HQ Forums Upgrade - July 2010

[jbluestone]

I personally love the update, i find it much cleaner, and easier to navigate, and the features are much better.

[Red]

Thanks for the quick reply. I guess the answer is that it's been fixed as much as HQ is going to fix it.

[RAY@HQ]

Red,

I think it's unfair to say that nothing has changed since the upgrade. If you review this thread, I think we've addressed the majority of the issues that people have raised. The 2nd/minor upgrade dealt with a lot of the ongoing issues like the subscribed thread titles not showing, etc. We've adjusted the fonts more than once in search of a good clean look.

The exact look/feel isn't going back to the way it was, as it's not supported in this new version. I think we reached a point where we needed to stop fussing with it and let it take root a little bit. I think most people have adapted reasonably well to it. There's certainly plenty of controls we do have at our disposal about what to change, but I'm not sure I can say exactly "it would be better if we did X". If you have suggestions, please post them... like I said, I think this thread shows that we've been receptive to that sort of feedback.

[Red]

It's been 5 weeks since the upgrade. As far as I can see nothing has changed since the upgrade drastically changed the look and feel of the forum. The current look reminds me of USENET from the early 90's. Are there any plans to get the forum back to the look and feel of what we had before the upgrade?

Today's monthly email reminded us that GOLD-4's will be renewing at end of season. I'll probably be back regardless, but if nothing is going to happen to improve the look and feel of the forum, I'll probably cancel my GOLD-4 and go with a regular subscription.

[Patioboater]

Yikes... can't really say what to expect with any mobile phone browsing -- I'd expect we'd see quirks like drop downs not working and such.

Just to be clear, it was my work computer that seemed to have that issue, but the problem there was really that I wasn't signed in. (I suppose there is a wee UI enhancement that could be made ... either greying out the options or kicking out an error message that says something like "You must be signed in to view this feature." when you click on something that won't work if you're not signed in.)

Actually, the HQ site works quite well on Safari on my iPod Touch when I access it that way. And I know a lot of other folks read it via iPhone. (Circle360 was a notorious iPhone reader of the Forums.)

[MikeK@HQ]

I've noticed a new oddity the week -- the pull-down menus on the top toolbar ("Quick links", "BaseballHQ Tools", etc.) don't seem to display the options on my work computer, which runs IE 8.0 on WindowsXP. These menus are displaying correctly on my home computer (IE 8.0 on Windows Vista) and on Safari my iPod Touch.

Yikes... can't really say what to expect with any mobile phone browsing -- I'd expect we'd see quirks like drop downs not working and such.

[MikeK@HQ]

Happy to hear everything is back to normal! :-)

[Patioboater]

It looks to me -- and I could be wrong here -- as if that "first unread" button now takes you to the first unread post on that specific computer. That feature used to keep track of your readings across computers. I notice it because I tend to access the site from a few different computers -- home, work, and my iPod Touch. (If I had to guess, I would guess that means the new software tracks "first unread" by cookie now, instead of holding that information with your account on the server, but that's really just a guess.)

I've noticed a new oddity the week -- the pull-down menus on the top toolbar ("Quick links", "BaseballHQ Tools", etc.) don't seem to display the options on my work computer, which runs IE 8.0 on WindowsXP. These menus are displaying correctly on my home computer (IE 8.0 on Windows Vista) and on Safari my iPod Touch.

Never mind. I went in and re-checked this today, and I just wasn't signed in on this computer. I must've just not signed back in after the last mini-release to fix a few bugs.

I signed in and it's working just fine. It's also tracking my read/unread without trouble.

Sorry about the false alarms. All is well.

[jtownjohn]

The unread button is working. I think the issue was that I didn't realize that I needed to log in on the new system. Don't remember that I needed to do that on the old system, but everything seems to be working now and all is right in the world of the forums.

[Patioboater]

I'll see if I can get my hands on an IE8 machine to confirm this as well.

Thanks, Ray. It's just IE8 on Windows XP that's given me this issue. IE8 on Windows Vista seems to work fine.

If you can't reproduce it, I'll take another look at my work setup and see if there's anything else that might be distinctive, but for the most part I try to maintain a really vanilla setup.

[RAY@HQ]

It looks to me -- and I could be wrong here -- as if that "first unread" button now takes you to the first unread post on that specific computer. That feature used to keep track of your readings across computers. I notice it because I tend to access the site from a few different computers -- home, work, and my iPod Touch. (If I had to guess, I would guess that means the new software tracks "first unread" by cookie now, instead of holding that information with your account on the server, but that's really just a guess.)

Interesting. Seems like a reasonable guess. I'll try to pay attention to this and see if I can confirm.

I've noticed a new oddity the week -- the pull-down menus on the top toolbar ("Quick links", "BaseballHQ Tools", etc.) don't seem to display the options on my work computer, which runs IE 8.0 on WindowsXP. These menus are displaying correctly on my home computer (IE 8.0 on Windows Vista) and on Safari my iPod Touch.

I'll see if I can get my hands on an IE8 machine to confirm this as well.

[Michael@HQ]

Is anyone else having issues with the unread button on posts? This is one of the best features of the forum to take you to the newest posts on a thread. Lately, I have been only taken to the first post of these threads. Could this be related to firefox, do I need an add-on to make it work?

I noticed that I had to log on, but you must have done that at least by the time you made the above post.

[Patioboater]

It looks to me -- and I could be wrong here -- as if that "first unread" button now takes you to the first unread post on that specific computer. That feature used to keep track of your readings across computers. I notice it because I tend to access the site from a few different computers -- home, work, and my iPod Touch. (If I had to guess, I would guess that means the new software tracks "first unread" by cookie now, instead of holding that information with your account on the server, but that's really just a guess.)

I've noticed a new oddity the week -- the pull-down menus on the top toolbar ("Quick links", "BaseballHQ Tools", etc.) don't seem to display the options on my work computer, which runs IE 8.0 on WindowsXP. These menus are displaying correctly on my home computer (IE 8.0 on Windows Vista) and on Safari my iPod Touch.

[RAY@HQ]

Is anyone else having issues with the unread button on posts? This is one of the best features of the forum to take you to the newest posts on a thread. Lately, I have been only taken to the first post of these threads. Could this be related to firefox, do I need an add-on to make it work?

Yes, this is working for me, if you're referring to the circular icon with the double down arrows in it, just to the left of the thread title. When I click on that, it brings me to the first unread post in the thread.

[Titan]

Just read all the posts and unless I missed it not one favorable comment regarding the change. Count me as another questioning why was it done when it was done. In the future can something like this be done in the offseason?