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Thread: Forum posting problems

  1. #1

    Forum posting problems

    [Reposted from the "Really Right Stuff and TK45S" thread]

    Posting: I don't want to denigrate the vast amount of volunteer work that went into setting up this forum. It is, bar none, THE forum for discussing large format photography, especially after the effective demise of the rec.photo.equipment.large-format newsgroup.

    That said, the intent was to duplicate the functionality provided by LUSENET, which Greenspan put together. At the time, that was a reasonable job - he again patterned it loosely on a minimal function, semi-threaded newsreader interacting with USENET newsgroups.

    But the interface is not fully threaded, so that I can't follow the thread of responses, the way I can with a threaded newsreader or with one of the popular bulletin boards which does complete threading.

    And despite the recent improvements to the posting, I run into glitches all the time. The most usual one is that no matter WHAT I do, I can't look at the post as it previews, and get back to the edit page with the text intact. Hitting 'back' on my browser takes me back to the edit page with only two of the fields filled in. Hitting the 'go back' link invariable takes me to a 'page not found'. Maybe it's the tightened security that comes with me be fairly paranoid about security and browsers, but I'm not about to relax my security just so that the darn interface works.

    And invariably, I find one typo or something, and before I've thought, I've click to go back, and the post is lost, period. I've tried to get into the habit of copying all I've written into the clipboard so that I can just past it back if I have to, but yesterday, I hit ctrl-a to select everything, and then went to hit ctrl-c to copy it, and the ctrl-key apparently didn't work, so I got just a c, wiping the entire post. Agh!

    It's enough to make me wish for phpbb.

  2. #2
    Scott Rosenberg's Avatar
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    Forum posting problems

    Paul wrote...

    "And despite the recent improvements to the posting, I run into glitches all the time. The most usual one is that no matter WHAT I do, I can't look at the post as it previews, and get back to the edit page with the text intact. Hitting 'back' on my browser takes me back to the edit page with only two of the fields filled in. Hitting the 'go back' link invariable takes me to a 'page not found. "



    I have the same problem, and also copy my text to the clipboard before 'clicking to preview'. I suppose I could simply be more careful while I’m typing, but nobody's prefect.

    i tried going back several times with my last response via the back button and every time i was able to without any loss of data. i'm using mozilla on this pc... this is not the case with IE.

  3. #3
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    Forum posting problems

    My 2 cents worth about Paul's comments:

    Always feel free to comment to the group as a separate thread or to the moderator email address (bottom of the page) if you're having problems. Usually these issues are browser related (esp. if you haven't seen any exasperated comments from others about the same issue). I’ve got a pretty thick skin where programming criticism is concerned—I get nailed all the time at my day job.

    On the disappearing post issue, I have run across that before, but with Linux and one of the Mozilla based spin-off browsers. It has to do with the browser losing track of POST variables (they hold all the user-filled-in data) from one page to another. Going back seems to cause problems in some browsers. Let me know what operating system and browser you’re using, incl. version, so I can try to reproduce/investigate the issue. FWIW, I have not had that problem in Firefox under Windows, but I’ll try it under Fedora 3 with various supplied browsers. Also, if you get any error messages, those are helpful, too.

    RE the threading capability. I hadn’t really given it much thought, but it’s probably possible. I’ll add it to my list of enhancements for the future, but the priorities for the next version are bug fixes and multi-forum capability.

    > It's enough to make me wish for phpbb.

    To be honest, it has crossed my mind a few times as well, but that cure might be worse than the disease, judging from worm attacks on it. Also, there are those horrible smiley faces.

  4. #4
    Founder QT Luong's Avatar
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    Forum posting problems

    I didn't have this problem here (Firefox and Netscape on Mac OS X and Win XP), however I used to have it at photo.net.

    Tom, I would suggest an easy fix. In the preview page, provide below the printed preview a text input box that repeats the
    posting, but allows the user to edit what he just wrote with a separate submit button.
    This would alleviate the need to use the browser's back button.
    This solution is used by UBBthreads, which is probably the most mature of the tabbed forum softwares.

  5. #5

    Forum posting problems

    "Let me know what operating system and browser you’re using, incl. version, so I can try to reproduce/investigate the issue."

    I'm using Win/XP, all updates rolled in. Browser is Explorer version 6, also the most current sub version.

    Let me know if there's more I can do to help you nail it down. Thanks for all the work you do on this stuff!

  6. #6
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    Forum posting problems

    Great idea, Tuan. I'll see what I can do.

    I tried to recreate the problem with this message on IE 6.0.2900[blah] on XP SP2 and could not get it to do the same thing. It could be due to some setting that some people have turned on/off, but instead of digging through all the possible combinations, Tuan's idea will be less trouble.

    One thing you might check is how IE is set to cache visited pages.
    You can configure basic caching parameters in Microsoft Internet Explorer (IE). To set cache parameters, click Tools, Internet Options on the IE toolbar. In the General tab’s Temporary Internet files section, click Settings. Possible cache settings in IE 5.0 and later include Every visit to the page, Every time you start Internet Explorer, Automatically, and Never—the most dangerous setting.
    Make sure you're set to Automatic (reboot if you change it) and see if that helps.

    Also, if you have a less used computer with the same problem, you could try a pretty drastic, but sometimes effective, solution to IE weirdness by clearing out all the temp internet files, cookies, and page history and rebooting. If it helps on the less used computer, you probably should try it on your main machine, though you'll lose cookies, page history, etc.

  7. #7

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    Forum posting problems

    I think that Tom's done a terrific job of supporting this site. (Not that anyone disagrees.) For a period of time, I was a moderator on the older Lusenet software, and this software works much better.

    For example, the older version didn't keep proper track of counts , so that one could have 5 postings in a category that couldn't be deleted because the software thought the count in the given category was zero. That was cute. Etc.

    I've always liked the simple, intuitive structure of this site and its predecessor.

  8. #8

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    Forum posting problems

    Ditto Neil's last sentence. No smilies!

  9. #9

    Forum posting problems

    I love the forum style... but one thing I have noticed is that in some threads, only some of the postings list the date and time of each post. For example, right now there is a thread on 4x5 vs MF scanning, and only the original post, and the last post display a time and date?

  10. #10
    Founder QT Luong's Avatar
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    Forum posting problems

    To echo Glenn's remark, here is another thread where none of the replies has a date:


    http://largeformatphotography.info/lfforum/topic/496772.html

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