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Topic: New Forum buries Old Threads (Read 12900 times) previous topic - next topic

New Forum buries Old Threads

I just moved back through some of the old forum topics and it appears that recent replies/queries related to older topics are unlikely to be seen or answered since the forum now sorts on recent original messages and not recent replies.

For example there is one thread started 3 years ago re: Recording to Minidisc.
The latest response was 3 months ago - so unless you regularly search back (this one was 12 or so pages deep) - I doubt whether anyone will find a recent response.

Is it possible to sort on activity rather than date of the start of the thread?

Re: New Forum buries Old Threads

Reply #1 –
And a further dig revealed that a thread on Drum Notation started by me 5 years ago had a reply only 10 days old requesting some simple drum patterns for practice purposes.
I was able to send a zip file of drum patterns in response to that request.
If the new forum had been up when that request was posted I probably wouldn't have seen it and would have been unable to help!

Re: New Forum buries Old Threads

Reply #2 –
Barry,
If you click on the word "Activity", at the top of the new forum layout, the postings are sorted into chronological order.  By doing that I found the exact posting that you  refer to even though it relates to a thread that was started five years ago.  Clicking on the word "Started" sorts them back into order by the date the thread was first started.  The "Activity" sort order is closest to the "Recent" in the old format.  Is this any help?

Eamonn

Re: New Forum buries Old Threads

Reply #3 –
So easy - That's what you get for taking an old forum for granted - I didn't even read the new instructions.

Thanks Eamonn

Re: New Forum buries Old Threads

Reply #4 –
Barry, you have now discovered why most computer applications don't have better help files. Nobody reads them.

Heck, neither do I.

Re: New Forum buries Old Threads

Reply #5 –
True.  But conversely, this also demonstrates why Microsoft was so hot for common user interface standards in Windows.  I also would never have found this by reading the instructions (even if I had known they were there) - but if you've used enough tabular applications you discover that clicking on a column heading almost always re-sorts the table according to that column's contents.

Re: New Forum buries Old Threads

Reply #7 –
Interesting point about MS standards. Many forum threads ago, I made a remark that NWC had a "visual basic" feel. I did not mean that it was programmed using Visual Basic (maybe it was; I don't know or care). I meant that the general organization was closer enough to common applications that I was able to intuitively find my way around the program. A distinct advantage!

By contrast, I have the "Pro" Quicktime player (for Windows) by Apple. The only help is on-line. Since I do not work on-line, the program effectively came with zero help. The program allows me to create a Quicktime movie by parallel merge of auido and video tracks. I had one of each, and wanted to merge them. How? I went through the entire menu, and all its subcommands and options, and could not do it. Finally, one day when I was on-line, I remembered that Quicktime had on-line help. So I went there, and learned that if I held down the shift and control keys when I went to the menu, there would be DIFFERENT menus!!! I would never, ever, have thought of that.

Re: New Forum buries Old Threads

Reply #8 –
In the old forum technology, only the recent activity page could be used to see which threads had been updated recently (with the exception of an obscure search trick). The new forum supports that very same recent activity view. It is the link named Recent on the top of the page.

Re: New Forum buries Old Threads

Reply #9 –
This is partly off the topic, but NoteWorthy Online, how do you insert bold text like you did for the word Recent? Is this something only you can do?

Re: New Forum buries Old Threads

Reply #10 –
No. We just haven't documented all of the things yet. You can use the View Source link to see the trick. Here are some tricks:

Bold italic text: some text

Bold text: some text

Italic text: some text

** - You cannot use parentheses in the "some text" area, and the highlighted text must be within a line (no carriage returns allowed).

You can do even fancier things, like bulleted and numbered lists, but I think this is best left undemonstrated untilp.ne can preview or otherwise edit your posts to correct for errors...

Re: New Forum buries Old Threads

Reply #11 –
> untilp.ne

And here is a classic case of needing an edit capability...my post got mangled by my connection and I have no way to fix it.

Re: New Forum buries Old Threads

Reply #12 –
(Please feel free to delete this if I bugger it up...)

Seems, then, that you're allowing <I>limited</I> html support, simply using <B>bold</B>, <I>italic</I> and maybe <U>underline</U> tags? Lists too, eh?

To create the best sounding and looking scores,
<UL>
<LI>Create a visible, muted staff for the visual aspect, and</LI>
<LI>Create a sounded, hidden staff for optimum playback.
</UL>

Now to see if I got it right...

Fred

Re: New Forum buries Old Threads

Reply #13 –
Hm.. guess I don't understand what you mean by the "View Source link". I assumed (obviously wrongly) the "view source" option in the browser, where it appears that you simply used html tags for the text attributes. Is there a View Source option on your system somewhere that I'm missing?

Fred

Re: New Forum buries Old Threads

Reply #14 –
Fred, I mean the view source icon next to each message and reply (it looks like a notepad icon) which links to viewsrc.php.

Re: New Forum buries Old Threads

Reply #15 –
And...the forum now supports a preview before posting, which should at least help in avoiding errors. So, here are examples of lists using similar techniques to those already supported by the forum.

Here is a bulleted list:

  • This is bullet 1. Each bullet can have text,

    line breaks, links, and text highlighting included

  • This is bullet 2

  • This is bullet 3
Here is a numbered list of predefined dynamics in NWC:

  • ppp
  • pp
  • p
  • mp
  • mf
  • f
  • ff
  • fff
You can also nest lists:

  • Dynamics
    • ppp
    • pp
    • p
    • mp
    • mf
    • f
    • ff
    • fff
  • Expression alignment options
    • best fit
    • before other staff signatures
    • after other staff signatures
    • at next note/bar
The Hints documentation will be changed to reflect some of these capabilities in the future (although perhaps not all).

Re: New Forum buries Old Threads

Reply #16 –
Well done Eric!  If contibutors begin to use these features it will really improve the look of the forum and greatly enhance its usefulness! I feel (and hope) that, with your expertise, it is only a matter of time before we will be able to include NWC examples in the postings to illustrate the points being made.  Keep up the good work!

Eamonn

P.S. The ability to Preview this message was really useful !!

Re: New Forum buries Old Threads

Reply #17 –
With all the new features to help me I still managed to mis-spell "contributors" !!

E.F.

Re: New Forum buries Old Threads

Reply #18 –
  • Great, but why can't we just use HTML?
  • And when do we get e-mail address ability back?

Re: New Forum buries Old Threads

Reply #19 –
What, you mean !link(this=mailto:apurdam@nowhere.com)?

I think Eric got rid of email addresses to avoid spambots. You can always add your e-mail textually, like apurdam-at-nowhere-dot-com.
If someone really wants to send you an e-mail, they'll manage.

Why not use HTML? Well, !bold and !italic are probably easier to understand than <B> and <I>. Especially if you want to use "<" and ">" a lot. Also it avoids spoilers from putting anything nasty in the page, perhaps.

Re: New Forum buries Old Threads

Reply #20 –
Ha! Good one! Leave it to Andrew to figure out a way to do <FONT COLOR="BLUE">this</FONT> ;-)

(Don't try this at home, kids. Andrew cheated.)

Re: New Forum buries Old Threads

Reply #22 –
To quote the rule:

"You cannot nest !bold statements with other hightlight instructions"

This rule has been in the hints from the beginning, but some of you figured out that it was not enforced correctly. It is now enforced correctly.

Re: New Forum buries Old Threads

Reply #23 –
Now I see, but you've really screwed up some of the threads by so enforcing it. It worked better the way it was IMNSVHO.

Peter

Re: New Forum buries Old Threads

Reply #24 –
No. It produced improper HTML code. I'll fix the ones I know about, but from here on out, the rule must be followed.

Re: New Forum buries Old Threads

Reply #25 –
Darn... we were having so much fun ;-) I don't see the big deal about "proper" HTML code... The thread does not validate even now because there is no !DOCTYPE at the start according to W3C.

Re: New Forum buries Old Threads

Reply #26 –
NoteWorthy Online wrote:
>
> It produced improper HTML code.

Many thanks for your efforts to produce proper HTML. This way, I get more chances to access NWC forum with my non-intel non-microsoft AIX system!
 

Re: New Forum buries Old Threads

Reply #27 –
Olivier, do you mean you're using browsers such as lynx? :-)
Aside of this, thanks for the proper HTML. It's alas too rare, and using non-most-standard browser is always surprising... Not because of the "unusual" browser, but because non-standard HTML code written, such as FrontPage does. Horrible. And totally opposed to the internet philosphy, which is that any resource should be usable on any platform.
Thank you, NWC people, to stick to that "netiquette".