RMweb Groups

[martin_wynne]

Not in Firefox 4, Windows 7 it doesn't either. no href in the link

Hi Kenton,

 

The href is in a button on hidden panel which is displayed by javascript.

 

<div id='hiddenContent' style='display:none;'>

<h3>Join Group</h3>

<table class='ipb_table'>

<tr>

<td class='row1'>

This group is open so you will immediately become a full member after signing up.

</td>

</tr>

<tr>

<td class='row1'>

<ul class="topic_buttons">

<li><a title="Join Group" href="http://www.rmweb.co....o=join&inv_key=" rel="nofollow"><img alt="Join Group" src="http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/public/style_images/master/page_white_add.png"> Join Group</a></li>

</ul>

</td>

</tr>

</table>

</div>

(Firefox 4)

 

regards,

 

Martin.

[Kenton]

Hi Kenton,

 

The href is in a button on hidden panel which is displayed by javascript.

Sure Martin - I had already spotted that - and used a copy and paste of one of the urls to join a group. But I'm not that insane to wish to do it for every Group.

 

But that doesn't explain why other buttons appear to work perfectly well without js and why this one should use this mechanism.

Evidently the mechanism doesn't appear to be working in other browsers so it is not just me and the dreaded js. Isn't there some issue with IE not handling display:none/display:block differently ?

[Tony_S]

Just in case it helps (as I normally use Chrome.)

 

I successfully joined two groups using a visible join button with both the 32bit and 64bit versions of Internet Explorer 9. My computer uses Windows 7 64bit version

[Peter Beckett]

Whilst not directly a group comment, I have now noticed how long it takes me to scroll down the main index page. All the topics related to a sub forum now appear vertically on the screen , not horizontly as before Groups were introduced. I have not changed any setting for the Forum and still using IE8.

Is this the new look and is it possible to adjust something to go back to horizontal viewing

 

Cheers

 

Peter

[kevinlms]

Whilst not directly a group comment, I have now noticed how long it takes me to scroll down the main index page. All the topics related to a sub forum now appear vertically on the screen , not horizontly as before Groups were introduced. I have not changed any setting for the Forum and still using IE8.

Is this the new look and is it possible to adjust something to go back to horizontal viewing

 

Cheers

 

Peter

 

This is also true of FF4.0.1 & IE8 on XP SP3.

 

Kevin Martin

[martin_wynne]

Whilst not directly a group comment, I have now noticed how long it takes me to scroll down the main index page.

Hi Peter,

 

I much prefer the new look. It's much easier to find what I'm looking for, and I can easily see the difference between the green and blue bullets.

 

May I suggest that instead of scrolling you press or hold down the Page Up and Page Down keys on the keyboard? You can also use the Home and End keys* to quickly jump from top to bottom and back. Or hold down the up-down arrow keys to fine tune your position. Using the keyboard rather than the mouse makes it 10 times faster to get where you want to be.

 

Note also that you can shorten the page by hiding the sections which don't interest you. At the right-hand end of the dark blue bars is a difficult-to-see minus sign. If you click it, that section will be hidden.

 

Martin.

 

*if you have caret browsing turned on (F7 in Firefox), that's Ctrl+Home, Ctrl+End.

[Andy Y]

The developer has responded with an answer on the visibility of content in Active Topics and View New Content.

 

 

That is the way it is setup currently unfortunately. In order to avoid setting up individual permission masks and user groups for each Social Group I setup a system where the group's forums are password protected and if you have permission to view the forum according to the group, the system will "log you in" to the group's forum automatically. That is why the view new content depends on their cookies being set. Now what I plan to do is set up a hook that will set all of the cookies for all of the groups which they have permission to view when they view the site's index so they will be able to use view new content and other similar features according to their ability to view topics in each group's forum.

 

Anyways, it is a little bit more complex than what it seems to be on the surface which is why I don't quite know how to tackle this yet. For many groups you will be able to view topic's within the group without actually being a member of that group, so do topics in those groups show up in VNC? or should they only show up when you can actually read the topics? I think either way it may cause confusion, but I think it would probably be better to only show topics you can read..

 

Anyways, as I said before, VNC is semi-functional currently do to these obstacles, but I will focus on making it more reliable soon.

 

Not all of that may make sense to those not familiar with the operations of the site but it basically means he's going to work on it. I've given him further information on behaviours which hopefully will assist him.

[Dave777]

Is this the new look and is it possible to adjust something to go back to horizontal viewing

 

We seem to have gone back to it... and I actually preferred the 'list' approach for the Groups at least (wasn't fussed either way about the forums). The Groups section looks really complicated and confusing now!

 

 

Andy must love the utterly polarised opinions on changes he makes

[Andy Y]

We seem to have gone back to it... and I actually preferred the 'list' approach for the Groups at least (wasn't fussed either way about the forums). The Groups section looks really complicated and confusing now!

 

 

Not sure what's happened for you Dave as it should still be displaying as a list.

 

Anyway, a huge thank you to Martin Wynne who has given some scripting advice which means there is now a separate ad-hoc button to Join a Group (below the existing one) for anyone who has had problems in IE whilst trying to join a group.

 

If IE7 users use the new button scroll down to the bottom of the page and click the new "Join group" button which will have appeared down there. IE8 and 9 may be better behaved

 

 

 

 

 

[coachmann]

Having just read the above, I tried to join the Group group with no luck.

[Dave777]

Not sure what's happened for you Dave as it should still be displaying as a list.

 

It has been up to now, just this morning it decided to go back to the previous format:

 

 

 

Not a problem, just another IE6 oddity (just look at the right hand side of the screenshot as well! )

[Kenton]

Having just read the above, I tried to join the Group group with no luck.

Yep me 2, The new button is no better than the one above it.

Still think a standard text link in the "Group Navigation" Box would be simplest solution. It avoids all this visibility/display:hidden/block vagaries.

[martin_wynne]

Yep me 2, The new button is no better than the one above it.

Hi Kenton,

 

The temporary button uses javascript. It will work for the 99% of users who have scripting turned on.

 

There's a limit to what can be done as a temporary kludge.

 

Martin.

[Kenton]

There's a limit to what can be done as a temporary kludge.

Appreciate that. But by the appearance of the page the "Group Navigator" box is simply the same as a Display Block in the Blog area. Which in the Blog area can contain a simple <a href=.. bbcoded as an [url=.. so, from that perspective adding a straightforward link (no javascript and no special coding) should be a fairly simple step. and as we all know even IE6 can follow a simple html 1.0 code.

 

I do appreciate there is a little more to it than that, the specific group code is being dynamically added to the destination url that is being hidden and this will need to be generated at the correct point - but I presume this is being pulled by a known function from somewhere. Known to the developers at least.

 

I know it doesn't matter too much as we actually don't need to join a group to see or participate, but it would be nice to be able to do so to "join in".

[martin_wynne]

I know it doesn't matter too much as we actually don't need to join a group to see or participate, but it would be nice to be able to do so to "join in".

Hi Kenton,

 

Couldn't you turn scripting on for the 15 seconds it would take to refresh the page and click the button?

 

I do feel for Andy when I read some of the stuff you write. You wouldn't believe what an incredible mish-mash is involved in the IPB code. It's a complex mix of php, html, javascript, ajax, css. Every page is made up from several different php files. Just finding the right place to make a mod is a major brain pain, before you have even changed a thing.

 

The biggest problem is that there is no proper separation between the templates and the php page code. Consequently the slightest error in punctuation wrecks the page.

 

On my Templot Club board, the templates are plain text files completely separate from the php page files and the software includes a nifty template editor. Even drastic template errors don't cause the page to fail. The templating system was developed by Aycan Gulez and I didn't fully appreciate how clever it is until I looked at IPB.

 

regards,

 

Martin.

[Pennine MC]

It has been up to now, just this morning it decided to go back to the previous format:

 

I wish mine had

 

Not a problem, just another IE6 oddity (just look at the right hand side of the screenshot as well! )

 

Oddly enough we had an e-mail at work today to say our browsers will be upgraded to IE8 over the next week or so, so it might be coming for others also.

[Kenton]

Martin

 

I do feel for Andy when I read some of the stuff you write. You wouldn't believe what an incredible mish-mash is involved in the IPB code. It's a complex mix of php, html, javascript, ajax, css. Every page is made up from several different php files. Just finding the right place to make a mod is a major brain pain, before you have even changed a thing.

 

The biggest problem is that there is no proper separation between the templates and the php page code.

Yep, as I have said many a time the bunch of "programmers" at IPB evidently have no real sense of project management or coordinated coding. It all seems like an anarchistic well what shall we dream up next to tag on.

 

All these things really should not be down to Andy to resolve. it is commercial software and should work in all browsers and with/without js (albeit some limitation) and should not depend on the latest dodgy gizmo from Google, Microsoft, ect.

 

Consequently the slightest error in punctuation wrecks the page.

That's often what you find with js a dot misplaced or a variable named with incorrect case or not declared - and anything can happen.

 

Not having sight of the code means that I am limited to suggestions based on what is already available. Hence my suggestion of putting a simple link in the "Group Navigation" panel. If this were a user blog "block/panel" it would be simple to do. But it seems from what you suggest that this panel is not customisable in the same way on the Group's "home" page as it is in the Blogs.

[Ian J.]

Reading the issues people are having makes me glad that my wishlist website development isn't using any Javascript, and no table layout, just 'simple' ASP.Net served pages with a relatively straightforward Master/Detail system, and no local scripting. I'm sure it will have it's own issues as I get further into development though.

 

Kenton, re Javascript I use the NoScript add-on in Firefox and am able to control what websites get to run script, including what cross referenced sites can do or not do. I think I will remain forever surprised that no such add-on is available/possible for IE. The only thing I would like to add to NoScript would be greater control over what Javascript commands should or should not be able to run on a per domain basis.

[martin_wynne]

All these things really should not be down to Andy to resolve. it is commercial software and should work in all browsers and with/without js (albeit some limitation) and should not depend on the latest dodgy gizmo from Google, Microsoft, ect.

Hi Kenton,

 

You have written in a similar vein in the past, but I feel that you don't fully appreciate the nature of bulletin board software. What you buy is in effect a programming language with which to create your pages, usually via a system of templates. It comes with a ready-written back end to support the database stuff, but the owner is expected to create the visible pages himself, or maybe purchase 3rd-party "skins" created by others. A very basic default skin is provided but it is not necessarily supporting all the available features. Furthermore in the case of IPS, the various modules -- gallery, blogs, etc., -- are purchased as separate add-ons and created by different programming teams working on different upgrade time-frames.

 

The end result is pretty messy, but I don't think it's fair to criticise IPS for selling something which is faulty or deficient in some way -- you do actually get exactly what it says on the tin.

 

regards,

 

Martin.

[Kenton]

The end result is pretty messy, but I don't think it's fair to criticise IPS for selling something which is faulty or deficient in some way -- you do actually get exactly what it says on the tin.

A disorganised, disjointed, disappointing product. Sometimes I wish I was still in software manufacture/development, where if the customer did not get the product and support requested then the manufacturer didn't get paid and the developer was dismissed.

[Adrian Wintle]

A disorganised, disjointed, disappointing product. Sometimes I wish I was still in software manufacture/development, where if the customer did not get the product and support requested then the manufacturer didn't get paid and the developer was dismissed.

 

Which isn't actually the case except in the very limited situations where the customer has fully (and correctly*) specified the custom product to be supplied. In reality, a lot of commercial software is disorganized and disjointed, primarily because it is easier (read cheaper) to patch on new features, use the customer to test the changes, and patch as necessary. Most suppliers of consumer (as opposed to custom) software would not stay in business if they followed a full analysis, development, and testing methodology as they would be beaten to market by cheaper products - unfortunately consumers tend to buy on price and availability and live with the 'features' rather than waiting and paying for quality.

 

*you might be suprised how often the customer doesn't really know what they want the product to really do (on reflection, I'd expect that you, Kenton, wouldn't be surprised)

 

Adrian

[coachmann]

As this thread is about the new Groups, I was invited to join one this evening and was pleasantly suprised to find things have changed sonce I last looked in and there were two boxes to click, either Join or Join if you use IE. I joined.

 

So I backtracked to a PM I recieved a few days ago about joining the Group members group, but I am still unable to joing becasue there is no approaprate box. Mmmmm.

 

coach

[Dave777]

I wish mine had

 

Mine's gone back to the list now - it's quite exciting to log in everyday to see what the latest changes are, be they Andy-intended or otherwise

[Coombe Barton]

In reality, a lot of commercial software is disorganized and disjointed, primarily because it is easier (read cheaper) to patch on new features, use the customer to test the changes, and patch as necessary.

 

Yes, I use Microsoft Office too.

[coachmann]

One can join a Group. How does one leave a Group?