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List of Requests for Site/Forum modification

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List of Requests for Site/Forum modification

Postby dodecahedron on Sat May 17, 2003 3:18 am

hi.
i've been meaning to write up a short list of requests that have to do with the design of the site/forum.
lazy me, kept putting it off, and now you've gone and upgraded the forum!
so i'll put it up now and hope something gets to the next forum upgrade.

of course, i've no idea if any of these requests are at all feasable, or difficult to implement, or they are phpBB design issues that are beyond you. so please don't be flummoxed if i make an unreasonable request. :D

here's my comments/requests, in no particular order:

1. when clicking the Image button in a review to get the printable version, it opens a small popup window (OK not very small). however, my beef is that (at least in my IE) it has no buttons, no toolbars. so i can't do what i like and that is to save the page to the hard drive.
OK there is a work-around (suggested to me by Socheat, i think, a long time ago) and that is to click ctrl-N and that opens up a new one, full size with all the buttons etc.
would be nice if the Image button opened a "normal" window, with the buttons, status bar and all.

2. i ususally open the oldest topic in a particular forum that i haven't read yet, and keep clicking the View next topic on right of the bar at the top of the page to get to the next unread topic, and so on until i've gone through all the unread topics in that forum.
would be nice if there was a small button in each post that "jumps" to the top of the page, so i don't have to scroll all the way back up to the top to get to that link. i've seen something like this in other forums (example: burnatonce fourms http://www.burnatonce.com/forums/index.php this is an Invision Power Board)
alternatively, if the blue bar that contains the View previous topic and View next topic links was duplicated at the bottom of the page, that would be good too (maybe even better).

3. when i read posts in a particular forum and i'm viewing the most recent topic, and click the View next topic link, i get the Information window that says "There are no newer topics in this forum". that window has the link CDRLabs.com Forum Index to the main index page.
it would be nice and convenient IMO if this Information window had also a link to the index of the current forum index, just like appears in each topic page, e.g. CDRLabs.com Forum Index -> CD-R/CD-RW.

4. add a "Printer Friendly" button to the forum pages
(not interested in this personally, but added it because a few other members requested this feature).

5. when loading a forum index page, http://www.cdrlabs.com/phpBB/viewforum.php?f=1 for example, it first loads the images of CDRLabs and the Image Image etc. at the top, then the little icons Image Image at the top-right of the page, then the Image etc. only then does it load the Image Image images for each topic.
it would be much better for me, being on 56K dialup, if the Image Image images were the first to load. that way i don't have to wait for the entire page, i can hit the Stop button and right away click on the topic marked in red. (also saves CDRLabs bandwidth).
for me this would be a great improvement, if you can control the order in which images are loaded, and rearrange the order like i suggested.
-----
ok i'm sure i had a few more requests but can't remember them now.
so this is it in the meantime, if i think of something else i'll update this list.

of course, anyone else who wants to add his/her suggestion is welcome, or any comments from anyone about my requests.
One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them,
One Ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them
In the land of Mordor, where the Shadows lie
-- JRRT
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Postby dodecahedron on Sat May 24, 2003 10:55 am

bump...
admins, any comment?
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One Ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them
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Postby Ian on Sat May 24, 2003 2:13 pm

Sorry, just saw your comments now. I don't ever print the topics, so I really can't comment there, but I know what you mean about the images. Even on a LAN, those images are the last to come up.

I'll talk to Socheat and see what we can do.
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Postby MediumRare on Tue May 27, 2003 8:02 am

Dodecahedron already mentioned the printing issues, but I have an additional request.

It would be useful to have a time stamp (similar to that on the forum index) on the contents page of the individual forums. I do a lot of off-line reading, and it's hard to tell how current one of these pages is otherwise.

Thanks

G
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Postby socheat on Wed May 28, 2003 11:46 am

Dodeca, that's quite a list! Here are my (short) responses:

1) Easy to do. As soon as I get a few minutes, I'll make the change.

2 and 3) Should be relatively easy to do, if I understand you right. May not look pretty because we (CDRLabs staff) have found that modifying phpBB templates to include our code is not fun at all and takes some time sorting through their templates system. (For Instance)

4) It's been brought to my attention there are "official" (or semi-official) phpBB mods out there. I'll look into them.

5) My HTML is a little rusty, but I don't think it's possible to directly control which images load first. I think all browsers have their own way of handling it. It might be that it loads the first image it sees on it's way down an HTML page, in which case it would be pretty hard to get the forum images (which are dynamically loaded) to appear before the header of the site without breaking cross-browser compatibility.

MediumRare wrote:It would be useful to have a time stamp (similar to that on the forum index) on the contents page of the individual forums. I do a lot of off-line reading, and it's hard to tell how current one of these pages is otherwise.


Not quite sure what you mean by this. When you go to a particular forum, each topic is timestamped with the last post time. If a forum has any new posts, the main forum page will indicate the time of the last post in that forum.

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Postby dodecahedron on Wed May 28, 2003 1:47 pm

hi Socheat.

first of all, thanks for considering my requests.

1. thanks.

2+3. like i said in my original post, feel free not to comply with my requests :) if you think it won't look good, then i'll have to live with it, right?
anyway, like i had thought and you said, it doesn't seem to difficult, so if you do make these changes i'll be grateful, if not that's fine too.

5. i think what Medium Rare means is a time stamp on the HTML page itself, showing when it was created. like at the top left of the main index page:
The time now is Wed May 28, 2003 20:39
One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them,
One Ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them
In the land of Mordor, where the Shadows lie
-- JRRT
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Postby MediumRare on Wed May 28, 2003 4:20 pm

dodecahedron wrote:5. i think what Medium Rare means is a time stamp on the HTML page itself, showing when it was created. like at the top left of the main index page:
The time now is Wed May 28, 2003 20:39

Yes, that's what I meant- I guess an example would have helped here. Sometimes a forum isn't all that active (like this one most of the time :D ) and it isn't obvious if there are no new posts or if the cached page is old.

G
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Postby dodecahedron on Mon Jun 23, 2003 12:51 pm

OK here's another one i had forgotten before:

6. when i get a new PM, i get a popup saying i've got a new PM with a link that takes me to my Inbox.
however, clicking the link opens the Inbox page inside an existing browswer window (the last active IE window?) instead of opening a new window. :x not nice. if it is possible to have this link open a NEW window for the Inbox and leave other brower windows alone, please.
One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them,
One Ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them
In the land of Mordor, where the Shadows lie
-- JRRT
M.C. Escher - Reptilien
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Postby dodecahedron on Sat Jul 12, 2003 2:40 am

i just chanced upon a PHP board that has both features i asked for in 2.
View previous topic and View next topic at the bottom of the page, and a Jump to top button at every post.

http://bbspot.com/forum2/

so apparently these features are possible/available in phpBB ?
One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them,
One Ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them
In the land of Mordor, where the Shadows lie
-- JRRT
M.C. Escher - Reptilien
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Postby dodecahedron on Mon Oct 27, 2003 1:28 pm

bump!

7. fix the BBCode bug/problem with the 8) emoticon.
see here: http://www.cdrlabs.com/phpBB/viewtopic. ... 5396#85396
One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them,
One Ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them
In the land of Mordor, where the Shadows lie
-- JRRT
M.C. Escher - Reptilien
User avatar
dodecahedron
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