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        riddles >> suggestions, help, and FAQ >> wu :: forums is up again
        
(Message started by: william wu on Feb 16^th, 2005, 1:04am)

Title: wu :: forums is up again
Post by william wu on Feb 16^th, 2005, 1:04am

Many of you were unable to log into the forum in the past few days. This is because my hosting service, OCF, told me their servers were no longer able to support the load being generated by our forum.

Since then I have upgraded the forum to the latest supported release of YaBB, which is less of a disastrous resource hog. Everything runs much faster now! I hope this will make for a more enjoyable and reasonable forum experience.

The tradeoff is, we have lost most of the modifications I added to the forum, because they are not backwards-compatible. I will try to restore some of these mods in due time -- the most important ones being file attachments, support for mathematical equations, and headers for threads. Rest assured that no information has been lost. Although your attachments and equations in old threads are not showing up properly now, the data is still there, waiting be processed correctly.

Title: Re: wu :: forums is up again
Post by towr on Feb 16^th, 2005, 1:13am

Don't forget the hide-tags either.

Title: Re: wu :: forums is up again
Post by BNC on Feb 16^th, 2005, 1:15am

For a while I thought I lost you... <sigh of relief>

[e]
Also, there seems to be a bug with the message preview while replying -- it show the thread posts twice.
[/e]

Title: Re: wu :: forums is up again
Post by Barukh on Feb 16^th, 2005, 3:22am

I would like to express my deep gratitude to William for the quick forum's recovery!

Wow, doesn't it sound too official? ;D

Title: Re: wu :: forums is up again
Post by william wu on Feb 16^th, 2005, 9:36am

on 02/16/05 at 01:15:15, BNC wrote:

For a while I thought I lost you... <sigh of relief>

[e]
Also, there seems to be a bug with the message preview while replying -- it show the thread posts twice.
[/e]

Thanks; fixed.

Will remember the hide tags towr.

You're welcome Barukh :)

Title: Re: wu :: forums is up again
Post by Noke Lieu on Feb 16^th, 2005, 10:31pm

I second (well, it's probably nth) the sentiments.
Glad you're back, was at a loss. Positive side was though, less distraction at work... ;)

Title: Re: wu :: forums is up again
Post by Barukh on Feb 19^th, 2005, 5:24am

I don't know if this is something only I experience: when replying or previewing, I get an Error window with the following information:

A runtime error has occured.
Line: 222
Error: Invalid Character

Title: Re: wu :: forums is up again
Post by test on Feb 19^th, 2005, 1:54pm

test

Title: Re: wu :: forums is up again
Post by william wu on Feb 22^nd, 2005, 10:31pm

Barukh, I wasn't able to reproduce that problem. Can anyone second it?

Also, sorry guys that the math support and file attachments aren't in place yet. My laptop motherboard got fried recently so I've been hopping between campus computers and talking warranty tech support people into giving me repair service.

Title: Re: wu :: forums is up again
Post by Barukh on Feb 23^rd, 2005, 10:43am

on 02/22/05 at 22:31:25, william wu wrote:

Barukh, I wasn't able to reproduce that problem. Can anyone second it?

So maybe it's just my laptop problem...

Title: Re: wu :: forums is up again
Post by william wu on Mar 25^th, 2005, 9:58pm

Attachments and hide tags have finally been restored. Old posts that had attachments or hide tags are being processed properly in this respect. More to come eventually.

Some new fixes to past versions of attachments and hide tags:

- new attachments with the same name as old attachments are automatically renamed. (contact me if you really want to overwrite an old attachment, i will handle it)

- the hide tags also hide text in the preview window and in the list of most recent posts

- in the posting window, there's now a handy hide button in the far right of the 2nd row of YABBC tags

Title: Re: wu :: forums is up again
Post by towr on Mar 26^th, 2005, 5:33am

The hide-tags now give a centered box, while lot's of old posts assumed in-line hiding.
Is this form of hiding here to stay? (I suppose I'd get used to it, but I can't say I'm an instant fan)

Title: Re: wu :: forums is up again
Post by william wu on Mar 26^th, 2005, 6:32am

If there are enough dissenting opinions, I could change it back. But first, some possibly good reasons for doing it this way:

- I can include the explanatory string "hidden" atop the hidden information, which makes it clear to newbies that stuff is being hidden there. I could even change the string to say "hidden (highlight to see)."

- This low-tech effect (no javascript needed) is achieved in html with a two-row table. And I don't know how to make an inline table in html without breaking the rest of the line, if it's even possible. If someone knows how, please share.

- This highlights the hidden hints/answers much more clearly.

Title: Re: wu :: forums is up again
Post by BNC on Mar 26^th, 2005, 8:13am

Thanks for the recovery. Re the hide format, it does look strange, but I'm sure we'll get used to it. Probably just us old timers ranting.

Title: Re: wu :: forums is up again
Post by towr on Mar 26^th, 2005, 1:34pm

I can see there is some advantage in some cases, but in others I'd prefer the old way. It's overkill to make a whole centered attention grabbing textfield for just one word you'd rather put inline. Or if you're just *bleep*ing away words in your text that give away to much, without disturbing the whole flow of the text.

Of course on the other end of the spectrum, it'd also be nice if there was a way to hide images and such. But that would require javascript, though it can be done well enough, even keeping in mind people with JS disabled.

Title: Re: wu :: forums is up again
Post by rmsgrey on Apr 4^th, 2005, 6:14am

I go away for a week, and the whole place changes ((mostly) for the better) again!

I'm going to have to agree with Towr on the new "hide" tag implementation - it has clear advantages for largish chunks of hidden text - the sort of thing I was formatting as:

::{hide}
**text**
{/hide}::

but it has definite disadvantages for the inline hiding like ::{hide}this{/hide}::.

Since there are these two distinct cases, would it be worth creating a new tag instead (perhaps "hideb" for hide block) for the new centered blocks, and keep the old inlining for the old tag?

And, using Mozilla Firefox 1.02 under XP Pro, I haven't managed to get the Hide button to work yet.

Title: Re: wu :: forums is up again
Post by william wu on Apr 4^th, 2005, 9:15am

Suggestions taken. We now have two hiding options, hide and hide block. Both should appear as grey buttons in the 2nd row of the YABBC tags menu when posting.

1. The hide tag {hide} will hide materal inline.

2. The hide block {hideb} will put the hidden materal on a new line by itself, and center it. It can be used for longer answers.

Example:

Code:

Hello, here are a few hints on this problem:

Hint: [hide]I once knew a girl named Minnie[/hide], and [hide]she liked a guy named Maxi[/hide] ...

now here's the full solution:

[hideb]
"Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor

incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud

exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat.

Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore

eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident,

sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum." [/hideb]

appears as:

Hello, here are a few hints on this problem:

Hint: [hide]I once knew a girl named Minnie[/hide], and [hide]she liked a guy named Maxi[/hide] ...

now here's the full solution:

[hideb]
"Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor

incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud

exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat.

Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore

eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident,

sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum." [/hideb]

The inline hide is implemented with CSS, so if your browser is not CSS compatible, it wont work. But then again, everything probably already looks terrible in your browser anyways :)

The background colors can be easily changed, so feel free to let me know if they bother you!

Title: Re: wu :: forums is up again
Post by Barukh on Apr 4^th, 2005, 9:23am

First of all, thanks!

on 04/04/05 at 09:15:57, william wu wrote:

The background colors can be easily changed, so feel free to let me know if they bother you!

Yes. I would prefer a softer color.

Title: Re: wu :: forums is up again
Post by william wu on Apr 4^th, 2005, 9:32am

You're welcome.

How about this color? (See a couple posts above for example)

(darkmagenta #8B008B ==> darkgoldenrod #B8860B)

(color reference
http://www.websiteprimer.com/article1043.html)

Title: Re: wu :: forums is up again
Post by rmsgrey on Apr 4^th, 2005, 10:08am

Thanks for the new functionality.

I'm still not getting the hide button(s) to work - the rest of the buttons append the relevant pair of tags (and clicking smileys appends the relevant smiley) to my post, but those two have no effect.

It doesn't really affect me - I can't remember the last time before today that I clicked any of those objects - but I imagine others will also be affected.

Title: Re: wu :: forums is up again
Post by william wu on Apr 4^th, 2005, 10:19am

Hmm that's weird ... they work for me. Maybe I'll try some other browsers or javascript settings later.

Title: Re: wu :: forums is up again
Post by rmsgrey on Apr 5^th, 2005, 7:36am

If it helps at all, I'm using Sun Java (TM) 2 Platform Standard Edition 5.0 Update 2 ("Java Plug-in 1.5.0_02 for Netscape Navigator") - according to Firefox's built in about:plugins page.

Title: Re: wu :: forums is up again
Post by towr on Apr 5^th, 2005, 7:57am

That's java, not javascript..

Also, I don't seem to have any trouble with my version of firefox 1.02.

Could it be an effect of caching? (I.e. maybe you still have the old .js file in cache, and thus don't have the two new functions available)

Title: Re: wu :: forums is up again
Post by rmsgrey on Apr 5^th, 2005, 10:48am

on 04/05/05 at 07:57:45, towr wrote:

Well, whatever it was, it's cleared up now - both buttons now have the same functionality as the other buttons. I didn't get the chance to check the cache to see whether that was the problem.