Modern Vespa

I'm sorry I was confusing in my description. I am not talking about the new notification feature. I am talking about the similar notifications at the top of the forum root page. We each have a list of watched, started, replied and new threads.

I understand that new section would make zero sense to remove notifications of any new post on the site.. that would make that page pointless. Watched I don't use, cause I don't subscribe/watch threads. Started, I want to know when someone responds to a thread I started, cause I created it. Replied is a gray area for me where I use it basically as a watched category.. I want to know about responses on threads that I replied to.. even if i was not specifically replied to or quoted, and generally if I reply to a thread, I am happy to know when those threads are added to. But there are some threads which you reply to that take on a life of their own.. and they show up in the replied section with no way to turn their inclusion in the replied list off... like an ignore thread feature. If its in the replied section.. I MUST check it! If it's in the new section.. I generally don't check it cause I seek out new posts elsewhere.

Ah. Got it. You're talking about the synthetic forums. Fair point. I'm not sure there's an easy solution to this, but I'll put it on the list anyway. Sometimes tasks that don't seem to have easy solutions at first become more obvious later. So no promises, but I'll stew on it.

Okay, so new feature: you can now ignore replies (sort of) to a topic that you've replied to. I say "sort of" because it really only affects whether the icon for the "Replied" synthetic forum is gray or vintage-red. It doesn't affect the topic in any other way, and in fact it will still show as unread when you're looking at a list of topics -- whether that is the forum area that the topic is in, or the "Replied" synthetic forum. But on the main index page, where it shows all the synthetic forums at the top, any topic that you've chosen to ignore won't trigger that vintage-red icon.

And even then, I'm not 100% I've gotten it all correct. It's a fairly complicated chain of events to make that icon not turn on.

Give it a try, though, and let me know if it makes sense.

Wow. I was not expecting you to make that feature, let alone next day!

I've tested it on the thread I have wanted to unsubscribe from for so long! Time will tell if it's functional.

To be clear.. it would still show up in the synthetic replied forum list when there are replies, just no little red notification at the replied forum link on homepage, nor a red icon on the thread in the synthetic replied list? Good enough for me!

And yet again.. much thanks for going way above and beyond on this site refresh!

Well, half of that. No red notification at the replied forum link on the homepage, but there will still be a red icon on the thread IN the synthetic replied list. I am debating whether it makes sense to turn off the red icon IN the synthetic replied list, as the topic will still move around in the list as it is updated, and that's... kind of weird. The other option would be to not show the topic in the synthetic replied list at ALL. But then, would it show in the regular forum view?

It gets sticky in a hurry.

Any form of this feature is bonus for me, so I am happy to utilize it whichever way it evolves, and for however long it exists.

It is a rare instance usage anyways, kinda like how i wish i could leave those group text chains you contributed to once when it first started for a specific purpose, then just seem to continue on forever refusing to end! Android doesn't seem to think that is worth the effort to provide an escape hatch to, but i hear ios does.

Yep. I get it. I don't have quite that much OCD about the read/unread status of the synthetic forums, but I totally get it. I'm sure I have similar OCDs, just about other things. Like badly-written code -- I can't see it and then NOT refactor it.

I am leaning toward removing an ignored topic from the list of replied topics in the synthetic forum altogether. The topic would still show up in its regular place, but not in the synthetic forum. I think the change would be relatively trivial -- I'll experiment a bit.

Yep. It was an easy change. If you ignore a thread, it now won't show up in your Replied synthetic forum at all.

Excellent! And unsubscribed threads still exists as they should in the sub forum they are posted in, so threads aren't being completely hidden, just hidden from user specific notifications.

At any time if you unsubscribe, you can always go find the those threads in subforum and search.

Correct.

Can the little corner flag disappear too?

Please explain what you have in mind.

Get rid of this if I no longer follow a thread.

The post won't disappear, though. It's still visible and will still show as unread in the forum where it lives. Is the corner flag really bothering you?

Never thought I'd say this, but hyphenation irritates me these days. Especially since English breaks up words in different places than German. 25 years on the web have left their mark.

The hyphenation behavior is new. And I'm not super happy with it either. It breaks up words in places where it really didn't need it, where leaving space at the end of the line and moving the entire word to the next line would have been preferable.

It's only there to prevent long words (and especially bare links) from breaking the page formatting, especially on small screens.

I haven't found a better solution yet, though.

Basic document structure HTML. The list wrapper is used as a container for list items. It also sets the list type. UL is unordered list and triggers bullets while OL is an ordered list and displays with numbers. Those are the defaults but can be changed with CSS. Both of these list types us LI for the individual items which is why the list container determines how the list is displayed and also used to alert screen readers to whether a list is heiarchial or not.

There is a third type of list called a definition list rarely seen in BB code e itors. Created using a DD container with two types of list elements. A DTfor the term to be bygones and a DD for the definition definition. You can have more than one DD for each DT.

Clear as mud?

I don't think the issue is so much "what is a list type" (the forum itself uses ul/li structures in several places, as it happens). The issue is -- how do the BBCode tags for lists work?

I think the answer is "they don't". Which is why they're not shown any longer.

Exactly. They didn't work right and the attributes for the html tags didn't work either.

According to https://www.bbcode.org/examples/?id=12 BB code list is supposed to create a UL but also says different versions of BB code implementation do things differently.

In 16 years, I was unable to figure out how to make the tags work properly, despite being reasonably fluent in the use of ul/li. So I gave up.

Is it my eyesight, or has 'Mark all read' disappeared from the bottom of each page, so now only available at the top? I found it a very useful addition - I seem to remember originally asking for it many years ago!

I think it got squeezed out of existence. Quite a lot has changed at the bottom and tops of the page. Not a lot of places to put stuff that won't interfere with something else on mobile.

Understood - and the improvements you have made are impressive! Many thanks.

(Though I'd still *love* a keyboard shortcut for 'Mark all read' )

I will add it to the list. I have not explored keyboard shortcuts at all.

I was trying to create a new wiki page to list out the forum awards and got stuck. It seems to be a forum bug, similar to the PM bug mentioned earlier and since fixed. The article cannot be created unless a subject is specified, and yet the subject input box seems to be missing? Screenshot below.

I also do not see a way to upload images? But this may be a function of my not having made a wiki page before. So it might be more obvious as I continue through the next steps.

Hmmm. Sounds likely to be something I broke. Let me take a look. Attachments in the wiki are indirect. You attach images to the topic that is associated with the article, then link the images in from the topic. But of course, you need to create the article first to get the topic, and that's the part that seems to be broken.

Hang tight.

Okay, should be fixed now. Thanks for the tip!

Sounds good! I'll try again

Confirmed it worked - thanks!

I created a new wiki page for the awards: [wiki-what-are-all-the-forum-awards-how-do-i-get-them-]

I don't know if this is a bug or intentional: I can't seem to edit the subject after-the-fact. If I edit the subject (trying to change it to "FAQ: What are all the Forum Awards and How do I get them?") it says the edit was successful, but the subject heading remains the same? FWIW, the reason I wanted to change the subject was to make it consistent with the other "FAQ" topics listed here: Frequently Asked Questions

Also, I wasn't sure what to state for the Paco Taco award? I know that was greasy's beloved cat... but in terms of why it's an award, I think it just showed up without explanation?

Did I miss any? Sorry for the inconsistent thumbnails - I had to screen capture from the forum. But if you had better versions to use, I'd be happy to redo that part.

This link isn't working.

Sorry, I changed the article slug.

FAQ: What are all the Forum Awards & How do I get them?

Thanks, Speedy Gonzales!

Thanks very much for the article! It's not so much a bug as an oddity of how articles are attached to topics. The trick is to change the name of the topic, which I've just done.

I also changed the article slug to a shorter form, which I then changed on the FAQ article as well. If you've linked it elsewhere, that should also be changed. I think Greasy should probably be the one to explain that -- I won't be able to do it justice. I have some higher-quality versions floating around -- I'll see if I can get them uploaded.

Jess, we've lost some text formatting options in the mobile version. See images below of the mobile and desktop text editing windows.

Miguel
iPhone 11Pro, latest iOS

That's not accidental -- the smaller the screen size, the less options we have room for. Even that URL button should probably come out at that screen size.

I can't remember the exact mix that the old iOS version used to have on the editing screen, but it was definitely a subset.

Occurred to me that I could just look at the source code for the iOS version.

It supported Bold, Italic, Quote, Img, and URL. And in landscape orientation it would also add Underline.

I think this might be a rare / edge-case bug...

If there is a bracket following a url, it gets stripped. But if there's a space before the end bracket, it keeps that bracket as expected.

(here is url with no trailing space - end bracket stripped: Brace Yourselves: Incoming Software Update

(here is url with trailing space - end bracket OK: Brace Yourselves: Incoming Software Update )

That's a common regex problem. I'll look at it and see if I can make it better, though often when I change a regex I only make it worse.

Okay, so this is probably a case where I would make things worse. Parens () are actually legal in an URL. If I fixed the case you've pointed out, I would break general URL handling, especially for sites (like wikipedia) that use parens in URLs extensively. This is just an annoying reality of the URL definition.

Here's some background on it from a programmer I greatly respect: https://blog.codinghorror.com/the-problem-with-urls/

There might be some nuggets of wisdom in there that could make this slightly better, I'll have to re-read it when I'm more awake.