Razasharp

Matt, on 19 April 2010 - 05:03 PM, said:

I would not call it trivial, because it takes moderators time and/or adds to user confusion. And correct me if I am wrong, but parsing the link is a one-time action, right? So i think that bit of CPU load is negligible, although I appreciate that your programmers try to keep the light and lean. Maybe the extent and behavior of the link trimming engine could be made configurable?

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If it was that simple, I would not complain. As has been pointed out, the internet these days is full of people with a less technical understanding of how things work, and teaching everyone to use URL tags would of course be the favorable way. That is why I feel a software that is being used by people with varying grades of technical expertise should make an attempt at correcting such mistakes (within a reasonable margin).

Matt, on 20 April 2010 - 02:02 AM, said:

I apologize if my sarcastic comment has been taken for an insult. The remark that this has been a topic for a few months now made me wonder though how priorities to features implementations are handed out though. If customer demand requested those backgrounds, fine, go for it, just be sure I can turn them off. If customers are complaining about the way links are parsed it should be taken into consideration as well though. Just pointing to URL tag usage is not the ideal way to handle such request IMO, cause it an issue generated by less-tech-savvy users.

Razasharp, on 20 April 2010 - 06:47 AM, said:

Exactly. And from my forum administration experience, users who paste the URL plain are the majority. However, at least here, most of them post something like

Check this out: http://blafoo.net/reallyfunny.html

and then use a newline to keep typing, or even put the URLs into separate lines, with no typing directly afterwards. I think that parsing the links including commas, until the first whitespace is discovered would have less fault rates and more customer satisfaction.

bfarber, on 20 April 2010 - 07:30 AM, said:

Agreed. Of course I am not expecting the code to really "foresee" each and every way a user can screw up the posting of links, but neglecting commas the way it is currently done is not the smartest approach IMO.

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Maybe in such situations it might be wise to make a poll between the customers so what they consider the lesser evil? I mean the two links used for examples here (initial post and the google one) are really borderline, extreme examples of where parsing hits its limits. But not even this parses right:

http://www.spiegel.de/wissenschaft/natur/0,1518,689506,00.html, but

Maybe a compromise would be to look for "URL delimiters" like html, asp, php, etc. and then allow all commas between the domain and the delimiter or something... I feel there is gotta be a way to make the parser "catch" more exceptions without causing headaches with "the other camp".

Maybe we just need a feature that detects "untagged" URLs and then slams the user in the face with a popup, requiring him to correct his evildoing. That would certainly settle things in the long run...

(Side note: I even fired up my old phpbb installation to check how it handles this, and of course it will parse

http://www.google.com/#hl=en&q=test,but it didn't work

wrong, but it parses

http://www.spiegel.de/wissenschaft/natur/0,1518,689506,00.html

right out of the box.

http://www.spiegel.de/wissenschaft/natur/0,1518,689506,00.html, but

is also parsed correctly, the comma is recognized at not being part of the URL.

http://www.spiegel.de/wissenschaft/natur/0,1518,689506,00.html,but

fails again.
Just an observation, not comparing or trying to start a religious war here...)

Any url with a comma should be parsed - if people cannot type correctly that should not stop correct URL's from showing up. They can easily go back and correct their mistake, whereas in order to correctly display a url with a comma in it, they need to just through an additional hoop which they the average user is unlikely to do.

Let's face it most people do not take advantage of the media button, so getting them to use the is probably not going to happen either.

bfarber, on 20 April 2010 - 07:30 AM, said:

We were also taught to put a space after a comma, not to have the next word touching it.  I still say that when a link is auto parsed, if the last part of it is a comma, to trim that from the link.  That would probably settle the problem for most people.

I've just updated this board to the very latest development copy.

Please perform a hard refresh / delete any browser caches to ensure the very latest JS and CSS is retrieved by your browser. If you experience any JS errors or 'missing' features, it is likely to be a stale browser cache.

This update brings numerous fixes and a few additions:

- Colour picker on 'Background Color' field in the User's CP.


- Collapsable side bar blocks


- Topic preview pop-up displays the first match when searching


We have received a lot of feedback about the notifications system and this is very much on our list to improve.

Razasharp, on 24 March 2010 - 04:14 PM, said:

The Admin CP will allow you to switch off and add new "share services". It also logs who shared 'what' with 'whom' so you will have that data.

ikillbill, on 24 March 2010 - 11:07 PM, said:

What would you like to manage?


Regarding notifications / pop-ups: Hear you loud and clear. We'll have a meeting of minds and get back to you.

In the Profile Customization I think that it would be fantastic if the color field had a color picker when you click on the color thing and perhaps changes to the hex color immediately instead of on page load?

Okay. FANTASTIC btw! I <3333 this company. It was a delightful surprise to wake up to this morning. You guys made my day!

Welcome to IP.Board 3.1.0 Beta 1!
Welcome to the latest development version of IP.Board 3.1.0. We're excited to reveal the product we've been working on for the past few months. This build contains all the features we've blogged about recently including the search improvements, Twitter integration, Profile Customization and more.

As always, this is a very early beta build so please expect to find the odd bug here and there. Please report any bugs found into the tracker as usual.

As always, we'd love to hear your feedback. Happy clicking!

Note: Please perform a hard refresh / delete temporary items in your browser to ensure you get the correct CSS and JS

Preview Only: IP.Board 3.1 is in preview only. It is not yet available for download. Keep an eye out for a future announcement.

What's New
Link Sharing
Easily share links from your community to Facebook, Twitter, and more. Great way to drive traffic to your community!

Status Updates
Enhancements to the existing member status system in IP.Board to include the ability to reply and more.

Topic Preview
Preview the first few lines of a topic without loading the entire topic.

View Reputation
Optionally allow your members to see who gave reputation points on their posts.

Twitter Integration
Your members can now link their account with their Twitter account!

Improved Facebook Integration
Further enhance the link between your community and Facebook to drive traffic.

Advertising Code Integration: Part 1 and Part 2
Easily place advertising code throughout your community with simple settings in the admin area.

Profile Customizations: Part 1 and Part 2
Allow your members to customize the look and feel of their profile page.

Skin Upgrader
Upgrading your skin between versions of IP.Board just became a lot easier.

Soft Delete Posts and Topics
Rather than actually deleting a post or topic you can now hide it from view to easily restore it later.

Notification System
An easier way to be notified of all the various events that happen in your community.

Modification Development Enhancements
Great tools for those that create modifications for IP.Board

Hook System Improvements
Improvements to the IP.Board hook system to make it easier for modification developers to expand the functions in the software.

Search Engine Optimization: Part 1 and Part 2
Allow search engines to better index and rank your community in results.

Search Engine Overhaul
Search engine rebuilt from the ground up introducing more flexibility and power.

Razasharp, on 21 March 2010 - 12:52 PM, said:

It can be challenging dynamically inserting and executing javascript code (i.e. facebook connect). I'm sure we could handle it with all the default login methods we support, though if someone created a new login method it's possible something might not work properly.

Razasharp, on 19 March 2010 - 08:37 PM, said:

IP.Content or IP.Converge?  Current v1 of Converge is about as flexible as a brick - it passes member data, that's it.  It's also encoded so we can't make it more useful.  v2 is apparently going to be better.  IP.Content is as flexible as you want it to be - I use it (nowhere near to it's fullest potential) and with v2 it will be very very worth it.  I may have to harangue our product team into putting together a fansite or news network just to utilise the cool new articles system.

Always amuses me when people say 'a feature has never worked for my forum, so it should not be included'.

Every forum is different, and 90% of IPB owners never come onto these forums - yet for all you know 70% of them might benefit from a feature.

I think Razasharp summed it up perfectly...

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I agree with the OP. The combination of search the way its been and the private forums is severely penalizing those that actually want to try to take the time to search for their own solutions. I would wager that if search was not so completely dysfunctional on this forum, that IPS ticket volume would go down a measurable amount, improving response time for the rest of the tickets and decreasing corporate overhead. And I would also agree that the IPS search will never completely replace Google search and I don't really see the point of having these private forums.

i would like to see this feature too in IPB  

We tend to steer clear from official yes/nos to suggestions... this is why

ghyghty, social groups may or may not get included in future. I personally like the idea (and is on my personal wish list) - but it's not something we've discussed officially.

As always, we announce development plans in the blog, any speculation or opinions posted elsewhere shouldn't be taken as gospel

It has already been reported. No need to post a new bug report it seems.

I can think of one place on the public side of IP. Board where it would be really nice to have AJAX to save a couple page loads.

When subscribing to a topic and/or forum! It'd be great if when clicking "Watch" you stayed on the same page and a popup came up with the different options (same ones as when you are taken to the subscription page), be able to indicate the type of notification you want in the popup on the same page... and then submit it as well without a page load.

I find it sooo annoying to have to be redirected around to select what kind of notification you want and then back to the topic... just to watch a topic.

I know, with all the exposure I've had to AJAX to-date just makes me lazy