Andy Y Posted September 3, 2014 Share Posted September 3, 2014 Invision have shown a preview of the next version of the forum software - http://zend.ipsdevserver.com/ips4/ Although there's a lot to commend it there will need to be a lot of alteration/amendment at our end to retain functionality as we have a lot of extras that aren't on there. I don't know when it will be available and I probably won't update it immediately as I'm sure there'll be a lot of fixes required.Sometimes you don't know until you jump in with both feet though. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
'CHARD Posted September 3, 2014 Share Posted September 3, 2014 Will there be a Latin - English translation available Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
brianusa Posted September 3, 2014 Share Posted September 3, 2014 Perhaps this is a case for if it don't need fixing, don't fix it! That is unless there is something we are all not privy to but this seems a perfectly workable and easy to navigate site already. Brian. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
RMweb Premium 2ManySpams Posted September 3, 2014 RMweb Premium Share Posted September 3, 2014 Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Andy Y Posted September 3, 2014 Author Share Posted September 3, 2014 Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo Boxpok and oil-baths to you. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Xerces Fobe2 Posted September 3, 2014 Share Posted September 3, 2014 Will it have 3D printing capability? Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
RMweb Premium 2ManySpams Posted September 4, 2014 RMweb Premium Share Posted September 4, 2014 Boxpok and oil-baths to you. Super! In 7mm please (with the motion, chassis, boiler, cab, smoke box and tender too). Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
RMweb Premium skipepsi Posted September 4, 2014 RMweb Premium Share Posted September 4, 2014 Waiting a while seems sensible having got used to a forum that stays up and running I would hate to see multiple crashes. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
jwealleans Posted September 4, 2014 Share Posted September 4, 2014 Boxpok and oil-baths Probably a better use of your time. Being an early adopter has very little to commend it. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
RMweb Gold Enterprisingwestern Posted September 4, 2014 RMweb Gold Share Posted September 4, 2014 A half decent search function would be an improvement. Mike. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
buffalo Posted September 4, 2014 Share Posted September 4, 2014 A half decent search function would be an improvement. It's not brilliant but everyone's search function seems a bit naff until you try to write a better one yourself. There are real limits to the effectiveness of any search when there are alternative terms for the same thing, let alone variant spellings. It's not often realised that searching is a user skill that needs to be developed. Perhaps those who criticise could tell us how it should be improved? Nick Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
RMweb Premium MPR Posted September 4, 2014 RMweb Premium Share Posted September 4, 2014 Boxpok and oil-baths to you. Being bulleid on the internet is, sadly, very common these days! Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
RMweb Gold Enterprisingwestern Posted September 4, 2014 RMweb Gold Share Posted September 4, 2014 It's not brilliant but everyone's search function seems a bit naff until you try to write a better one yourself. There are real limits to the effectiveness of any search when there are alternative terms for the same thing, let alone variant spellings. It's not often realised that searching is a user skill that needs to be developed. Perhaps those who criticise could tell us how it should be improved? Nick Hmmm, personal attack time. Right, as I'm a plumber I don't have the capability to write a better programme, no more than a computer programmer can design a better central heating system, but to an uneducated oaf like myself, a search engine that actually finds the words you type into the box would help. Mike. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
RMweb Gold martin_wynne Posted September 4, 2014 RMweb Gold Share Posted September 4, 2014 but to an uneducated oaf like myself, a search engine that actually finds the words you type into the box would help. Hi Mike, The usual problem is that the Search on RMweb is set to ignore words of fewer than 4 characters. But nowhere is this explained, so you get ludicrous results like this: This is down to the general incompetence and lack of imagination of the IPS programmers. It is not the case that there are no results, because no search has actually taken place for a 3-character word. This should be explained to the user on the results page. You can see this sort of lack of imagination and failure by the programmers to see the pages from a user perspective all over the IPB software. For example just below where I am writing this there is a link for the above image attachment which says Add to Post and mousing over it says "Adds a placeholder tag for the attachment in the post". At this stage the attachment has already been uploaded so it has already been added to the post. The actual wording on that link should be Insert in Text and the mouse-over explanation should say something like "Insert this attachment within the text instead of below it" -- i.e. words which make sense and which you and I and everyone else can understand, not programmer jargon. When did you last use the word "placeholder" in everyday conversation? Assuming it is the same programmers producing the new version, I wouldn't hold out much hope for anything better, and almost certainly they will have introduced some interesting new bugs. But Andy can't stand still and retain the old because at some stage IPS will cease to support it when things go wrong. regards, Martin. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
stewartingram Posted September 4, 2014 Share Posted September 4, 2014 A few years ago, I was working as a comms engineer for the police. [No names as to which Constabulary]. They had been planning to get a new Control Room at HQ for a while, and had narrowed the equipment down to a minimum number of suppliers; eventually choosing one. (Marconi as it happens, no offence intended on their part). Now, the Chief Constables of the surrounding forces have their regular get-together, and at one such meeting, our CC was talking to another (from Force B, again no names). Turns out that Force B had just had a new Marconi control room installed; and it was right at the end of the production of that variant (lets call it Mark 6). So our CC comes back to his HQ, and promptly informs the team that they must NOT order a Mark 6, but get a Mark 7, so that it is newer than Force B's! Outcome was that we got the first Mark 7 installation.Very impressive to look at, but still needed lots of development (snagging was the buzz word I believe. 12 months down the line, it was vastly improved, a system to be quite proud of. But during that 12 months, endless callouts (plenty of o/t payments though) for me, lots of problems. Moral: DO NOT jump in when something is new. Let the snagging begin first. How many times have we heard this with, say, a new Microsoft Windows release? Or bought one of the first, say, Ford Focus? (No endless knocking of Windows or pro-Mac arguments now please!) Things evolve; software will have to be upgraded, but please wait a bit. Stewart Stewart Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
buffalo Posted September 4, 2014 Share Posted September 4, 2014 Hi Mike, The usual problem is that the Search on RMweb is set to ignore words of fewer than 4 characters. But nowhere is this explained, so you get ludicrous results like this: However, if you type "gwr" into the search box, with the quotes, you'll get a large number of results both upper and lower case. AFAIK, nowhere is this explained either. Much as I agree with Martin about the "...general incompetence and lack of imagination of the IPS programmers..., we're stuck with them. It has always been the case that searching with any system requires the user to develop skills in searching and, hopefully, to share them with others. Nick Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
buffalo Posted September 4, 2014 Share Posted September 4, 2014 ...Moral: DO NOT jump in when something is new...Another moral here is never to let senior management anywhere near the software procurement process. They will invariably have not the slightest idea about the tasks which the software is intended to support as they will have changed out of all recognition since they last, if ever, went anywhere near them, and they will never have to use the new software. Nick Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tim H Posted September 4, 2014 Share Posted September 4, 2014 Will it being going through the Shrink-Ray and coming out in N? Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
RMweb Gold martin_wynne Posted September 4, 2014 RMweb Gold Share Posted September 4, 2014 However, if you type "gwr" into the search box, with the quotes, you'll get a large number of results both upper and lower case. AFAIK, nowhere is this explained either. Hi Nick, Not here you don't. This is the result for "GWR" in quotes: I think you are confusing the Google custom site search on the rendered pages, with the native Search on the database. Again, nowhere is this distinction explained to the user. Note that in the above screenshot my entered double quotes have been changed to single quotes. Just the sort of thing that a programmer knows is returned by the database engine and is of no significance, but which will puzzle an intelligent user who knows nothing about such things. An equally intelligent programmer would swap the quotes round to match what the user actually entered. regards, Martin. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
RMweb Premium DIW Posted September 4, 2014 RMweb Premium Share Posted September 4, 2014 Hmm, I'm looking forward to reading Kenton's comments on this topic...... Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
RMweb Gold RedgateModels Posted September 4, 2014 RMweb Gold Share Posted September 4, 2014 Another moral here is never to let senior management anywhere near the software procurement process. They will invariably have not the slightest idea about the tasks which the software is intended to support as they will have changed out of all recognition since they last, if ever, went anywhere near them, and they will never have to use the new software. Nick Oh where's the "double agree" button! Having worked for a software house in Support I can count on the fingers of Captain Hook's left hand the systems we installed that worked right for the business who ended up with it. Salesmen promise the earth, customer buyers have no idea what they are buying and projects departments just install the system as it is to meet the timescales for completion ....... Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
RMweb Gold The Stationmaster Posted September 4, 2014 RMweb Gold Share Posted September 4, 2014 Another moral here is never to let senior management anywhere near the software procurement process. They will invariably have not the slightest idea about the tasks which the software is intended to support as they will have changed out of all recognition since they last, if ever, went anywhere near them, and they will never have to use the new software. Nick Oh so very true. At my final big railway employer I was instrumental in cancelling an application which had been underdevelopment for several years because it was simply not delivering what it was supposed to deliver and on talking to the developers it quickly became crystal clear that it never would. Part of that was down to poor understanding on the part of the developers on the way relationships between different databases within the system would have to work and that in turn was down to wishy washy specification by the original client in the company I was now working for. After that I cast around various alternatives offered by a number of companies from various countries in Europe and attended several promotional demos they had organised (all in London alas). By the time I left only one supplier had been able to get anywhere near an understanding of how the relational databases would have to be worked but their quote was too high for the board to accept so the whole thing was dropped. A couple of years after I had left the wheel re-inventors duly arrived in various directors posts and decided they could save money by buying such a system. They duly cast around Europe visiting various developers to see what they could supply and ended up buying a system I had rejected and immediately getting rid of two posts. Within a year everything had gone to pot and BOTOMS was in operation (Back Onto The Old Manual System) with staff put back in. The directors duly wondered if they had been misled so went off to visit an airline based in the Middle East which used the same system - over three days there they managed to find out that the airline also found it unsatisfactory and was going to dump it. So back to London came the directors and the system was dumped. If they had asked the right questions in the first place (like I had) they ought never to have bought it - it simply could not match what a proper spec should have required. Lesson 1 (teaching many on here to suck eggs of course) is to get the operator spec right - go to the folk who do the job to really find out what is required. Lesson 2 Having agreed the spec don't mess around with it unless you have a pile of gold bars you want to chuck away. Lesson 3 Make sure at each agreed stage that the developers are actually delivering the functionality demanded by the spec for that stage. Lesson 4 Don't keep hoping - if they aren't delivering the easy bits at the beginning you can quickly work out what will happen when they get to the complex bits. (the system incidentally was for traincrew rostering and that is not something which it is easy to properly computerise) Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
RMweb Gold roundhouse Posted September 4, 2014 RMweb Gold Share Posted September 4, 2014 We are getting new software at work. The director who chose the system has failed the learning test 5 times so far!! PS - I asked the question as to what happens if this software provider goes bust.. There was a deadly silence!! Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
buffalo Posted September 4, 2014 Share Posted September 4, 2014 Hi Nick, Not here you don't. This is the result for "GWR" in quotes: Sorry, Martin, you're quite right. I was using the Google Site Search option as I always do. It will of course find three-letter words without the added quotes. IIRC it was added long ago because the inbuilt search was so poor. There really is very little that the custom search can do that google can't, and much that google can do that the inbuilt mechanism can't. The google site search is meant to be the default option so why does anyone use anything else? Nick Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
RMweb Gold martin_wynne Posted September 4, 2014 RMweb Gold Share Posted September 4, 2014 The google site search is meant to be the default option so why does anyone use anything else? Hi Nick, Because the Google search delivers a seemingly random selection of results going back over several years. And when you visit a result the searched-for term is not highlighted, which then means using CTRL+F to find it. In most cases you are looking for recent occurrences of the term, which is what the native search delivers. And when you visit a topic that way you can quickly scroll down to see the highlighted term. Furthermore you have the filtering options on the left menu: It is also much more convenient to have the search results delivered on a proper page, rather than in a pop-up as Google. Google searching is a useful option, but having it as the default is surely a cop-out from providing a good native database search function. To be fair the native Advanced Search function (click the little white cog-wheel icon) does normally produce good results, apart from the 4-character limitation. The options to set Date limits and search by Author are especially useful. Trying to do that with the search terms in Google produces very erratic results. But that is such a tiny icon I'm willing to bet that a large number of RMwebbers have never tried the Advanced Search functions. Why not a proper link which says Detailed Search in ordinary English? How is a cog-wheel intended to convey that? A cog-wheel icon normally leads to a settings page for personal preferences, to be set once. This goes back to my previous comments about the lack of imagination by the programmers. regards, Martin. Link to post Share on other sites More sharing options...
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