editor Posted October 26, 2011 Share Posted October 26, 2011 By now you should have noticed that we've upgraded the HAIF software once again. This isn't as jolting a change as the upgrade from 2009 that freaked everyone out. In fact, in a lot of ways this new system feels a lot like the old HAIF Classic system. At least the soothing blues are back.It's going to take me several days to sort through everything and tweak the software so it works best for our community, so expect some growing pains. If you have any requests or notice anything wrong or missing, just reply to this thread.I'll also use this thread to let everyone know about the new features. There are over 200 new ones, but a lot are behind-the-scenes. As I run across public-facing ones, I'll note them here.First, you may have noticed that Post Options has moved to the right side of the posting window. The whole posting experience is a lot cleaner now.You can also tag your posts with keywords. Some people like this. Some will ignore this.There is a ghosted arrow at the bottom of each page. It will reveal itself when you mouse over it, and clicking takes you to the top of the page.You can rate a topic with stars right above the topic title.Before we had reputation points based on +/- ratings of individual posts. Now you can "Like" a post and see who else likes certain posts. This is a HAIF-only "like" and is not part of Facebook.There are lots more features, so I'll keep posting stuff here. Let me know what you think of the new and improved HAIF. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
editor Posted October 26, 2011 Author Share Posted October 26, 2011 Keep an eye on your signatures. If you had anything other than plain text (like URLs or colors and sizes), they may no longer show correctly. (Mine didn't at first.) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HoustonMidtown Posted October 26, 2011 Share Posted October 26, 2011 Where do I find the "Mark All Content Read" option ? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Highway6 Posted October 26, 2011 Share Posted October 26, 2011 (edited) I like that the View New Content" keeps track of your latest "By Time Period" selection.I like the "other" search filter on the main page.It seems pretty speedy too.And it seems that just by visiting then re-saving your signature, fixes that issue. Edited October 26, 2011 by Highway6 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
editor Posted October 26, 2011 Author Share Posted October 26, 2011 Where do I find the "Mark All Content Read" option ?I'm not sure where there is one system-wide. But until I find one, you can work-around it by going to the front page, and then clicking on the colored quotation bubbles for each section. If you mouse over each one you'll notice a "Mark forum read?" tooltip pops up.I just noticed another new feature: When you're writing a post, it auto-saves your work every now and again. I guess that will be useful for flakey internet connections, but I'm not sure how to recover a half-written post. We'll see! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
editor Posted October 26, 2011 Author Share Posted October 26, 2011 In "View new content" (and possibly elsewhere) there is now a button to preview a topic without actually going to the thread. Similar to the pop-up previews available on other fora, but far less annoying. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
samagon Posted October 26, 2011 Share Posted October 26, 2011 maybe I just missed it on the old new layout, but there weren't hard links to the different areas of the forum, only at the top of the page, and on the bottom was the drop down box. I like not using drop down boxes, and I like not having to scroll to the top to choose the top level of forums. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sevfiv Posted October 26, 2011 Share Posted October 26, 2011 At the bottom of the page, clicking on "mark community read" reveals a menu with the option "mark all as read." I hope this is the same as the old "mark board as read." Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HoustonMidtown Posted October 26, 2011 Share Posted October 26, 2011 At the bottom of the page, clicking on "mark community read" reveals a menu with the option "mark all as read." I hope this is the same as the old "mark board as read."Yep -- that marked all the content "read".... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Highway6 Posted October 26, 2011 Share Posted October 26, 2011 Clicking on a thread doesn't go to the last post, or even the last page, even if I've visited it before.Can this change ? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RedScare Posted October 26, 2011 Share Posted October 26, 2011 Clicking on a thread doesn't go to the last post, or even the last page, even if I've visited it before.Can this change ?There is a link on the top right side to go to last unread post. It is an extra step, but it gets you there. Agree that the layout is much cleaner. So far, so good. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ross Posted October 26, 2011 Share Posted October 26, 2011 The dot to the left of the thread takes you to the first unread post. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
editor Posted October 27, 2011 Author Share Posted October 27, 2011 The dot to the left of the thread takes you to the first unread post.Good catch. We're all learning stuff here! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Montrose1100 Posted October 27, 2011 Share Posted October 27, 2011 Does the new features not include a small mobile site? It looks great from my droid, very clean. Just a bit easier to read at work with the mobile site. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Highway6 Posted October 27, 2011 Share Posted October 27, 2011 The dot to the left of the thread takes you to the first unread post. Thank you. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Highway6 Posted October 27, 2011 Share Posted October 27, 2011 Very stupid and petty request....Evey time I come to haif, I'm momentarily fooled into thinking I have a message because of the green search button at the top right.It's that green.. It's like a mental trigger. Anyways that can be changed down the line ?Also.. Is anyone else finding it super fast now? Are you going to be adding in custom icons and graphics like you always do? Is the lack of custom icons and graphics one of the reason for the speediness now ?#pettycompaints You mentioned tagging. Does it work like Twitter? I don't see a tagging button. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
editor Posted October 27, 2011 Author Share Posted October 27, 2011 Does the new features not include a small mobile site? It looks great from my droid, very clean. Just a bit easier to read at work with the mobile site.It does. Works on my iPhone; I'm not sure why it isn't triggering on your Droid. Check the bottom of the page and see if there' an option to switch to the mobile version. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
editor Posted October 27, 2011 Author Share Posted October 27, 2011 Very stupid and petty request....Evey time I come to haif, I'm momentarily fooled into thinking I have a message because of the green search button at the top right.It's that green.. It's like a mental trigger. Anyways that can be changed down the line ?It's funny, because the default message color in the last version of HAIF was green, and I changed it to red.As for the green search button, I can probably change the color without too much problem. I'll look into it.Also.. Is anyone else finding it super fast now? Are you going to be adding in custom icons and graphics like you always do? Is the lack of custom icons and graphics one of the reason for the speediness now ?It's faster for a number of reasons. Primarily, because of the new server. However, the new version of the software contains many dozens of database optimizations to make it less taxing on the server. The fewer times a page hits the database, the fewer times it has to pause while rendering. Third, I've enabled compression of portions of the page before they're delivered to your browser. I had this feature turned off for a long time because older versions of Internet Exploder would fudge their Huggies when they saw it. Since fewer than 45% of HAIFers still use IE, and of those fewer than 2% use a version earlier than 7, I've re-enabled the compression.#pettycompaints You mentioned tagging. Does it work like Twitter? I don't see a tagging button.When someone starts a new thread there is a box that shows up where they can enter tags. These are true tags, not hashtags, so there's no "#" required. For example, I tagged this thread "HAIF" when I started it. You can see at the top of the thread, below the thread title the little button marked "HAIF." Clicking that tag will take you to other threads that the author has tagged "HAIF." Currently there are zero of those. At this time, only the thread starter can tag a thread (though it might be possible for moderators and admins to do it later, I haven't looked yet). I've seen other fora where anyone can tag a thread or a post and it gets kind of chaotic with a lot of firstpost! abuse. For now, I'm OK with it being thread starter only. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
editor Posted October 27, 2011 Author Share Posted October 27, 2011 Since this was brought up, here are the browser statistics for the last 30 days: 44%: Internet Explorer 22%: Firefox 16%: Chrome 14%: Safari All others combined: <3% And here's the breakdown of just IE users: Internet Explorer 8: 57% Internet Explorer 9: 23% Internet Explorer 7: 18% Internet Explorer 6: 2% Other Internet Explorer: <1% Mobile Devices: 78%: iPad 11%: iPhone 10%: Android .73%: Blackberry .53%: iPod Touch .17%: Windows Phone .03%: Symbian Mobile Device Carriers (includes mobile devices on wifi networks): 23%: Comcast 22%: AT&T DSL/U Verse 10%: AT&T Mobility 6%: Verizon 3%: TimeWarner 3%: Sprint 3%: T-Mobile 1%: Verizon FiOS 1%: Cricket Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NenaE Posted October 27, 2011 Share Posted October 27, 2011 I just checked it out...I like it. Seems easier to use. The search button is what I found not too good on the last layout, I will soon see how that is. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Montrose1100 Posted November 2, 2011 Share Posted November 2, 2011 It does. Works on my iPhone; I'm not sure why it isn't triggering on your Droid. Check the bottom of the page and see if there' an option to switch to the mobile version.Ah ha! Took a bit of finding, but it's all good now. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
20thStDad Posted November 2, 2011 Share Posted November 2, 2011 So, is my rep what it is now and forever? I don't see any pluses or minuses. Don't really care, just noticing. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
editor Posted November 2, 2011 Author Share Posted November 2, 2011 So, is my rep what it is now and forever? I don't see any pluses or minuses. Don't really care, just noticing.I believe you can earn reputation points when people "like" your posts. But there is no "dislike" option at this time.However, I think we can go back to the old +/- system, if there's a demand for it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
20thStDad Posted November 3, 2011 Share Posted November 3, 2011 I assumed the "Like This" was some kind of facebook nonsense. I don't really use the +/- except when I find something funny, so I won't miss it. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
samagon Posted November 3, 2011 Share Posted November 3, 2011 Clicking on a thread doesn't go to the last post, or even the last page, even if I've visited it before.Can this change ?There is a link on the top right side to go to last unread post. It is an extra step, but it gets you there. Agree that the layout is much cleaner. So far, so good.on this note, I also noticed that when you select the date of the last post (on the right) it takes you to the last post you read in a topic, or since you marked it as read. or at least, it seems to do that for me. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
texas911 Posted December 13, 2011 Share Posted December 13, 2011 WOW, the site is 100X faster loading compared to before. Maybe now we'll get more posters. Great work guys! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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