Forum Update!

Monkey Archive Forums/Monkey Discussion/Forum Update!

devolonter(Posted 2014) [#1]
We’ve just uploaded a new version of the forum. I hope updated template will be more readable and solve problems with contrast and large spaces.

Major changes:


Posts :
* Added share button
* Stars were moved to the bottom of the block post
* Subscribe button was moved to the upper right corner
* Improved text parser, now it makes less free space
* Increased font size and improved contrast

Other:
* Completely redesigned template of active topics
* Removed ALLCAPS headlines of topics
* Improved badges "new"



If you have any issues displaying the site, try to clear the cache or force refresh the page CTRL+F5

Edit
Stars for this post disappeared after I edit it a little. Don't worry about that, these stars are still counted in my profile.


Goodlookinguy(Posted 2014) [#2]
I think the text parser still needs more work, because it broke over half of my posts by shoving two lines into one. And if I add an extra line then it breaks the lines too far apart.


devolonter(Posted 2014) [#3]
I think the text parser still needs more work, because it broke over half of my posts by shoving two lines into one.

Thanks for report! I'll try to fix it as soon as possible! Can you give me some links to your broke posts?


Tibit(Posted 2014) [#4]
Great work with the site. Absolutely great!

Is there any way I can mark a topic or post as "read" so I can keep track of what is new and what is not? Just opening the topic when logged in does not do it for me like in some other forums, feel like I miss that a lot.

Also is there a way I can see all posts of a specific user? Before you could click your own name, or someone elses. I tired search by user but the search does not allow "nothing" or * as a search query.


Paul - Taiphoz(Posted 2014) [#5]
more readable and solve problems with contrast and large spaces.


First of all your doing good work and we all appreciate it, but honestly mate if anything you have made the brightness and contrast of the forum worse than it was, it feels even more like looking into a field of snow than it did.

there are so many simple tweaks you can do that would solve this but you seem to have gone in the opposite direction, is your monitor super dark or something, I just dont get how you could make it even worse while a lot of the feedback was that it was far to white/low contrast already.


therevills(Posted 2014) [#6]
Looks better :)

A few things I've noticed:

* The post titles are no longer bold within the forums - Looks a little odd with the username as bold, seems unbalanced
* When opening a post, it no longer takes you to the end of the thread (for example clicking on Monkey X post it takes you to page one, it use to take you to the last page
* The auto scroll(?) is still missing when you click on the thread title, I miss that :(
* Could the "Reply" button be on the left hand side?


simonh(Posted 2014) [#7]
Paul - I personally don't see any problems with the use of white. There is a beige outer background, grey background behind the posts, as well as plentiful use of darker grey outlines and separators.

Black text on a white background is fairly standard with most modern websites - see the BBC website, the New York Times website and Wikipedia to name just three.

Not every taste can be catered for, but I think devolonter has done an excellent job with providing a design that is easy on the eye for most.


Tibit(Posted 2014) [#8]
I wanted to say that I did take special notice that you use a nice readable semantic html5 with <article>, <header> and the nice :before to do the chat symbol. Nice :)

On the note that some think color contrast is to "white", I tried changing the border color on the article content to #B1B1B1, with bottom bar background of #FFF with bottom bar top-border to #FFF. This makes the "bottom bar" dissapear and instead you only see the icons on the right bottom side which I made brownish. Made it look much clearer to me! Check it out if you want, just a suggestion.


simonh(Posted 2014) [#9]
* When opening a post, it no longer takes you to the end of the thread (for example clicking on Monkey X post it takes you to page one, it use to take you to the last page
OK I've changed this back to the old behaviour for now. I will look into a way of adding a 'read' status to posts, so you will automatically be taken to the first unread post.


AdamRedwoods(Posted 2014) [#10]
great job, i like the compact look. easier to find info.


Sammy(Posted 2014) [#11]
Good work Devolonter, the Active Topics is a lot easier to read now. :)


spintop(Posted 2014) [#12]
Hi,

Well done. I give this new forum 85/100. (The original forum is 55/100.) However, please don't stop and make this forum become a perfect forum. Thank you.


Goodlookinguy(Posted 2014) [#13]
Alright, it looks like the spacing was mostly fixed. Only problem I see at the moment is that the new spacing doesn't allow spacing on the first line of a 'code' bbcode tag.

Other than that, I like this layout better than the other new one. It just seems more fitting. It probably follows along the lines of law #21 of the laws of computer programming.


EdzUp(Posted 2014) [#14]
Clicking on topic name doesn't jump to last post on my windows 8 phone :/


benmc(Posted 2014) [#15]
THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU!!!!!

I was so happy to see the forum changes today I got goose-bumps, actual "chills" of pure happiness!


skape(Posted 2014) [#16]
Ah, recent changes are much improved (before was nice too, but I like the new compact look.) Keep it up.


EdzUp(Posted 2014) [#17]
cant we have the subscribe button at the bottom as well it was nice and big for small phone screens :)


ordigdug(Posted 2014) [#18]
:)


MikeHart(Posted 2014) [#19]
When are the sub forums for 3rd party modules coming?


Paul - Taiphoz(Posted 2014) [#20]
devolonter , on my tablet the forum is much easier to read you have what I suggested alternating background colors on the forum list which saves my eyes and makes things a lot cleaner, but I am wondering why I cant see that from the desktop, have you just not updated the desktop css with the css for mobile ?

Would love it if you could do that the next time your tweaking something..


Soap(Posted 2014) [#21]
Thumbs up!


AdamRedwoods(Posted 2014) [#22]
hi,

there is a problem when copying code from a codebox: if i hit control-A to copy the code, it selects the entire webpage. i don't think it did this on the other site?


Sammy(Posted 2014) [#23]
The community forums need a proper link on mobile platforms, the little 3 line icon is not very obvious IMHO.


therevills(Posted 2014) [#24]
the little 3 line icon is not very obvious IMHO.

It seems to be the de facto standard now for that icon to be used to show additional menus, checkout Twitter Bootstrap...


Sammy(Posted 2014) [#25]
Well it's new to me(I don't use twitter though?) and if I did not know already that there was a forum available I would not have pressed on that icon.


Neuro(Posted 2014) [#26]
We need the preview feature back too.


therevills(Posted 2014) [#27]
We need the preview feature back too.

+100000000000

Also if you have time, if you could add all the cool features that Nikoniko has added ;)
http://www.monkeycoder.co.nz/Community/posts.php?topic=7860


Paul - Taiphoz(Posted 2014) [#28]
yeah I second that, also make the main PC/Desktop theme the same as the mobile one in terms of the alternating color on the forum list, It's so much easier to read on my tablet than it is on my PC.


Paul - Taiphoz(Posted 2014) [#29]
Can we also get the following BBcode's
Lists
[list] 
	[*]list item
[/list]
This will allow us to actually bullet point stuff such a simple feature to add.

Alignments, Left Right and Middle.
[left][/left]
This will allow us to post a picture and then have it left align so we can have text running along side it instead of massive empty white space with the text bellow.
There are so many handy BBcodes that the site could easily use without major work or time, no reason we should not have them when they make life so much easier on the end user.

Propper Code Tags.
[monkey]Print "Hello"[/monkey]
I brought this up in the past and I am sure for a little while Simon or Mark actually had it working on the forum, that is to say propper syntax highlighting of code, and now with a number of additional highlighting scripts out there, crayon if I recall, geshi, and probably some others, there is plenty of options to select from, it's silly that in this day and age when we post code it has to look brown and crappy when it could look nice, highlighted, and easy to read.


test...
[monkeycode]
Strict
[/monkeycode]

Yup the monkeycode bbcode at least is still there, its just not using any highlighter to actually do anything..


Nobuyuki(Posted 2014) [#30]
bbcode lists are janky and a PITA to work with. I much prefer the impromptu list style of Markdown/WakabaMark. Just type a list like one of these things and they're formatted automagically:

* item 1
* item 2
* item 3

1. item A
2. item B
3. item C


Drezan(Posted 2014) [#31]
Not sure how anyone could think bbCode is a PITA and then say Markdown is better, it's apples and oranges they do the same thing convert some textual shortcode into html for formatting.

I would rather do {b} than ** because I may use stars in a normal post, but with markdown it gets parsed, its a lot less likely that I would try and use something like {b} in a normal post.

expanding the bbcode gets my vote.


nikoniko(Posted 2014) [#32]
AdamRedwoods wrote:
there is a problem when copying code from a codebox: if i hit control-A to copy the code, it selects the entire webpage. i don't think it did this on the other site?

It's fixed my extension http://www.monkeycoder.co.nz/Community/posts.php?topic=7860

Also I would like full reply message (or messages) in the email notifications.


Nobuyuki(Posted 2014) [#33]
Drezan: Could you give a reasonable example of how some reasonable string could inadvertently get parsed into a markdown list? AFAIK a proper implementation only checks for unclosed stars at the beginning of a line with regards to bullet lists. It works the same way as bbcode lists would, with the exception that there is no specific redundancy to force list checking inside a [list] tag.


MikeHart(Posted 2014) [#34]
I am missing the active topics link in Safari browser on my IPhone 5.


nikoniko(Posted 2014) [#35]
Look at monkey x dowloading page


OS/version description isn't fit fully to select field. It's actual for old monkey versions.

Check forum search. I tried find this topic via search by typing "forum update" and "Forum Update". No results.
Does search engine use post's title for searching?


nikoniko(Posted 2014) [#36]
Hi,

Email notification contains a link to topic:

http://www.monkey-x.com/Community/posts.php?topic=7860
Since you last viewed the above topic, a new post has been made.
...


Is it possible add to end of link an anchor to new message (ie #7)?


Goodlookinguy(Posted 2014) [#37]
Hey, I don't know who maintains the backend code, but what's the deal with edits creating new entries in the database. This problem is quite annoying if you try to link a single post that gets edited and can cause multiple duplicate posts to appear if you click too many times by accident because there's no post time limit. These seem like such basic things and yet this forum doesn't have them. That's really kinda sad because my personal forum for my employees and I is more advanced than this forum and I wrote that in a week. *rabble rabble rabble* Really though, please fix these problems. It's not hard and I can say it with confidence because I've done it.


Paul - Taiphoz(Posted 2014) [#38]
does not surprise me at all, the whole site is from the stone age, sure dev has done a good although I suspect hard job at giving it a fresh lick of paint and that has helped but its still a far cry from being anywhere near as feature complete and functional as a normal modern forum found on just about any other website on the internet.

I wish they would go with something like phpbb3 or invision or one of the other extreamly popular systems that exist, hell if phpBB3 is good enough for people like Mozilla, or SouthPark it has to be good enough for us.


GfK(Posted 2014) [#39]
but what's the deal with edits creating new entries in the database.
It does that for the moderators. If people post abuse at each other, then delete it to cover their tracks, the moderators can see every change that's been made to any post.


Goodlookinguy(Posted 2014) [#40]
Then the posts still need a single ID and a separate ID grouping for each successive change. Really, a lot of this problem would be solved though if a post time limiter was added. Just make it like 5 seconds wait and that would be enough to prevent the multiple post problem.


Danilo(Posted 2014) [#41]
On Nexus 7 2013 Android 4.4.2 tablet with screen size 1920x1200 I can't try
any apps on the Monkey X site in Google Chrome. It always says "Your screen is too small".
Also, the site menu does not show up (About, Store, Community, Apps, Contact), although I think
it would easily fit into width of 1920 in landscape mode.


ziggy(Posted 2014) [#42]
@Danilo: It it's configures as HiDPI, you're likely to be using a logical resoltuion of 960 x 600


Danilo(Posted 2014) [#43]
What did you mean, ziggy? The games are only 640x480 (for example Flying Flappy Monkey),
and the game preview/picture site fully shows in Chrome on the Nexus7. The picture is also 640x480 only.

MS Surface 2 (1920x1080 @ 10.6") works.
iPad mini 2 (2048x1536 @ 7.9") works.
Nokia Lumia 920 (1280x768 @ 4.5") works.

Nexus 7 2013 (1920x1200 @ 7") does not work: "Your screen is too small".


ziggy(Posted 2014) [#44]
When HiDpi rendering is enabled on a browser, 1 "logical" pixel in HTML is 2 real pixels, so texts are not too small. So the game may be 640x480 in HTML5 and that would make it render as it was a real 1280x960 which maybe is too big for the current responsive website design.