THE FORUM UPGRADE

OGR Webmaster posted:

Many of you have commented that this forum is difficult to use on smaller tablets and phones.

 

THAT IS ABOUT TO CHANGE!

 

Hoopla Version 2 is a major upgrade to this forum software. The upgrade will change this forum to a "Responsive Design" which means it RESPONDS to the screen size you are using to view the forum and displays the pages properly on your smaller device. Using the forum on smaller tablets and phones will become MUCH easier.

 

If you typically use this forum on a desktop or laptop computer, not much will change for you. The look will be slightly different and some of the buttons and tool bars will have moved, but overall the site will look and feel much the same as it does now.

 

This site upgrade is scheduled for December 2, 2015 between 11:00 AM and 9:00 PM Eastern Time.

During this time the forum may be down for up to 2 hours as the Hoopla Tech staff performs the upgrade.

 

NO CONTENT WILL BE LOST IN THIS UPGRADE!

All the existing posts on the forum at the time of the upgrade will be saved.

 

I hope you enjoy the new "look and feel" of the OGR On-Line Forum!

How do you sign out?

phillyreading posted:

OGR Webmaster posted:

Many of you have commented that this forum is difficult to use on smaller tablets and phones.

 

THAT IS ABOUT TO CHANGE!

 

Hoopla Version 2 is a major upgrade to this forum software. The upgrade will change this forum to a "Responsive Design" which means it RESPONDS to the screen size you are using to view the forum and displays the pages properly on your smaller device. Using the forum on smaller tablets and phones will become MUCH easier.

 

If you typically use this forum on a desktop or laptop computer, not much will change for you. The look will be slightly different and some of the buttons and tool bars will have moved, but overall the site will look and feel much the same as it does now.

 

This site upgrade is scheduled for December 2, 2015 between 11:00 AM and 9:00 PM Eastern Time.

During this time the forum may be down for up to 2 hours as the Hoopla Tech staff performs the upgrade.

 

NO CONTENT WILL BE LOST IN THIS UPGRADE!

All the existing posts on the forum at the time of the upgrade will be saved.

 

I hope you enjoy the new "look and feel" of the OGR On-Line Forum!

How do you sign out?

On computer, hover your cursor over your name up top. The drop down menu appears.  Bottom of menu "Sign Out"

and on the iPad, your name is in the menu that looks like a very short 3 rail track

OGR Team, I'm sure this update has created a lot of work for you.  

What I appreciate most in this update is that one thing didn't change...it's still FREE and still continues to be a place where I find great deals and a place where I can sell without paying commissions or service fees. 

There is no single interface that will meet everyone's approval or be perfect in every way so I have no complaints.  Thanks for your efforts. 

What about desktop models? I had to look around and search for almost ten minutes to find out how to sigh out! It is the three little things that look like train tracks.

Maybe it is just me but I am finding the site super difficult to use now.

Lee Fritz

Rich, et all

Add me to the "Thanks but NO THANKS" column.  

It is VERY hard on these old eyes as it is not easy to read without squinting. 

What happened to the "Print entire thread" anyways?  That was such a welcomed addition; I absolutely cannot believe whoever "proofed" this release let that one slip by.

Line spacing is horrible and leads to way too much "white space" (see my greeting and salutation for an examples of this).  Reminds me of "letting" in newer versions MS Word; which I don't care for either!!!

Any chance you could get this ROLLED BACK TO THE PRIOR VERSION and re-release it once it is truly ready for prime time?  If it doesn't happen I won't be surprised - I wrote a letter to Billy Gates regarding the poor user control of letting and you see what a profound impact my request had there  

Just my 2 cents worth...

Best,

Dave

Rich, I'm having a hard time reading the new format with my mac (Safari).  When I increase the page size, the type is still too small, and the recent posts window disappears.  Can this be adjusted somehow?  

While it's clear that there have been a lot of changes since it went over, and I give props for the complaints being listened to, I really can't much out of it on my cell phone at all, and it no longer gives me the option of seeing the desktop version on my cell.

Everything is still more difficult to navigate and needs more steps to do anything than before.

Sadly, I know I won't be spending as nearly much time here as I used to, directly related to the redesign...

Volphin posted:

Rich, I'm having a hard time reading the new format with my mac (Safari).  When I increase the page size, the type is still too small, and the recent posts window disappears.  Can this be adjusted somehow?  

Volphin:

What Mac are you using.   Since last evening's fixes that Rich got, it started showing fine on both my 2011 iMac 21", and my 2014 Macbook Pro 13" Retina.    Granted I don't use Safari, i can test that for you later.   I use Firefox.

Also, it works fine now, on the PC I use for other things, both IE and Firefox.

Rich,

First off, thanks for working on this - I know it's a big job when upgrades such as this happen.  Would it be possible to put dividers between the Forum Lists as well as the different topics, maybe like below?  I think it would help greatly with the readability of the forum and finding information.

Great job Rich!

The forum looks awesome on both my iPad and desktop wide screen computer.

I hope you can now get some well-deserved rest.

Earl

Well today it looks better than yesterday. I guess that's good.

Looks oK now on MacbookAair.  Gray is better than all that white.

Still need to get used to it.

EscapeRocks posted:

Volphin posted:

Rich, I'm having a hard time reading the new format with my mac (Safari).  When I increase the page size, the type is still too small, and the recent posts window disappears.  Can this be adjusted somehow?  

Volphin:

What Mac are you using.   Since last evening's fixes that Rich got, it started showing fine on both my 2011 iMac 21", and my 2014 Macbook Pro 13" Retina.    Granted I don't use Safari, i can test that for you later.   I use Firefox.

Also, it works fine now, on the PC I use for other things, both IE and Firefox.

I'm using a 17" MacBook Pro with Safari 6.2.8  Usually I have to triple tap the command + to get it where I can read the text comfortably.  

Spell checker is back on Firefox. I'm saved! My wife is tired of me asking her.

Now if we could just get that activity feed back on.

C&O Allie posted:

Rich,

First off, thanks for working on this - I know it's a big job when upgrades such as this happen.  Would it be possible to put dividers between the Forum Lists as well as the different topics, maybe like below?  I think it would help greatly with the readability of the forum and finding information.

I would like to 2nd that request, I also think it would really help.

Rich,

I know I'm not the first to say it but I'd like to add to the other comments;

Thanks for all the work you are doing.  Things are looking so much better!!!  I'm definitely on the side that likes this version.

I do have a couple of suggestions that may help.  A few have mentioned adding a faint dividing line to help separate the topics.  I concur...that would make it much easier to browse the lists.  Also, the blue box that says "NEW" and the white box that says "REPLIES" distract from the actual topic.  I would experiment with 2 different design changes.  First, make the 2 boxes 1 or 2 sizes smaller. Second, move the topic title (header) above those 2 boxes.

Dave Garman posted:

What happened to the "Print entire thread" anyways?  That was such a welcomed addition; I absolutely cannot believe whoever "proofed" this release let that one slip by.

Just go to the top post in a thread and print it. It will now AUTOMATICALLY PRINT in a PRINTER FRIENDLY format.

Line spacing is horrible and leads to way too much "white space" (see my greeting and salutation for an examples of this).  Reminds me of "letting" in newer versions MS Word; which I don't care for either!!!

Working on changing this...

Any chance you could get this ROLLED BACK TO THE PRIOR VERSION

No.

It's getting better.

Rich, thanks for great followup.

RickM46

This is AMAZING on my Android!  Thank you!

Jon

Looks great on my Iphone, however I can no longer get the forum at work when I go to look at it on my break, it says I need to upgrade to Internet explorer 10. Unfortunately with many agencies  IT is the only one with administrator authorization to do that. O well I guess I will use the old Iphone.

Great quote on your post...

Just gets better and better.  Rich I've got to give you credit for the amount of change you have been able to make in a short period of time.  Thanks for being so responsive.

Kevin

First time back since yesterday. Thank you very much for your time you have put into this upgrade. Looks great since then. I still don't like the location of the Likes. Looked better on the previous forum,  Thanks for your Time

At the hospital with my dad - using an Android. I admit that the forum is much easier to view on a mobile device.

I use  my PC 99%  of the time to view  the forum.  I see here that spell check is now working on Firefox.  Is spell check working on IE now?

Hopefully I will be able to check out the forum on my PC tonight and things will be better.

Richard 

Just a outstanding look and setup. I like it very much. Thank you Richard.

Was weird yesterday but got used to it. I do like having the avatar pictures bigger.

In the old format, I could find threads that I had posted to They could be found by clicking on my profile.  I can't seem to find this now.   Can anyone help me on this?  Thanks

Another item I noticed is when we are online next to our name we light up RED. can that be changed to Green?

Need help posting pictures. I go to attachment and put a list of pictures from my desktop. Then hit finished and nothing happens. thanks don

Super job Rich....well almost.  You could have done away with the Featured Topics section which everyone scrolls through anyway.  Other than that it's a job well done.  Thanks.

wb47 posted:

In the old format, I could find threads that I had posted to They could be found by clicking on my profile.  I can't seem to find this now.   Can anyone help me on this?  Thanks

Click on the Member ID to get an options window. Click on the Member ID again in the window to open the member's profile page. You'll see the option to See All Posts off to the right.

scale rail posted:

Need help posting pictures. I go to attachment and put a list of pictures from my desktop. Then hit finished and nothing happens. thanks don

Are you clicking the small box to "insert pictures" ?  That will produce the large version as seen below, then click finish.  Or if you skip selecting the small check box and click finish then just the small thumbnail appears.

Starting to get used to it and agree that it is being improved as we watch.   Thanks for your efforts to make this user friendly.

DoubleDAZ posted:

wb47 posted:

In the old format, I could find threads that I had posted to They could be found by clicking on my profile.  I can't seem to find this now.   Can anyone help me on this?  Thanks

Click on the Member ID to get an options window. Click on the Member ID again in the window to open the member's profile page. You'll see the option to See All Posts off to the right.

Thanks Dave, I asked about this yesterday. It's just harder to find, but at least it's still there.

Sort of been holding off on posting here as with any major software update there is bound to be some glitches and things that were just not thought of until it goes live.  Seems most things are up and running now, or have been addressed so it's time for my two cents.  

As a note I primarily use a fairly old MacBook running safari 5.1.1 to read the forums and have not used my phone as of yet.  

First, I agree that the line spacing is off, but Rich already has commented that that is being worked on.  

Second, I'd like to see some better separation between topics  on the list.  maybe a bigger font for the title, or a line between them.  they all just sort of run together to my eyes.

The third thing is a problem that carries over from the previous version, but has been amplified by the new format  which is the massive mount of scroll to get past the sticky threads, and the habit this causes of never looking at them in the first place.  Maybe these would do better if stuck to the top of the "recent posts" side bar instead?  

It seems there are two camps when it comes to the replies in this thread.  Many people are sharing what they find useful, and what they find difficult to use, these sorts of threads seem like they could be useful to the webmaster in addressing problems and getting things working as smoothly as possible.  The second group seems to be a lot of "we don't like change" folks, but then that must, most certainly. have been expected in a community where half the members will shout from the roof tops " Two wires and a transformer" till the day they die.  Improvements in functionality or lack of understanding of what is involved in a ground-up platform change are not considered by such folks, only that it is not the same as it was, there for, must be worse.  

In the end, Keep up the good work, Rich, and don't forget to take a break, run some trains, pop open a beer if it's your thing, and give your mind a rest.  Take a loot at what people like and don't, and do your best with it.   Thanks for the work, and I'm sure, like many others we don't mind a bit of hassle learning some new things to make things better for everyone else.  

Thank you for the updates to make the site more readable versus initial roll-out.

Paul

I only browse on a laptop or desktop so the changes don't benefit me, but I'm sure they will benefit many. Time marches on!

Admittedly, I'm joining this thread a bit late...but I think it looks pretty darn good on both my PC and my iPhone.  Nice job, Rich! 

WOW, eleven pages of replies to this thread.  I don't understand what all the hoopla was about.  

LOL Rich never did answer my question i posted last night. 

OGR Webmaster posted:

Just go to the top post in a thread and print it. It will now AUTOMATICALLY PRINT in a PRINTER FRIENDLY format.

Sorry, Rich - it only prints the first page of posts in a given topic.  For instance, if Scott's WEEKEND PHOTO FUN happens to have four pages of posts for the week, you have to do this four times (once in each page of posts), and then you will get four pdf documents instead of one.  I don't know how to combine multiple pdf files into one, and we did not have to do that with the prior version.  Please try to get this fixed.  Thanks much.

(I posted two other times on this - not trying for over-kill - the first on on page 6 didn't get your attention.  Second one done about 1/2 hour ago up a couple of posts, also on page 11, because I wasn't sure I'd be able to locate this one.)