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My pet peeves with the Forum software

May
3,515
5
My pet peeves with the Forum software:
1/ cannot keep a copy of ALL posts locally to permit searching without internet access
2/ does not keep track of what I displayed before I selected "mark forums read" (usually "New Posts")
3/ does not allow me to open a Forum tab in my choice of display (usually "New Posts")
4/ intercepts and discards some browser control keystrokes, esp. those which switch tabs
5/ does not provide user-selectable default font (it had had a user-selectable default style before the move, which is no longer available)
6/ the cursor controls "word-right" and "word-left" during editing are not symmetric - if a word follows a quotation mark, word-left stops between the mark and the word, but word-right stops before the mark
7/ switching fonts for part of the post and continuing to type sometimes it switches to the non-user-controllable default font, at other times it contines the previous font, according to rules I have not yet discovered.
Anybody else?
 
My pet peeves with the Forum software:
[snip]
4/ intercepts and discards some browser control keystrokes, esp. those which switch tabs

Are you saying that Control-Tab and Control-Shift-Tab don't work in your browser? They do here (Firefox 24).
 
None of the tool-bar ALT accelerators work, nor do ctrl-page-up nor ctrl-page-down, nor ctrl-home work when I am editing a XenForo reply. Ctrl-tab and ctl-shft-tab do work. WinXP SP3/ Firefox 24 / latest Java release.
 
I have a copy of some of the emails. I did lose some when the transition reset everything and it took me a while to notice I no longer received them. I did eventually catch this and reset the forums to watch and email. Unfortunately with the new software, it only sends one email, the footer of which contains this: "You will not receive any further emails about this thread until you have read the new messages." So, if it is a thread I want to archive, I can only keep some of the messages that happened to get emailed.
 
My pet peeves with the Forum software:
1/ cannot keep a copy of ALL posts locally to permit searching without internet access

That's your browser settings, not the forum software.

2/ does not keep track of what I displayed before I selected "mark forums read" (usually "New Posts")

I don't know what you're referring to -- can you provide an example?

4/ intercepts and discards some browser control keystrokes, esp. those which switch tabs

Not reproducible here. I suspect that is your browser (or browser plugins).

5/ does not provide user-selectable default font (it had had a user-selectable default style before the move, which is no longer available)

As I've mentioned before, that's not XenForo, it's the browser editor. (And it didn't do it before.)

6/ the cursor controls "word-right" and "word-left" during editing are not symmetric - if a word follows a quotation mark, word-left stops between the mark and the word, but word-right stops before the mark

That's your browser, not the forum software. Chrome behaves the way you want; IE and FireFox don't (but IE also considers a quote to be a word).

7/ switching fonts for part of the post and continuing to type sometimes it switches to the non-user-controllable default font, at other times it contines the previous font, according to rules I have not yet discovered.
Anybody else?

Not reproducible here. (But I abandoned Firefox a few months ago; it was getting way too slow and buggy.)
 
(But I abandoned Firefox a few months ago; it was getting way too slow and buggy.)

I'm pretty sick of FireFox too. And I agree ... slow, buggy. So maybe folks will tell me a bit about Chrome; I have never seen it.

How many processes run when Chrome runs? Do any Chrome-related processes/services run when I'm not browsing? Can it import FireFox login credentials? Does it automatically install any other stuff? How often is it updated? Can I close it with a 2-click in the upper-left? Given that I like complete control and a minimum number of processes, is it going to make me angry?
 
How many processes run when Chrome runs? Do any Chrome-related processes/services run when I'm not browsing? Can it import FireFox login credentials? Does it automatically install any other stuff? How often is it updated? Can I close it with a 2-click in the upper-left? Given that I like complete control and a minimum number of processes, is it going to make me angry?

I'm currently running 22 chrome.exe processes. It looks like one for the main window, one for each tab, and one for each extension that's enabled. If the Chrome window is not open, no processes/services appear to run. Dunno about importing from FireFox. Doesn't install anything else unless you tell it to. Updated very regularly. With the number of processes shown in Windows Task Manager, I'm guessing you're going to be one hopping mad bunny.
 
A forum pet peeve of mine is the INCONSISTENCY (I believe I've mentioned my dislike of inconsistency in the past, YOU CAN'T CODE WHEN DEALING WITH INCONSISTENT INPUT) of the of the navigation bar under the (Home/Forum/Members) tabs at the upper left.

Sometimes it shows

Mark Forums Read - Search Forums - Watched Forums - Watched Threads - New Posts

neatly in a row. Other times it shows

...

with a pull-down that contains those options.

MAKE UP YOUR MIND!!!! Give me one or the other, not a random choice depending on some arbitrary value.
 
More peeves.

After the moving of the Forum server, I turned on some alerts. Two problems:

1/ I could not find a method to remove received alerts, neither for a specific alert, nor for a group of alerts, including all.

2/ I unchecked every box in the "Alert preferences" menu, and I remembered to "save". I restarted my computer, and just installed a new Firefox updates, but new alerts are still coming through.

3/ Neither the block navigation keys, ctrl-home. ctrl-end, page-up, page-down, nor the up / down keys can be used to scroll a thread while preparing a new post. This forces using the mouse to scroll to earlier post in the thread to avoid repeating myself, or to respond to an item.
 
1/ I could not find a method to remove received alerts, neither for a specific alert, nor for a group of alerts, including all.

Alerts time out after four days and are automatically removed. Why would you want to manually remove them? (This has nothing to do with moving the forum server, or the forum updates -- alerts have always behaved this way.)

2/ I unchecked every box in the "Alert preferences" menu, and I remembered to "save". I restarted my computer, and just installed a new Firefox updates, but new alerts are still coming through.

Did you turn off your watched forums as well?

3/ Neither the block navigation keys, ctrl-home. ctrl-end, page-up, page-down, nor the up / down keys can be used to scroll a thread while preparing a new post. This forces using the mouse to scroll to earlier post in the thread to avoid repeating myself, or to respond to an item.

Works fine for me with IE and Chrome, provided I'm not actually editing the reply -- in which case the navigation keys obviously are going to affect the edit window, not the thread window. (Did you really want the cursor keys to not work while you're composing a message??)
 
Steve Fabian:
I could not find a method to remove received alerts, neither for a specific alert, nor for a group of alerts, including all.
Rex Conn:
Alerts time out after four days and are automatically removed. Why would you want to manually remove them? (This has nothing to do with moving the forum server, or the forum updates -- alerts have always behaved this way.)
An alert needs to be recognized only once, like any alarm. Afterwards it serves no purpose. I don't want MY time wasted by looking at 95-hour old alerts. (My reference to the server migration was only that I did not use alerts before, I guess it was superfluous.)

Steve Fabian:
I unchecked every box in the "Alert preferences" menu, and I remembered to "save". I restarted my computer, and just installed a new Firefox updates, but new alerts are still coming through.
Rex Conn:
Did you turn off your watched forums as well?
Why would I do that? I still want to watch them! Besides, that's not in the "Alert Preferences".

Steve Fabian:
Neither the block navigation keys, ctrl-home. ctrl-end, page-up, page-down, nor the up / down keys can be used to scroll a thread while preparing a new post. This forces using the mouse to scroll to earlier post in the thread to avoid repeating myself, or to respond to an item.
Rex Conn:
Works fine for me with IE and Chrome, provided I'm not actually editing the reply -- in which case the navigation keys obviously are going to affect the edit window, not the thread window. (Did you really want the cursor keys to not work while you're composing a message??)
Of course I want to be able to navigate within the edit window using navigation keys, but not exclusively within it - there are many reasons to move outside it, e.g., preview, posting, looking at previous parts of the thread; my keyboard does not come with a pointing device, as many laptops do, and I do not want to take my hand off the keyboard while editing. I'd be very happy with NO pointing device...
 
An alert needs to be recognized only once, like any alarm. Afterwards it serves no purpose. I don't want MY time wasted by looking at 95-hour old alerts. (My reference to the server migration was only that I did not use alerts before, I guess it was superfluous.)

Since the old alerts are only there if you actually go to look for them (they do *not* appear in the alert popups), why is that a problem? You want to go to the trouble to specifically look for alerts in the hopes that they won't be there?

Why would I do that? I still want to watch them! Besides, that's not in the "Alert Preferences".

Watched forums always send alerts.

Of course I want to be able to navigate within the edit window using navigation keys, but not exclusively within it - there are many reasons to move outside it, e.g., preview, posting, looking at previous parts of the thread; my keyboard does not come with a pointing device, as many laptops do, and I do not want to take my hand off the keyboard while editing. I'd be very happy with NO pointing device...

If you want a DWIM editor in the browser (it is not in the forum software!) that automagically determines that a cursor up sometimes means move up a line and sometimes means scroll up a line, you're going to have to talk to your browser developers. This is not a XenForo issue.

It seems that many (if not most) of your complaints about the forum software are actually complaints about your browser, but you don't express any willingness to try something different. If you want to stick with FireFox, you're going to have problems. FireFox problems.
 
I gave up on Firefox after being plagued by too many unstable versions with bizarre bugs, the most bizarre of which I encountered being: if I'd launched FF from the command line and then brought the command line forward to do something -- then hit Control+C: FF would QUIT. It was that way for several versions. I gave up on it. FF has a much better UI for bookmarks, in my opinion, and its 'find text as you type' feature is implemented better. It does a better job of wrapping text within frames as you enlarge or reduce the text, and Chrome doesn't have the useful option of NOT enlarging/reducing graphics when text is enlarged and reduced. I find its web 'store' kind of stupidly designed compared with Mozilla's (never mind the eye-candy, which is meaningless). You can at least send feedback to the Mozilla people; I have no idea how you get Google's attention (or if it's even possible; as with Microsoft, they insulate themselves well). All that aside, Chrome works ok and I appreciate its greater stability.
 
As long as we're doing the peeve-thing here: is there some way to shut emoticons off and leave them off? I'm not seeing a "use/don't use emoticons" check-box (or other option).
 
I gave up on Firefox after being plagued by too many unstable versions with bizarre bugs, the most bizarre of which I encountered being: if I'd launched FF from the command line and then brought the command line forward to do something -- then hit Control+C: FF would QUIT. It was that way for several versions. I gave up on it.

Take a look at the thread http://jpsoft.com/forums/threads/unidentifiable-output.4354 and see my solution. I stayed with FireFox through the unstable versions, and it still works well for me.

Joe
 
I have a copy of some of the emails. I did lose some when the transition reset everything and it took me a while to notice I no longer received them. I did eventually catch this and reset the forums to watch and email. Unfortunately with the new software, it only sends one email, the footer of which contains this: "You will not receive any further emails about this thread until you have read the new messages." So, if it is a thread I want to archive, I can only keep some of the messages that happened to get emailed.
{emphasis added}
I want local copies of the WHOLE JPsoft FORUM because I am am not always connected to the internet. If I have my local copy, I can search for it any time, anywhere. Even on airplanes (though I haven't flown in years).

Steve Fabian said:
1/ cannot keep a copy of ALL posts locally to permit searching without internet access
Rex Conn said:
That's your browser settings, not the forum software.
Do you know a browser which allows to keep local copies of webpages as selected by the user, not just as a cache with constantly changing content? AFAIK neither IE nor Firefox have such settings. With at least one of the previous forum implementations it was trivially easy to download ALL accumulated posts, going back to the very first one. The current implementation allows you to manually browse, but has no provision to automatically download everything not already in the local system for offline viewing. I hope someone will correct me and show me that this statement is wrong by describing how to do it!
 

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