Forum Issues List

[Tstorm]

I just went through and made some changes.  See the changelog post above for details. If I missed anything, please let me know.  With "edit" not working right for awhile there, some of these things backed up on me and sorting through what is truly a new issue versus someone that is just venting about something that is already there is easier said than done! It would be of great help if people that have noticed some of the issues posted could let me know when something is no longer an issue.  I try to verify a lot of these things myself, but some of these issues I am unable to test (Opera issues, for example).  SOE does not provide us with release notes with each forum software release so we're on our own with maintaining this list.  If we keep this issues list current, it will be valuable to both the community and SOE.

[Fringe]

Great job Tstorm. If I notice any changes  I'll be sure to let you know. Please keep up the good work.

[Tyndaleon]

I read through the initial post but not the entire thread, but I've noticed an issue that to my knowledge hasn't been listed or addressed:  Private messages you send, when you go to view them in your sent box, there is never any indication given whatsoever when and/or whether that private message has been read.  On the Lithium forums, you always saw whether they had been read or not and I believe a timestamp given as well.

[Seagoat]

I'm not getting the "Duplicate post submission" error very much at all, if ever.  I think they might have done a ninja fix...

This post is also to test this theory, since I opened three new windows to three separate threads while I was typing this!

EDIT:  Yep, it seems to be gone!  Anybody else still experiencing it?

[Tstorm]

Seagoat wrote:

I'm not getting the "Duplicate post submission" error very much at all, if ever.  I think they might have done a ninja fix...

This post is also to test this theory, since I opened three new windows to three separate threads while I was typing this!

EDIT:  Yep, it seems to be gone!  Anybody else still experiencing it?

I just tried on purpose myself after seeing this post.  Kudos to Seagoat for discovering this was fixed!

[Tstorm]

Note -- I updated the list today and removed a handful of the 'search' related issues as we were given a vastly improved search form with the most recent update. As I look through some of the remaining issues, I am scratching my head a bit as some are for browsers/environments that I am unable to test myself.  It is really helpful to know after a big update like this if the folks that have reported trouble in the past are no longer seeing the issue so I can fix the list.

[Isisalthea]

Great list.  Just wanted to mention the having to re-log in everytime I come to forums seems to have been resolved with the last patch. 

[Lantis]

The 'need to relog every time' issue is fixed for me with this week's update they did to the forums.

[Tstorm]

This has been a fun week.  I have actually been removing things from the list instead of adding to it! Note -- I just removed the re-login issue.  Thanks to those that mentioned it appears to be better now as I was never having that issue (not entirely sure why) Those of you that may note I am a bit sluggish sometimes with updating the list are correct and it is intentional!  I figure after a forum software update there will be a few days of confusion along with the forum devs addressing some of the unforeseen snafus quickly (as we saw this time with avatars, titles, and bold subjects).  To save myself having to add things then remove them the next day, I try to take a patient approach.

[Eriol]

I must add my voice to the masses asking for post preview, especially since some of the most-used features (quoting) isn't "enabled" from any of the menus.  If you want to add it, there are "code" ways of doing so (I think) but you can't preview to make sure you are submitting something valid, rather than a collection of code. Also, non-quoted indentations would be nice.  There are reasons for them occasionally.

[Pogball]

STILL having problems with Opera and forum home page - it does not size properly and scrolls horizontally for miles. Post this before but seems to have been ignored since its been on for months now - do SoE fix these things or am I being force to use IE?

[Seagoat]

I'm pretty sure it's an issue with Opera rather than the forums.  Granted, code should be displayed nearly identically across all browsers in an ideal world...but whoever said this was an ideal world? 

You can use IE, or Firefox, or Netscape -- any one of a handful of more "mainstream" browsers.  Many websites aren't designed specifically to look good in Opera because there just aren't that many Opera users out there to "worry" about.  Most sites cater to IE, Netscape, and Firefox users, since the vast majority of their visitors will be using one of those three browsers.  It's all about the numbers, unfortunately, and if you're an Opera die-hard, they're not in your favor. 

[Pogball]

Thing is all the other pages on the forum are formatted fine, so its obviously a forum problem and something missing from the formatting. And was all fine prior to SoEs 'revamp' around with the forums a few months ago. Having been involved with the design of professional websites and one of the first things you do is check it works on browsers of all ilks because your customer is king. Something SoE seems a bit remiss with.

[Tstorm]

There was a new forum update today, but I am going to give it a day or two before I update the list. If anyone has pet peeves in the list that have been addressed, please speak up! The things I already know about that changed are listed here.

[bdlarmor]

Preview!!

Quote option within the Editor.

Pretty "standard" things IMO, and 2 reasons I don't post here very much at all =/

And why does a line break have to double space? Do i have to write a bunch of garbage just to get my text to wrap to the next line. Seems kinda dumb. Writing crap to prove my point again and again and again and again.....

posting w/o a preview

/crosses fingers

[FireDragon]

predefined avatars are also missing for frogloks.

[Mronin]

The "log me in automatically every time I visit" option doesn't seem to work nice with firefox (though seems to behave properly under IE).  Also the ever popular issue of not being able to switch personas to toons that are not guilded.  As none of my toons are currently guilded I can't switch personas, where as before I could guilded or not.  I don't know when this came into play but I for one call B.S. on this change.

[Proteck]

In Game Update Note #29 (EoF) there is the link on examples: http://forums.station.sony.com/eq2/...essage.id=66299 but it doesn't work

[Mikkahl]

So "Notify when a reply is posted" has been broken for 5 months, and there has been no attempt to fix it?

Also, I think this used by called "subscribing" to a thread.  And didn't there used to be a way to display all the threads you were "subscribed" to?  I can't find any of that now.

[Hellswrath]

Messages read has not updated since Sept. 13.  Every time I log in, it flags every post since then as new, since it thinks the last time I logged in is the 13th, regardless of how many times since then I've logged in.  This is making it very cumbersome to sift through the threads.While there is already a seperate thread on this issue, I figured a post in the stickied issues list might grab someone's attention.

[Hellswrath]

Hellswrath@Blackburrow wrote:

Messages read has not updated since Sept. 13.  Every time I log in, it flags every post since then as new, since it thinks the last time I logged in is the 13th, regardless of how many times since then I've logged in.  This is making it very cumbersome to sift through the threads.While there is already a seperate thread on this issue, I figured a post in the stickied issues list might grab someone's attention.

The fix for this is on the way.  Thanks for the update, Sentinel.

[Nylacra]

I cannot see most of the forum topics, like server / class forums.

[Trynnus1]

I too can not see any of the topics.

[Fringe]

Just some preliminary thoughts so please excuse any that might have already been covered elsewhere:Functionality Not Working Right

• Read vs Unread Posts

• Logging out or closing browser and reopening seems to cause all posts to be marked as read.  Forums seem to have poor/buggy tracking of read posts.

• “Forums seem to have poor/buggy tracking of read posts” is definitely the key phrase here. Not only does the forum randomly set certain posts to be marked as read but it will also randomly set some posts that have been read as unread.

• "target=_new" being used for links

• The post editor adds a "target=_new" to open links in a new window. This may work with IE, but all other browsers use "target=_blank" for this. The _new results in multiple links all being opened in the same page called "_new".

• I wasn’t able to verify this through several test so maybe it has been fixed. Then again, I’m not an expert with this sort of issue and I was only able to test in IE6 and Firefox.

• Signature links open in the signature frame

• If anyone uses links in their sig and they don't specify a "target" attribute, all links try to open in the tiny 500x150 sig iframe.

• Possibly fixed as Firefox opens signature links without any target attribute in a new tab and IE6 opens them in a new window of normal size.

• Double line spacing happening

• Several posters have noted that pressing "enter" in a post results in double line spacing.

• Just to note that while this does in fact still occur when using IE6 it doesn’t when using Firefox.

• Editing a post that includes previous emotions will result in a “ /> being added to the end of the emotion. This doesn't effect emotions that are added during an edit but rather ones that had already existed prior to the edit either from the original creation of the post or from a previous edit of the post. This also seems to only effect text input emotions and not the ones that are part of the editor itself. " /> Further testing on this issue has shown that it will occur regardless of how the emotion is added into the post. Also notice that certain emotions from the imbeded list are getting "smooshed" after submitting the post.

• The … in the “Who is online” section results in a listing of all members regardless of their online status.

• Just now had to add that I've lost the display of the Cursor Carrot while creating this post. This makes it rather difficult to jump around a post in order to add, remove or edit previously typed text. EDIT: I just got it back by leaving changing focus to another application then coming back to continue creating this post. Not really sure why it happened in the first place though.

Desired Functionality Lost

• Timezone setting

• In the profile, the community would like the ability to specify the timezone to display posts/threads in.

• Very helpful for all posters in all time-zones in determining when an Official News, Announcement or Update post was actually posted in regards to important information.

• Post preview

• While the post editor is quite nice looking, it does have some quirks and a “post preview” would be nice to prevent any issues.

• The Post Editor doesn’t seem to always work the same as when first creating a thread. The ability to Preview a Post prior to sending it to the public would help to alleviate a lot of the issues that someone like myself has with creating extensive posts containing formatting that we just aren’t all that familiar with. This might encourage some posters to follow through on posting importing information that they might have otherwise thrown out due to the frustration involved with getting the format to work out as they envisioned.

• Spell checker

• The non-perfect spellers in the community would like a spell checker function (WORKAROUND: Browsers such as Firefox have built-in spell-as-you-type functionality)

•  Another suggested workaround is the free IESpell addon for Internet Explorer.

• Ability to Move individual forums to the Top of the board as desired.

Wishlist

• Ignore list

• Ability to ignore posts/threads of a defined list of posters. Just an Edit Note: This is the description of the bullet-point above and not a separate issue.

• Replies to PM's add too many "Re:"

• When you reply to a PM, the forum software prepends "Re:" regardless of the number of times it has been replied to.  This can result in several "Re:" prepended to the subject.

• Workaround: Self editing Subject lines currently available.

• Ability to Set All Forums As Read from the Main forum page and/or the SubForum pages.

• Ability to Unsubscribe from individual threads via a Subscription Manager screen (ala the current Bookmark Manager feature). The only way to currently unsubscribe to individual threads is via an Email link and only when someone posts to a subscribed thread.

[Fringe]

Here's another one that has recently popped up within the past 1-2 months that I completely forgot to add to the list above:Most of the time (not always) when I log into the site using Firefox it brings up the "Bookmark" window instead of the logged in window. In other words, it wants me to create a Bookmark to the site. I just cancel that request then reload the page in order to get to the site as logged in. Also note that I never log out to begin with, having to log in again is directly related to the issue of the site automatically logging me out sometimes after closing the window down.

[Tstorm]

I updated the list today to remove things that have specifically been fixed.  Specifically, the request to add indent/outdent buttons to the editor and the request to allow posting as an unguilded character as both are "fixed".I haven't added the latest problems yet caused by the recent forum software update, but will be adding them very soon if they continue (I just don't want to get in the habit of adding and removing things every other day).

[feldon30]

The links in the e-mails that go out on subscribed threads take us to the thread/topic with the page numbering screwed up. It says I'm on page 3. I click on page 4 and get the same posts.

[feldon30]

Actually it's even more complicated than I am saying. If I follow a link to this forum which takes me to some new posts, those new posts are added onto the page that the link took me to. So I go to the thread, and some new posts are tacked onto the end, then I click the next page, and I get the whole page with those new posts blended in. It's really bizarre. Suffice it to say the e-mail links are really broken.

[Mynervia]

Putting the issues from the forum upgrade in the list would be some comfort to a few of us Would at least make it /look/ official :p(I'm mainly referring to the bug feldon30 references, which is more generally described as issues with respecting the "Preferred Page Size" profile setting. Some forum features use a fixed page size regardless of your setting (like the 'Page 1,2,3' links from the thread index always calculate using a page size of 15, and the links from search results (including the Trackers) always pick your destination page based on a page size of 20), which make for strange behavior with default settings (15) and no setting that will make everything work (since some calculates at 15, some at 20, regardless))There's still the old issue from before the forum upgrade, too, where a search link to the last post on a page would send you to the following page. For example, with a preferred page size of 20, this link from the dev tracker sends you to page 3, whereas the post is actually the last post of page 2. This bug existed *before* the forum upgrade, and is separate from the links-going-to-wrong-page described above.Edit - Fixing links.  Forgot that the HTML/Paste-Plain-Text windows attempt to translate ampersands into html character codes, so links with terms like "&#4773489" die off and are replaced by one or two question marks.  I assume because it attempts to translate "&#..." into a html char code, fails, and spits out "??" for lack of any better idea - though it seems to deal with ampersands followed by a normal parameter just fine.  Editting it to "&#4773489" etc resolves the issue.

[SilkenKidden]

Number of pages in a thread doesn't match between main listing and the count when you open the thread.  Once at the end of the thread, system often indicates a non-existent last page. 

This occurs when user does not use forum default for number of pages.  Using forum default for number of pages broke months ago and results in many multi page threads being listed as if they had only one page of notes.