Forum Wish List

[Julie Wilber]

When I created user groups for our Partners, I made a few assumptions, and apparently VBulletin was of a different opinion.

The Calendar view has been fixed and I am sorry for any inconvenience it caused.




Thanks!

[Pamela Hazelton]

Ah, so I couldn't access because I'm special, yet not so special?

:)

[truXoft]

There were a lot of posts in the thread, but the inability of the forum to set and save the read status is extremely anoying. Could anyone at Miva look at it and tell me what the problem is? And other users - do the forum icons turn automatically to the 'read' state when you visit all thrads? Will the last state be visible when you close all browser windows and then reopen the forum again?

Is it just me, or is the forum database already broken?

Anytime I close the forum and access it later again, all threads already open and read, appear again as unread (yellow icons). To be sure I tested it with different browsers (MSIE6, Opera, Firefox), but there is no difference. And of course, I was always logged in, had cookies and scripts enabled.

This is rather disturbing, since I am spending my time in re-checking re-reading the same threads over and over. Is it just me, or does it happen to everyone?

[Pamela Hazelton]

Here's a trick:

Login when ever you enter. Click New Posts - that's everything new. When done, click Quick Links-->Mark Forums Read.

When you click New Posts again, only new posts will display. This is much easier than going to the front page all the time, it will filter only what you haven't read.

[truXoft]

Here's a trick:...

Too much work and besides it I prefer seeing it in the structured form. I know vBulletin quite well, and know how to mark threads or forums as read, but this is not the way is is supposed to work. Normally, the forums turn to 'read' automatically anytime you open all unread messages. This does not happen here. And even if you mark the threads and forums as read manually, the next time you open the forum, everything is gone and displayed as unread again - very disturbing and definitely not in the way it is supposed to work.

As I wrote, I do not think that the problem is on my side - it works fine with me in other vBulletin boards and I tried several browsers of course too.

[Vic - WolfPaw Computers]

Thats what I've been doing for the last two days.

Works well. Just have to take note on the right of which forum the post is from...so you dont confuse scopes.

I'm also NOT fond at all of the red style layout...I went back to the blueish one since the red one lacked many of the features and options.

[Dave Slifka]

Thanks for the feedback

Hi all,
Just wanted to say thanks for all the feedback regarding the look and feel of the forum as well as the offers for assistance in some cases. Obviously, the point of this is to be as user friendly as possible for you, our users, so I will continue endeavoring to make it so.

[marvster]

Hi Dave,

Would it be possible to start a forum for urgent alerts? As Ken pointed out, one of the main benefits of the listserve is immediately knowing when someone else is having a problem with a payment gateway, Miva update, etc.

If we had a forum dedicated to topics like "Verisign gateway down?" it would be easy to subscribe and still get that immediacy.

I realize there's potential for abuse (i.e., "Help! What's the token for XXX?"), but I think we could pretty quickly self-moderate out the bogey posters.

Thanks,

Marv

[Julie Wilber]

Right now, we are not going to add new forums. We'll definitely take it into consdieration though.




Thanks!

[Bruce - PhosphorMedia]

I would think you would want to give only Miva employees and Host partners permission to post. Reason is, everyone (ok, not everyone, but you get the idea) who gets one bounce will be posting to that board. Host usually hear about REAL outages first. (At least, they have always been the only crediable resource for this type of information.)

[truXoft]

Just wanted to say thanks for all the feedback regarding the look and feel of the forum as well as the offers for assistance in some cases. Obviously, the point of this is to be as user friendly as possible for you, our users, so I will continue endeavoring to make it so.

Dave, many thanks for listening to our wishes! The layout "Miva 2" begins to look pretty well! I have just some minor comments:

1. I still would like to have the possibility to control the font size on my end. Using CSS relative sizes (i.e. x-small) instead of fixed sizes (i.e. 10pt) at least for the message body text would be very appreciated. You can keep it fixed for the headers and menus, though, not to mess up the page layout when the user changes the font size. Also unifying font sizes for all message elements would be nice. For exaple as you see from this post, the font of the List elemnts (LI) is slightly bigger than the first sentence (possibly a TD definition)
   .
2. The Quote and Code boxes do not look well with the fading background color - the gray text in it is not well readable. I'd suggest using more contrast and non-fading background here.
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3. I'd still prefer the design slightly denser - on many places the table cell padding or icons are unnecessarily big (for example the message footers). See the attached images - they contain the same info, but the layout with the reduced padding (miva2b.gif) is (on my mind) better readable yet much shorter than the original (miva2.gif).
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4. You should really consider moving the CSS definition out of the document body and putting it into an external file! Using big Style Sheets and Javascript definitions in dynamic pages is huge no-no. Unfortunately Miva always did it in Merchant too. Imagine what bandwidth you are wasting with putting the CSS into the document - the CSS definition in this forum HTML page is 12kB long (yes, I measured it). I do not know what is currently the daily page hit volume, but I guess it will grow permanently and would not surprise me if once there were ten or hundreds thousands of page hits daily. That represents already around 1 Gigabyte of wasted bandwidth daily - the CSS included in a dynamically generated page (unlike an external style sheet) does not get cached and hence it is loaded over and over, slowing so not only visitors' viewing, but also your corporate server.

[truXoft]

Yet another wish: replacing the PHP code box button in the message editor with a Miva Script code box button, that would also properly parse Miva Script. I admit that it is already slightly more challenging wish, but it would be a shame if Miva was not capable of doing so. If interested, you can get some inspiration from the Miva Script color parser on my website - I've written it some 6 years ago. And of course it is written in Miva Script (real Miva coders use no stinking PHP) :)

[Dave Slifka]

I still would like to have the possibility to control the font size on my end. Using CSS relative sizes (i.e. x-small) instead of fixed sizes (i.e. 10pt) at least for the message body text would be very appreciated. You can keep it fixed for the headers and menus, though, not to mess up the page layout when the user changes the font size. Also unifying font sizes for all message elements would be nice. For exaple as you see from this post, the font of the List elemnts (LI) is slightly bigger than the first sentence (possibly a TD definition).

I will work on this shortly.

The Quote and Code boxes do not look well with the fading background color - the gray text in it is not well readable. I'd suggest using more contrast and non-fading background here.

I will consider some other options here, especially if I get some corroborating feedback from others.

I'd still prefer the design slightly denser - on many places the table cell padding or icons are unnecessarily big (for example the message footers).

You and I are just going to have to agree to disagree on this one. Your version, to me, ends up looking very cluttered and is harder on MY eyes. I have reduced some of the padding on the cells to accomodate those who prefer a more compact presentation. I will continue to look for areas that can be tightened up.

You should really consider moving the CSS definition out of the document body and putting it into an external file!

This is determined by the vBulletin engine, not by me. I edit or create the styles completely independent of the templates for each section. Maybe there is an option in vBulletin for the styles to be linked through and external style sheet instead. Anyone know?

[truXoft]

This is determined by the vBulletin engine, not by me. I edit or create the styles completely independent of the templates for each section. Maybe there is an option in vBulletin for the styles to be linked through and external style sheet instead.

I do not know how the vBulletin admin interface looks like, but isn't it possible to simply delete all the CSS definitions there, and replacing them with <link href="yourstyle.css">?

[Dave Slifka]

I'm still working on a couple small things, but the text size in most areas is now adjustable.