GWJ bugs, feature requests, and updates

HURRAY! It's over!

BNice wrote:

Was the avatar file size reduced? I went to change mine and deleted my old one which was definitely more than 30k ahhhhhhhh

How do you manage to make an 85px x 85px image over 30kb? If you have an image in mind, post a link and I'll save it in a less unnecessarily humongous size.

The Popular Forum Threads box is stuck since reverting from 1998 mode.

Yeah, I was just coming here to post that -- it hasn't updated in a long time.

It's updating again!

Could an option to disable signatures be implemented? Most of the time they're just clutter. The most extreme example I can think of right now is Paleocon's, which is like eight lines or something.

MyBrainHz wrote:

Could an option to disable signatures be implemented? Most of the time they're just clutter. The most extreme example I can think of right now is Paleocon's, which is like eight lines or something.

You can use this style sheet if you want in the meantime. It's just a simple toggle.

Nossid - thanks so much! That makes a tremendous difference.

Here's an easy one -- can you increase the size of the edit window for PM's? Peering into a five-line window feels very constricting.

(I'm using Chrome on a Mac and have the Stylish addon enabled, though I don't think that is supposed to affect edit window size. The Post New Comment text box is certainly large enough.)

Looks like the flashback layout got implemented for mobile sites sometime the last few days. Checked the forums on my phone today when I was out and noticed the design. Seems good so far. Was surprised there is no m. in front of the address or a button to toggle between full/mobile.

can you increase the size of the edit window for PM's?

I'm not sure if I'm running a mod to do this or if it's a native site feature, but I have a draggable bar at the bottom of the edit window that lets me resize it vertically.

Malor wrote:
can you increase the size of the edit window for PM's?

I'm not sure if I'm running a mod to do this or if it's a native site feature, but I have a draggable bar at the bottom of the edit window that lets me resize it vertically.

Huh. I never noticed that! Thanks!

Also true of the comment window in any thread. Fun fact: doesn't work on an iPad. Nor can you scroll within the post. So, hope you aren't quoting anything too long on a mobile device!

Stele wrote:

Looks like the flashback layout got implemented for mobile sites sometime the last few days. Checked the forums on my phone today when I was out and noticed the design. Seems good so far. Was surprised there is no m. in front of the address or a button to toggle between full/mobile.

I'd like the My Account / Inbox / Recent Posts navigation at the top of the page to be larger. It's the only bit on the page I really need to zoom in to use.

Highlight where people have responded to my posts.

Scratched, in another thread wrote:

The forum could use a thread splitting tool occasionally.

This is in reference to a thread derailing in an interesting way. It would be nice to be able to allow the thread originator or a moderator to pick up the derailed subthread, remove it from the original thread, and make it a new post with replies.

Yeah, that would be cool, but it would be impossible for forum software to tell which of the subsequent replies should go into the new branch, and which should stay. Well, it could probably kinda-sorta fake it by scanning for quotes, but that would be extremely CPU-intensive, and wouldn't work reliably.

I think we're gonna have to handle our own thread splits.

Malor wrote:

Yeah, that would be cool, but it would be impossible for forum software to tell which of the subsequent replies should go into the new branch, and which should stay. Well, it could probably kinda-sorta fake it by scanning for quotes, but that would be extremely CPU-intensive, and wouldn't work reliably.

I think we're gonna have to handle our own thread splits.

Nah, I don't think it'd be all that bad. It'd be similar to quoting a post, but instead of taking the text to the comment box, take it to the new post page.

Speaking of the mobile site... is there any way to get a "show spoilers" button somehow?

Only way to read them on the phone is to quote the message, then scroll around the post comment text reading what's in the tags, which is a pain.

Or am I missing some easy way to select/highlight text on my Droid?

Malor wrote:

Yeah, that would be cool, but it would be impossible for forum software to tell which of the subsequent replies should go into the new branch, and which should stay. Well, it could probably kinda-sorta fake it by scanning for quotes, but that would be extremely CPU-intensive, and wouldn't work reliably.

I think we're gonna have to handle our own thread splits.

It wouldn't have to be that smart of a feature. You could just choose a post to split off from (like a "Split" link next to the "quote" and "link" options on all posts) which would automatically insert a link into the post that was split from that says "A thread has been split off from this post!", and then sends the splitter into a page to create a new post with the body containing the quoted contents of the split post.

That could potentially facilitate ballooning thread numbers, though, so I doubt the powers that be would approve of such a thing.

Mike, you are proof that great minds think alike.

I was thinking... could the way spoiler tags work be changed from highlightable text to expandable divs with display:none on devices with javascript support? That might be the best of both worlds.

Hey all, I did a search for Tapatalk integration and saw a mention of it in this thread, so I thought this would be the place to post it - apparently there is now a plugin to make Drupal tapatalk compatible:

http://drupal.org/project/tapatalk

Can someone nerdier than I take a look at this and see if it's something that could work for GWJ? I use it for another forum I'm on and it's the business for mobile thread viewing and commenting.

How about switching over to vBulletin. Seems like that would solve a lot of problems with the current forum system.

VBulletin is PHP, which is a strike against it, in my book. It's just too easy to get things wrong, security-wise, in PHP.

I dunno, basically every other forum I visit uses it and GWJ seems so clunky in comparison. I don't really see the point of putting so much effort into patching something to be half decent when there are already better solutions out there. I'm not sure what the security concerns would be considering the way I use the GWJ website.

While I'll not deny that vBulletin would solve a lot of problems, I'm not personally convinced that it's the way to go. For one thing, I don't know that you can get the current site design(which I happen to like) to work in vBulletin; I've never seen a board on that software look as clean as GWJ does. Plus there's always the security issues, as Malor points out.

I'm not really seeing the security issues with it being a forum for discussion about games. Unless you mean it can be used to infiltrate people's computers? Regardless, I would have thought with it all being open source, the security would be updated regularly.

I don't know if it's still the case, but vBulletin has never really been at the top of the heap for security. I can think of a few sites that have long since shut down or moved away from vBulletin due to repeated security problems, despite frequent updates. As for it only being a gaming site, I'm of the opinion that if it were a forum about nothing that mattered to two people who held circular self supporting discussions, I'd still want them to take a certain level of care about my personal information, regardless of how much is available.

What sites were those?