Brandon, it's a shame that you are using a lot of your precious time (I mean this ... you have probably better things to do) in defending and responding to various members here about the crappy forum software.  A lot of us know it's crap (and I agree with Undertow about some of the non-features, e.g. read vs. unread posts).  Many of us however do not complain (enough) and just "live with it".  I don't bother trying to quote anymore (using the old method of cut'n'paste, italicising, different color etc.).  And I'm not talking about issues with various browsers, just the application itself.
Please convey our dissatisfaction to the respective team internally.  Thanks.

As much as Undertow and I have disagreed on so many things here we are of one mind on this. I totally agree with what he has said about the forum software. I wouldn't use his words but he has it pretty much nailed.

What we see is that CW can choose any forum software and that they picked this one? We wonder why?


The old software worked except for searching. Now we have a some what better searching but loose a lot that we liked in the old software. For one the automatic reply noting to whom it is meant for.  Very neat.

This is slow ponderous and not user friendly at all. 

A reassessment of where CW is with this forum software would be highly appreciated by many of us. It would make the help this forum offers so much more pleasant to give. It would also say a lot about how CW treats is users.

I don't bother trying to quote anymore

 
I've mentioned this a few times in the past, but if you highlight (select) the text you want to quote and then click "Reply to Message" instead of "Quote", that text should be in your reply with the proper quote tags intact.   Just hit Enter and you can follow the quote with your reply.    Like I've done here.  
 

UnderTow

Brandon Ryan [Cakewalk
]

And frankly, you can complain to me all you want but I don't pick the forum software and I don't implement it and I don't maintain it.

...

So please don't call my ears deaf.

Brandon, I wasn't complaining to you. I didn't even come here to complain. I came to say I thought the new bussing feature sounded like a good idea and added a couple of suggestions of my own. Then I got confronted with yet another issue with this forum software and vented my frustration at that. I wasn't expecting anyone to react to it (not least because people including myself have been saying this forum software is crap for years). I really have no idea why you choose to respond to that part of my post rather than the rest which was the important part. 

And no this is not proper forum software. I would consider making it perfectly clear which thread has been read part of the most basic functionality of forum software. This forum can't do that. That makes it flawed at the most fundamental level. You can tout your computer experience as much as you want but if you don't see that as a massive flaw then you are just not very critical or demanding when it comes to forum software. So why bother responding?

I spend a lot of time here listening and shining a light on customer concerns and needs.

I know Brandon and I think most people consider you a good guy and a real asset to Cakewalk. That isn't being questioned. The deaf ears are those of whomever should have long ago decided to switch to decent forum software.


(Just now I clicked right where I wanted to write and started typing but instead the text appeared at the bottom of the post. Tried copy&pasting the text after clicking at the right location, it just appeared at the bottom of the page again. If I click, hit space-bar and THEN start typing, the text appears at the right place. No, this is NOT proper forum software by any stretch of the imagination. It is fundamentally broken. (Google Chrome 13.0.782.215 m))

So let me be clear about what I understand from you. Perhaps it will give you some faith that indeed you are being heard:

1) I understand why you hate the forum software and to what degree this hatred extends.
2) I understand you feel it makes Cakewalk look stupid - in that a software company would use what is in your estimation abyssal software for its forum.
3) I understand that you feel Cakewalk is not aware of any problems and that complaints fall on deaf ears.
4) I understand that you feel Cakewalk needs to get a clue but that sadly, in your estimation, this is highly unlikely at any point in the near future.

I will make sure your opinions on the subject are known and taken into consideration.

Brandon you always demonstrate that you understand what people are writing (whether you agree or not) that isn't ever the issue. But considering how many people have attested to how crap this software is for so long (and just using it should be enough for anyone critical to agree), that is why I believe it will fall on deaf ears and nothing will be done about it. I would love to be proven wrong though...

So if we're all good can we please stay on the topic of this thread. Anyone can feel free to start a new thread in the CoffeeHouse about the forum software.

Sure so to conclude:


New bussing feature = Cool!
Forum software = Worse than a poke in the eye with s ****ty stick! 


UnderTow

I know I hear ya - and I really am sorry so many users find it so frustrating. I'll bring it to attention. I know there is a forum related project currently under way that may make all this a moot point.

I appreciate your comments and thank you for the clarifications. My apologies if I went over the top at all in my response.

Music gives me gas.  You got a Pepcid on ya?

John T

Anyone made any music lately? I realise that's a side hobby for professional forum users, but I gather some of you have a passing interest in music.

I tried, I can't. My DAW works perfectly for everything except Sonar and these Forums!!!!!!

ROFL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Gods Honest truth! LOL

Bub

ProjectM

Bub

The forum software.

IE8 - All of the format tools in the reply box are gone so you can't insert a link, picture, indent, make thins bold, italicized, etc.

That sounds weird to me Bub, I have IE9 on this machine I'm currently gazing at - a 64-bit Win7 thing, and all formatting tools show up in any typing box. Try getting IE9, it looks like Chrome

IE8 gives me the same behavior on my XP laptop and my Win 7 DAW. Both have latest updates. It is weird.
 

Hm... I know you can't get IE9 on XP but it works great on Win7. Anyway, it's just software. I usually just type in the smileys anyway and try to refrain from insisting and making my self clear

 
BTW, I miss your beard Avatar

Just for you ... and that smokin' hot vampire Avatar you use ... I brought the beard back. My wife walked by my PC and saw I was using it as an avatar and yelled at me so I removed it. She hates that picture. LOL! Hey, I took it last winter, I was cold. :) I told her if she didn't like it, she could go plow our 200ft long driveway when it's -20 out and 60MPH winds. That didn't go over well either. I have a way with words sometimes don't I? LOL!

Cool! I knew the vampire avatar would bring me some eh... luck... one day? And it was a bearded man?? Something doesn't sound right... from over here.... Hmmmm...
 
Anyway, if I could grow a beard like that I'd do it!!! And if I had a wife and she complained I'd ignore her (although as an unmarried man I might not see how difficult that may actually be - but I've heard rumours). But we suffer the same snow over here and that beard would make winter easier for sure! Here's my sollution to your snow plowing voes: Don't get a drive way
 
 
So... what were we discussing here again?

Wow!!   


With Chrome I can even place emoticons from other forums in here... 


But it is slllllllooooooowwwww. It takes a few millenia to show up sometimes here. Other times not so much.


As for not being able to quote and such that does sound very off ... I've seen other forums that seem to have issues with that as well...so I am kind of thinking that it is both forum and Internet Exploder, I mean Explorer issues?

ProjectM


whoa! UnderTow! Breathe! Ha ha, your first statement about the forum software (in this thread) was like: Man, there's something weird happening with the forum software

And it escalates to that rant! Man, it's impressive!

Are you sure it's healthy to be that concerned about a forum software? Indeed, any software? It's not like anyone's life depends on it, it's a way to communicate. And it's possible to use it for that so calm down and relax. Go for a walk, get some air - no software needed and it's out there life truly exists. Or you could write a book, you are have the gift of words - and I mean that as a sincere compliment!

Anyway, thanks for an entertaining read. It was a little over the top but I had to smile

Don't take my posts too seriously. I quite enjoy ridiculously overstating things at times. I have a smile on my face. :-)


But I do have a headache which always kills musical inspiration, no good book to read at the moment. So what's left? TV?  Oh wait! "Seven wonders of the Buddhist world" on BBC2 could be interesting. Let's see...



UnderTow

John

A reassessment of where CW is with this forum software would be highly appreciated by many of us. It would make the help this forum offers so much more pleasant to give. It would also say a lot about how CW treats is users.

Why ... John ... I think I'm rubbing off on you.

Wait ... that didn't come out right ... but you know what I mean.

UnderTow

ProjectM


whoa! UnderTow! Breathe! Ha ha, your first statement about the forum software (in this thread) was like: Man, there's something weird happening with the forum software

And it escalates to that rant! Man, it's impressive!

Are you sure it's healthy to be that concerned about a forum software? Indeed, any software? It's not like anyone's life depends on it, it's a way to communicate. And it's possible to use it for that so calm down and relax. Go for a walk, get some air - no software needed and it's out there life truly exists. Or you could write a book, you are have the gift of words - and I mean that as a sincere compliment!

Anyway, thanks for an entertaining read. It was a little over the top but I had to smile

Don't take my posts too seriously. I quite enjoy ridiculously overstating things at times. I have a smile on my face. :-)


But I do have a headache which always kills musical inspiration, no good book to read at the moment. So what's left? TV?  Oh wait! "Seven wonders of the Buddhist world" on BBC2 could be interesting. Let's see...



UnderTow

He he, ok, noted. Good to hear.
 
I'm struggling with a cold and am tripping out on cold medicine while trying to drink some ginger tea with pepper in it that my mother talked me into making, I could deal with Buddhist Wonders right now...
 
No wait, I have the forum! I understand what you mean;)
 
I hope your headache clears up soon.

Is that logical ? So you "reply to message" if you wanna quote ? And you have to highlight beforehand ? More weirdness with this software ...

 
I never claimed it was logical.  Only that it works.  
 
Seriously though, I've been using that technique for years, starting back on the previous forum software (but still post-NTTP).  Like most things it becomes second nature after a while.
 

Ok, on a serious note.

In this day and age of 6 core CPU's, 64 bit processing, 192GB RAM, 40MB Per/Sec internet connections, it get's very frustrating when sites (and software) doesn't work the way it is supposed to.

We have browsers that allow us to have multiple windows open all at once, multitasking PC's, live streaming video in High Definition, refrigerators that allow you to email shopping lists and have your groceries delivered ...

And yet, the forums for the software we love so much takes 60 seconds to load sometimes, gives us 'No Records To Show' errors, we can't indent paragraphs, our icons are missing a lot of the time.

This is not a rant ... it's just trying to give a little perspective on why people's expectations and standards when it comes to software are much higher than it was when we had our 2100baud modems screeching away in our ears.

I mean ... after all Brandon ... this forum software is from 2009 ... it's time to join the club and upgrade.

  
@ Brandon - in my honest opinion, here are the main things wrong with the forum software.
 
A change to all of these functions would make the experience here much better for us, your loyal cash paying customers, and more importantly, for your future cash paying customers:

• The quote system may work, providing you remember to click in the reply window and then hit the down arrow to make certain the cursor arrives at the very bottom of the screen.Even if you manage to master the skill of using multiple quotes and replies in the same post, it's fiddly to say the least, and I'll wager even you check the Preview screen before posting.
  
  Now consider the huge amount of contributors who obviously haven't worked out the quote system - don't you think it's incredible that these very same people have mastered a program as complicated and sophisticated as SONAR but they can't fathom out the quotes?
  
  What on earth was wrong with the easy to read 'boxed' quotes we used to have? And the wonderfully easy to use [ quote][/ quote] button?  
• (I've just done this) - if you're typing a longish post, it's wise to copy what you've typed and paste it into Word. I've completed so many long posts, often with screenshots, and clicked on Post Reply, only to see the screen hang and then the whole lot is lost into the ether forever. I know this used to happen (it might still do for all I know) if you didn't check the cookies option when you log in and spent longer than about 15 minutes compiling a post.
• Talking of screenshots and embedding images, why are we limited to a viewable size of around 800x800 pixels? I've seen countless full-screenshots posted of SONAR in here and you can hardly make out any of the detail. Beforehand, we could post much larger images - and to view them properly the forum software provided scroll bars. If you wish to see the detail properly, you have to click on Reply to message > Quote message on someones post to see the image displayed properly. How can that be right?
• And another way to lose a whole reply post is to refresh the page - that's it, gone forever... even if you just hit F5 inside the reply window (feel free to try it!). That never used to happen with the old forum software.
• Another annoyance are the scrolling windows. With a reply window open, you generally speaking have three scrolling windows in view - the 'text' window, (inside the) the post reply window, and the forum page underneath. The problem is that the scroll wheel on the mouse scrolls the view the cursor is above, without having to click inside that view. In every other program I use, the focus stays where the mouse was last clicked.
  
  I thought I must just be clumsy in this respect but I keep losing the reply screen either to the bottom or top of the page - e.g. click in the text area and use the scroll wheel to continually scroll up - instead of stopping at the top of your reply, the whole reply window starts disappearing off the bottom of the page, and then the forum page beneath starts scrolling! It's a royal pain.
• In the User Control Panel, it states the Signature can hold a maximum of 550 characters. In reality, it's about half that - why? Here's my current signature - there are exactly 200 characters. Even accounting for the hidden formatting code and full web links (there would have to be 351 characters in those), I still cannot save this properly (although for some reason I obviously was once able to):
  
  
• On the subject of scrolling, the mouse pointer seems to arbitarily lose focus sometimes on a forum page - the Up/Down arrows don't work, neither does the scroll wheel on the mouse; this stays the same even if you click back on the screen. The only way to navigate then is to actually grab the scroll handles and drag them.
• For some reason, we no longer have the In Reply To message displayed in a post - this causes a lot of confusion for sure. The only way to indicate who you're replying to (other than using e.g: @Brandon etc) is to quote their post, and we know how that works.
• Finally, the unholy trinity:
  
  
  
  
  

 
 
Sorry for straying OT, but I'm happy to start a new thread with this post to see how many others agree with any of my points.
 
 

John

Brandon is one of my favorite people from CW and I know that he is not fully getting just how we truly feel about the forum. I know he is trying but it is not possible for him to see it the way we see it.

A lot of us feel a connection with this place.  It is a home away from home. The people here have a meaning to many of us. We know a lot of them from their postings over the years. Its a family to a degree that some of us feel a responsibility to. When the technology here gets in the way of the interactions we have here it only hurts the forum and the people that it represents. I mean you me and all the others.  It can't be good for CW to have this under current of having to deal with silly brain dead forum software.

Bud we are friends no matter how I may disagree with you on a point we are still friends. As are so many others here.

We have a common interest we are here to both learn and offer help. 

This will go on no matter what CW does about the forum software. They could however make it so much better for us.

That's a great post John. Seriously. And I consider us and many others here friends as well. It took me a long time to let my guard down, but I've finally done it.

I feel the exact same way. It is like a family here. We get in to our little squabbles, block each other, etc etc ... then we forget about it in a few days and get back to everything and forget all about it.

For me personally, this forum has been a tremendous help for me to keep my sanity over the last year that I've been out of work. I couldn't imagine going more than a day without coming here to see a familiar name popping up on the screen.

You're right, it is like a home away from home. For me it's my home at home. I always have either my laptop or DAW up with the forums loaded. A lot of times I'll log on, forget about it, and do something else and it looks like I've been online all day.

I think some of us are so vocal because we have that feeling of knowing everyone and belonging. I personally wouldn't say half the things I do to total strangers ... you know what I mean? It's a really special thing Cakewalk has going here. I'm sure there's other forums that have regular members, but I've never seen one quite like this place. Especially with the tolerance level of the admin. These guys do take a beating and I'm not claiming any innocence on that. Hopefully my attention to curbing that behavior hasn't gone unnoticed lately.

I wish I would have participated soon than I did. I've been lurking here since 2003 off and on, and even posted a couple questions under a different name, but I can't even remember what the name I used was now. Work never allowed me the time to participate back then like I do now. While we're reminiscing, I remember CJ and Bitflipper helping me with a latency problem in Sonar 4 many years ago. CJ said something like RTFM and Bit was very helpful IIRC. LOL!