An open letter to Cake re the Forum Software...and in response to The Colonel his ownself

• 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 instead of the unpredicatble indent we now have to do?  
• (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, but I do check it (and never log out LOL).
• Talking of screenshots and embedding images, why are we limited to a viewable size of around 800 x 800 pixels? I've seen countless full-screen shots 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:
  
  
  
  
  

(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)) 

Jimbo 88


Do you think Panu and Ben have time to check out the Forum stuff??

thomasabarnes


I get the "there is no record to display" message on occasion (using RoadRunner Turbo Internet connection.)

However, what I see frequently (and it's irritating) using IE9 is this:

When I am reading on a page for more than 2 minutes or so, and I try to click the page hyperlink to go to another thread page, the page just hangs. I have to click on a blank place on the page to get the "Recover Webpage" feature of IE9 to pop up, and I have to use that feature to get to the same page, and then quickly hit the page 2 hyperlink.

Also, the page hanging occurs when reading for 2 minutes or so and then attempting to make a post. The post is made, but I have to use that "Recover Webpage" feature mentioned above to be able to see the post I just made and to be able to move on to another page of a particular thread.

This doesn't happen on other forums I visit or frequent.

I'm all for using tact when complaining about any problems any of us may experience. :)

I sure hope something can be done about this forum software hanging matter because it is irritating.
 
Please convey our dissastisfaction with this forum software. The forum software we had before the change to this bad forum software was much better than this forum software. I understand Cakewalk wants to have forum software that's secure and anti-hacker capable, but surely you all can get something better than this forum software. This forum software is really very bad, in the opinion of many of us forum users. So, please, convey our dissastisfaction with this forum software. :)

Bub



I'm using Firefox 3.6 which works great for me.

John T


> KEEP IT CIVIL...the last thing we need is for the admins to move this to Siberia...er...the Coffee House (shudder)!!!!
 
surely civility isn't the issue. This has got nothing to do with X1, so what it was doing in the X1 forum in the first place is a bit of a mystery.

mike_mccue

Beagle


I have talked extensively with Willy about the problems I have with the forum software, so he is aware of it.

Steve has outlined some of the things that I have experienced as well.   However, the most annoying thing I have a problem with is the "no record to display" error.  it happens fairly frequently and most recently Tuesday when I was home most of the day resting from the tests I had to do, I couldn't get on the forum for over 8 hours because of that error.

The "no record to display" error has something to do with your login.  if you log out and enter a forum then you can go in.  if you're logged in then it gives that error.

IIRC the amazon server farm that Cakewalk rents scalable service on is in Virginia. Last Tuesday, Virginia was busy with more important things.

:-)