Website display change

It might grow on me.
"":http://www.lvrj.com/multimedia/Man-with-100-pound-growth-on-his-testicles-seeks-treatment-131961463.html

like it, one request though. Could it get the topic author back

EX...

Urban Decay Photos by OhioKimono

Helps me follow posters I like.

I love it. Definitely easier to view on my iPhone.

This looks far better on my Droid. Nice change.

I agree with Hank ...I like the new format but that was one thing I noticed was missing.

Cheers,

Certainly is easier to read for old eyes with bifocals. I agree with OhioKimono. The topic's author was something I relied upon.

Uh, I meant what "hank" said. Sheesh.

The thread author name is now displayed, but it's displayed like the forum name for a thread, which means a smaller, greyer font. Less emphasized, but it's present.

But the text for the thread author name and the forum name will not be displayed on smartphones. I want to limit the amount text clutter, wrapping, etc. on the the smartphones. But this text will display on tablets.

For threads older than three months, the month and year that the thread was created will be displayed by the title of the thread. If you scroll down the home page, you will see this on older threads titled "Shoe shine?" and "Andrew Z morning show ..."

*Thanks JR!

:)*

Different but nice, this is definitely more mobile/tablet friendly.

In viewing TT on my Samsung 3s I DO SEE the thread author name displayed.

IS there a way to edit our comments to correct typos and such?

I hate it. I hate all change. Except pennies. I am a part of a conspiracy group to keep pennies in circulation. I am not an official member and am just an associate member. The group is called Citizens of Illinois and Kentucky.

All kidding aside. I went back to the old view for my computer but will use the new for my phone.

Can you go back to sorting by date, so you can see what is posted each day, or at least is new each day?

No. I'm opposed to allowing users edit their comments. I don't consider typos as faults. Typos are part of the landscape. We're not getting paid to write here. To reduce typos, users could slow down, proofread, and hit the "Preview" button a couple times before posting.

Allowing users to edit their comments can lead to problems, such as major edits that could disjoint a thread.

The max-device-width is larger on some Samsung devices. I consider the Galaxy Note 2 to be a small tablet that happens to make phone calls. Anyway, I'll look into accounting for the larger phones. And I'm unsure if the site is working the way I want on the Amazon Kindle Fire.

I'll have to think about that. I understand what you are saying.

The problem is, what is a "day?" On a message board, I consider a "day" to be the past 24 hours from this moment and not a calendar day.

The little new gif is displayed by a thread that has been created within the past 24 hours.

The time stamp for the last comment in a thread will say "X mins or "X hrs" for comments created within the past 24 hours.

Under the old display, I noticed that I would occasionally miss new threads or new comments that were created late at night but before Midnight. So when I accessed the home page the next day, these new posts would appear underneath the date heading for the previous day. My eyes would stop viewing the threads when I hit the previous day heading. The old display implied that a comment or thread created just before Midnight was "old" because it was beneath the previous day heading.

The current home page under the old display is an example. In the screenshot below, two threads under the "Jan 02, 2013" heading had comments posted after 10:30 p.m. In situations like this in the past, if I had viewed Toledo Talk last at 9:00 p.m., then I would overlook those "new" comments the next day, especially if the list of threads above the date heading was long. I stopped looking when I hit the first date heading even with the "new" link next to the comment count. I assumed that I had already read those previous day posts.

On the new display, I could make the horizontal line bolder and wider to indicate a 24 hour change, or something subtle like that. I don't want to use calendar date headings as dividers. Thanks for the suggestion.

To be honest, I do not like how this looks. It feels like the text is forcefully crowded into the middle for no reason other than to make room for more white space.

I did like the old format. There was not anything wrong. I could see wanting to do some cosmetic changes - but we do not come here for the look of the site...we come here for the context.

meh...will continue on the old format

I'm partial to the old format too. Thanks for giving users a choice.

But deleting comments without a note is fine? Not even a "comment deleted by jr" note?

Since I never use my phone or a tablet to view this site I cant say that the change has any positives for me except the larger font.

Because I work outside in all weather conditions, using my smart phone is not a common occurence during working hours. And then I use it to quickly communicate a situation that requires a photo(such as a broken irrigation head) or to search the internet to ID a plant. Just noodling around the net on your phone or tablet is not an option when you're a landscaper. So, this is pretty much a wash for me.

I went to TT on my android and it looks great. Thanks JR.

Cheers, Jim

Change seems fine. Still would like to see some additional formatting options that don't require random weird characters (more basic BBCode would be best). However not sure if this software can even handle it since it is pretty spartan as it is.

I like it.

"more basic BBCode would be best"

Why? I never understood the point of BBCode. Why not learn HTML? At least that way, one could use HTML in other applications.

Some basic HTML commands are permitted here, such as:

a
i
b
em
strong
pre
table th tr td
center
img
code

I could enable other HTML commands if necessary.

But in my opinion, Textile is better than other markup languages. It's easier to learn and simpler to use.

The Textile commands that I use most often for formatting include:

I added a few of my own commands.

Creating lists in Textile is easy.

Sure HTML is an easy language to learn, but to expect your average message board user to know it is just inane.

Now with the message boxes having bold, italics, and html link options with it - why not add the rest of your textile commands to it as well? Again, expecting your average normal message board user to memorize the various commands went out of style 15 years ago. It is all about GUIs and user convenience these days. Every application I write now has to have those features or my users won't bother. If I could just stick to a basic command interface I would be thrilled.

Just a random thought.

I just noticed the HOS and HOF buttons at the bottom of the parent post of each thread (after acting like a 10 year old and pressing the link thinking "what's that?)

Will there be a link to a HOF/HOS?

"Sure HTML is an easy language to learn, but to expect your average message board user to know it is just inane."

But using BBCode is even more insane, since it cannot be used as widely as HTML. It's a contradiction to say "user convenience" in one comment and then request BBCode capability in another comment.

"Every application I write now has to have those features or my users won't bother."

I'm curious. Do you get paid to ensure that a WYSIWYG editor operates correctly on all versions of every brand of Web browser on every operating system across all devices, or do you create and maintain your applications for free as a hobby? If the latter, then point me to an example or list the type of editor that you embed in your apps. I've seen too many posts elsewhere about users having problems with Web-based WYSIWYG editors.

"Again, expecting your average normal message board user to memorize the various commands went out of style 15 years ago."

Wrong. Example: http://metafilter.com - The site that inspired me to create Toledo Talk more than 10 years ago.

MeFi has existed since 1999. That site owner still requires its users to type HTML commands for formatting. It only provides a small subset of HTML. MeFi prohibits users from embedding images and videos, which can be done here.

But MetaFilter is popular enough that the site owner earns his living from MeFi and its subsites. He earns enough money to hire a few other people to help with the site, yet the only GUI provided to users is what you see here because several years ago, I "stole" the little JavaScript code from that site.

Years ago, the three little formatting buttons were enabled only on my account here because those buttons don't work properly on the Internet Explorer browser, and they still don't. But the code works on Safari, Chrome, Firefox, and whatever my HP tablet uses. I'm not going to attempt to maintain a large, sophisticated WYSIWYG editor across many browsers and devices.

Obviously, since most of the posts are comments, then that's when the formatting options would get used the most. Comments.

I'm not intimately familiar with Facebook, but what formatting, GUI, or WYSIWYG capabilities exist for users when posting a Facebook comment on Facebook or on one of the thousands of websites that incorporate Facebook comments? I don't see any formatting buttons for Facebook comments. How can that be? The site has more than one billion users. The company is worth billions of dollars. It employs thousands of people. They create new technologies. I also don't see any formatting features when sending a Facebook message.

The Facebook Note feature is similar to creating a blog post, and it provides a six-button WYSIWYG editor, although it doesn't work on my tablet. The six buttons format for bold, italics, underline, ordered list, bulleted list, and quote. If users need to do more formatting than what's provided by the Note editor, Facebook allows users to type some HTML commands. Why does Facebook, arguably the most popular website on Earth, require Note users to type some HTML commands? Why aren't all the formatting features supported in the editor? I don't think Facebook Note supports BBCode.

I first learned HTML basics in September of 1996, and I consider that skill as useful as learning how to type on a keyboard many years earlier. I hope second graders today are learning HTML or something similar and not wasting time learning how to write in cursive.

It's fascinating to me that we can learn all the stats of our fantasy football teams, learn all the private details about our favorite reality TV stars, rattle off the ingredients for our favorite recipes, memorize quotes and lyrics from pop culture, recognize dozens if not hundreds of corporate logos, learn to identify birds, flowers, etc, but learning a handful of simple HTML formatting commands that can be used in many Web services is somehow beyond our scope.

^^ Agreed with jr.

The era we are living in is not the early 1980s, when personal computers were just emerging and only a relative handful of geeks bothered to work with them. Trying to live in the age of the Internet without knowing a few basic HTML or CSS commands is like trying to live in a foreign country while not even knowing how to speak a few basic phrases: you can make hand signs and get by, but ultimately life is simpler if you have mastery of some essential vocabulary.

The Internet is filled with helpful sites like this that demonstrate basic HTML commands, and anyone with an IQ over 60 who has 20 spare minutes can learn how to accomplish simple tasks such as creating a hyperlink or posting an image.

Um, "anyone with an IQ over 60 who has 20 spare minutes can learn how to accomplish simple tasks such as creating a hyperlink or posting an image" ? Ouch. That hurt. I still have a hard time remembering how to get an image posted. I can create a hyperlink. Have never mastered any of the other commands on this site. They confuse the hell out of me and I have better things to do with my time. Like getting a second degree.

^^with all due respect HM...this is a message board not an IT learning center. We "get" why the change, but we don't have to like it

Aw, holland, I don't think you should be hurt by historymike's comments. I'm certain you could learn it in 20 minutes. But like many skills, if they're not used regularly, they're forgotten. I've created basic sites with HTML many times, but as I've gotten away from it, I need to refresh my memory just to post a link. But I don't mind having to think about it a bit. I'm glad I have that particular skill, especially since so few people (right now) in my field seem to have it.

Where much of the programming commands leave me most of the time:

< <img src="http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8359/8345859547_fcf2cf842b.jpg" width="425" height="282" alt="iStock_000016040394XSmall1">

or is it:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/58555798@N08/8345859547/

Sigh. I attempted to expand my opinion a bit, but it seems you are still hard for the BBCode example. Regardless, I apparently hit a nerve by making a suggestion about the site - which others have felt the wrath of several times on here (not to mention getting flooded by a wall of worthless text). People don't want to have to learn HTML just to talk on a message board. If they wanted to participate in a forum that required a knowledge of a programming language, they would stick to those specific boards. Not a basic community discussion forum.

Like Reviewer said...this is a message board, not an IT learning center. I would think that wanting to make modifications to the forum to make it more user friendly for more users would be a good thing. However I guess that isn't a priority. Shrug. To each their own.

Yeah. What justareviewer and JustaSooner said.

How wonderful for you valbee.

I am
right

there

with
Holland!

Sheesh, holland, I didn't mean it to sound the way you apparently took it. My apologies.

Yikes. I did not mean to offend anyone; just pointing out that basic HTML is fairly simple and that these skills can be easily acquired.

< slinks off to corner of room >

HM, how dare you suggest that there are things people should learn that they don't already know. Pride and Ego the 2 things that cause more conflicts than anything else.

baad mikey...bad bad boy...stay

Most browsers are tabbed these days, so bookmark your favorite HTML reference and pop it open in one tab and read and comment on TT in another tab.

Anyone else from the "NOTEPAD.EXE = best web page editor ever" crowd here?

and anyone with an IQ over 60...

Gee... I feel kind of sorry for SensorG.

From HistoryMike: < slinks off to corner of room >

Come out of there. Now.

Holland is clearly having a bad bout with some sort of feminine moonbat touchy-feely psychotic brain fart. Pay no attention.

Holland? You could learn this if it were important to you. Look at all the other things you've learned to do and then try and convince me that a few lines of HTML is beyond you. I'm not buying it.

Anyone else from the "NOTEPAD.EXE = best web page editor ever" crowd here?

Close. I use Multi-Edit. I'll use notepad if I have to. Likewise I'll use vi if it's all I've got, although it's been a while.

Intelligence and logic are kinda the gnat around your banana aren't they.

Someone forgot their Metamucil today didn't they.

"I would think that wanting to make modifications to the forum to make it more user friendly for more users would be a good thing."

And I believe that I accomplished that with this new display. The site displays much better on the iPhone and on a tablet, at least for me, anyway. From notes that I found recently, I learned that I have been testing this since at least early last September, so I didn't rush into this.

I use the even narrower view to read the site on the laptop, since narrow text is easier to read/scan. I could resize the laptop browser to make the display smaller, and sometimes I do, but prefer not to resize the browser.

And if you disagree, then do as suggested above and click this link to get the old view.
http://toledotalk.com/cgi-bin/tt.pl/theme/2012tt

Most visitors on most sites that accept user-contributed content are browsing-only users. Only a small percentage contribute content. And only a tiny percentage contribute content regularly.

Wikipedia article : 1% rule or the 90-9-1 principle or the 89:10:1 ratio or the 80/20 rule or participation inequality

So in my opinion, it makes more sense to make it easier for the browsing-only users to read the site on more devices than it is to maintain an editor that only a tiny percentage of people would use infrequently. And besides, the IE6 users would complain about the editor not working for them.

But here's a discussion about trying to encouraging more lurkers to create content:

The 90/9/1 Rule – Can It Be Broken?

I'm unsure that a user-friendly WYSIWYG editor is enough to encourage more lurkers to post. I don't have any idea how to encourage more lurkers to post.

I'm guessing that most of the time, posters have no need to format any part of their text. Maybe that's why Facebook provides no formatting options with their comments.

Most of my time at Toledo Talk is spent reading and not posting. So I want the site to display better for reading, especially on the smaller devices, which will dominate most of our Web access in the future.

You may not be reading the Web now with a smartphone or a tablet, but you will. How many people own a smartphone and/or a tablet today but did not own either just a couple years ago? More people will get accustomed to typing rapidly and accurately with only their thumbs and posting content from these small devices. Resistance is futile.

BTW, the Netbook style of laptop computer was declared dead this week.

"Anyone else from the "NOTEPAD.EXE = best web page editor ever" crowd here?"

Vi/Vim first and Notepad a distant second when necessary.

Enclosing, a post from the archives: How to eat sushi properly.

Hmm. I'm not arguing against the update. I like it. It definitely looks better on my Android. My comments are more based on enhancing the user experience even further.

I thought you would use Edlin, I think thats what it was called.

I would have figured he used an abacus and a pencil myself ;)

When I first got online, it was just shortly after someone invented the zero and fire, so we could use smoke signals.

jr, is it possible to have the latest entry display first?

Looks great on my Nexus 7.

I'm unsure what you mean.

The homepage displays as before by sorting the threads by their last-post-date, which could be from a comment in the thread or if no comments, then the date the thread was created. And if the post that started the thread is edited, that would also bop the thread back to the top.

Are you asking to display or stick the most recently-created thread(s) at the top even if other threads have newer comments? In other words, sort the list by the order that the threads were started, youngest to oldest, which is the way blogs are normally displayed. Is that what you mean?

At the bottom of the home page are a couple links to different views, but they may not be what you are looking for:

• blog - list ALL threads by the order that they were created, youngest to oldest, and display intro text
• changes - list ALL threads by the date that they were created or edited, youngest to oldest.

I emphasized the word ALL in the above link descriptions because the current default home page does not display the non-locally-focused political threads. You can access those threads by clicking on the small /p/ in the upper right hand corner of the site.

And I occasionally create admin pages or boring posts for myself that I hide from the front page of the site by using the "frontpage=no" command. But these posts get listed when clicking the all link at the bottom of the home page or by clicking on the links posted above.

Looks great.

I have used edlin in the distant past, but I didn't like it much. It's only virtue is that it was part of the opsys and always around when I was desperate.

I used to own an abacus, but I never could learn how to work the thing. I think it's in the bottom dresser drawer, next to my semaphore flags.

"I think she means to have the comments filtered so the newest displays first and we do not have to scroll all the way to the bottom to read it."

Now I'm getting confused. Why do you have to scroll all the way to the bottom of a thread to read a new comment?

The new default view displays differently, but it functions the same as before.

When you login, if threads have new comments, you click on the "X new" link, and you're taken to the bottom of the thread where the X-number of new comments begin.

On the home page, under the title of each thread is a line about the last comment. If you click the "comment" link, you're taken to the last comment in the thread.

The "new" link or the "comment" link are the two ways that I get to the bottom of a thread to read new comments. I don't click on the total comment count number. And I only click on the title of a thread when it's a new thread.

When I logged in, here's what I saw with the new display and the old display:

To read the new comments, I would click on the links for "2 new", "3 new", and "1 new," which would take me to the bottom of those threads where the new comments begin.

If I was not logged in, then obviously, I would not see the "X new" links, so I would click on the "comment" link for each thread, which would take me to the bottom of the threads, and then I would have scroll up to where I left off last.

So functional-wise, it's still the same, right?

The little breadcrumb links are no longer displayed in the new view. Those links indicated the five recent threads that the logged-in user accessed, during the user's current browser session. Those little links were handy at times, but for now, they are gone from the new display.

In the new view, I removed the word "last" from the last comment line for each thread, and I shortened the date-time stamp info, and I removed some other text in an attempt to reduce the amount of text clutter.

In this example from the front page of the new display, I hope people realize that the text within the red ellipses are links.

The blue and purple text are links, of course. But I did change the last comment line to use black or grey text to be links. Is that causing a problem?

If someone thought the black text for "comment" was regular text and not a link, then I need to switch back to using normal link color.

All the blue/purple links on the home page looked a bit annoying to me, so that's why I made the last comment line use black/grey color for links.

In the snippet above, I hope users read the line as, "For the thread R.I.P Oregon Lanes, the last comment was posted by justareviewer an hour ago." If you read that as something differently, then let me know.

Does the word "last" need to be added back in to that line?

Should I change the "comment" link color back to the normal blue/purple?

I will not change the link color and font size for the links that relate to the author of the thread and the forum name for the thread. Those will remain less emphasized.

Is being able to go directly to the newest comment without scrolling a function available only in the new format?

Are you referring to the "X new" link, circled to the right in this image where 'X' equals the number of new comments posted in a thread since you last logged in?

If you mean the "4 new" link in the above example, then no, it has nothing to do with the new display. It exists in the old display. In fact, the "X new" link feature has existed since the site began 10 years ago. It's a function that I borrowed from MetaFilter.com. It exists for logged in users. In the above example, clicking the "4 new" link will take you to the fourth comment from the bottom in that thread, so you can read forward the new comments. No scrolling down or up is required.

This is the first that I have heard about users scrolling to get to the bottom of a thread, especially for logged in users. For 10 years now, I thought logged-in user clicked on the "X new" links, and for the last few years, I thought users at least clicked on the last "comment" link.

For people who do not login, which is me sometimes, click the "comment" link that is circled in the above image. That also exists in the old display. That link will take you to the last comment in a thread. That means you may have to scroll up a bit to get to where you last left off reading the thread. But I think most message boards provide a link to the last comment in a thread. Again, this is mainly for people who do not log into the site, although I click the last "comment" link often for threads, even when I'm logged in.

Sidenote:
When logging into the site, I may still provide an option that allows you to save your login. I never use the "save login" here or on any website. But if the "save login" function still exists here and you use it, I think that I'm incorrectly calculating the current and previous session dates, which could mean that the number in the "X new" link is in incorrect.

Honestly, I never knew that function existed. I'll bet you really didn't know badly some users, such as myself, lacked in basic message board skills. I still cant post a picture, only a link to one. Its ok. Its not your job to teach me.

Will I take the time to teach myself? I dunno. Depends on how important it is in the scheme of things. Right now I'm trying to navigate Windows 8 and some touch screen functions. Its crap. Suddenly, learning HTML or whatever that other language stuff is people keep talking about here seems like it might actually be easier!

holland, I probably never explained the new comments link feature, or it was not displayed well enough.

Here's info about how to embed an image using your example posted above.

The link that you posted points to the flickr Web page and not specifically to the image.

Flickr Web page that contains an image:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/58555798@N08/8345859547/

What's needed is the URL or link to the image, which will probably end with an extension like .jpg, .gif, or .png.

So at the above flickr page, I selected "Actions" --> "View All Sizes."

Then I selected the image size that I wanted.

Then I right-clicked on the image, and selected "Copy image URL," and I pasted that image URL here.

Here's the image URL or link with the .jpg extension.
http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8359/8345859547_fcf2cf842b_n.jpg

Surround the above image link with exclamation points like this

Which produces this:

If you prefer to type HTML to embed an image, then type the following except replace the left bracket with a less-than symbol and replace the right bracket with a greater-than symbol.

[img src="http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8359/8345859547_fcf2cf842b_n.jpg"]

has it been discussed that the "new posts" #'s are off?

Okay, upso, I thought it was just me, but they are weird. Your post, for instance, is new since my last visit, but doesn't show as new.

Same thing for me.

Mentioned above.

And I found this to-do item from 2011

Correct the operation of the "save login" feature. It does not permit proper display of new comments and created/updated articles. Something is wrong with the way lastsessiondate and currentsessiondate are maintained when "save login" is checked when logging in.

Since I never choose the save login function on any website, I forgot about this.

Aha! I got it jr. I truly appreciate the tutorial.

At least you knew what edlin was hehe.

I know what an acoustic coupler is, too. And WWIV BBS software, and the AT command set and a bunch of other trivia that I'd just as soon forget.

I also remember when the SS came through Toledo and busted a bunch of people for software piracy. They nailed one 12 year old who had learned how to set up a BBS on his parent's PC, then squeezed about six or seven names out of him. One BBS that should have been nailed and wasn't was The Jungle, SysOp Thanatos (actually Jim McLouth) who ran WWIV software.

Another BBS that was told to clean up their act was affiliated with a local computer store, long since closed. I think the owner was Jeff somebody or other.

My memory has a few weak chips in it.