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UPGRADE MOSTLY COMPLETE


Helene

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I've decided to bring up the board now, since our very kind IPB people rebuilt our database for us, and, from my preliminary tests, the board is working.

The UI changes won't be documented until later.

Two of the big ones are

1. "New Topic" Button on the Forums Pages is displayed after the Stickies, and you may need to scroll down to find it.

2. The "Reply" button has been kept at the top of the page, but removed from the bottom of the page. From the bottom of the page, you can

  • Use the "Reply to this topic" box at the bottom of the page (the old "Quick Reply"), or
  • You can click "More Reply Options" at the bottom right, and the full reply box will appear.

If you can't find a formatting option at the bottom of the page, click "More Reply Options"

I'm still trying to get rid of all of the avatar/photo boxes throughout the site, but I haven't been able to find them all. They will disappear gradually.

There may be a few features that we didn't notice and will disable.

The colors will change a bit.

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I won't be available to make more changes until this afternoon Pacific Time. (I'm not ignoring you.)

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Please list any questions or comments here.

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Helene....you're the best!

One small item..........

I use "View New Content" to navigate the board. After the upgrade, when I pushed that button, I got 8 pages of "new" content going back to the end of Sept. Maybe this is a one time thing, and once I log on to the new board for the 2nd time, it will "remember" that I was here not long ago. Just FYI in case it's useful for you to know.

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Sandy, I notice that to the left of the list of New Content is a menu where you can select the time window. I don't know whether this is something Helene added since you posted (if so, thank you!) or is part of the default format. :thumbsup:

thanks.GIF , Helene, for also explaining the other changes. flowers.gif

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I'm one of those who tends to resist changes in my daily routines, but I like the new appearance and am looking forward to learning how to navigate it. I have just found the new smiley strip, mentioned by carbro. smile.png Thank you, Helene.

The following is probably off topic. At the time I logged in there were 6 other members on line. One was "Google." I don't think we have a member named Google. (5 minutes later he/she was gone.) dunno.gif I've never noticed this before.

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Sandy, I notice that to the left of the list of New Content is a menu where you can select the time window.

BINGO....................thanks carbro!

What I thought was a glitch, turns out to be a great new feature! I've always wanted better control of what period of time the "New Content" applied to......now I've got it in spades.

I'm guessing that it defaulted to 1 month. Now that I have selected other options, the screen shows me just what you would expect (e.g., new in "last 24 hours", or best of all "those I haven't yet read"). Terrific.

Later.....it even remembers my choice between sessions and even thru logouts and logins.

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I just noticed another GREAT addition (at least I think it is new).

Note the icon at the far left of the top toolbar line (looks like a little light switch). It is for "Toggle editing mode". By hitting this button one can instantly switch between seeing all the HTML tags (in case you'd like to play with them); and how the text etc will actually appear when the HTML tags take effect. No more having to go to "Preview Post" to see what one's post is going to look like. Yea!

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About "View New Content", I just found a setting that lets the default be "New since my last visit". (It had been set to the only other default options, "Content I have not read". You can always change it back or choose another one of the options.

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I'm doing only little tweaks. Almost every UI change was done by IPB, the makers of our software, based on feedback from many of their customers.

I think they've done a splendid job with the UI.

There are some things that are graphics that will keep their colors, but I am trying to distinguish us from BT4D visually.

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Great new look and terrific new features. Many thanks for all your efforts.

One minor quibble, though. It's necessary to log in to view new content -- apparently that's now considered to be a 'search', which has always required logging in. No idea about others, but I've never seen any point in logging in except to search or post; frequently just took a quick peek at the 'new content' column; now will have to go through the hassle of a login just to see if anything new has been posted.

Other than that, love it!

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It will take me awhile to click around on the changes -- I'm a slowpoke -- but many thanks for all the work you've been putting into board development and maintenance. Without your efforts, we would all be in our individual showers, talking vehemently to ourselves.

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The only difficulty for me is that the typeface, though larger, is a little more difficult to read than the older version. It's as if the pixel count is the same as a smaller face, or else it's not black and contrasty enough. Tech Crunch also has a sans serif type but it seems darker and crisper. I seem to have to resort to my reading glasses more often than I did with the old Ballet Alert. Also light grey type on home page and "posted today"s is a bit faint.

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I thought the type face was black, but let me go in and look. I'm working on something for the lighter gray type: BT4D is having the same issues.

The default background for posts is now white; it used to be a light, greenish-blue. I wonder if that is causing an issue. I changed it on BT4D to a bluish gray, because there was feedback that the white was too glaring.

It's odd that "View New Content" was ever visible without signing in: it's always been a search. It's possible that in past versions it went to whatever ballettalk/balletalert cookie was on the machine to determine who you were -- it needs a starting comparison point -- and now it's looking elsewhere.

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I think I've found a glitch, or perhaps this is just the way it has to work now. When I used the "link" function to link to another website (in a posting on the PNB lec-dem) there wasn't a box to let me label the link something other than its actual url. What did I do wrong?

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When you click on the "Reply to this topic" box, the double strip of formatting tools appears at the top of the box.

  • There are two types of links:
    • Links attached to a word or phrase
    • Stand-alone links

    [*]For stand-alone links, you can copy and paste directly into the reply box, or you can use the same tool used for word/phrase links.

The wordy, step-by-step version to use the formatting tool.

  1. Optional, if you don't want to type the URL: copy the URL.
  2. Skip Steps 2 and 3 for a stand-alone link. Type your word, phrase, sentence, paragraph, or post.
  3. Highlight the word, phrase, or sentence you want to turn into the link.
  4. Click the "Link" button, the little icon on the second row, under the size box down arrow.

    1. post-3390-0-58214500-1319940689_thumb.jp
    2. [*]The "Link" box will appear: paste or type the URL into the box and click "OK".

      1. post-3390-0-96955900-1319940940_thumb.jp

      [*]If you've highlighted a word(s), the highlighted word(s) will be underlined:

      1. post-3390-0-06947000-1319941004_thumb.jp
      2. If you place your cursor over it, you should see a "tool tip" box that says "External link".

      [*]If you haven't highlighted a word(s), the free-standing link will appear as if you had pasted or typed it directly into the post.

      You can see the encoded version by clicking the light switch icon (left-most icon on the top row).

      post-3390-0-43463100-1319941046_thumb.jp

      Apologies for the first grader red circles on the screenshots: I only have Paint and a touch pad on my PC.

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I found the "styles" for most of the smaller text and darkened it. The way the site is designed, there is a setting, and then different parts of the site use that setting. I'm not a programmer, just a poke-arounder and a best-guesser, and I didn't attempt to make them independent.

I also didn't make the very small (11px) text larger, because in the style sheet, there's a comment "Important!" next to the size, and I didn't want to blow up the site.

There's a reason the type on the "Edit", "Report" etc. buttons are so slight until you cursor over them: it's to keep you from accidentally using these buttons, unless you really mean it smile.png Once you cursor over them, the text is dark enough to read.

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