Status of Updates and Fixes (New as of 12-23-2015)

Thanks :-).

I'm with Zen_Man and am also adjusting to the changes and getting to where I want to get. An extra click where necessary has yet to sprain my wrist. ;-)

Terry -- someone elsewhere asked a question I can't readily answer. How does she (step by step please) sign up specifically for the Parking Lot Forum?

Terry,
I was wondering since the changes if there is a new place we should be using to contact Admin.
I've sent a couple of messages over the last few weeks using the "Contact" link but I'm not sure Melody has received them. Is it possible that link isn't functioning correctly?

I'm working my way through the most recent help desk messages right now (and there are some with today's date as well as others in the queue.) I haven't come across a recent one from you, but if you used the "Contact Us" link, and it went through, it should be there. I'll look specifically for notes from you.

Assuming they are a subscriber, they will see the Parking Lot forum when they go to the main forums page: http://davesgarden.com/community/forums/

When they click on it: http://davesgarden.com/community/forums/f/parking/all/ they will see a link near the top that says "Add to Favorite Forums"

Thanks, Terry. I'll pass that along to her. There are some things I just "do" but then find it hard to explain how I did it to another person. Appreciate your help.

This made me chuckle. I hardly think about it with preview any longer.

Chillybean, in the beginning a post often would disappear when you hit Preview, then tried to post. That glitch seems to have disappeared. I do tend now to compose long posts in Notepad and then cut/paste. I am a "just in case" kinda gal. ;-)

I don't care for the preview, then post, as a lot of times, I type my message click on preview, then I have to click on post 2 or 3 times, before it will go through.

Thanks Terry!
My messages were 12/19 & 12/28 so you'll probably come across them soon. If not, I'll resend them.

I was reluctant to even bother you guys with any messages since you've got so much going on right now with the current changes.

I've sent numerous dmails and contact us messages concerning the Squash Challenge prizes being given to participants. I've received no response from anyone. No one responds on the thread either. This may not be a technical issue, but it is an issue that has upset a lot of members.

Terry, I am still seeing this error as of now, when I uploaded each of the pictures below. The second picture is a screen grab of the error message that showed during the upload of the first picture.

This is an annoying error, because it falsely reports a problem that doesn't exist and provides a tempting Cancel button to stop an upload that will, if left alone for a minute, normally complete successfully. This would be a devastating behavior for new users, or even experienced users that aren't aware of this bug. It does need to be fixed.

Terry, I do have a feature request that I will slip in here. When you are viewing the first picture in a row of pictures, you have a "Back to post" button over that picture, and a "Next photo" button if there is a next photo. That's fine. For any pictures to the right of that picture, you have a "Previous photo" and "Next photo" button. My feature request is to also have a "Back to post" button for those photos. That would be a convenient thing to have in many cases.

For example, say there is a row of 5 photos, but you are only interested in the middle one and you click on it. When viewing that photo you can't get back to the post without clicking "Previous photo" twice, thus taking the time to load two photos that you aren't interested in.

Thanks for your attention. Just wanted to get that feature request in and call attention to the fact that the photo upload bug hasn't been fixed yet, as of this post.

ZM




This message was edited Jan 6, 2016 5:36 PM

I just tried it and actually found when looking at the 2nd, 3rd, etc. pics, clicking the back arrow worked to take me right back to the same post. On the first pic you still need to click Back to Post. I'm using a desktop pc. I can't say if it works with other devices.

Explore your options- I always bypassed the next photo option by startin on the last pic, and doing previous til the first photo gave me the back to option. So many posts just kept going on and on... if I wanted one photo, Then I would use the link at top that took me to that thread, it is difficult on long posts tho.

I am also using a Desktop PC. Yes, in that particular example I gave, clicking the Browser Back Arrow does take you back to the post. Which is very logical when you think about it. You were in the post, you clicked a thumbnail that took you to a new page, so clicking the Browser Back Arrow takes you back to where you were. So in the example I concocted, the requested "Back to post" button would just give you the same result as the Browser Back Arrow.

However, there are circumstances in which my requested "Back to post" button would work better than the Browser Back Arrow. Say, for example, that you did view the first picture in a row of five, click "Next photo" to view the 2nd photo, and click "Next photo" again to view the 3rd photo, and then decide you had seen enough and wanted to go back to the post. My requested "Back to post" button would take you there in a single click. But the Browser Back Arrow takes you back to the 2nd photo, and a second click of Browser Back Arrow takes you back to the 1st photo and a third click of Browser Back Arrow takes you back to the post. Three clicks versus one.

So my requested "Back to post" is always as good as the Browser Back Arrow, and in a variety of cases, better. My feature request would be a convenience to the user.

ZM

Me too. I'm not exactly a cheese mover but have found changes to be an improvement. I don't think any one person has been less inconvenienced than another so maybe it's more about tolerance. I would like to see the problem of updates to the forums resolved and think things like quotes and backslashes are less important. In fact, I don't like people quoting so much. It's not done in normal conversation. I do understand when Terry does it to respond to a poster but if I find someone parroting me on a thread I leave. Well, on a positive note, improvements continue and the community can move forward.

A minor point is I noticed, on a rare visit to my laptop, a very wide spacing between the response box and the edit, post, etc. info. Just saying I had to scroll down to edit. Maybe the type should be squeezed up? No need for such big boxing on the Edit & Post Reply boxes.

Zen_Man, I agree "Back to Post" would be useful to have above all the pics. I was just making a suggestion for something that can work as a stop-gap if you only want to check one photo. The back arrow obviously doesn't work for everything.

Besides, right now if you go through all the photos and try to use the back arrow instead of Back to Post it takes you all the way to the beginning of the thread.

I am still waiting for the home page to be fixed so I can get notification of new posts on the forums I am watching.
It is frustrating to go to to these forums and try to find new posts. The last posts are not on top.
It has been a long time to have so many glitches remain unresolved and I am losing patience now.
When will everything be repaired?

Is the 'new posts' issue ever going to get fixed? I can't navigate the forums the way they are now!

I agree with MaypopLaurel's comment: " I don't think any one person has been less inconvenienced than another so maybe it's more about tolerance."
(Sorry, Laurel, I know you don't like to be quoted, but quotes do make it easier for a reader to know what one is talking about, they don't have to scroll back through a gazillion posts to figure it out.)

Also I agree with June_nmexico who wrote: "I'm with Zen_Man and am also adjusting to the changes and getting to where I want to get. An extra click where necessary has yet to sprain my wrist. ;-)

And, obviously, I don't care one way or another about the 'quote' feature. I prefer the above method.

The idea of anyone setting up blocks of screen names, thus inflating the membership numbers, never occurred to me. Thanks for clearing that up, Terry. I also hadn't thought about people joining and rarely, if ever, using the site again. That, obviously does change the membership quite a lot.

Seems like people are objecting to the forced preview. I have always previewed all my posts. Often I have wished some others would do the same. It's easy enough to post typos and unclear statements even with a preview. Or 2, or 3 or even 4.

Vern

Julie, I'm afraid the Squash Wars prizes may be a lost cause. Not sure why that is though.

I know, Carole! I'm so frustrated about all the changes here, people leaving DG, and unresponsive admins! I contacted Internet Brands, but they haven't replied yet, either! I assume that as long as they have paying subscribers that we are just small fish in a big pond. I'm contacting the vendors now!

I think Admin is doing a great job here of responding promptly to genuine questions and requests for assistance. Just saying...

They are trying, but perhaps you would want your promised prize too if you had won one in the Squash Wars contest. Just saying ,..

Oh, not getting a prize is a very different issue from navigation and features issues. I absolutely agree there. Did you win the prize? And what was it?

The squash challenge is entirely my fault. I was waiting on a few more winners to contact me with their info before I set into putting all the participants together with winners. And then we got tsunami'd (if that's appropriate to use as a verb) with the forums changes, and I've been using my forums page instead of the home page. Which means I'm not keeping up with messages and a few watched threads that aren't on my forums list.

That's not meant to be an excuse, and it's certainly not a good one, but that is the sad reason behind the lack of communication.

I'm working on some other issues at the moment, but I will have the challenge results remedied by tomorrow at noon (my time.) By then, every winner who did respond to my dmails will have a followup with more information. Please accept my apologies; it was simply an oversight on my part.

I contacted all of the vendors and most of them responded that they were ready to send prizes, but they needed to hear from admin. Thanks, Terry, for finally responding. I hope we get our prizes soon so we can use them for spring planting. It;s been a long time coming! Julie

I made a post on this thread earlier today. At least I attempted to make a post. I see that it totally disappeared rather than posting.

It is still very difficult to follow threads. I am on one thread that is very active. There had been no new posts shown on my home page in several days so I decided to just check it anyway. There had been LOTS of post but I had not been notified. The thread showed up on my home page but I was not receiving notifications. I had made a post to the thread but I must not have clicked watch that thread again. Don''t know why it would show up in my watched threads but not notify me of of new posts. I'm sorry but I'm just not seeing any improvements over the old format. I spend too much time trying to figure out where things have disappeared to and trying to back track.

I have finally clicked the watch thread. I hope that means that I will be notified by something on showing up my home page when more comments are made to this thread. Really dropping the ball when we comment on the thread and that doesn't automatically singal to watch it.

I agree! I was following some threads and didn't realize that I now have to click the "Watch" icon to receive notifications. More clicks!

Hi Terry,
Thanks for the info regarding the Squash Challenge. Though I wasn't involved with it, I was wondering if the same would apply with the Calendars for Photo Contest Winners.

I wasn't even planning to mention it here since it's very off-topic (sorry), but since there's a discussion about the Squash Challenge I figured I might as well.

Thanks and I apologize for temporarily hijacking this thread :o)

P.S. I did send a couple of D-mails, but I'm sure you're buried under a ton of messages.

By-the-way, I just noticed something on the forums page. It showed under "Most Recent Threads" that the Bird ID forum had a recent post and when I checked I discovered it had many recent posts. But on the list of forums there is no indication that the Bird ID forum had recent posts. It doesn't have a red dot and the title isn't bold.

I then posted on the most recent Bird ID thread and checked the forum list again. It still wasn't marked as having been updated. Is it possible forums are being a lot more active than it looks like they are? I didn't check any other forums.

Edited to say: I just checked the Bird Watching forum and it also had recent updates (Jan. 6th), but wasn't showing it. So I assume it may be quite a few other forums as well.




This message was edited Jan 7, 2016 8:28 PM

That's why I've posted that I click on the forum, on the home page (even tho it doesn't show that there are any updates) but clicking on the forum takes me straight to the threads and the new ones seem to be at the top. I get to all the threads this way, it's not perfect but it does work.

I agree that works for forums I'm watching, like the Bird Watching forum, but it doesn't work for forums I like to occasionally visit, but don't watch. If I've checked some of those recently and they don't show any new activity I sometimes just skip over them.

I guess for now I'll have to start checking on forums even if they don't show new activity.

Well, it works to click Watch, but it seems ridiculous to have to click it too when you have commented on a thread.

I have been seeing that the Skip to New will sometimes take you to a part of the thread that you have already seen, like it was the same place that it skipped to the day before when looking at the thread.

Yes, I did. It was a $25 gift certificate.

Good work on following up with the vendors, Julie.

Thanks for not forgetting the challenge, Terry.

Yes, Terry, I do appreciate your response.

Terry -- I completed a post, went as instructed to "Edit Post" and the post had disappeared. Nothing to edit, just a blank page. Tried this three times with the same results even when I tried just hitting Post Reply. Could you check that out please.

Edited to add that it did not happen just now when I posted the above. The error occurred consistently in the Pull Up a Chair thread.

This message was edited Jan 8, 2016 1:56 PM

June -- this had happened to me and others quite a few times.

It's "odd" characters causing it. for me it's the ° degree symbol, and sometimes the double hyphen. --

I have found a work-around for me that has been working. I will copy my post, and in the "blank/empty" edit box, [below the preview window] I will paste the text i had copied from above. It's been working for me for the ° degree symbol.

But Terry is aware of the issue.

Terese