Gaudiya Discussions Archive » COMMUNITY, MODERATION AND FEEDBACK

Growth of the online community, standards of moderation, feedback on both the content and the technicalities of the site, related announcements.

Board software update - Your suggestions sought - Please contribute in this topic

Madhava - Fri, 03 Sep 2004 01:52:48 +0530

The final release of InvisionBoard 2.0 will soon be available, and will be installed as the basis of Gaudiya Discussions, upgrading the current 1.3 version.

While I'm customizing skins and hacking in some modifications I personally like to see in the forum software, I can also look into implementing different suggestions you may have.

Therefore, whatever ideas you might come up with on how the forums would be more convenient, post them in please! No matter how small or big, I'll do my best to have them included if they seem useful and aren't unreasonably hard to implement.

Basically anything that you see can be changed, and everything you cannot see can be added. Small useful features, custom skin colors, just about anything - post it in! Yes, you!

Madhava - Fri, 03 Sep 2004 01:53:46 +0530

ACCEPTED MODIFICATION SUGGESTIONS

This slot is reserved for accepted mods that will be implemented. See the edit line for the time of the latest update in this post.

DharmaChakra - Fri, 03 Sep 2004 16:19:16 +0530

Madhavaji

Personally, I've got a real problem with how formatting posting is handled. When I write a string of text, and want to make bold, when I place the cursor someplace in the text and click the bold button, the formatting element is placed at the end of the line, causing me to cut and paste it where I want...

I want to make some part of this text bold [B]
^ Insert cursor here... ^tag is placed here

(hope that text comes across...)

Also, and I'm unsure how easily this could be done, but the ability to highlight text & have the tags placed accordingly around the highlighted text would be cool.. however I know this depends on the textbox element in the browser & methods that are available to it...

BTW, I'm running Mozilla Firefox 0.9 on a Linux box.

Madhava - Fri, 03 Sep 2004 17:08:47 +0530

DharmaChakra,

I understand the issue. However, this is unfortunately impossible to implement with current browser technologies. There are some attempts at a WYSIWYG kind of interface which would allow you to do that, but they are buggy and by no means cross-platform. Personally I just type the tags in as I write, I can't remember when I'd have last used the buttons.

braja - Fri, 03 Sep 2004 18:02:47 +0530

QUOTE (DharmaChakra @ Sep 3 2004, 06:49 AM)

Also, and I'm unsure how easily this could be done, but the ability to highlight text & have the tags placed accordingly around the highlighted text would be cool.. however I know this depends on the textbox element in the browser & methods that are available to it...

BTW, I'm running Mozilla Firefox 0.9 on a Linux box.

Have you tried the BBCode extension for Firefox? It at least allows for the highlighting and applying tags on either side of the highlighted text.

The cursor placement only seems to work with IE.

Madhava - Fri, 03 Sep 2004 18:42:00 +0530

QUOTE (braja @ Sep 3 2004, 02:32 PM)

Have you tried the BBCode extension for Firefox? It at least allows for the highlighting and applying tags on either side of the highlighted text.

Works like a charm! However, the link in the review leads to version 0.1.2. Here's a link to the latest version, 0.2.

DharmaChakra - Mon, 06 Sep 2004 02:32:35 +0530

QUOTE (Madhava @ Sep 3 2004, 01:12 PM)

QUOTE (braja @ Sep 3 2004, 02:32 PM)

Have you tried the BBCode extension for Firefox? It at least allows for the highlighting and applying tags on either side of the highlighted text.

Works like a charm! However, the link in the review leads to version 0.1.2. Here's a link to the latest version, 0.2.

Ahh.. very cool. Just installed it. Good enough for me! Thanks!

Madhava - Wed, 08 Sep 2004 21:12:06 +0530

Any other suggestions? Nobody cares if it'll just have one big "Add Reply" button and that's it?

DharmaChakra - Thu, 16 Sep 2004 01:11:44 +0530

I hope it isn't too late, but I would love to have the full 'cookie crumb' style navigation at the bottom of the page as well as the top. As usually want to click back out to the main forum page after reading a post all the way through, I always have to scroll all the way back up to the top of the page...

just an idea..

Madhava - Thu, 16 Sep 2004 01:18:04 +0530

QUOTE (DharmaChakra @ Sep 15 2004, 08:41 PM)

No, it certainly isn't too late. The final release isn't even out yet.

However I wonder if you have noticed the dropdown jump menu that is there right below the topic on the right side. There you can pick "Forum Home" or any other location you'd like to head to.

DharmaChakra - Thu, 16 Sep 2004 21:17:16 +0530

QUOTE (Madhava @ Sep 15 2004, 03:48 PM)

QUOTE (DharmaChakra @ Sep 15 2004, 08:41 PM)

Yes, but... mehhh... I personally would drop the combobox in favor of text links.. so much easier to jump quickly, and gives a good visual sense of where you are & where you are going...

I would put this in place of the 'Oldest... Newest'.. navigation.. I dont think I've ever even used that... if course, thats just me...

Sakhicharan - Fri, 17 Sep 2004 05:19:28 +0530

Gotta feeling that I might be dreaming, but how about a built in spelling checker as well as a built in diacritics converter?

I really don't know how this board software works but these would certainly be handy.

Hell, while you are at it how about database access to the complete works of the Sad-Goswamis?
Oh Yeah!, don't forget the works of Cakrabartipad and Kaviraj Goswami and....

Madhava - Fri, 17 Sep 2004 05:38:16 +0530

QUOTE (Sakhicharan @ Sep 17 2004, 12:49 AM)

Gotta feeling that I might be dreaming, but how about a built in spelling checker as well as a built in diacritics converter?

I'll have to see about that spell checker thing. However isn't the diacritics converter already pretty much integrated? I mean it's right there behind one click to a popup window, how much more do you want it integrated?

QUOTE

Hell, while you are at it how about database access to the complete works of the Sad-Goswamis?
Oh Yeah!, don't forget the works of Cakrabartipad and Kaviraj Goswami and....

This should become possible once I recode the Grantha Mandir engine from a scratch with all those pending revisions, and while I'm at it put together a decent search engine too, and then link it up with the forums. One of these days, one of these days...

Sakhicharan - Fri, 17 Sep 2004 06:03:26 +0530

QUOTE (Madhava @ Sep 16 2004, 07:08 PM)

However isn't the diacritics converter already pretty much integrated? I mean it's right there behind one click to a popup window, how much more do you want it integrated?

Yeah, my mistake. I am new to posting here and didn't notice it.
It works great, thanks for pointing it out.

Madhava - Fri, 17 Sep 2004 16:13:46 +0530

No problem. Keep those suggestions coming.

Sakhicharan - Mon, 20 Sep 2004 08:12:45 +0530

I would like to see a link at the bottom of the page that takes us to the home page.

I would place it in this location (note the attached image).

This "print screen" is of course from the editorials and should be available at any section. I would like to see the link to home above, below, whatever, just so I can easily restart and get "home"

Attachment:

Madhava - Mon, 20 Sep 2004 17:15:58 +0530

Though I was thinking of making these tweaks only when the new version of the software came out, this was a rather easy tweak so I put it in right away. How about that, there is now a link to front page and a link to new posts.

Sakhicharan - Tue, 21 Sep 2004 00:34:26 +0530

QUOTE (Madhava @ Sep 20 2004, 06:45 AM)

Thanks for that Madhavaji!
I found that immediately useful.

DharmaChakra - Tue, 21 Sep 2004 17:38:22 +0530

QUOTE (Madhava @ Sep 20 2004, 07:45 AM)

Good enough for me...

Thanks!

Sakhicharan - Wed, 22 Sep 2004 01:45:11 +0530

I would find a link to the diacritics convertor placed on the search page to be a useful feature.

Madhava - Wed, 22 Sep 2004 03:23:25 +0530

What good would it do on the search page? I don't follow.

The final release of IPB 2.0.0 has been released. The board updates will commence sometime this week, estimated forum downtime six hours.

Sakhicharan - Wed, 22 Sep 2004 06:04:35 +0530

I have found that when I am searching to see if a sloka has already been posted I often enough need to correct what I copied (probably from googleing) before I paste it in the search input box.

Make sense to you?

Madhava - Thu, 23 Sep 2004 23:06:55 +0530

Oh I see. Yes, it does make sense. Given that other people may also need them in other locations, I think I'll just place a link into "My Assistant" to make it available from anywhere.

Does anyone have any input on skins? Is the current selection of styles fine, or would you like something different? If so, what?

Sakhicharan - Thu, 23 Sep 2004 23:47:50 +0530

QUOTE

Oh I see. Yes, it does make sense. Given that other people may also need them in other locations, I think I'll just place a link into "My Assistant" to make it available from anywhere.

Placing the link in My Assistant is an excellent idea!

Thanks Madhava.