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General discussion

FORUM Annoucement: Forum bug fixes and added features- to deploy 6/08

Jun 7, 2004 7:26AM PDT

Hi folks,

Sometime tomorrow morning 6/08, we will be deploying some changes to the CNET community forums--some will be enhancements and some will be bug fixes. So please be aware of these changes and please report any bugs or weirdness to THIS thread. thank you! -Lee

Here is the list of things that are going to be deployed in the forums:

Forum Bug fixes

1. Duplicate posts have been resolved by adding a confirmation page after submitting a post. It is one extra step for users, but this will ensure that duplicate posts will not occur.

2. Text limitation in replies: Limitations have been removed in replies, no more "Part 1, part2..." for posting large amount of text

3. Active X script running in forum templates has been removed

4. Forum Discussion list will now include additional columns of info:

Title/Author, Thread creation date, Last Post to thread date and time, and number of posts in the thread

5. Alt tags have been added to buttons -- We might have missed a few alt tags here and there, but the important ones are covered.

6. Reply to post page, will show entire content of post that you are replying to, rather than it being cut off.

7. HTML template has been cleaned up in hopes to improve forum speeds.


User functionality enhancements:

1. Increased tree thread views to show 250 rather than 50 messages So rather than having user page through the tree of messages, 250 messages will appear on the tree for ease of following long discussions. Anything after 250 posts will initiate the paging of the tree.

2. The red "NEW" indicator for new message to disappear after 12 hrs rather than a lengthy 24hrs

3. User thread subscriptions: User will now be able to subscribe to threads and get notification on activities in those particular threads. Please check out the revised Forum FAQ page to reflect thread subscriptions: http://reviews.cnet.com/4002-7600_7-5083783.html Once you have subscribed to a thread, if there is any activity in the thread(s) that you subscribed to, a summarized email of your subscriptions will be sent to you. Emails will be sent every 4 hours. If there are no activities in your subscriptions, you will not be notified.

4. Forum Search added to all forum pages

5. Next and previous message button has been moved to a more prominent and fixed location rather than bouncing around depending on the length of the message.

6. Added a "Back to main Forums page" link and "Jump page" at the bottom of collapsed forum pages

Other Stuff:

1. CNET Editors/Employees will receive a red ball "C" icon.

2. Co-Branding of the CNET help.com with CNET Reviews
Going forward --to invite more members and participation in our forums, we have co-branded our forums to have the look and feel of CNET Reviews. Once these forum changes have been deployed you will now be able to view the forums with the CNET Help.com look or the CNET Reviews look. All content is shared, but just the header and footer template will be different.

Here is an example, but it will only work after the forum changes have been deployed to live:

CNET Help.com Windows XP forum:
http://reviews.cnet.com/5204-6142-0.html?forumID=5

CNET Reviews Windows XP forum:
http://reviews.cnet.com/5204-6142-0.html?forumID=5&tag=cnr

3. Subject line display will be limited to 50 characters.

4. Register user can now only send Offensive message alerts now. Only registered/logged in users will have the ability to notify us of offensive messages.

5. Discussion threads can be locked by our moderators. If we see that a discussion is going no where, but south, moderators will be able to lock them down. Locked down thread will be indicated with a pad lock icon.

Things that will unfortunately remain the same:

1. 7 layer deep thread...we tried but the wrapping of subject lines made the thread almost impossible to follow, so it was ultimately decided not to increase it

2. No thread jumping links...we implemented it at first, but because the forum pages are dynamic and any new posted message to any discussion will bump the thread to the top of the forums--it made the previous and next thread button appear then disappear which made it a pretty confusing experience. So we had decided for the sake of not confusing users, this piece was pulled at the last minute.

3. Remaining logged in. This is actually a larger issue and will require additional resources to look into to fix, so given the resources I received this time, I was unable to get this resolved.

Discussion is locked

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Re:Re:FORUM Annoucement: Forum bug fixes and added features- to deploy 6/08
Jun 8, 2004 4:42AM PDT

Could you post the URL where you saw that behavior? It must be related to the content.

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Sovereign --did you get my email?
Jun 8, 2004 8:01AM PDT

if not let me know.

thanks!
-Lee

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Re:Sovereign --did you get my email?
Jun 8, 2004 2:43PM PDT

sorry, no mail.

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I emailed you again (NT)
Jun 9, 2004 2:35AM PDT

.

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A Big Bad One. Was it doing this before?
Jun 8, 2004 4:48AM PDT

If you open a post that allows a reply you have a button to clk on and the Add Discussion button is to the right of that. When you open a post that doesn't have the Reply button on it, the Add Discussion button has instead moved over into the place of the Reply button. Of course it still say's Add Discussion, but makes it too easy to not realize the shift occurred.

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Re:FORUM Annoucement: Forum bug fixes and added features- to deploy 6/08
Jun 8, 2004 5:03AM PDT

1. Bug: A Wasteland of threads unknown Forum


2. Bug: In Mozilla if I select "Do not load Images" option, I don't see any buttons. However, hoovering the mouse for example in the Reply area the links are behind.


3. Comment regarding Your comment has been submitted text in the sumbission message page. I think that comment should be replaced by another word. I don't post comments in a technical Forum.


Cetin


Trying to unweave, unwind, unravel
And piece together the past and the future,


T. S. Eliot

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Re:Re:FORUM Annoucement: Forum bug fixes and added features- to deploy 6/08
Jun 8, 2004 5:09AM PDT

#1: They disappeared that one in a hurry!

#3: Good idea!

Dan

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Re:Re:FORUM Annoucement: Forum bug fixes and added features- to deploy 6/08
Jun 9, 2004 2:37AM PDT

1. Not a bug, a unpointed to forum that should not be accessed

2. I saw that too. what's the solution to this? and how many people actually don't view images on their browser?

3. I will change that eventually. To Your post has been submitted.

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The Solution and the Moral of the story ...
Jun 10, 2004 1:13AM PDT

Well, I thought that maybe the alt parameter was missing, so I've looked inside the code. Extracted the below fragment and saved as img.htm file.

<a href="http://reviews.cnet.com/5224-7598-0.html?forumID=51&threadID=25206&messageID=283710"><img border="0" src="http://www.cnet.com/i/hlp/reply_button.gif" width="135" height="19" alt="Reply To This Message"></a>


At first sight (cold view), it looked OK. Launched a Mozilla instance ("Do not load any images" was the default) and opened the img.htm file. The alt part worked as it's supposed, i.e. I saw the link.

Toggled the Image from "Do not load any images" to "Accept all images" and of course I saw the button. Toggled back to "Do not load any images" and from now on the link was invisible.

The moral (solution) is: If you don't want images, launch Mozilla with the "Do not load any images option" and don't toggle it Wink


Cetin


Trying to unweave, unwind, unravel
And piece together the past and the future,


T. S. Eliot

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If you load the image it displays from the cache, but new images won't load when reset to not. nt
Jun 10, 2004 2:16PM PDT

nt

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sorry lee for posting in new thread
Jun 8, 2004 5:05AM PDT

wheres search saw it earlier now gone or am i loco?

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no problem, I just wanted to keep bugs in one thread...
Jun 8, 2004 5:23AM PDT

that way it is easier for me to follow.

Search... I only locked your thread, but it should still surface in search.

-Lee

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Re:no problem, I just wanted to keep bugs in one thread...
Jun 8, 2004 7:29AM PDT

i see it now i need get new eyes

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''Add New Discussion'' button now moves :-(
Jun 8, 2004 5:54AM PDT

When a thread branch has reached the point of no replies, the "Add New Discussion" button moves to the location previously occupied by the "Reply" button. This is resulting in people inadvertently creating new threads when they meant to respond to an existing post. It's happened to me twice today and other members are reporting it as well.

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Taking notes :-)
Jun 8, 2004 7:57AM PDT

.

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Re: Taking notes :-)
Jun 8, 2004 1:31PM PDT

Hi, Lee.

Please bring back the "next message" button at the bottom of the messages, so you don't have to scroll back up to the top to go on in the thread. And I really hate the fact that when you post, you're now brought back to the thread root message, rather than where you replied!
-- Dave K.

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NT - for sure please.
Jun 9, 2004 12:29AM PDT

.

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Changed "Add Discussion" button color
Jun 9, 2004 9:37AM PDT

Hope this makes it standout better.

Fastest easiest cure.

-Lee

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Re:Changed button color -- still the same
Jun 10, 2004 3:40AM PDT

in Netscape at least, Lee.
-- Dave K.

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dump the cache, it will appear then. Or do forced page reload. In IE...
Jun 10, 2004 5:40AM PDT

....hold down CTRL key while clking on the reload button, in Netscape hold the Shift key while clking on the reload button.

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Re: Or do forced page reload.
Jun 10, 2004 1:18PM PDT

Ah, thanks, James! I'll have to remember that trick!
-- Dave K.

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Re:FORUM Annoucement: Forum bug fixes and added features- to deploy 6/08
Jun 8, 2004 6:14AM PDT

Sorry Lee but I might as well jump in also. To me the "Next/Previous" button is in the wrong place and instead should be located at the bottom of the message. Being at the top usually requires scrolling back to the top for next message... I suppose one can just click the next message.

Just my 2 cents!!

Happy

Glenn

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I'm taking notes...
Jun 8, 2004 6:55AM PDT

Let me see if I can add an additional next/previous buttons to the bottom of page.

This and other small changes will be taken into consideration, but it will be dependant on how much time I can get from the engineer to implement these changes.

So please be patient everyone.

Thanks.
-Lee

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Re:I'm taking notes...
Jun 8, 2004 7:11AM PDT

It would be a very good idea to get rid of the "add new discussion" button in the post view, and make it available only from the tree view.

This button being in the post view serves no useful purpose whatsoever, and is causing the accidental creation of new threads when the poster intends to reply to a post within an existing thread.

DE

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The simplest solution to that is...
Jun 9, 2004 2:40AM PDT

for me to change the color of the "Add New discussion" button.

How about it?

What color?

Any other way may take longer to get to.

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Re:The simplest solution to that is...
Jun 9, 2004 4:33AM PDT

OK then, until you can really get rid of it change the color to white so it disappears into the background.

That button caused more glitches just yesterday than the duplicate post bug did.

DE

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What if it was to be changed to CNET Yellow
Jun 9, 2004 7:55AM PDT

That should stand out...

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Re:What if it was to be changed to CNET Yellow
Jun 9, 2004 7:59AM PDT

I'd rather make it disappear by making it white, but CNet yellow or any color with a high contrast over the "reply to this message" button would be better than the way it is now.

DE

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Works in IE, but still same color in Netscape 7
Jun 9, 2004 2:04PM PDT

I also have Netscape 7 set to display the page in it's own colors rather than mine. The same exact link will display a post in IE using the CNET Review template and the Discussion button is cnet yellow, whereas using Netscape 7 the same link displays in the Help.com template and the Discussion button is unchanged, not cnet yellow.

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Nevermind, it's there. Forgot to dump cache. Did so and it's there now. nt
Jun 10, 2004 5:38AM PDT

nt