vwestlife
Veteran Member
Also, there is no double-arrow icon to get to the last page of a thread when accessed via your Subscriptions page (which is normally how I keep track of my activity in the forum).
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The New Forums
- Thread starter Erik
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Agent Orange
Veteran Member
Today's "everything showed up" I now have the dates and arrows and the whole shebang.
Agent Orange
Veteran Member
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AndyO
Experienced Member
Well, yes, I would certainly hope this is true. However, I know that if, while helping to secure systems for my employer, I radically changed how everyone was expected to work, where things could and couldn't be found, and what did and didn't function, without any warning, while claiming that 'change is a good thing', I'd be lucky to have a job before the day was out!
TH2002
Experienced Member
You are completely correct. This site has literally become everything I hate about the modern web.
Hey mods, can you just accept the fact that this new theme has been a disaster? I thought you knew your audience better than this, guess I thought wrong.
Either they bring back the old forums (or at least fix the issues with this one) or I guess I'm going to have to find a new vintage computer hangout... does anyone have any suggestions? Does the VOGONS site still work on vintage computer hardware?
maxtherabbit
Veteran Member
No vogons drank the SSL koolaid too
From a bit of searching, I see that vB5 supports stylesheet overrides (via "css_additional.css"), so it may not even be necessary to create a new style or to hand out any keysBut I'll see what I can do. Thanks for considering that.
Got some progress to show. For now I've been concentrating on fonts, colors, sizes, and other things like removal of whitespace (and of those social buttons that seem to be universally disliked).
Here's what my changes look like in Firefox with a desktop size of 1920x1200.
(EDIT: this is on imgur... so after you follow the thumbnail, to see the real size you have to click on the image, *then* right-click, pick "view image", and click once again to ensure that the browser isn't resizing it)
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I hope it's understood that this type of stylesheet override can only take care of visual factors, not functional ones like Javascript issues and built-in elements that don't play nice with older browsers. However, I'm hoping that this could be eventually added, either as a "css_additional.css" to work with the current style, or as a new default style.
From a bit of searching, I see that vB5 supports stylesheet overrides (via "css_additional.css"), so it may not even be necessary to create a new style or to hand out any keys
BTW, like others said, I can't see the style selector at the bottom of the screen either... maybe the default setup enables this control only for admins?
Got some progress to show. For now I've been concentrating on fonts, colors, sizes, and other things like removal of whitespace (and of those social buttons that seem to be universally disliked).
Here's what my changes look like in Firefox with a desktop size of 1920x1200.
EDIT: this is on imgur... so click the text (not the thumbnail). Then, to see the real size you have to click on the image, *then* right-click, pick "view image", and click once again to ensure that the browser isn't resizing it.)
Still a work in progress... there are other things to take care of, and to test in other browsers and on mobile as well.
I hope it's understood that this type of stylesheet override can only take care of visual factors, not functional ones like Javascript issues and built-in elements that don't play nice with older browsers. However, I'm hoping that this could be eventually added, either as a "css_additional.css" to work with the current style, or as a new default style.
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Hm, looks like you have to middle-click the above images to get to get to the actual full size URL.
Also: I'd love it if the forums showed more than 10 threads per page. I think this is an internal vBulletin setting (looking at the old site on the Wayback Machine, it used to be 20.)
Also: I'd love it if the forums showed more than 10 threads per page. I think this is an internal vBulletin setting (looking at the old site on the Wayback Machine, it used to be 20.)
So I guess no one is here for the actual content.
My nit is that the New Topics doesn't delineate ones that I've see and ones that I haven't, it's more simply "Threads reverse sorted by last change date".
So, I have to make note of the last time I was on and check the activity date. If it was before my last visit, well, "old news" territory.
That's my nit with this new thing.
SSL is the new reality folks, the modern web browsers (and, yes, the bulk of everyone are using modern web browsers, yes, even here) are pushing unencrypted HTTP to the back burner and making it more and more painful to not use HTTPS.
We're definitely working on style updates, and will continue to do so. The major issue is that the existing theme isn't directly compatible with the new version of the forum software.
Erik and others are doing a ton of work to try to iron out all of the warts. Please bear with us as we try to deal with the worst of them.
- Alex
Erik and others are doing a ton of work to try to iron out all of the warts. Please bear with us as we try to deal with the worst of them.
- Alex
maxtherabbit
Veteran Member
This.
loblolly986
Member
- Joined
- May 10, 2018
- Messages
- 16
Re: Security.
A high-traffic forum I visit (Blu-ray.com) is still on (from the looks of it) vBulletin 3, which is of course far better than the JavaScript-infested vBulletin 5. Sticking with an older vBulletin major version must be working pretty well for them, or I suspect they'd have "upgraded" by now.
Using HTTPS on a site with account/login features, like a forum, makes a fair amount of sense to me, and as long as browsers like RetroZilla continue to have their TLS support updated it won't be a significant problem for users of older OSes. The real problem is the notion being pushed that it should be used everywhere, even for inert webpages that don't involve accounts or personal information. HTTPS has been around for many years, so if using plain HTTP for those was really such a problem, you'd think this push would have happened much sooner.
A high-traffic forum I visit (Blu-ray.com) is still on (from the looks of it) vBulletin 3, which is of course far better than the JavaScript-infested vBulletin 5. Sticking with an older vBulletin major version must be working pretty well for them, or I suspect they'd have "upgraded" by now.
Using HTTPS on a site with account/login features, like a forum, makes a fair amount of sense to me, and as long as browsers like RetroZilla continue to have their TLS support updated it won't be a significant problem for users of older OSes. The real problem is the notion being pushed that it should be used everywhere, even for inert webpages that don't involve accounts or personal information. HTTPS has been around for many years, so if using plain HTTP for those was really such a problem, you'd think this push would have happened much sooner.
Great, much appreciated.
Since Erik indicated that you guys are willing to accept help on the visual side of things, I'm attaching the CSS override code which I demonstrated in the above screenshots.
(Had to rename it to .txt because the .css extension is not allowed)
Please let me know if I shouldn't do any further work on it, in case it could conflict with what the admins are already doing on your end.
For those of you who have the Stylish browser extension, you can already try applying this .css to "https://www.vcfed.org/forum/" and see the results. I tried to upload it to userstyles.org too, but that site is having even worse problems...
maxtherabbit
Veteran Member
yeah I can cope with the SSL (though I still think security for an "account" that serves no purpose other than to make hobby posts is absurd) but the JS load of this new version is heinous
GiGaBiTe
Veteran Member
This is a non-argument. Not having security on the forum like SSL and TLS for HTTPS was a FEATURE, not a bug. You seem to have forgotten that this is a VINTAGE computer forum, many people used their vintage computers to browse the site, which have no way of ever supporting any modern web encryption. And this doesn't even go into Javascript, which also is not supported by older computers.
You are very out of touch with reality.
And you want constructive criticism? Don't make massive changes without consulting your user base first, and bring back the old theme with FULL SCREEN support. The current theme is an eye bleeding organ pile sin against god and should have been aborted before it was even made live. And disable forced HTTPS. You may retain some of your user base that way. I for one won't tolerate the new forum and will be going elsewhere until the cancer that is now has been eliminated.
maxtherabbit
Veteran Member
good grief man, I get being annoyed by the changes but these "admins are retarded" posts aren't really advancing your cause
GiGaBiTe
Veteran Member
The problem with many of those "retro" web browsers is that they're bloated, slow and don't really resolve the issues they were intended for.
Classilla is one example, it's designed to be able to view modern websites with HTTPS and Javascript, but you need a very fast G3 or G4 for it to work with acceptable speed. I have it on my G3-333 and navigating to a new page locks the machine up for at least a minute while it grinds through the page. My G4-733 machines are just about able to browse with bearable speed. Older more period correct browsers like IE4.5 and Netscape Navigator scream through web pages that will work without HTTPS. Sure some JS is broken, but that's bearable.
GiGaBiTe
Veteran Member
I never said that, don't put words in my mouth.
What I'm saying is in regards to general incompetence and negligence, both of which are very true. There was zero effort put forth to try and get community feedback before the change, it was dumped on us unceremoniously with an emphasis on LOL CHANGE IS GOOD GET USED TO IT!
It's very clear that the forum was not tested properly prior to making it live, with admins telling users to use features which aren't actually exposed to user accounts. This makes it very clear admins did not do any user testing. Dumping broken forums on people and cleaning the mess up later is the definition of incompetence. I've helped do forum migrations before, and even done some myself. There was a long period of testing and user input before the new forum was made live to ensure trash fires like this don't happen.
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