How stuff works...

[jukkodave]

Just discovered another bug.
When first came to this thread only a few of the posts were visible.
The initial one from Hilary, a couple more and the final one from Liselle, so about 4 or 5.
Once I had posted suddenly more of the thread appeared, I assume the rest, 20 on page 1 and 10 on page 2, if I am seeing and counting accurately, but somewhere in that region, far more than the 4 or 5 that showed up after being linked to the thread page.

Teething problems, just to keep everyone on their toes. And keep Hilary busy before a very well earned break.

Dave

 

[hilary]

Does anyone know how to "reply" without bringing up the "quote" contents.

Instead of using the 'reply' button under an individual post (which turns out to be short for 'reply with quote'), just go to the end of the thread and type in the reply box.

Does anyone know how to "cancel" a reply.

No... just don't post it? Or delete the contents of the editor and then leave the page. (If you don't delete your draft, the system will save it for you for later.)

How does one insert Hexagram characters.

Two ways: as smilies (click the smiley face in the formatting bar, then type in the number you want in the search box) or with shorthand, : for a broken line and | for a solid line, left-to-right = bottom-to-top.::| for instance would come out as .

How does one insert Chineses characters.

However you'd insert them anywhere else. Copying and pasting works.

Looking good apart from the technicalities. And certainly loads the pages a lot faster than before.

It does, doesn't it?

 

[hilary]

Just discovered another bug.
When first came to this thread only a few of the posts were visible.
The initial one from Hilary, a couple more and the final one from Liselle, so about 4 or 5.
Once I had posted suddenly more of the thread appeared, I assume the rest, 20 on page 1 and 10 on page 2, if I am seeing and counting accurately, but somewhere in that region, far more than the 4 or 5 that showed up after being linked to the thread page.

Teething problems, just to keep everyone on their toes. And keep Hilary busy before a very well earned break.

Dave

I bet that's a feature not a bug - probably a clever resource-saving setting somewhere. No, I don't want it to do that. I wonder what they call it and how to turn it off...?

 

[jukkodave]

Hilary, I agree, dont want that, need to be able to see all the posts in a thread. One wouldnt want to be accused of not reading the posts that may have already addressed a point or two. ONe would want to be repeating what someone else had said and claiming at "new".
We do need to be able to see all the posts in a thread, even if it only comes up with the first and last initially, the option to be able to see the rest, pretty please.

Just found another one. While trying to find various ways to cancel the post, I tried refresshing, going back a page, closing the page completely and going back to the Forum start page, in the hope that the post that I might want to delete had disappeared, it hadnt, I noticed a delete, edit, set of buttons, so thinking that it was for my trialy post I hit delete, realising as I did that it was connected to whoever's post it was, I dont think it did actually delete it thank goodness, but obviously it should have been availabe to anyone but the original poster.

Found out how to insert Hexagrams, it was in the missing part that I couldnt originally see.

Dave

 

[hilary]

I've asked after the hidden posts in the XenForo user forum, hoping that will be a quick way of finding someone who knows the answer. (No amount of searching round the admin area has turned anything up.)

I don't know what 'delete' link you saw, but it definitely wasn't for anyone else's post. You can delete your own posts, can't delete your own threads (because that might involve deleting someone else's posts) and can't touch anyone else's posts.

 

[jukkodave]

I don't know what 'delete' link you saw, but it definitely wasn't for anyone else's post. You can delete your own posts, can't delete your own threads (because that might involve deleting someone else's posts) and can't touch anyone else's posts.

The delete button appeared at the bottom of someone elses post. It was above the reply box, on the same line, right next to the report button.
It was on the thread "Imagery in the structure". That was simply the top thread and the one that I was using just to experiment, without wanting to actually post, I wanted to make sure that I understood the new formatting parameters, so was trying things out withthe intentionof cancelling and not sending anything..
So definitely it came up on someone elses post.
I was looking for a way of cancelling the experiment post where I had been just trying out various options without intending to post the random characters that I was experimenting with.
Although the button definitely appeared on someone elses thread I dont think, inthat instance, that it deleted that particular post, but I ma not sure as mu focus was on the posting box below and I saw that the experimental post was still there but the delete and edit buttons that were above the box, next to the report button, had now dissapeared. It may have been a one off, but bugs rarely are one offs, so I thought you would like to know.
My apologies to whoever it was, if I did actually delete anything.
But it definitely wasnt my post that it appeared under.

Thanks for the info on the other questions. Some of them I had managed to work out, I should have been more patient, some of them appeared in the parts of the thread that werent visible to start with.
I was a bit dim on the Chinese character front, 谢谢.


Dave

 

[Liselle]

Does anyone know how to "cancel" a reply.

I've found this disconcerting, too, to be honest. I think it's because we're so accustomed to cancel buttons in all our other software. We'll have to learn a different "flow." We can do it!


Something else...(with a bunch of caveats)... is there a way to *not* have thread pagination? The old forum gave us options for that, and I had mine set to display the highest-possible number of posts on one page.

Caveats:
1. for all I know, no one else had the old forum set that way, and everyone else likes pages (in which case I'll get used to it)

2. I can hardly believe I'm saying this, because I hate infinite scroll with a red-hot passion everywhere else it occurs. I think the differences are:

a. other places, Instagram for instance, you're looking but not so much using, if that makes sense. Here, I find myself scrolling up and down threads to refer to other posts, quote them, check what was said, looking at the original post several times while trying to reply to it - doing more interacting.

b. most threads aren't long enough for infinite scroll to cause memory problems.

 

[hilary]

The delete button appeared at the bottom of someone elses post. It was above the reply box, on the same line, right next to the report button.
It was on the thread "Imagery in the structure". That was simply the top thread and the one that I was using just to experiment, without wanting to actually post, I wanted to make sure that I understood the new formatting parameters, so was trying things out withthe intentionof cancelling and not sending anything..
So definitely it came up on someone elses post.

I've just been looking through the thread, and I think what you probably saw was not a 'delete' button but a 'deleteD' icon - Gmulii deleted a post on Thursday, before the move, which now shows as 'deleted by N/A' as that bit of information didn't make it.

My apologies to whoever it was, if I did actually delete anything.

It's OK, you didn't. There are two posts deleted on that thread - Gmulii's and your experimental one.

is there a way to *not* have thread pagination?

Good question. I will look.

 

[hilary]

I can't find a user-controlled setting for pagination, but have upped the overall limit of messages per page from 20 to 30.

 

[Liselle]

The new and improved "Latest posts" link ("Community" tab in the menu, under "Search)...

 

[Liselle]

Something else...the bottoms of some of the longer editing dropdowns are cut off when the edit box is at the starting/default size, and there aren't scrollbars to compensate. (Font family, font size, Insert link, the "..." insert, Text color a very tiny bit, although - added later - that one seems to push the edit box upwards oddly).

This can be worked around by using the enter key several times in the edit box to make it taller, but if you start making a url, for instance, without doing that, you have to start over. (Edited again - even that isn't a problem once you realize that the taupe strip at the bottom is actually the top of the insert button, which can be clicked on. What I'm trying to say: this doesn't need attention before your vacation, bless. )

Smilies are fine since they have a scrollbar. Look at the list dropdown (with a default-size edit box) for how it's probably supposed to work.

 

[Liselle]

Adding to list-for-later - I think it was Trojina who mentioned earlier that things aren't always put where you want them. I just had that happen with the smilies. I had my cursor in the right spot, but the smilies went at the very bottom of my post. (Unfortunately, this seems to be intermittent. Sometimes it works fine.)

A fix seems to be to simply repeat the smilie insertion, and then delete the ones you don't want.

Edited - also had this once with font size. But again: intermittent.

 

[Liselle]

I think it's because we're so accustomed to cancel buttons in all our other software. We'll have to learn a different "flow." We can do it!

My optimistic bravado might be fading (sorry).

In order to clear the contents of the edit box, your only recourse is to select it all and delete it manually? Is that right? It's not like that's difficult, per se, but how is it better than clicking a cancel button? Am I missing something?

It starts feeling annoying after a while (and also like there's a non-zero chance of mistakenly posting the thing). I'm completely in favor of it saving posts-in-progress in case of glitches, but - I hate to say it - this is one thing I think worked better in vBulletin...

 

[legume]

i wasn't even aware of a cancel button tbh, to me it feels a little redundant.
and just tested the draft thing, nice! the text indeed stays in the box, this is pretty neat. works to the forum's advantage imo, happened before i lost some of my posts previously by mistakenly closing the tab...

also correcting reaction, as in like to thanks works easy. but not sure if possible to remove it?

as Liselle says, maybe this will help my neurotic self be more mindful and stop clicking around

 

[legume]

ok, just clicking on Thanks / Like removes it

also, there's "delete draft" option to cancel / clear out the text box, under the floppy icon!

 

[Liselle]

also, there's "delete draft" option to cancel / clear out the text box, under the floppy icon!

Oh! Let me try this....okay, I quoted you, am typing along, la la la , as if I'm writing a real post...clicking on preview... clicking "delete draft"...

...no, that didn't work. Nothing happened at all when I clicked "delete draft."

Maybe you have to "save draft" first?...

...nope. Again, nothing happened at all. My whole post is still in the edit box and also in preview.


@legume , would you mind explaining this to me? Clearly it worked for you.

 

[Liselle]

Maybe it works if you haven't clicked on "preview" yet?

(Typing, typing, typing...The quick brown fox etc. etc.....)

Clicking "delete draft" now without displaying the preview... no, it didn't clear my edit box.

 

[moss elk]

What's the dealio with the 'Following' and 'Followers'?

I see two lists but don't recall creating them.

 

[Liselle]

Hilary explained that here.

(It's basically the "Friends" thing from vBulletin, but Hilary goes into more detail.)

 

[hilary]

I've updated my 'is there a way to do this?' thread at XenForo with 'can we get a "cancel" button on the editor?' Unfortunately, my thread title was uninspiring and hasn't attracted any attention so far. I'll try to make it a bit more inviting...

 

[Liselle]

I've updated my 'is there a way to do this?' thread at XenForo with 'can we get a "cancel" button on the editor?' Unfortunately, my thread title was uninspiring and hasn't attracted any attention so far. I'll try to make it a bit more inviting...

Oh! Thank you!

One example of this being cumbersome/disconcerting (imo)...

Say you start writing a post on a thread, abandon it for some reason, and come back later to write something quite different, or just to read the thread. vBulletin would have allowed you to clear the edit box with "cancel" (a.k.a. "I've changed my mind and don't want to post this"), but still would have autosaved it.* Recovery of said autosave was hidden behind a nice, polite, unobtrusive "recover autosaved content" button.

XF keeps the content in the edit box, where it persists staring you in the face. You have to take more steps, do more work, to get rid of it (ctrl-a/delete, as you said, vs. clicking one button).

The two forums have the default behaviors reversed (edited: the opposite paradigm, might be a better way to say it), and I liked vBulletin's better, is all. Unobtrusive vs. in-your-face. But I'm just one person, etc. etc. I think Legume said she didn't mind XF's version. I don't want this to get all 2.6-y (assuming I understand 2.6). I'm happy to back off about it.

[2019-08-15 Thursday 11:26 AM] Just ran into one where selecting and deleting didn't work, backspacing over it didn't work, nor did reloading the page, nor did navigating to another page and back again: the unwanted contents were still there. What did work was to make use of the preview button. But what a rigamarole just to erase something!


* which, actually, is desired imo - I never meant I wanted a way to circumvent the autosave safety feature entirely. It's a really important feature. (Sorry for being confusing.)

 

[legume]

@legume , would you mind explaining this to me? Clearly it worked for you.

oops, true, it doesn't seem to remove the text, my way was probably to select all and backspace, then saving the draft keeps it clear.

 

[hilary]

Something else...the bottoms of some of the longer editing dropdowns are cut off when the edit box is at the starting/default size, and there aren't scrollbars to compensate.

This should now be fixed.