Announcing the NI Discussion Forums Upgrade

[Laura F.]

Hello Forum Users,

I am pleased to announce that the NI Discussion Forums have undergone an upgrade bringing us new features and bug fixes.  In addition, we have gained the ability to take advantage of other new features that our forum vendor Lithium has recently released.  The following is a list of things that I know have changed. I am sure that I have missed some items:

• Unread Discussions – finally, a way to keep up with what you haven’t read!  All boards and idea exchanges now include this module in the right hand side bar.  At a glance, it shows you five discussions that have activity on them that you have not read.  You can click View All to see the discussions you haven’t read, and you will find the number of unread messages listed for each thread or idea.  Clicking on that number jumps you to the first unread message or comment for that thread or idea.  You can also switch to the unread posts view of this module where you can see every individual message or comment that you have not read.  You can choose to see the entire text of the messages on this page, or just a preview. 
• New solutions module – if there are newly marked solutions that you have not read, you will see this module that lists the five most recently marked solutions
• Overall look and feel of forums – you will notice many color changes and an updated look throughout the forums.
• The Kudos button has a new look and location.  Instead of seeing it on the right top corner of messages, it is now on the left of the message just below the avatar of the user posting the message.  The numbered link that allows you to see who has given Kudos to a message is much larger and easier to click on.
• Autosave – We all know how frustrating it is to be typing a post and then something happens and your browser crashes or you accidentally navigate away from your message!  The forum will now autosave your message as you create it.  As you are creating your message, you will see the time that the draft was last autosaved just above the right corner of the editor window. If you do end up with a crash or otherwise abandon the message, you will find a link to your saved message on your profile page.  You can also delete the drafts from your profile page if they are no longer needed.
• Idea Exchange – the options menu now has the option to select “Collapse View”.  You cannot give Kudos from this view, you will need to give Kudos when viewing the idea itself if you choose to use this view. 
• Profile page – The Total Messages Posted metric now reflects both forum and idea exchange posts / comments.  You can also see how many Kudos a user has received in the Statistics section of their profile.  On your own profile page, you will see a section for Public Statistics which is what others can view and a Statistics section which is only for you to view.  Additional metrics are found in this section.
• Accepted Solution button has a new look – It is now blue and has the text “Accept as Solution” instead of a green button with “Solution?”
• Search – The interface looks different, but functionality is basically unchanged.  Advanced search now allows you to specify to search within a particular date range.  Look for improvements in this area in the future.
• Board pages – the modules previously found at the bottom of the page are now in the right hand side bar making them easier for everyone to find
• Spoiler tag – the editor has a built in spoiler tag that you can use to hide text in your message.
• Reply button for a particular message is more noticeable – instead of a black word at the left top of a message, it is now a blue button in the bottom right corner of each message making it easier to find.
• Image fix for Idea Exchange – images that are too wide are now auto-sized to fit in the Idea Exchange post.
• The Email Subscriptions section of the “Subscriptions & Bookmarks” tab in My Settings has been improved.  You can view all subscriptions (Board, thread, etc.) at once.
• Subscription emails have format changes but the information is the same.
• My Profile has been renamed to My Settings and the format for navigating through the settings has changed – the long list of settings has been broken up into different sections.
• Floating boards is no longer possible from the main forum page. You must perform this action from the Board Options menu when viewing a particular board.
• The Dashboard has been discontinued. Remember that you can find your latest bookmarks and subscriptions in a module at the bottom of the main forum page for quick access.  You can also get to your bookmarks from the “Go To...” list at the upper right corner of the page.
• Inserting emoticons in Firefox works on the first try. All the pop-up windows linked from the editor window seem to be improved.
• Key Focus when adding tags works the way you expect
• White space after signature when viewing messages in Firefox is no longer an issue
• Compact viewing preference no longer available –  a handful of users had set up the forum home page to be viewed in the “Compact style”. You should have received an email from me last week notifying you that this would no longer be an option after the upgrade. 

Known Issues:

• Externally uploaded avatars appear stretched in Internet Explorer 8 (not other browsers). This is expected to be fixed soon.

As you use the upgraded forums please feel free to let me know of bugs that you find and any thoughts on the changed items I’ve listed above.  I will report them to Lithium.  I expect that we will start to see small changes more often now that we’ve finally made it through this large upgrade.

Thank you!

Laura
Web Support & Operations
National Instruments

[MichaelAivaliotis]

Great Job. It looks awesome.

[RayFarmer]

What has happen to everyone's icons?

and is there something that replaces the dashboard?

[Mathan]

I frequently use "Mark all as read" in the community options in the forum main page to keep track what i missed reading.

I badly miss it now.

Oops I just found it below "Unread discussions" in the right hand side in the main page.

Sorry.

Mathan

[RayFarmer]

On the NI Discussion Forums page didn't the folder icon change to a yellow open type when there was new messages!

[GerdW]

Hi Laura,

the forum looks great after the upgrade!

But I have to add a new issue:

There seems to be problems when trying to download attachments, see the first port in this thread...

Next point: the "insert link" popup window uses a window border that looks like WinVista style - even on my WinXP using the standard (Win2000) look...

[AdnanZ]

• The Email Subscriptions section of the “Subscriptions & Bookmarks” tab in My Settings has been improved.  You can view all subscriptions (Board, thread, etc.) at once.

Where exactly can we choose the option to view which Boards we are subscribed to? I don't see that option on this page.

Good work on the Forums!

[tst]

OK, so I'm not going to slam this, but this post will be mostly criticism.

1. I don't really like the new look. I prefered the old look with the clean lines separating sections. It's hard to tell things apart with the new look.
2. The signature isn't separated from the post, making it appear as part of the text. A line between them would probably work.
3. The font sizes are really off. I logged in with IE 8 set to have the text size as Smaller and the OS was set to 120 DPI. With these settings the board names in the main page, thread names in the board view and post titles in the thread view are all ridiculously large and sometime go out of their allowed area and are cropped. I changed the text size to Smallest, which helped somewhat, but they're still too large and this will probably affect other sites adversely.
   
   This is what looks like with the Smallest text size.
   
   
4. That image also shows that floated threads are way too attention-seeking. I REALLY don't want them to be a different color.
5. The message editor no longer jumps around - excellent. I doesn't jump around like it used to, but now, every time I move my cursor out of it, it jumps back to the image I inserted. This happens as long as my position in the edit window is under the image. This is REALLY annoying.
6. Like the others said, the image inserting window takes too much time to load.
7. I also fail to see the point of the unread discussions module. The point was for us to see unread discussion that we participated in. The current version is useless.
8. Autosave - great.
9. Idea exchange - the collpased view is useless and will continue to be until we get a standard board view - one line per thread and new comments bring it to the top. I do like that the links to new comments finally work properly and that we can naviagte to the next pages properly.
10.  Search between dates - excellent.
11.  The board pages modules seems to take up too much vertical space. In the past, I think I had it on because otherwise the page view became too wide, so I don't think I want to disable it, but it would be useful if we could remove some of the modules there, such as the unread discussions and new solutions modules.

[tst]

OK, so I went to my settings (which are tricky to navigate, BTW) and changed the text size there to small. This, combined with IE's smallest size, makes the titles of managable size, although they still look weird and it's hard to read.

Additional points:

1. In the board view, threads with more than 50 chars in the title have their title cut off. I don't like long titles, but this is even more annoying.
2. Some of the posts have a gray backgound, and I haven't figured out which. I think it's the first unread post, but it's not obvious.
3. My avatar also seems to have disappeared for one post. When I refreshed the page, it did show up.
4. When posting a new reply, the page does not jump automatically to that reply.

[tst]

Some more:

1. I don't like the fact that the cancel button is to the left of the post button. It's a reasonable setup (and probably works nicely for Mac users), but on Windows the convention in dialogs (at least in left to right languages) is to have the action button on the left and the cancel button on the right. This isn't a huge issue, but is just slightly annoying.
2. Also, I would prefer moving both of them to the left side of the page. Yes, they have some more visiblity on the right side, but when my eyes track the page they focus on the left side.
3. Similarly, having the page navigation links (in the board view) on the right side is annoying. I understand it's needed because the ones on the top of the page are also on the right side because the left side is taken up, but I would have prefered the ones on the bottom to be on the left side.
4. It would be nice if the Mark all as read link was more prominent (maybe in bold?). I use it all the time.