white text on dark charcoal bkgrd, & it's extremely hard on my eyes. Please tell me there's another option. I used to use a medium shade bkgrd, until we no longer even had that option & I had to go with the sort of ochre color.
I can barely see what I'm typing in this text box. It's bright white bkgrd (again, horrible on the eyes especially when I've been staring at charcoal to read the other posts) And the text I'm typing is such a light grey I can barely see it. Please don't make me need to change a color & text size & all that in order to simply see what I'm writing. Ughh. (Let's hope I can find responses as Idk how that works either)
DayBreak, my Folk Music Group (some free mp3s!) http://daybreakfolk.com
Now that I posted the above questions, I also cannot see the text to my numbered questions. My opening statements are white text. But the questions, number 1 and 2, are in such dark grey text that they're barely readable. If I highlight them to try to read them, it's even worse. Gosh, I sure pray there are other display options. They're not in settings, so idk where they'd be.
DayBreak, my Folk Music Group (some free mp3s!) http://daybreakfolk.com
I too have to highlight the numbered text. Please changed the colors.
Images in the Backcountry
My SmugMug Customizations | Adding CSS to Your Site | SEO for the Photographer | Locate Your Page/Widget Number | SmugMug Help Desk
MIke, I can't figure out a way to quote or reply to a comment. But dk if you meant I should change the colors or SmugMug should. I"m not finding any "edit" button either. I sure hope there is one somewhere. But for now I guess we're stuck with no one being able to read my questions. The other things I can't do are: find reaponses (this came up by accident; I couldn't find any when I looked). And switch my display so that new things are first. Why would I want to scroll down to the end of a forum to see new stuff?
DayBreak, my Folk Music Group (some free mp3s!) http://daybreakfolk.com
To quote or reply to a comment click the blue icon below the comment:
There is not another display option - I asked for black text on a white background a while back. Apparently Vanilla only has the option we are seeing.
There is a problem with text in numbered lists. I think if you change the text to only text, not a numbered list, that it will be readable.
You won't have to scroll to the end of the forum to see new stuff once you start reading. A thread opens on the latest post that you haven't yet read - but since all of the posts that came over from the old version of dgrin are new posts here you will need to scroll to the bottom the first time you open an old thread. This is very annoying at first but it works it's way through the system.
One of the first things I did when I started using the new forum was to click MARK ALL VIEWED to turn off the new indicators on all of the threads. Then only the posts and thread that were new after I cleared the "all viewed" show up as new.
Musings & ramblings at https://denisegoldberg.blogspot.com
Thanks Denise-- somehow found your reponse. OMg I can't believe there's only white on black. This is terrible. it's hard enough for me to type right now anyway. I hate black on white though too. They just need some neutral (beige or a medium shade of blue or something) with dark text. But the box you write in is even worse. Bright white with nearly invisible grey. I guess what I was trying to say is that posts are in pages from one to whatever (14 in this case) with the oldest first. In the old forum we could reverse it so it was ordered from newest down to oldest (with newest being on top of page 1 * oldest being at the bottom of p. 14 or whatever) ). I don't see a way to do that. It's also extremely unhandy to have no post numbers!
I could've maybe seen the "quote" icon if the icons were simply larger. SUre I can see the icons, but can't see what's on them. And the quote icon has no hover-text. They also need to make "edit" obvious.
DayBreak, my Folk Music Group (some free mp3s!) http://daybreakfolk.com
Ordered lists should now be fixed.
Former SmugMug Product Team
aaron AT aaronmphotography DOT com
Website: http://www.aaronmphotography.com
My SmugMug CSS Customizations website: http://www.aaronmphotography.com/Customizations
Thank you, much better!
Musings & ramblings at https://denisegoldberg.blogspot.com
Also, I asked Vanilla to fix the date format. You'll now see all posts given in "Month, Day, Year" format. The downside is that we lost the time (hour/minute) if the post was today. This seems to be an acceptable trade-off. We could experiment with other, more detail formats, but it would require some work to make it all fit appropriately, and I think this format is "good enough".
Former SmugMug Product Team
aaron AT aaronmphotography DOT com
Website: http://www.aaronmphotography.com
My SmugMug CSS Customizations website: http://www.aaronmphotography.com/Customizations
We didn't lose the time completely. If you hover over the date, the time of day will show as a tool tip.
"You miss 100% of the shots you don't take" - Wayne Gretzky
So let's try unordered with spaces between lines:
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua.
Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur.
Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum.
The source looked like this:
The text is still light gray. Looks like they need the same CSS fix with ul replacing ol.
The preview still had no bullets markers and is flush left.
Unordered lists without spaces between lines can be quirky:
Here's the source on this one.
It seems to be the case that sometimes the Markdown-to-HTML converter wraps the list entries in p tags and sometimes it doesn't, and the CSS hasn't caught up with that.
Well that's neat -- thanks for pointing that out!
Done! Those should be fixed. Thanks for hunting down these
Previewing should be fixed now. I think I've tackled all the obvious ones you guys have identified. I'm sure there's more to clean up as we find em but thank you!
Former SmugMug Product Team
aaron AT aaronmphotography DOT com
Website: http://www.aaronmphotography.com
My SmugMug CSS Customizations website: http://www.aaronmphotography.com/Customizations
Checking the previews. Unordered lists:
Looks fine.
And ordered lists:
Preview view shows bullets, not numbers. No margin below entries as with the unordered list.
Suggest a little more SM testing after a good night's sleep, but this is really minor stuff.
Final display is fine.
I had a feeling I broke that but Vanilla is so weird with how it handles Markup that I couldn't get it to actually do an ordered list and I gave up. And this is just me fiddling with the CSS after hours ... hopefully you don't hold it against me for sloppy CSS
Former SmugMug Product Team
aaron AT aaronmphotography DOT com
Website: http://www.aaronmphotography.com
My SmugMug CSS Customizations website: http://www.aaronmphotography.com/Customizations
OK, I think I got those fixed now
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 would also prefer a dark background with near-white text. Someone wrote earlier that the white box is like a spotlight. While it doesn't exactly blind me, I do find it distracting, especially when the thread opens at the last post and I don't intend to respond.
There is a workaround for those who genuinely have trouble reading or writing in the existing color scheme.
If you look in the upper right corner of the text editor window, there is an icon to switch to full screen:
The full-screen version will open with a white background, but there is an icon that flips the background to black:
The text seems to be the same light gray, not white, but some people will find it easier on the eyes. I know I do. It would be nice if that background toggle were available without going to full screen and even better if we could just set it once and for all as a preference.
I just noticed that when you switch to full-screen it remembers your previous setting for background color, so it looks like you only have to flip it once. That makes it a little easier. It doesn't appear to remember the setting for editing an existing post, but you can flip the background yourself for that case.
@leftquark said:
Looks good. Thanks. (But I would have forgiven you for going to bed first and doing this in the morning.)
Photographers don't sleep -- we have to stay up all night editing
Former SmugMug Product Team
aaron AT aaronmphotography DOT com
Website: http://www.aaronmphotography.com
My SmugMug CSS Customizations website: http://www.aaronmphotography.com/Customizations
Well... I find the new Vanilla forum awful. Though I rarely post, I used to get enjoyment from lurking. Please correct me if I'm wrong on these points:
1. I can no longer select which forums which interest me.
2. I can no longer hit one button which allows me to read all the new posts in those forums.
3. There's no date/time stamp on each post.
I prefer more information to whitespace (which seems to have been expanded greatly). I also prefer customization, which seems to have all but disappeared.
I've tried reading it several times since the changeover, and I just can't get into it. My "workflow" for the site has been nerfed.
Just my thoughts. Good luck!
BTW, you can always go into any forum and read "new" posts.
My Website index | My Blog
Hi Chris, point #3: Yes, each post has the date on them. On the left under the poster's avatar a few lines down. If you hover over the date, the time shows up. Same for the "Discussions" tab on the top. Each listed thread there has the date and time the thread was started, and the date and time the last post was made. Again, you can hover over the date and the post time shows as a tool tip.
Hope that helps.
"You miss 100% of the shots you don't take" - Wayne Gretzky
Chris,
Most of your complaints were answered above. I just wanted to point out the notifications preference panel, which you can get to via the notifications icon next to your user name at the top right. It takes a little getting used to--and I still prefer the way email notifications worked on the old forum--but I've found that by fine tuning the notifications, muting some forums, and selectively using bookmarks I have pretty good control over accessing the stuff that interests me while ignoring stuff that doesn't. I rarely look at the categories page, as it's easier to follow what I want from the discussions page. When I want to see a particular sub-forum, I can usually get to it by clicking on its name in a post on the discussions listing.
Hey @leftquark --
Didn't we used to see the OP's name on each thread listed in the Discussions display? It seems to have gone missing and I would like us to bring it back.
EDIT: I see the problem now--something has changed which causes columns to be hidden when you reduce the browser width. It just truncates without putting up a horizontal scroll bar. It's happening in FF, Chrome and Safari.
I find that is true with some web pages also.
I have bookmarked the threads that i am interested in and those threads are bookmarked in the URL I use to get to the Forum. I don't know if you could do that with the general topics or not.
A lot of responsive sites (i.e. ones that adapt to the size of the screen) do that, as scrolling is problematic on many mobile devices. A huge percentage of design work now done is aimed at mobile; I often wonder if developers even run them any more on a desktop.
We who have desktops, big monitor screens, and work with all 10 fingers instead of just thumbs are dinosaurs. Beware the asteroid; it's coming.
Well, I already knew I was a dinosaur but I thought I still had a few years left. If this is "for my convenience" I want no part of it. Bah, humbug.
Thanks, guys! It's still not optimal, but Is better. Having the mute/unmute on a configuration panel would more logical to me. Also, even when I have marked all as read, everything still shows up when I click discussions (instead of disappearing). If I've read it (or marked it as such), it takes my brain extra cycles to process. I don't understand why the timestamp can't be included with the date.
Anyway, I'll see how it works in "real" use for a while. Thanks for the help!