Upgrade Is A Value Judgment

[ThePythonicCow]

Re: Upgrade Is A Value Judgment

Can I subscribe to individual users like I've asked for so many ages ago??

I haven't seen anything like that. That would probably be a vBulletin feature, not a site-specific iTulip configuration, so unless you game to code it up yourself and push the change through the vBulletin development process, I would be surprised to see such a feature.

Yes, it's a good idea. A related one I'd like (but not enough to code up) would be for someone, when posting, to "ping" other users, like adding to the CC list on an email. If you're making a comment about some other iTuliper, or some remark you think they might enjoy reading, then you'd add them to the list of people to be notified of your post.

[jk]

Re: Upgrade Is A Value Judgment

i would really like the name of the post's author to be larger. i use firefox and adjust the overall font, but the relative size of the poster's name remains tiny relative to the text of the post itself. i sometimes scan/scroll looking for the names of people whose posts i want to read. very hard to do now.

[metalman]

Re: Upgrade Is A Value Judgment

i go away for a week & come back & what do i find? what the hell did you guys do to my itulip. :rolleyes:

thx to finster & all complaining i missed the tinyfont period.

thx fo the notes on how it all works, cow... you're the man.

looks fantastic... much cleaner. perchance i'll start a blog here... heh, heh.

[thriftyandboringinohio]

Re: Upgrade Is A Value Judgment

I notice subtle changes from yesterday, all improvements. The old light green small font on post header is now a darker color, now readable.
Good work admins, keep it up.

[Finster]

Re: Upgrade Is A Value Judgment

Thanks for the feedback, Finster. Let us know where you are having issues.

The look is not the reason for the upgrade but the improvements to functionality that at first may not be obvious. For example, you may have noticed that as a Select member there are no more ads. Log out and look at the forums and you will see the ads are still there. The major benefits come later with the integration of the content management system and the forums is up and running in a few weeks.

For one thing, I'll be able to promote a brilliant Finster posting into an article that appears on the front page without an hour of hacking and pasting.

If you are so inclined, you can operate your very own Finster Blog inside of iTulip rather than the klunky Finster Forum we had before.

Want to embed a video? No more junky clunky media tags. Click on the insert video icon, enter the URL, and the system figures the rest out.

There are dozens of administrative improvements that you won't see but they'll free me up to so other tasks.

Keep the comments coming!

Thanks, Fred. At least now I know that there is some benefit! As TPC suggested, it's not that straightworward to describe, and frankly, detailing one specific issue is likely to pull focus away from the more general issue. But here's a stab at a few things quickly noted. From this vantage point, it's just plain kludgy and flaky. The user now has to take the extra step of selecting "Go Advanced" to add any richness to the post, e.g. smilies. The previous posts in the thread, which used to appear immediately below the reply window are now separated by several feet of blank space. And the point I cited above above: The the box with the smilie selections covers up part of the typing area. As I type, the cursor disappears behind it, obscuring what I am typing.
I need to see what I am typing (even if readers don't want to see it...) ormany
mistakes
happen.

[Finster]

Re: Upgrade Is A Value Judgment

Well, dang, us retarded retired old software hackers might want a job too :rolleyes:.

I have not observed the "window-lets covering up" that you describe. I'm unsure of what you speak. I suspect it isn't easy to describe however, so I'm content to remain unaware until such time as the future might choose to tell me.

This is really just a litmus test to see who should be a programmer, namely those of us who thought the last couple hours spent poking around were fun.

Having done time as a software development manager, I know it's not as easy as it might first appear. But I'd have been in deep doo-doo if something like this had been deployed under my watch. And that was in the government ... yeah, not even good enough for government work ... :eek:

[ThePythonicCow]

Re: Upgrade Is A Value Judgment

The the box with the smilie selections covers up part of the typing area.

Someone else (perhaps yourself on another day?) mentioned this as well.

I am not seeing anything like this. Finster - I presume you're using Internet Explorer on Windows?

If I had to guess, it would be that the page rendering is more complicated with this new release of vBulletin (making more use of style sheets and such) and that some browers aren't quite up to the task. But that's just a shoot-from-the-hip guess at this point.

For the record, I am using Firefox 3.5.9 and I don't see anything resembling this problem.

P.S. -- From your more recent post #21 just above, apparently it indeed was yourself who earlier reported windows covering up while replying.

[ThePythonicCow]

Re: Upgrade Is A Value Judgment

But I'd have been in deep doo-doo if something like this had been deployed under my watch. And that was in the government ... yeah, not even good enough for government work ... :eek:

In my experience, this depends on the size and importance of one's customer base. If one has a million customers, or one customer who is named say Steve Jobs, then one is held to a higher standard when rolling out upgrades. For a few hundred or a few thousand active users doing non-essential work, things are more laid back and ad hoc.

[Finster]

Re: Upgrade Is A Value Judgment

Someone else (perhaps yourself on another day?) mentioned this as well.

I am not seeing anything like this. Finster - I presume you're using Internet Explorer on Windows?

If I had to guess, it would be that the page rendering is more complicated with this new release of vBulletin (making more use of style sheets and such) and that some browers aren't quite up to the task. But that's just a shoot-from-the-hip guess at this point.

For the record, I am using Firefox 3.5.9 and I don't see anything resembling this problem.

P.S. -- From your more recent post #21 just above, apparently it indeed was yourself who earlier reported windows covering up while replying.

This reminds me of a bit that made the rounds a while back:

If Microsoft made cars
At a recent COMDEX, Bill Gates reportedly compared the computer industry with the auto industry and stated: "If GM had kept up with technology like the computer industry has, we would all be driving twenty-five dollar cars that got 1000 miles to the gallon." In response to Bill's comments, General Motors issued a press release stating: If GM had developed technology like Microsoft, we would all be driving cars with the following characteristics:

1. For no reason whatsoever your car would crash twice a day.
2. Every time they repainted the lines on the road you would have to buy a new car.
3. Occasionally your car would die on the freeway for no reason, and you would just accept this, restart and drive on.
4. Occasionally, executing a maneuver such as a left turn, would cause your car to shut down and refuse to restart, in which case you would have to reinstall the engine.
5. Only one person at a time could use the car, unless you bought "Car95" or "CarNT." But then you would have to buy more seats.
6. Macintosh would make a car that was powered by the sun, reliable, five times as fast, and twice as easy to drive, but would only run on five per cent of the roads.
7. The oil, water temperature and alternator warning lights would be replaced by a single "general car default" warning light.
8. New seats would force everyone to have the same size butt.
9. The airbag system would say "Are you sure?" before going off.
10. Occasionally for no reason whatsoever, your car would lock you out and refuse to let you in until you simultaneously lifted the door handle, turned the key, and grab hold of the radio antenna.
11. GM would require all car buyers to also purchase a deluxe set of Rand McNally road maps (now a GM subsidiary), even though they neither need them nor want them. Attempting to delete this option would immediately cause the car's performance to diminish by 50% or more. Moreover, GM would become a target for investigation by the Justice Department.
12. Everytime GM introduced a new model car buyers would have to learn how to drive all over again because none of the controls would operate in the same manner as the old car.
13. You'd press the "start" button to shut off the engine.

http://www.jokesunlimited.com/jokes/...made_cars.html

To this I would add: You go work one day, and shortly after you hit the highway,
your windshield starts blinking. It looks like other cars are jumping lanes, sometimes disappearing altogether. Then you car starts jumping lanes. Finally, you crash. A couple weeks later,
you are surfing the 'net on your IPad from your hospital bed, trying to figure out what went wrong. After making some inquries, you are referred to an announcement from the highway department
touting its latest "upgrade" to the roads in your state. Way at the bottom, in the fine print, it observes that only cars manufactured since 2006 will run properly on the new improved
roads. The entire stock of vehicles manufactured prior to that date has instantly become
valueless. Yet the highway department justified its "upgrade" based solely on the benefits, deeming the costs irrelevant.

This is the state of the software business today. It's a lot like the US car business was back in the sixties and seventies, when you had to buy a new car every couple years or so due
to "planned obsolescence". There was little competition, so the industry could do just about anything it felt like whether it was good for its customers or not. For a while, anyway. Then of course we know what happened next. Something like this is coming for the software industry. It might be China, it might be Apple, whatever, but somebody is going to start really paying attention to what people want and blindside the fat and happy establishment. Redmond is gonna look like Detroit.

[ThePythonicCow]

Re: Upgrade Is A Value Judgment

The airbag system would say "Are you sure?" before going off.

I like that one.

[thriftyandboringinohio]

Re: Upgrade Is A Value Judgment

I tried the new video embed and it worked. I'm a technical guy and was never able to accomplish the old method despite many attempts carefully copying embed code html strings, thanks. Also seems like font size has been tweaked again showing more threads in a post, nice. NEW REQUEST - little lamp by Username shows if person is on line now. It got very small recently. Appears it could go back to being much larger and not perturb the layout of anything else on the header of the post.

[shiny!]

Re: Upgrade Is A Value Judgment

I also have my Firefox startup script empty out my $HOME/.macromedia/Flash_Player directory every time I startup Firefox.

Ash, if you're still reading this thread I would dearly love to know how you did this. I can't find my Firefox startup script. Using PCLinuxOS (similar file system to Mandriva). Thanks!

[ThePythonicCow]

Re: Upgrade Is A Value Judgment

Ash, if you're still reading this thread I would dearly love to know how you did this. I can't find my Firefox startup script. Using PCLinuxOS (similar file system to Mandriva). Thanks!

I'm cow, not ash ;).

The Firefox startup script I was referring to was not something that came with Firefox. It is a script I wrote myself.

I am fluent in three languages: C, shell and English ... in that order . My script ends up invoking the production Firefox command after it messes with the caches, so I don't have to change anything when I upgrade my Firefox revision.

[shiny!]

Re: Upgrade Is A Value Judgment

I'm cow, not ash ;).

The Firefox startup script I was referring to was not something that came with Firefox. It is a script I wrote myself.

I am fluent in three languages: C, shell and English ... in that order . My script ends up invoking the production Firefox command after it messes with the caches, so I don't have to change anything when I upgrade my Firefox revision.

Of course you're Cow! I don't know why I called you ash, except I've been working so hard I think my brain is having a meltdown.

I spent an hour searching my system for that script, thank you very much . Cow is a smart bunny... I only know HTML and English.

[Finster]

Another Problem

Here's another problem. I put up a post in Actionable Hedging Strategies #1 about today's Fed meeting with an incorrect date in the thread title. Okay, so just edit it, right? NOT! I tried multiple times to correct the title to no avail. Alright, so just put up a corrected post and delete the incorrect one. Nope!

There is definitely something amiss with software that won't allow you to even correct your own typo!