They are probably trying to repair whatever was wrong in the My Replies section where the last post (be it yours or not) was being flagged as your last reply date-wise so you couldn't tell for the life of you if there was something new for you even by looking at the dates/time.

I really LOVE the new "new post" and "red hot, read this" icons, those are awesome! Glad to see the correct timestamps in the My Replies section, and read/not read link colors working.

Now thats all working, I think I can live with all the various forum changes. I understand all the reasons, so kudos, even though I may have my own personal preferences on occasion.

I don't know about anyone else but I still have the issue with PNG alpha transparency which is a minor thing but I'm also still getting a *ton* or Operation Aborted errors which is a pretty major impediment to my forum reading pleasure. Plus I'm convinced the Operation Aborted errors are related to the PNG alpha transparency issue.

Are these issues going to be addressed?

[edit]

This is still how all medals appear to me (at least when they appear which is not all the time).



[/edit]

I would still like a slightly larger default font, but overall the new forum is working great. It is much faster now, and I have not experienced any errors past the first day or so.
I am running IE7, by the way.

I like the design of this forum. A bit slow loading though. Opening pages can be a pain.

I'm not having too much problem with the forum other than what I mentioned in the OP. The only new complaint I have is the way the forum always loads the first page of a multi-page thread. Not only does it do this when opening a thread, but it also does it when posting or editing a reply. It's a hassle to wait for the first page to load, click the page index, then wait for the last page to load. If it's not possible to fix the forum so it remembers your place like it used to, it should at least default to the last page.

Wait a minute.

I'm starting to detect some positive changes. I notice a page list has been added to the post list that allows you to jump into a thread at whatever page you want.   

And if I'm not mistaken once I hit "Post Reply" on this reply I actually will be taken back to the end of the thread instead of the beginning.   

I think it's at least as important to acknowledge the good things as it is to complain about the bad, but please don't stop quite yet.

Yes the page list is definitely welcome.

Sentient species taste better...

The Operation Aborted issues are being investigated as well. Like I said, just have a bit of patience and things will get sorted out in time

Thanks.

I do want to repeat my belief that the operation aborted issue and the PNG alpha transparency issue are related.

I would expect that the alpha transparency issue is something more easily resolved because it's something that exists at all times whereas the occurance of the operation aborted errors are random and intermittent. For example at work I get operation aborted very infrequently and at home I get them very frequently. Also it seems that the likelihood of their occurance is far higher on multipage threads as opposed to single page threads. In fact I can't recall a single operation aborted on anything but a multiple page thread.

IIRC the last time the forums were updated (about a year ago?) there was a similar issue. In that case it was a matter of medals not being displayed at all but again it had been an issue with alpha transparency and also there was some kind of crash or page hang that was associated with it and the prevalence of the error was dependent on the length of the thread. The symptoms in that case were awfully similar to the current symptoms.

In any case these are merely suggestions from an interested layman.

I've moved this reply from another thread since I think it belongs here. To set the context GW is complaining about the apparent new policy of having google ads visible in threads to those that are not logged in.

While I don't object to this as strenuously as GW and I would like to encourage folks to register on the site, I definitely see his point and basically agree with it.


Ahh...

Yes indeed. I've attached two screen shots of before and after. Also this is in every thread and as far as I can tell is new today.

This actually messes up the paging that used to be 25 replies per page. Note that this AD appears as the last reply in any thread of 4 or less posts and appears as reply #4 in threads longer than 4 replies. This changes the last reply of each page from 25, 50, 75, ... to 26, 51, 76, ...

I'm not as offended by stray advertising as my dear friend GW but I do believe he came by his objections honestly. Plus us curmudgeons need to stick together. Right GW?

Not logged in:


Logged in:


[edit]

To correct myself slightly this AD appears in the position of the 4th reply on every page of a multipage reply and changes the reply number of replies that have been previously referenced. This reply number has been used in some cases to record the occurance of an MVL game submission for example and these references are now wrong.

[/edit]

I agree with GW on this one. I find this ad incredibly intrusive. I understand the need to recoup some of the cost associated with running this site. I also agree with Mumble that people should be encouraged to register. They should not, however, be *annoyed* into registering.

I wouldn't object so much if registration actually mitigated the problem. I have been registered for some time, and shouldn't have even been able to see the ad. Thing is, I have to be signed in to make it go away, and the only time I actually sign in is when I have something to say.

As far as ads go, this one is not too bad. It's not one of those flashing, shaking, epileptic fit causing ads that are so prevalent on the web these days, but the geography it occupies, (smack in the middle of the thread) makes it almost as obnoxious.

One of the things that I have always admired about Stardock's handling of this site is (was) it's lack of outside advertising. It keeps the look of the forum clean and professional. There are gaming sites that I used to visit on a fairly regular basis, that I now rarely, if ever visit, for just this reason. (The exception being, of course, Stardock reviews).

Stardock, as a company, and as a gamer's philosophy, is a step above all others, and I would sincerely like to see it stay that way.

I'll end this reply while it is still more constructive criticism than rant, and ask you to please remove the ad, or at least move it into the sidebar, where it will be less intrusive.

Just my 2bc.

Apologies for not thinking to check that the Strange Ad phenomenon was widespread; I was barrelling along doing too many things at once.



I've ended up in about the same situation as Mistralok here. I used to read lots of game reviews, but now I pretty much don't bother unless someone around here mentions one, and then I immediately dump my cookies and run a spyware scan.

Anyone else remember when Games Domain was "By Gamers, For Gamers?"

Some of our sites are partly ad-supported (Wincustomize for one), though I would expect that it's just a mistake that that slipped into the GC2 variant of the forums code. I'll see if I can find out.

That would be great.

I do want to add that although I agree with GW on objecting to unrelated Ads (actually a Buy TA Today! Ad would be far less objectionable in my mind), I don't want to put the cart before the horse. By that I mean if I had to chosse between the Ad or the site then I can live with the Ad.

Something I've noticed the past few days was when I hit the forum link for "Everything" I use to see a nice list of recently active threads. It's still there, but it doesn't really seem to capture the recently active threads very well anymore. I can go to other sub-forums and see threads that should have been on that overall.

All this did was really make me go to each sub-forum now and check the posts in each instead of a 'one stop shop' like I use to have.

Is this a bug or a feature?

I'm glad to see the ad-posts are no longer appearing when I'm not logged in.

The forum search function is still messed up, but now in a different way. When I type in a search it diverts to a Google search results page. Is it ever going to be restored so that you can search within the forums themselves?

One negative effect of this is that it makes it a lot harder to find users in order to send PMs. This hampers communication between members of the GC2 community...definitely not a good thing.

Sentient species taste better...

That's quite intentional, not to mention faster, more effective, and a lot more efficient. I pretty much always used google with site:forums.... myself when needing to do it before, as the search just was not very good at all.

In Opera today, I'm getting an occasional error about the GetMedals function failing.

I see, but I still cant find users who have replied to posts. With the old "advanced search" function, that was possible. That's my main gripe...I cant find people.

Sentient species taste better...

Now when I search the forums, I get no results for anything, and sometimes I get this screen:



It seems like every other day it's something strange and different. I'm hoping the tweaking will be completed soon.

Sentient species taste better...

You're typing to programmers, mate! Life is an ongoing tweak.

In Brad's new MP thread, Opera shows many of the posts with text in the same black as the primary background (text is faintly visible in the shaded boxes and in every post when I select it). Things look fine in Firefox.

Ten Thousand More Curses Upon the Browser Warriors. They made a modern web dev's life so much harder than it should be...

p.s. The "no paragraph breaks for you" thing for Opera folks also seems to be back, at least for OPs. Around 1920 EDT, I tried doing one in Opera and had to switch to Firefox to clean it up.