I know what you mean about the heat making one grumpy. My attic fan died today, and it's HOT (at least for the Northwest). So I wasn't in the best of moods to begin with when I encountered the new forum. And that encounter pretty much sent me over the top. But still, no amount of self-reflection upon grumpiness can change my mind about anything I've said.
-Phil
Me neither, save going away. I really value this place and the great people associated with it.
And that is what makes it hard.
And it is hot and humid there. I'm in central Oregon and it hit 102 and I was wrenching on a hot engine. Ugh. Sometimes that little adventure part of vacation isn't so nice.
Actually I agree that OSS isn't automatically the best.
However I assumed the price was right. Of course, the smart thing to do would have been to try to leverage some of the community SME's who are more knowledgable for either vetting or possibly potential free support/SHHTF help.
"If you could help us work through some of the issues we'll improve the settings and style. Bump will be here full-time until we have a comfortable arrangement."
OK, I got some sleep and I'm not so steaming agree any more. Disappointed, sad, upset, I don't know what describes it best.
My avatar is now a grinning idiot. That hurts me deeply for some odd reason. These things get personal. It's as if my best friend forgot my name, drank my beer, punched me in the face and walked out with my girl friend. That sounds like a totally over the top reaction but you get the flavour of it.
Now I see that your own avatar is a similar grinning idiot. I don't know weather to laugh or cry.
I also notice your own sig is totally out of commission.
That makes it hard for me to believe you have ever logged into the new site and given it a review before giving it's go ahead. Even a ten minute cursory glance would have put the the thing on hold and prevented this train wreck. Just the colours, size and location of different elements, the silly use of screen space, well, general style and layout shouts STOP!
I think I said this after the last forum upgrade debacle, one should never break the links. That is not just wrecking the forums internal links to itself and search engines, it breaks the links in every other little blog, forum, website out there. It breaks everybody's book marks. It breaks the web.
Looks like someone has to go through that whole link reclaiming exercise again.
There is another thousand hours of work to be done here. Sorry to say I'm in no position to help except in pointing out all the defects.
I do hope this is not all as bad as I am painting it.
P.S. More comments:
1) The "quote" button feature is pretty useless. How often do we want to quote an entire post at once. I have yet to figure out how to cut and paste text into a quote properly formatted quote, as you see above.
2) The voting thing is pretty useless. Who on Earth wants to know how a few eager vote button pushers think of a particular comment in a thread? Who want's the order of posts mangled?
Everything costs something. Running the OSS version seems free or cheap, until it isn't and when it isn't the users then must pay with their time and minds are and or suffer any opportunity or risk costs.
It is cheap and the price may well be right when somebody owns it all and the project aligns with goals. Where those things are not true, cheap entry costs may well end up very expensive maintain or exit costs.
Experienced community managers understand and can speak to those dynamics.
1) The "quote" button feature is pretty useless. How often do we want to quote an entire post at once. I have yet to figure out how to cut and paste text into a quote properly formatted quote, as you see above.
I can quote portions, but there is a risk of being sucked into the quote-body-vortex.Seems best to comment first, then delete inside the body.
What a surprise. I thought that the "forums.parallax.com" URL was related to semiconductors end electronics in general.
I hoped to find information concerning the release of an P2 fpga image .... it seems definitely I am on the wrong URL, this looks like a Disney channel.
There are actually some good things about this forum software too, except the total showstopper (for me) that it does not work at all on Android.
Drafts seems to be better handled than on VB, for example. Start writing something and abandon it (as I had to, on Android), come back to it later (as I did, on my work PC), comment on that thread again, and the draft is right there. Didn't see that on VB.
I have not determined yet if we have a fully working 'unread posts' functionality here though. That's important.
How come many users now have a post count of zero? My 13000 odd gone in a puff. Besides, if I'm reading someones post surely they have made at least 1.
Actually, I never did like the rating by quantity of posts. Being garrulous doesn't really imply intelligence or authority.
The fact that it may look better on my 'smart phone' doesn't please me personally at all. I purposely don't surf the internet on my cellular phone. But I suppose that is where all the new users are... which converts into new customers.
I feel a bit old and in the way. But it has been that way for a while.
And another thing:
When the stupid post edit box has included a pile of formatting I did not want, colours, fon't sizes, etc going back and editing the post there is no "remove formatting" button active anymore. You cannot undo the gibberish. Like so:
<pre>
<a href="http://forums.parallax.com/profile/63084/xanadu" class="Username" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: bold; font-size: 15px; font-family: Calibri, Arial, Helvetica, Tahoma, Segoe, 'Segoe UI', Verdana, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration: none; color: rgb(29, 86, 137); line-height: 30.2599983215332px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">xanadu</a>,<div><span style="font-family: Calibri, Arial, Helvetica, Tahoma, Segoe, 'Segoe UI', Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 17.7999992370605px; line-height: 30.2599983215332px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><br></span></div><div><span style="font-family: Calibri, Arial, Helvetica, Tahoma, Segoe, 'Segoe UI', Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 17.7999992370605px; line-height: 30.2599983215332px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">That screen shot shows that IE6 displays these pages in a much nicer way than what I am seeing here. </span></div><div><span style="font-family: Calibri, Arial, Helvetica, Tahoma, Segoe, 'Segoe UI', Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 17.7999992370605px; line-height: 30.2599983215332px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><br></span></div><div><span style="font-family: Calibri, Arial, Helvetica, Tahoma, Segoe, 'Segoe UI', Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 17.7999992370605px; line-height: 30.2599983215332px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">How do I install IE6 on Linux now... </span><br></div>
</pre>
Had to change my avatar right away. It was just too far afield.
Now if I could only get the white background down to a more mid-tone grey... my comfort zone would be rebalanced. I suppose those smart phones light the excessive brightness.
This has to be the worst forum software I have ever seen. Visually it just looks like a jumble, hard to navigate, hard to 'glance' at and see what is what.
Also what happened to the P1V sub forum? It was nice to have that stuff in an isolated location.
The old forum might not have had a 'modern' skin on it, but it was VERY functional and quick to browse through.
Loopy,
Of course having more posts make one superior. It shows guts, determination, tenacity, tolerance of Smile forum software. All fine qualities in a man.
I notice you have zero posts!
Humility is a virtue that some of us lack (mostly Leos and Aries).
Engineers are so hung up on numbers that they can't grasp that the real world only cares about one, Net Worth.
Don't worry, I am not going to contribute lots of postings to try to prove something that is silly.
It has been fun to learn micro-controllers from Parallax over the years, but the Internet has changed, people have grown weary of trying to learn or trying to mentor over the web... too many with mis-information or a soap box that tilts objectivity.
Loopy,
Leo here. No humility but whatever it is it's meant with good intent an humour most of the time.
Cheer up. It's not so bad. At least I have seen many folks come here and to other forums with curiosity and a desire to learn. I have seen many other willing to be their guides. On occasion I have been both, certainly I have received a lot of help from many places.
As for the apparent rabble majority. A lot of it is an illusion. It's natural that many disagree with one or have different values and so on. Surely the world has always been that way.
I guess I would name the graphics theme of the forum as Pre-K. I didn't, by choice, have an avatar on the old board. I hate being forced to have one. My biggest complaint so far is that there is too much wasted screen area and the text in messages is too small. MIcrosoft will like it as I will probably wear out the scroll wheel on my mouse. Could we please go back to the old list of categories?
John Abshier
PS. I was looking forward to finally getting to 1000 posts. Now I start over.
Heater, I have long suspected that you were a Leo.
We all have our crosses to bear, being a Sagittarius often makes me out to be the fool. Sooner or later we all have to accept what we are given to work with in life.
Fire signs are great entertainment for all the others to watch.
This forum upgrade violated all the rules of a roll-out.
1)You do not do roll outs without first beta testing the new app from those who are going use it. But that's not the worst of it,
2) I doubt any in-house testing was done. It looks to be one those situations where the developers got it to work and not blow up after 5 minutes and called it good.
3)It looks very amateurish. I don't care if it's OSS, it looks like something some kid put together. For a
business, it says a lot of things and none of it good.
Say I'm a new customer and I check out your forums, all I see is a mess. It tells me the company really doesn't care about the image it conveys to the public.Compared to Adafruit's or Sparkfun's forums it doesn't hold a candle.
Loopy,
What are you getting at? Leo is clearly the most desirable sign to be born under. Apart from Harrods that is.
I mean, you get to have your birthday in the summer, in the middle of the school holidays. Perfect.
I may be in the minority, but wow are you guys freaking out. It is a forum change, not the end of the world! The same people, the same content is STILL HERE.
The most complaints:
1) Just because the forums don't look like they're from the early 90's doesn't mean that the sky is falling.2) People keep saying that when new people come to this forum they're going to see how "unprofessional" the forums are. More than likely they're just going to see people complaining about the forums instead of talking about projects. Keep it together folks, I'm sure they're working on it. 3) Grinning avatars. If you don't like your grinning neon avatar, change it. *mind blown* If you are against avatars, change your avatar to be white. It will blend in with the page.4) We needed a beta before roll-out! Do you want their engineers working on a beta, or do you want them working on new products? It's a miracle they were able to keep all of the previous posts and all of your post counts in the first place.
Chill. out. people. Ken and the team will work on making it better, LIKE THEY ALWAYS DO.
@atdiy
But it does look like the hideousness from the 1990's !Main point it is that it does not function correctly.Sure I can fix the grinning avatar in a minute, it's a slap to be treated that way though.
Yes, all power to Ken and the team in pulling this straight.
You're posting your thoughts to the forums. I'm posting a reply. You are then posting another reply. I'm pretty sure that's what forums are about.
A slap to be treated what way? New forums that can keep up to date with changes in internet technology, forum security, spambots, and fake registrations?
Come on.
Tymkrs,
Yes, you speak, I speak, you speak...that is a wonderful thing.
As for the "slap" and all the other complaints, it's not the end of the world. But heck people have been building forums for decades now and it comes to this mess.
How is that even possible?
It seems to me that the people who insist on "upgrading" the forums never actually use them, hence drastic changes are not accounted for. I really liked the "New" button on the old forum.
My message has raised concerns from Parallax. My criticism is being
seen as an attack on the company and not as constructive, so I'm retracting the entire message in addition to all of my recent
posts.
Possible Migration Bug? I'm getting emails from the forum with message notifications that I didn't request. I've gotten about six of them so far.
On a positive note, the new forums look great on a cell phone.
Comments
This put me in a crappy mood. It is done, and I am cool and I'm off to the sticks a day late.
The upside is you won't be reading grumpy potatohead. Though I really am flirting with changing to spud for a usernname...
I won't go away, but I also promise not to like this if I really should not like this. No cheerleading. I'll be honest and loyal and mostly nice.
-Phil
And that is what makes it hard.
And it is hot and humid there. I'm in central Oregon and it hit 102 and I was wrenching on a hot engine. Ugh. Sometimes that little adventure part of vacation isn't so nice.
Actually I agree that OSS isn't automatically the best.
However I assumed the price was right. Of course, the smart thing to do would have been to try to leverage some of the community SME's who are more knowledgable for either vetting or possibly potential free support/SHHTF help.
"If you could help us work through some of the issues we'll improve the settings and style. Bump will be here full-time until we have a comfortable arrangement."
OK, I got some sleep and I'm not so steaming agree any more. Disappointed, sad, upset, I don't know what describes it best.
My avatar is now a grinning idiot. That hurts me deeply for some odd reason. These things get personal. It's as if my best friend forgot my name, drank my beer, punched me in the face and walked out with my girl friend. That sounds like a totally over the top reaction but you get the flavour of it.
Now I see that your own avatar is a similar grinning idiot. I don't know weather to laugh or cry.
I also notice your own sig is totally out of commission.
That makes it hard for me to believe you have ever logged into the new site and given it a review before giving it's go ahead. Even a ten minute cursory glance would have put the the thing on hold and prevented this train wreck. Just the colours, size and location of different elements, the silly use of screen space, well, general style and layout shouts STOP!
I think I said this after the last forum upgrade debacle, one should never break the links. That is not just wrecking the forums internal links to itself and search engines, it breaks the links in every other little blog, forum, website out there. It breaks everybody's book marks. It breaks the web.
Looks like someone has to go through that whole link reclaiming exercise again.
There is another thousand hours of work to be done here. Sorry to say I'm in no position to help except in pointing out all the defects.
I do hope this is not all as bad as I am painting it.
P.S. More comments:
1) The "quote" button feature is pretty useless. How often do we want to quote an entire post at once. I have yet to figure out how to cut and paste text into a quote properly formatted quote, as you see above.
2) The voting thing is pretty useless. Who on Earth wants to know how a few eager vote button pushers think of a particular comment in a thread? Who want's the order of posts mangled?
It is cheap and the price may well be right when somebody owns it all and the project aligns with goals. Where those things are not true, cheap entry costs may well end up very expensive maintain or exit costs.
Experienced community managers understand and can speak to those dynamics.
1) The "quote" button feature is pretty useless. How often do we want to quote an entire post at once. I have yet to figure out how to cut and paste text into a quote properly formatted quote, as you see above.
I can quote portions, but there is a risk of being sucked into the quote-body-vortex.Seems best to comment first, then delete inside the body.
I hoped to find information concerning the release of an P2 fpga image .... it seems definitely I am on the wrong URL, this looks like a Disney channel.
- OK, I get it, social media rules. Never mind usability or functionality.
- Why, oh why, were these avatars chosen for a technical forum?
- Wait! I've got it! My avatar is two permanent magnets attempting to deflect an electron beam!
- Change is not always progress. And search doesn't seem to work any better than the old forum.
- Why there was no beta test for this forum?
IMHO, Parallax has dropped the ball.Drafts seems to be better handled than on VB, for example. Start writing something and abandon it (as I had to, on Android), come back to it later (as I did, on my work PC), comment on that thread again, and the draft is right there. Didn't see that on VB.
I have not determined yet if we have a fully working 'unread posts' functionality here though. That's important.
-Tor
Not much continuity here, but Forum changes have had a history of being challenging and dragging me out of my comfort zone.
Shall we call this one "The Great Leap Forward"?
How come many users now have a post count of zero? My 13000 odd gone in a puff. Besides, if I'm reading someones post surely they have made at least 1.
Actually, I never did like the rating by quantity of posts. Being garrulous doesn't really imply intelligence or authority.
The fact that it may look better on my 'smart phone' doesn't please me personally at all. I purposely don't surf the internet on my cellular phone. But I suppose that is where all the new users are... which converts into new customers.
I feel a bit old and in the way. But it has been that way for a while.
Good luck Parallax. May you survive and prosper.
When the stupid post edit box has included a pile of formatting I did not want, colours, fon't sizes, etc going back and editing the post there is no "remove formatting" button active anymore. You cannot undo the gibberish. Like so:
<pre>
<a href="http://forums.parallax.com/profile/63084/xanadu" class="Username" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; outline: 0px; font-weight: bold; font-size: 15px; font-family: Calibri, Arial, Helvetica, Tahoma, Segoe, 'Segoe UI', Verdana, sans-serif; vertical-align: baseline; text-decoration: none; color: rgb(29, 86, 137); line-height: 30.2599983215332px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">xanadu</a>,<div><span style="font-family: Calibri, Arial, Helvetica, Tahoma, Segoe, 'Segoe UI', Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 17.7999992370605px; line-height: 30.2599983215332px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><br></span></div><div><span style="font-family: Calibri, Arial, Helvetica, Tahoma, Segoe, 'Segoe UI', Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 17.7999992370605px; line-height: 30.2599983215332px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">That screen shot shows that IE6 displays these pages in a much nicer way than what I am seeing here. </span></div><div><span style="font-family: Calibri, Arial, Helvetica, Tahoma, Segoe, 'Segoe UI', Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 17.7999992370605px; line-height: 30.2599983215332px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><br></span></div><div><span style="font-family: Calibri, Arial, Helvetica, Tahoma, Segoe, 'Segoe UI', Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 17.7999992370605px; line-height: 30.2599983215332px; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">How do I install IE6 on Linux now... </span><br></div>
</pre>
Now if I could only get the white background down to a more mid-tone grey... my comfort zone would be rebalanced. I suppose those smart phones light the excessive brightness.
Also what happened to the P1V sub forum? It was nice to have that stuff in an isolated location.
The old forum might not have had a 'modern' skin on it, but it was VERY functional and quick to browse through.
Of course having more posts make one superior. It shows guts, determination, tenacity, tolerance of Smile forum software. All fine qualities in a man.
I notice you have zero posts!
Engineers are so hung up on numbers that they can't grasp that the real world only cares about one, Net Worth.
Don't worry, I am not going to contribute lots of postings to try to prove something that is silly.
It has been fun to learn micro-controllers from Parallax over the years, but the Internet has changed, people have grown weary of trying to learn or trying to mentor over the web... too many with mis-information or a soap box that tilts objectivity.
Leo here. No humility but whatever it is it's meant with good intent an humour most of the time.
Cheer up. It's not so bad. At least I have seen many folks come here and to other forums with curiosity and a desire to learn. I have seen many other willing to be their guides. On occasion I have been both, certainly I have received a lot of help from many places.
As for the apparent rabble majority. A lot of it is an illusion. It's natural that many disagree with one or have different values and so on. Surely the world has always been that way.
John Abshier
PS. I was looking forward to finally getting to 1000 posts. Now I start over.
We all have our crosses to bear, being a Sagittarius often makes me out to be the fool. Sooner or later we all have to accept what we are given to work with in life.
Fire signs are great entertainment for all the others to watch.
1)You do not do roll outs without first beta testing the new app from those who are going use it. But that's not the worst of it,
2) I doubt any in-house testing was done. It looks to be one those situations where the developers got it to work and not blow up after 5 minutes and called it good.
3)It looks very amateurish. I don't care if it's OSS, it looks like something some kid put together. For a
business, it says a lot of things and none of it good.
Say I'm a new customer and I check out your forums, all I see is a mess. It tells me the company really doesn't care about the image it conveys to the public.Compared to Adafruit's or Sparkfun's forums it doesn't hold a candle.
What are you getting at? Leo is clearly the most desirable sign to be born under. Apart from Harrods that is.
I mean, you get to have your birthday in the summer, in the middle of the school holidays. Perfect.
The most complaints:
1) Just because the forums don't look like they're from the early 90's doesn't mean that the sky is falling.2) People keep saying that when new people come to this forum they're going to see how "unprofessional" the forums are. More than likely they're just going to see people complaining about the forums instead of talking about projects. Keep it together folks, I'm sure they're working on it. 3) Grinning avatars. If you don't like your grinning neon avatar, change it. *mind blown* If you are against avatars, change your avatar to be white. It will blend in with the page.4) We needed a beta before roll-out! Do you want their engineers working on a beta, or do you want them working on new products? It's a miracle they were able to keep all of the previous posts and all of your post counts in the first place.
Chill. out. people. Ken and the team will work on making it better, LIKE THEY ALWAYS DO.
@atdiy
Yes, all power to Ken and the team in pulling this straight.
A slap to be treated what way? New forums that can keep up to date with changes in internet technology, forum security, spambots, and fake registrations?
Come on.
Yes, you speak, I speak, you speak...that is a wonderful thing.
As for the "slap" and all the other complaints, it's not the end of the world. But heck people have been building forums for decades now and it comes to this mess.
How is that even possible?
seen as an attack on the company and not as constructive, so I'm retracting the entire message in addition to all of my recent
posts.
Possible Migration Bug? I'm getting emails from the forum with message notifications that I didn't request. I've gotten about six of them so far.
On a positive note, the new forums look great on a cell phone.