New Forum layout April 2018

[Scottie]

Also, if you haven't viewed a thread since the Big Forum Upgrade, your "last known position" was lost.

My main landing page for the forum is now the New Posts page, and it works nicely.

It even sorts posts based on what's new since the last time you visited, and what's new that's new to you, but you never viewed the thread.

Yeah, that was confusing.

 

[goyacobol]

Does anybody have the same experience with alerts not really functioning? I don't receive info via alert function (the red number) for all the threads I marked as Watched. It looks as if the system was picking only selected threads upon some unknown algorithm.

I don't know if there may be an algorithm or time calculation for last alerts viewed so I when some alerts are replaced by new ones I use the "show all" alerts button and decide which ones I have not viewed. I don't think it misses any alerts but just changes the most recently displayed.

Also a nice way to view threads you haven't checked to "watch" is to go to the "Whats new" area of the title bar and it has the "Latest activity" option to choose. That option allows to to see threads you have not already checked to "watch" and you can see all the activity.

I am guessing the design is set up so you can choose to watch or unwatch and that requires more options buttons. Also you may "like" or "unlike". I know for me it has taken some getting used to but now I really "like" having the choices.

 

[Scottie]

Does anybody have the same experience with alerts not really functioning? I don't receive info via alert function (the red number) for all the threads I marked as Watched. It looks as if the system was picking only selected threads upon some unknown algorithm.

It seems that Alerts only contains a limited number, even if you click "Show All".

One solution to that is to go into Preferences and uncheck some of the Alerts settings.

Also, make sure the e-mail options are checked.

Finally, when watching a thread, you have to manually select "alert + e-mail" for each thread you watch, and then it will send you an e-mail for each watched thread.

BUT, it will only send you 1 e-mail. If more posts come in, and you haven't visited the thread since the last e-mail notification you got, it won't send another mail for each post.

It's also smart enough to know when you're viewing a thread, so it also will skip sending you an e-mail notification if you leave a thread open in a browser tab.

 

[stellar]

I really miss the old layout

 

[mrtn]

Thanks for the quick replies. Yes I'm also using 'What's New' and 'New Posts' and it goes to the new post automatically. What I mean is it goes for example to post #5 because that's the first new one, but then post #1 is loading all its youtube and twitter stuff and expands, taking more space, so all following posts move down in the viewport and then I'm looking at post #3 instead of the new #5. In the larger threads that's often several scroll pages so i scroll a bit up/down so that the arrows appear, then click the up arrow and then at the top the 'jump to new' and I'm finally back at post #5. Sometimes it automatically jumps again to the new post position after the page finished loading but not always. Maybe it's a Firefox thing and other browsers handle the loading/scrollposition better or it depends on connection speed too. Not too important, just a bit of a hassle and I thought that navi icon (white paper with a yellow bling thing) was nice for that issue. (If it ever existed? I'm not so sure anymore, can't find it with XenForo related websearches)

 

[Scottie]

Sometimes it automatically jumps again to the new post position after the page finished loading but not always. Maybe it's a Firefox thing and other browsers handle the loading/scrollposition better or it depends on connection speed too.

Aha! Yeah, I've noticed that too, but it doesn't always happen. Not sure what's going on there, but I also suspect it has to do with embeds and such not loading fast enough, so the page's "jump to this post" magic becomes less-than-magical.

 

[mrtn]

But was there ever such a 'jump to new' icon within that little hover navigtation or do I misremember this? I'm having a lot of weird Deja-vu impressions lately.

 

[fabric]

I also suspect it has to do with embeds and such not loading fast enough

I also believe that's the case. I notice it tends to be 'laggy' on threads where there are a lot of embeds in the post.

 

[Scottie]

I also believe that's the case. I notice it tends to be 'laggy' on threads where there are a lot of embeds in the post.

Well, it makes sense... If there are embeds, those embeds have to render first so that XenForo knows where on the page the new post is located. Otherwise, how does it scroll to the new post if the height of the page is changing?

If the rendering is slow for some reason (like net slowness, or Twitter's infamous crap embeds), then it will jump you to the wrong place.

I'm guessing they sort of gave it a time limit, and if it doesn't work, it just sort of aborts and plops you wherever instead of hanging forever.

 

[dugdeep]

But was there ever such a 'jump to new' icon within that little hover navigtation or do I misremember this? I'm having a lot of weird Deja-vu impressions lately.

The "Jump to new" button still appears for me, but it's selective about when it shows up and I'm not totally sure what determines it. I do know if I go to a thread I've never visited before and it puts me on the first page, the button is there and it takes me to the most recent posts.

 

[mrtn]

The "Jump to new" button at the top will not be shown anymore if you reload the page and there are no other new posts created in the meantime or unread new posts on other pages. But what I mean is the little hovering navigation in the bottom right area of the page which appears if you scroll a bit. It has these top/bottom arrows and if I remember correctly (?!) It once also had a third navi item that did the same as 'jump to new' without you having to go to the top first.

 

[Scottie]

If the rendering is slow for some reason (like net slowness, or Twitter's infamous crap embeds), then it will jump you to the wrong place.

Yup, pretty sure it's embedded Tweets. They render in a most retarded fashion. It keeps happening to me on 1 particular thread with multiple embedded Tweets.

I had to fix the exact same problem on SOTT. Alas, I don't work for XenForo...

 

[mrtn]

It happens here all the time with half of the threads. The twitter iframes don't have a min-height or something like this. They load as one-liner links and later expand to whatever they need.
For example this post #1,740 : Trump era: Fascist dawn, or road to liberation?

 

[Scottie]

It happens here all the time with half of the threads. The twitter iframes don't have a min-height or something like this. They load as one-liner links and later expand to whatever they need.
For example this post #1,740 : Trump era: Fascist dawn, or road to liberation?

That's the problem: they aren't IFRAMEs. They're a bit of HTML (BLOCKQUOTE usually) and then some JavaScript.

The JavaScript runs, sees the specific blockquotes already rendered on the page, and dynamically turns them into an embedded tweet - which changes the height of the page's content

This is the "new" way of doing embeds, and it's very dumb. Embeds like those from YT don't have that problem because they're IFRAMEs with a set width/height.

On top of that, Twitter embeds are generally pokey when loading.

On SOTT, tweets are wrapped in IFRAMEs and then there is some JS in both the wrapper IFRAME and in our editor that talk to each other. Once the tweet is fully rendered, the JS in the IFRAME talks to the JS in the editor and resizes/adjusts things so that everything works properly.

The other way of fixing it would be for XenForo's JS to hold off on jumping you down the page, but that's not terribly reliable as I discovered with SOTT - mostly because Twitter's rendering of embedded tweets is horribly unreliable and buggy.

So in short, any embeds like tweets that use this method are going to cause problems. Not much to do about it except hope that XenForo fixes it at some point...

 

[caballero reyes]

I also noticed the "ignore" function is now present, as well as the new function "like". Is the like similar to facebook in that it helps provide metrics on certain things? Not sold on "ignore" yet personally but we'll see.