New Web Site
The new site went live today. Love it? Hate it? Having problems? Give us your feedback.
Max For Live forum (https://cycling74.com/forums/forum.php?id=10) does not seems to work.
The RSS-feed links are leading to http://veryhandso.me/ (http://veryhandso.me/forums/rss.php?topic=14346 , for example). I'm pretty sure they should lead to cycling74.com.
Thank you Valery, the Max For Live forum link is working now, as well the rss-feed links have been corrected as well.
1) M4L forum is still non-functional, and has no RSS-feed link.
2) Can you, please, fix the subjects of messages in RSS-feeds? Currently they are displayed like this:
-----
aufumy on "New Web Site"
Valery_Kondakoff on "New Web Site"
Ben Nevile on "New Web Site"
-----
This not a best way, just because users can not sort the messages by threads (there are no Thread-id and all of the messages in the same thread have different Subjects). I'm pretty sure it is a good idea to place only the topic title (subject) into the RSS-feed Subject field.
Here is a screenshot: http://www.rugby-forum.ru/temp/threads.jpg
Thank you!
Hi Valery,
1) The M4L forum is functional, but we haven't migrated the old posts yet. Feel free to add a new topic. The RSS link isn't there because there aren't any topics yet. When it shows up, the link will be https://cycling74.com/forums/rss.php?forum=10 .
2) Okay, I've modified the RSS feeds to try out your idea. Thanks for the feedback!
Benr
Hi,
I am really liking the streamlined new website! I find it much easier to navigate. Thanks for your good work!
I just added a new topic in M4L forum and I see only my post so far...migration still in progress I assume? I couldn't possibly the first after the site's been up for as long as it has.
Hi MaestroGeek - yes, migration for that forum is still in progress. Sorry for the delay and thanks for your patience.
great new site.
love the changing logo.
i like it, the all tab is great! the cycling 74 tag line is brill, cheers
Hi pizza:
a/ fixed.
b/ coming soon.
Thanks for your feedback!
nice site, like the look and simplicity of it, plus the tabs of sections at the top of the forum. there was a few bugs before, but seemed to of been ironed out, such as the reply button. i could not do any replying at all, but that is all good, as you can tell :)
aye, its good...
actually one thing i need to ask. how do we get to choose our avatar/picture for our profile. before we had jitter the cat, msp, wall plugs etc.
i cant seem to see these anywhere...
Is there a way to see which user created a topic, as it was with the old forum? At the moment all i can see is the most recent poster..
..and the edit post function is gone? I *would* have edited my previous post to clarify that i was referring to the individual forum main pages. I can obviously see the creator when I click on the topic..
Nice to have a global view on the forum though, the 'All' tab
RE the profile picture - it looks to me (based on what I see in the contextual menu for the image) that it should be showing your gravatar for your profile email address. I've just set up a new gravatar for my account here, which hasn't shown up yet, but maybe it takes a while.
I could be wrong about this, but if not, you need to go to www.gravatar.con and set up an account for the same email you used to register for this forum, and then upload an image. It's pretty simple to do.
HTH and HIR (hope I'm right :-) )
David
And in reply to myself - it looks like I'm right about that, as my image showed up alongside my last post!
And of course that should be www.gravatar.com (and it does indeed seem to be that we can't edit posts, which is a pity as it means a stream of corrections - like this one - if we need to change something. hmm.)
Hi !
Nice website ! I like very much the new tab-style. A few remarks though...
~ I miss a bit the "subscribe to topic" button (and functionnality of course). I know that we've got now RSS feed instead, but I actually prefer emails. I guess I'll have to get use to RSS or find a good client that can send me a mail.
~ More annoying, It seems that the possibility to search in one forum only does not work. When I search with the left sidebar button then select a forum in the menu and click search again, results does not change and are picked from all the forums...
I'll send some other feedback along my browsing.
Nice work any way ! Congrat's
I think the All view would benefit from a column showing which forum the message is in.
Thanks for all the feedback everyone. Most of the features you request above we plan to add very soon.
re: post editing, it should be possible!
... but I see that for some reason it's not. I'll figure out why.
Sorry, but the rss feeds do not work!!!
Thunderbird throws an error and complains the address is not valid...
Working rss feeds or a classical mailing list feature are absolutely essential for me being part of this community...
Messages are piling up already...
Good job.
The return of the user pages will be welcome - I see "coming soon".
Hi Stefan,
I'd like to fix your problem, but you haven't given me enough information.
What's the URL of the feed that doesn't work?
What is the error that Thunderbird is giving you?
Have you tried other RSS software? Do you see the same error there?
Ben,
the problem Stefan has is probably the same Valery explained in the first post of the RSS-feeds broken? topic ->https://cycling74.com/forums/rss-feeds-broken
p
Yes, I need them in my Thunderbird I am on OS 10.5.8 and the latest Thunderbird (2.0.0.23)
If I give it for example this feed: https://cycling74.com/forums/rss.php?forum=1
It would return that this is not a valid feed.
On the other hand i does put an entry in, but that doesn't load any messages...
It simply doesn't work...
The last message which came to my inbox is from 23rd 1:53...
fixed.
sorry i don't much like the new website at all. the layout doesn't work for this forum - it looks like it's broken and floating in space, or as if half the graphics won't display. i prefer more definite boxes and borders around things instead of these pale rounded boxes floating in space. is it supposed to look congruous with facebook or iphones or something? it may be my imagination but it also seems narrower than before, so it takes up only half my screen. in that case i'd prefer it centred. i much preferred the old one. but hey that's just me... maybe i just need to get used to it.
I'm surprised to find out that Cycling '74 does not make bicycles.
Forum stuff in comparison with the last rev:
I don't find all of the large spaces between CSS elements to be useful. If anything all of the blockii-ness (might be solved through widening the main post column) seems a bit distracting and a strain to navigate.
Users have to scroll through quite a bit of horiz space to see replies...
In a long thread this could end up being unwieldy. The reply is all the way at the bottom of each thread, so we have to scroll way down for that (or hit spacebar a bunch of times). Would you consider having a reply next to each post?
I don't mind straining to see the "posted n minutes ago", but I was thinking that the names of people should be darker against the white background.
I do notice a lot of niceties ala CMS, though.
jml
I wanted to mention that the 'recent replies' page for a given profile seems much better in terms of spacing.
Even, smaller text, and still un-cluttered. Could still be wider.
The gravatar thing is a bit weird for me.
I know that it's just a wordpress extension and that it's supposed to make your life easier, but I'm not sure that I want to use an external personal info collector just to post an avatar.
Another thing about the single column:
I think that it might feel less cluttered to put the sidebar on the right so that you can expand/maximize your window for larger screens without affecting the alignment area once you scroll down the page a bit and can't see the sidebar.
I'm sleepy and typed horiz when I meant vert and can't edit. I just woke up for a second and realized that you can hit 'latest reply' and then reply from there. That's ok. :)
Overall I think I like the look of the old site better with all the color variations and cleaner design.
jml
I've seen some unparsed html code in posts (Firefox on a Mac), which make them very hard to read...
I am missing a possibility to quote...
I've seen post which mention an attachment, the answers let me assume there was an attachment, but I haven't found/seen it...
Is this tested on the standard Max/MSP machine which is a white MacBook, running OS X 10.5.8 and Firefox?
I do like the look and feel though, and since I am receiving the rss feeds I am almost happy. Congratulations to that part...
Stefan
Stefan
Vanille,
Thanks, that email address slipped past my radar. Fixing now.
Is there a way to remove our email addresses from google's cache?
The usernames underneath the avatars are almost unreadable..
Salut Vanile,
We're working on making old attachments available. :)
Ben
@mudang - I don't know of a way, other than to let the cache expire on its own. Sorry for the inconvenience. Spam sucks!
i really miss "attachement" and "edit".
that you can move your own post is a nice idea.
the blue is okay, but the violet from day 1 was even better.
the username and the "posted 1 hour ago" could have a bit more
contrast, i can hardly read them.
do you also have a new server? the forum is quite fast now.
the reply boy seems small, but i dont mind, i use safari. ... :)
the "all forums" filter is a nice idea, seems appropiate for us.
why are the menus on the side? waste of space. could have been
like they were before, in a block on top of the page.
now that all passwords are updated, people hopefully stop
complaining about password not work
pluggo .. pluggo .. humh. never mind.
Is there no longer a way to message a user from their profile page? If there still is, I can't find it.
I definitely like being able to search more than once every 30 seconds...
I also miss knowing who the original poster was of a topic, as well as the last poster.
Thanks for the feedback guys!
If you're a firefox user and have the "stylish" add-on you can use custom css to fix a few things while the forum is being set up. I've widened the content window and changed the poster name and date colours to something visible but there's a whole lot more you could do if you want to explore.
lh
@-moz-document url-prefix(https://cycling74.com/forums) {
div.threadauthor p a {
color: #666666 !important;
}
.poststuff {
color: #666666 !important;
}
#wrapper {
width: 850px !important;
}
}
i HATE the new website. the share pages arent up yet, all my bookmarked links are broken, and it takes more clicks to get anywhere (whats up with the navigation?) the apple approach of removing features (from the website) to cater to the average joe is not the way to go for a program such as this which has a rather brainy userbase. We can handle it, we can! I want my features back! And, from the posts above, it would appear that I'm not the only one. Can I get an Amen, brethren?
I hope the user pages are coming back soon. That was a great way to serve the community.
Can we get the "Mark all posts read" function back?
I, too, vote for less white space on the page and shorter scrolling.
As others have mentioned, the usernames are really hard to read with these old eyes.
Thanks for all the work in the update!
Thanks for all the feedback everyone!
i also noticed a bug:
if you are on your profile page and you log out, all of your information is still displayed.
jml
Another issue I noticed a number of times now is that previously visited threads with new unread posts do not update their state but remain grey. I miss the option to format as code or quote, or did I miss something obvious? Furthermore I noticed that attachements have been removed, right? Thanks for the great work.
@jml -- I'm unable to reproduce. When I log out, it doesn't show my personal info any more. And when I look at your page when I'm logged out I don't see anything exposed. Can anyone else reproduce?
@jvkr - I can't tell if you're being sarcastic or not! :)
re: keeping track of read posts, we're working on that feature. re: code, use a code tag. re: quote, you can use a blockquote tag, but any sort of automatic quoting probably won't be supported in these forums. Attachments have been removed for now, but we're working on something that will merge the worlds of forum attachments, the old share pages, and user profiles.
Good to hear that share/user pages will come back in a way or another. Hope it will happen in 2009!
Quote: @jvkr - I can't tell if you're being sarcastic or not! :)
Never, then I would have written a letter instead. Concerning the formatting? For instance copying text that was formatted as code was easy as it was contained in a box.
I just now see this just above the statement about the bicycles:
Allowed markup: a blockquote code em strong ul ol li.
You can also put code in between backtick characters.
Let's try.
is this code?
Hi,
Good looking site you've got there! Just two niggles:
1) When searching the forums, I really miss the option to search for words either in the Subject Heading. I always found the most relevant results using this option. Please can we have it back?
2) I can't see any options to change my profile picture.
Thanks for all of your hard work.
nick
please ignore the word "either" in my last post (an option to edit comments after they've been posted would be useful).
Nick
Nick -
> 2) I can't see any options to change my profile picture.
You need to set up a gravatar at www.gravatar.com. Whatever you upload there will follow you around the net to compatble sites, which now appears to include C74.
BEN - should there perhaps be something somewhere which explains this to members?
David
I think it's really unfortunate that the width is fixed. I have a widescreen monitor. I want to be able to stretch my window wide and have the content reflow into the new aspect ratio.
Is the 'who's online now' feature gone?
I really think crucial elements of the forum have been sacrificed in the service of a more economical design. With so many new topics going up everyday it really helped to have a) the original poster's name and b) a line clarifying the topic header. At the moment the main forum pages are very uniform, I'm probably missing interesting threads because the topic doesn't stand out.
Individual users are what makes a forum great, and at the moment they're all lost in white..
I hope these things will return..
On a somewhat less essential note (apologies if its been pointed out before), I've noticed that searches for older topics return garbled results. This one appears to attribute a whole conversation between Kasper Toeplitz and Volker Bohm to Ben Neville..
Like the new site, but as a noob to Max the share page and their resources were essential for me, actually my main reason to keep returning to the site. I'm really missing them now. Anyway to access them? Hi to Jean-Francois Charles, its mainly your links i'm missing.
the new site kinda feels like New Coke or the redesigned tropicana orange juice box...
bit the grava-bullet, although i don't think storing some small images on the c74 server is a big deal.
i do like the new 'recent activity' page.
the way that you can see recent replies and when they were written is quite nice and i would consider this a huge improvement.
again, i think the lightest text elements on the site are too light and should be darker for legibility. i cannot read them on a laptop depending on the tilt of the screen...
@jml -- I'm unable to reproduce. When I log out, it doesn't show my personal info any more. And when I look at your page when I'm logged out I don't see anything exposed. Can anyone else reproduce?
yeah; actually i didn't realize that you could read someone's posting history now when not logged in. i can't remember if that was always enabled in the previous site, but i think most forums only allow for that if you're a member.
jml
there are 3 things i think are vital to change:
1. search by specified content w/r/t which forum you want to look at (sorely missed)
2. reply on any given post. this doesn't necessarily facilitate the need for quoting, but would help immensely. it could also help in this case to mention the post number that the reply involves.
3. search individual threads would be great and eliminate the need for #2 in some ways.
[@ben n] re. quoting: can u insert blockquote tags around text when replying to something, ala reply-blockquote buttons or such? or is that a nightmare to implement?
jml
oh, and when you click on a given reply that is listed in the "recent activity" or profile pages, the link should jump to that post, esp. if you decide eventually to truncate threads via multiple pages.
jml
I mostly agree with previous posters about missing functionality in the forum. In particular, post editing is necessary to correct errors in code examples, spelling etc.
Non-gravatar profile pictures would be nice to.
And please ignore the word "mostly" in my previous post, I would remove it if i could ;).
The reply count should be more like zl mth. After one reply the count says two. (Max programmers ar soooo precise)
as always, thanks very much for all the feedback.
@nick: Our search will improve. We're working on it. In the meantime, a great alternative for site-specific search is always to stand on the tall shoulders of Google. Try formatting a google search like this:
"eggs crutches halloween site:cycling74.com" .
@david: You're right, the idea of gravatars could be communicated more clearly. Any ideas as to where that information should go?
@chris: i respectfully disagree with your preference for a relative width rather than a fixed width. tabbed browsing, readability. I think of forums as being closer to newspapers than books, but you may feel differently. But I agree that the design still needs work clearly, and I hope we're moving towards something that is both pleasing and functional.
@goodparley: yes, who's online now gone. a lot of elements were sacrificed, and we're now deciding what is and is not "crucial". so thanks for your feedback. you're not the first person to say that they would prefer to see the original poster more than the most recent poster. and thanks for the report of the importing bug that's crediting me with a lot of posts I didn't make!
@razzkazz: something like share coming soon.
@briangibson: I actually really like that new tropicana carton!!! we still have it in some stores up here.
@jml: storing files on c74 server not a big deal, but taking on the burden of maintaining that code substantial. thanks for your design opinions.
re: quoting, I think you're asking if I can implement a one-click repond button that inserts the old text inside blockquote tags as a stating point. The issue here is not how difficult it would be - not very - but rather that it's not something we want to make easy. My current thinking is that quoting is a behaviour and style that migrated from the world of page-at-a-time usenet and email services. The value of lazy quoting when the entire thread is accessible is less clear to me. For a design reference, note that quoting is by default hidden in gmail.
@Hans: agree about post editing. coming soon.
Hi Ben, if quoting is probably not going to make a come back it would be nice to be able to reply to a specific message in a thread rather than just tagging your reply on at the end. The old forum had message IDs so you could see which specific comment was being replied to.
lh
i am mostly using the rss-feed with apple mail, and since the update, there is no "re:" in the posts anymore, which makes it hard to keep track of threads.
is this something by design or by error?
either way its annoying.
h
"you're not the first person to say that they would prefer to see the original poster more than the most recent poster."
(Ok, I cant let this one slide..) Actually I was! Far as this thread goes. I just reiterated it under the guise of a second issue because it's SO VERY IMORTANT! s'life and death here..
I generally like the layout of the new site. That said, for the forum, I find the all white background tiring for the eyes (not to mention not very eco-friendly as it is being said). Particularly, the light grey or bleu over white background is almost unreadable to me.
Just my 2 cents.
Best,
Julien
One thing that worries me is the "Coming Soon" state of the Max Runtime Download. In a number of cases, it's a crucial tool, and a reason why Max is chosen in some projects, over other solutions. Please, make a runtime available soon, for real.
Thanks!
I'm with Roman. The light grays and blues for fonts aren't legible to these old eyes against the white background. I've fixed it with local CSS, but it seems like others might have the same issue?
Not super crazy about the light text color on the light background. I can't read the stuff on the left side easily. It seems fashionably sadistic. Hey you kids, get off my lawn.
@benneville How about a sticky at the top of the Misc category with the various little things people need to know (like the gravatar)?
David
Thanks again for the continued feedback!
@Luke, I like the idea but I wonder if replying to specific posts would cause problems for those who use RSS readers to follow threads. If you can provide an example of a forum that does that, and also has usable RSS feeds, we will consider the request.
@kochhw, thanks for letting me know about the missing re:. I'll look into it.
@jln, LCD monitors dominant, so: http://blogs.wsj.com/numbersguy/does-a-darkened-google-really-save-electricity-104/
@Jean-Francois: the "coming soon" status of the 5.1 runtime is not a website issue.
@ztutz + @kp, design in progress.
@ Jean-Francois: The runtime is part of the full version, so anyone can download it and throw the Max app away.
I found a CSS issue: The space between
elements is abysmally large.
Example: https://cycling74.com/forums/patchchords-vs-s-and-r (scroll down)
Hans, thanks so much for 1. reporting that bug and 2. including a link to an example. Especially #2!
Compared to the previous site, I find it more difficult to track already visited threads with new posts, as they don't change their state. In the old version I could scroll down to the point where I left off (the frist entry with read state) and from there start scrolling up. Now I find myself opening read threads with no new messages quite often. Best would be a combination of the old and the new: being able to see if a thread had been visited already, and a flag for new posts. The option to create an insertion point (like a bookmark) would also be an option.
_
johan
I think vBulletin is a decent forum software. And there's a Wordpress-vBulletin bridge.
http://www.vbulletin.org/forum/showthread.php?p=1925652
there are some examples how it integrates to other websites.
Well, seems like the vBulletin / Wordpress PlugIn is not supported anymore. But in general it may be a good idea to use a mature forum software and integrate it into the website / Wordpress. I don't know which forum-plugin or whatever is being used at the moment.
You can now edit your posts.
re: quoting, ... it's not something we want to make easy. My current thinking is that quoting is a behaviour and style that migrated from the world of page-at-a-time usenet and email services.
@ben i can see your point and agree.
it's super annoying when people reply w/ quotes and don't realize they are quoting 5 pages of a max patch.
but along these lines, maybe it should also be required that people post patch links or something like that. i personally don't find much of a reason to have any patch stuff inline except for smaller pieces of patch. :)
it's convenient until you have to scroll down.
also, i think that a single reply button for each post would be great and might help populate the correct information for a quicklink back up to that post. for example, if you see that post x is a reply to post y, then you could maybe click on that post id and the page could jump up to that post id. this would make using the forum much quicker in general.
thanks very much for the ability to edit, btw.
i just got an idea about the patch stuff.
if the code tag was collapsable it might help. then if one is viewing a given page, the 'code portion' could be collapsed by default and you could click on the 'see code' link in order to reveal the magic.
?
jml
I think the All view would benefit from a column showing which forum the message is in.
i agree with this.
Thanks for the ideas jml. Not sure we want to take on the burden of supporting that type of inline complicatedness... it's more than just the present, it's all future places these posts might end up being rendered.
There are external javascripts you could use to expand and collapse code wrapped in "pre" html tags. Have a look here for the one that's used by wordpress. If you collapse everything by default it would make threads shorter. It would also allow people to post max 5 patches as uncompressed JSON without the whole screen being filled and there's an option to copy directly to clipboard so no need for all the scrolling. This might benefit max 4 users who would be able to either read the JSON directly or use the SuperCollider conversion patch. At the moment all the copy compressed patches are lost to them.
The old forum gave each new post a unique ID number and this was referred to if that post was replied to by another user. Could this be added into the text somewhere without making a mess of the RSS feeds? This way replies would still appear in the order they were posted but there would be a visual clue to help people follow conversations. You could also include links with anchors tags to jump to parent posts and maybe even include the name of the poster being replied to. Stop me if I'm getting way ahead of everything here, just trying to throw some ideas out there!
lh
i think somebody already said this but i miss the attachment option for patches which have [bpatcher] etc. makes it easier than copying and pasting all the code and then the people on the other end spending time pasting it then saving then opening again.
other than that, no problems, except that the details of the poster could be clearer, rather faded a bit too much...
I agree with almost all comments about the forum
I'm a new and I find it too bad to not be able to get the attachements (but I know you are working on it)
The links don't work anymore (I guess you are also working on it also).
And the subscribe option, I really liked it in the previous site
as well the unread section.
Somehow the search option doesn't always take me to real post ?! Its like it creates post for that day that dont exist !!!
Overall the site looks good, well structured and simpler.
If a pale gray could replace the white background it would be much easier. That said our website is white as well but when you read a lot of material its very difficult after a while - makes me think that we should change our background color).
Thanks
Hi !
Is there a way to get an RSS feed of new topics in one particular forum ?
I got the new topic feed in the "All" section and I got the new message feed in one forum only. But I actually would very much like an hybrid of those : new topics in one particular forum.
Did I missed this feature ? Is it implemented ?
Thx
[EDIT]Woops ! I think I found it... feed:https://cycling74.com/forums/rss.php?forum=1&topics=1 seems to work well ! Am I correct ?
for some reason the search by forum function doesn't work right now.
i first have to search for a term (there is no advanced search button) and then when i select "forum max/msp" and type in jitter, all the results show up from the jitter forum instead of the max/msp forum.
thanks for any help...
jml
The search function on the forum doesn't seem to give as much results as before. Maybe you are aware of this problem.
Hi Marie-Helene and jml - search is a lot better now.
Ben
Thanks Stefan - we'll take a look at the CSS asap.
hi stefan,
i fixed up the css to solve this issue. let us know if you come across anything else.
thanks!
alanna
did anything change with the feed recently?
i am reading with apple mail and can´t get the max/msp forum rss anymore: "content has unknown format" says mail.
the jitter feed works though...
strange.
nevermind...sometimes complaining helps...mysteriously it started working again just now.
(without me changing anything)
sorry for the noise
h
Me too and now works again.
Thanks!