DG has a new look!

I use IE10. I'm not on dial-up. My laptop has a 17" screen.

Thanks, Terry.
For my part, I expect to be gone for most of the day. Besides, it's raining out...not a good day for gardening. (Anything the tech team can do about rain?) ...Just kidding.

Also, I'm using IE8...right now we still have XP so that's as high as it can go. We don't have dial-up and we have a 17" monitor.



This message was edited Jul 3, 2013 10:31 AM

This is weird:

When using Chrome, there is a caterpillar on the upper right banner

When using IE10 there is a flower - looks like a zinnia on the upper right banner

I'm holding my breath. Sounds like mine is the only one that is good, and it is beautiful, I love it. But, with you making changes to accommodate everyone I wonder how long it will be good. Thanks!! Jeanette

Honeybee, the images are not browser-specific, and they will change when you click from page to page. If you hover over them, you'll see what they are and whose they are :-).

I use Firefox almost all the time because I hate IE, but I have IE 10, Windows 7 and when I go to DG Home Page I had to Zoom out to 75% and everything fit very well, BUT IT WOULD NOT LET ME SIGN IN. My ID came up and so did my password but when i click to sign in it refused. So, I am unable to be helpful regarding the other problems people are having. I tried deleting what came up automatically and putting it all back in fresh, but that did not work. This is no big deal except I have IE10 on my laptop which eventually I will need to have it work. I can always use Firefox on there too if IE is a problem. I feel sure most of your problems is with the darn IE. My computer hates that so I seldom use it. Happy Birthday, NutsaboutNature,,,,have a wonderful day.

Hi Terry....My HP laptop with windows 7, running Firefox seems to be handling all the changes okay. Hope ya have time to catch your breath.

Thanks for the B'Day wishes, JBerger!!

BTW, that problem you're having with signing in on IE...I've had that same exact thing happen here at least a couple of times in the last few days. Here's how I solved it....

First I cleared my browser/cache. Then I turned off my computer completely...not just rebooted, but turned it off and let it sit for about 10 minutes.

When I turned it back on I was able to log on normally.

Now the new issue with enlarged pics...that's a whole different story.

Haven't been here for several days - we are in Anchorage and DH's computer is not talking to Internet; so we are using public computers that we pay for. However, everything looks fine today from this one, unlike what I experienced in the airport last Sunday.

Happy 4th everyone.

Terry Wrote:"Joy, we had to drop the column with the RIDs (and photos) from the summary page in order to make that page navigable."

As of yesterday, the summary page was navigable with the picture column intact, now suddenly it has to go?
Being able to view collections of thumbnails was my favorite feature of my journal. I REALLY dislike this change and it dramatically reduces my enthusiasm for keeping my journal. My DW is suddenly unable to view photos on threads so I cleared her browser as instructed. She is now unknown to her favorite sites and still cannot see photos. I can't believe that more of this change was not ironed out before being dropped on members without warning.

When I used IE 7, there were huge numbers of problems.
FireFox, none I've noticed so far.

The idea of switching to another browser is a very good idea. You might find so many unexpected improvements on every site that you never go back to your old browser.

One of the bad things about fixing bugs is that, for every 5 you fix, you usually create 2-3 new ones. Making ANYTHING work with older versions of IE seems to be a nightmare. Providing that kind of historical backwards compatibility, let alone customer support, is a huge expense for any organization. Many sites just say "some features do not work with older browsers", and you're on your own.

Making things work with every existing browser, (plus for PCs and mobile handsets and tablets), sounds like a harder task than I would ever want to deal with.

And I helped write the antiskid braking system on the 787 ... one of the systems that has NOT had problems on that airframe!

(I almost submitted this post saying that I had worked on the "barking system" for the 787 ...)

I agree with Rick -- and would also add that the fact that errors are to be expected when major changes are made means there should be a pretty good reason for making the changes. If the goal of the recent DG changes was aesthetics, I'd prefer to not have elevated form over function -- especially since we pay for access to the site. It is frustrating to not have it work properly. I really miss the search function!

Thanks Terry..my pics are now shown as before :-))

LOL, Rick, thought they had found a new problem with that 787. Antibarking system. J

I will see what we can do about subbing the RID column for another one, but it probably won't happen for at least the next ten days. Please understand that I am running interference between the community and the tech team and it was I who gave the green light for choosing the RID column to remove so that the page would be navigable (greenthumbs99, it was not working for everyone). To go back and request another switch means it's going to be a little lower on the priority list than some of the other changes/fixes we lined up.

As to trying to retrofit changes to a variety of browser versions, Rick is correct - it's a nightmare. For those of you on Internet Explorer (IE) 7, it's time to upgrade. I understand that version isn't supported by most sites (including Microsoft and Google), and I'm afraid that we cannot guarantee it will work with DG going forward.

As to the question of why we implemented these changes, it was due to several factors, mainly the navigation, which was becoming more difficult with every new addition. Aesthetics were secondary, but they were/are important. A website is in some ways just like any public facility: we try to take good care of what we have, but even so, occasionally a fresh coat of paint, a new roof, or even an extensive remodeling becomes necessary. The renovations impose a temporary inconvenience on everyone but aren't we all glad that someone cared enough to invest in keeping it updated and functioning properly?

Working OK here now.

I agree with Ric also. I have upgraded IE and I still hate it. I never use it unless nothing else works. If you do not want to change browsers then I guess you are a lot more patient than I am. I just can not take the frustration of IE. We all have our little likes and dislikes....thanks to Terry and Melody for all the time and effort you have put into this wonderful place we call our home away from home. JB

I would also imagine that the sheer size of the Site and the number of features and people using themat any given time could be a logistical nightmare. from all I have read here, it seems that folks are not as upset over the changes as they are over the lack of warning that changes could cause problems for some users and their programs.

A simple banner at log-in, complete with a link to this page with "fix-it info available here" may well have alleviated some of the confusion.

Hello Terry,

It seems that we all are now beta-testing a new version of the forum software. Except that this is involuntary beta testing. Oh well.

I have a bug to report. In case you want to reproduce it, I encountered it at the 6th message in the thread at this link, where I attached three pictures. (But I am sure it exists in many other places.)

http://davesgarden.com/community/forums/t/1275654/

When you click on the left-hand thumbnail, you get an enlarged view of the picture over the message text. The picture is smaller (I'll discuss that in a bit), but the text is now much more readable than before. Your choices are "Back to post" on the left or "Next photo" on the right. So far, so good. Click "Next photo" and you are now looking at the second photo with choices "Previous photo" on the left and "Next photo" on the right. So far, so good. Click "Next photo" and you are now looking at the third photo, and this is where the bug appears.

It now says "Previous photo" on the left and "Next photo" on the right. But since there is no next photo, it should say "Back to post" on the right. When you click on the "Next photo" link, you go to a no-picture page with just the message text, with "Previous photo" on the left and "Next photo" on the right. Clicking on the "Next photo" link now gets you nowhere, except a rebuild of this same page. To get "Back to post" you are obligated to keep clicking "Previous photo" laboriously until you get back to the starting point, where you have a "Back to post" link. That extra work is not good.

Beta testers normally get some kind of reward. (hint, hint) A subscription renewal or a new car. Something like that. I need a new car more than a subscription renewal.

Like others, I am not happy about the downsizing of all of my 998-pixel-wide pictures to 708 pixels wide. If there had been a vote, I would have voted against that. But nobody said this forum was a democracy, so I am not completely surprised by the change. At least you didn't downsize down to 550 pixels wide, like they did over at GardenWeb.

Incidentally, there are different bitmap downsizing technologies, and some are much better than others. It is a little known fact that it is harder to do quality downsizing than to do quality upsizing of a photo. I could provide a link to a photo-type forum where a lengthy message thread documented that counter-intuitive fact, but I hesitate to do that because you might have to register at the forum in order to be able to read the thread. Photoshop's different bicubic methods are not the best available. Nor are any of the textbook methods like S-Spline, Lanczos, Bicubic, B-Spline, Catmull-Rom, Mitchell, Bell, Hermite, Bilinear, or Nearest Neighbor. I think it is possible that most bitmap resizing methods were designed with upsampling in mind. I guess this is all moot, because the downsampling has already occurred.

ZM

I propose some new poll topics, such as "which features
are most important to you?

This debacle is, in essence a "beta" version. Why not
next time ask for volunteers to try out the beta ?

I too like Joy and Greenthumb99 am horrified to see all of the dozens and dozens of hours I have spent adding pics to the column of my journal just vanish out the window, I could live with most of the layout changes and fixes and look Changes but this really hurt after pain-stakingly adding all those to the journal and seeing them vanish like that in an instant :-( . too not be able to see my pics in the rid column is sad for me, I have hundred iris and daylily cultivars, too many to always recognize unless a pic is by it in that column that again took dozens of hours that will have been wasted and make my journal for me unaesthetic and pretty non-functional or enjoyable for me, at the stage of having so many cultivars I feel the pics were a necessity. It makes me very sad :-( If you guys fix anything please fix this! Terry, You should tell the designers if they have us gardeners at heart this is something they need to give Daves Garden back! even if ten days from now, we need this back. Please do your best to advocate this message for your fellow Daves Gardener Friends and Family. Respectfully Sandra.

New roll-outs are always painful. I was using bad words and grinding my teeth, too, until I bit the bullet and made FireFox work (DELETE the DG cookies, don't just ENABLE them).

P.S. With an unusable browser like IE 7, clearing cache doesn't help noticeably.
Taking IE 7 out back and putting a mercy bullet through its head - that helped a LOT.

One rule of thumb is that the more users a product has, and the more they depend on the product, the more painful any change will be. That's why some products become like dinosaurs, more and more outdated until they go extinct.

(I shouldn't mention other websites in derogatory ways ... but there is one whose initials are "Garden Web".)

Hey, J!

Still in the Pacific NorthWet, I see.

>> LOL, Rick, thought they had found a new problem with that 787. Antibarking system.

Au contraire, mon vieux! When was the last time you heard a 787 barking? Roaring, yes, and squealing, maybe but never barking. It works fine!

When I worked on integrating custom material-handling plus ink-jets plus barcode labeling equipment, we had a stock answer for anything that went wring during a customer demo.

"Its SUPPOSED to do that!"

Kudos to terry and crew for attempting the near-impossible. in theory it MIGHT have been possible to clone the entire DG system and give a few users some alpha and beta test time, but it might also have been hugely expensive and tripled the hours of software work needed.

We should think of some of the features as "biennials" that take more than one season of patience to bloom.

One suggestion for features that may not be ABLE to be replicated in the new format: maybe give them relatively high priority as NEW features implemented in some OTHER way. Like porting Journal text and photos to some other format, so that the users could regain the feature they came to depend on, but not constrain whatever the new journal format is.

Interesting. When I go into my journal through 'Joy's Journal', I have photos but the end where 'Actions' is is cut off. When I go to my journal from 'My Journal', the photos are missing but the end is there.

See photos...
First one is 'Joy's Journal' Second is 'My Journal'

BTW...I noticed this afternoon, just before leaving home, that the thumbnail pics were now enlarging like they should...Thank You for that!

I don't really care for the text below the pic as it requires scrolling up and down. Generally, though, I read through the whole post before enlarging the pics so I don't usually bother reading the description again while viewing the pic.

The pictures in plant files are still being cropped.

I'm sorry that I do not have time to search thru your thread but I can NOT find mail and I can not find how to renew the membership. So far I have not had a good experience with the "new look".

Joy,
When I go to my Journal on the middle of my member page by clicking on themikesmom's journal I still see the Journal Rid pics! yaay! which gives me some hope and peace of mind :-), when you go to your journal through clicking on communities on the lower banner and then journal to access it, or access it via the black menue boxes this rid column of pics was deleted. just the other week you could see the pictures via the black box menues to access your journal but entering your journal through your page was where it was cuttoff on the right hand column. Im glad All my rid journal pics are not history as I can see them through my journal on my page, but now when you add future entries too your journal how would you add pics to the rid column unless they fix the journal in communities which is the one you have to use to edit or add the pics in isnt it? hopefully theyll fix that and everything will be fine, also find it interesting their are several place to access a journal but no longer a box link in plantfiles on the header to 'add a new plant'. the only place I have found to add new plants is way over on the left hand side in red writing at the bottom of the list on left side of plantfiles page, wonder why they took add a plant of the plantfiles header?guess ill have to get used to that other than the journal enty rid pics missing scare, im not encontering any of the other technical problems others are and I have an older computer with windows 7 and dont use google chrome. I think the pages are looking good as its starting to have much of the feel of the older look and website just let me ad pics to view in a column on my journal like I had been, and as long as I can atleast view them in my journal on my page and im a happy dger.

Search is back on the Home Page!

Just found out you can add pics in your jounal edit on the far right still and still view your rid journal column pics of your journal via your jounal on your page! as long as I can keep adding pics to my jounal and see them in a column in my jounal on my page by clicking 'read themikesmoms journal' looks like ALL my problems are solved! YaY!

Does it work Pirl? I could never get it to work before.

I'm not having any problems in forums, but look what happened when I did a search in Plant files.

A minor improvement - not important, but it would make the pages look nicer - to increase the spacing between the vertical line and the topic titles / text. Compare the green highlight in pic 1 (existing) and pic 2 (what I'm suggesting)

Resin

Joy, I just ran the same search using Firefox, and it aligned perfectly - no extra white space. I am hoping that's an anomaly that should work itself out shortly.

Resin, yes - we talked about the vertical cell padding issues yesterday and those will be fixed ASAP.

Where do I find the old Tools box that would allow me to work on my journal? Also extras that had the Address Exchange in it?

Holly, while it is yet to be found by site navigation, use this link directly and keep it bookmarked:
http://davesgarden.com/extras.php

Search works perfectly! Better than ever before!

Thanks Greenthumb, now I can find the extras but how do I work in my journal. I can view it but the tools box was where I went to edit and add things to my journal. I wanted to switch out a few pics for nicer new ones and can't figure out how to do that.

Ok, I think I have it now. Will we get the picture column back on that page?