[07-MAR-2016] Current status of BLF upgrade process

Hope with favor my words youā€™ll anoint
Without bending your nose out of joint
All Iā€™m trying to say
I wish there was a way
To possess an unbiased viewpoint

Iā€™ll say it againā€” the most important next feature should be a ā€œJackā€™s Limericksā€ page. Make it obligatory reading for all new users before they can post. :smiley:

Indeed, there should be a collection page of them

We should have a collection page of the important posts, probably starting with CRXā€™s page but covering things like beginning in flashlightism and so on, in an easy to find dedicated place

You mean like this?
Buried Treasure

:smiley:

Good points here J-Dub74, thanks for the input.

Thanks SBā€¦and youā€™re welcome. :smiley:
Speaking of my being too long winded hereā€™s a situation that created a bit of grief (for me) a few nights ago. I was up too late bouncing between tabs, drafting two separate PM messages to BLF friends. After spending an hour or so typing these novels my laptop battery died. I foolishly had the power settings tuned as such that I had only a few seconds warning before it shut down. Restoring my internet session did not restore my words. Here is where an auto-save function would have saved me a lot of time rewriting. The same has happened to me when posting in a thread. On occasion, due to some little glitch or another a page of carefully crafted words are eaten by the cyberboogieman.

Is an auto-save function feasible? Too problematic? Too much server space eaten up by drafts of unsent messages and posts? I try to craft my lengthier work in Word or some other format when I think about it in order to avoid these losses but since we have this thread going I figure Iā€™ll throw it out there. If itā€™s not possible with this software or simply too problematic on your end Iā€™ll just try to be more careful. Let me know your thoughts.

I assume this was with the Advanced Post Editor? Because in my testing on Firefox with the Simple Post Editor it does autosave text when I kill the browser and re-open it. The Advanced Post Editor doesnā€™t have it yet, but it does appear to be possible to configure.

Profanity is an interesting issue. For some, simply using a word is offensive regardless of context. For others, itā€™s just another word and not worth noticing. Iā€™ve probably used the wrong words by accident a few times because for me itā€™s like trying to remember not to say avocado, so if someone points it out Iā€™ll gladly change or remove it.

Iā€™m not really worried about those kinds of cases though, since theyā€™re easy to resolve already.

Instead, Iā€™m more concerned about other types of cases. Someone recently made a comment which intentionally escalated some drama using insults and challenges, and I sent a private message asking them to stop adding fuel to a fireā€¦ and I wasnā€™t the only one who asked. They told me the fuel makes the fire prettier, and added another line worth of drama to the original comment. I was a bit surprised by this reaction so I looked up the personā€™s other comments with the handy new ā€œMy Postsā€ feature, and found they had a fairly consistent history of borderline trolling.

Itā€™d be nice to have something built in to help deal with that. Most people wonā€™t go far enough to PM an administrator about these things, but theyā€™re often willing to click some sort of ā€˜dislikeā€™ button.

Dislike buttons have quite a few problems, which have already been brought up, really it feels like more negatives than positives. Except for this:

I have to agree, I think many people donā€™t want to pm the admin even if they feel there is a problem. For that reason I lean towards it being useful. And maybe needed.

Iā€™ve also had incomplete drafts dropped when flipping between tabs on safari using the spe.

Iā€™ve never even tried the Advanced Post Editor. Iā€™m a simple man. :wink: All computers Windows 7 64-bit running the latest version of IE11ā€¦

So you're the one still running Internet Explorer. :)

Ha! Yesā€¦ Iā€™m the one. :P Not being a programmer but a simple ā€œIT guyā€ I never dove into Linux and avoid Mac like the plague. ;) I certainly see the appeal (of Linux), I just donā€™t have the time. Lots of respect for those that do though :beer:

Not really a Linux thingā€¦ Other browsers generally have better crash recovery.

Incomplete posts are generally not even sent to the server yet, so thereā€™s nothing the server can do to recover those after a crash. However, the browser can do quite a bit to avoid losing half-written messages. Itā€™s likely easiest to address lost-data concerns by switching to a more robust browser, like Chrome or Firefox.

A variety of server-side solutions are at least possible, but theyā€™re rather tricky.

I use Lazarus, works quite well, its not perfect but has saved my butt many times. I also use firefox

:) I actually happen to maintain a little spin of Linux that I put together to help new users migrate more smoothly. But thatā€™s a topic for another conversation. O:)

Meanwhile is there any way to convince you to run Firefox or Chrome on Windows? I think youā€™ll have a better time with crash recovery and autosaving. As I said, itā€™s already natively working with the Simple Post Editor in Firefox, and it looks like I can probably get it working for the Advanced Post Editor as well.

As somebody else mentioned, the autosaving is usually not server-side. Most implementations these days take advantage of an HTML5 feature for local browser storage. Hereā€™s a list of supported browsers. Not sure why IE11 failed you, since itā€™s also on the list.

I use Compuserve, and my momā€™s AOL as backup, for my dial up 56k connection. Iā€™m using all my extra CDā€™s as coasters because Iā€™ve got 260000+ free hours (oh the days when internet access was measured in timeā€¦)

I hope this isnā€™t off topic by the time it has been uploaded :smiley:

BTW, thanks for all your hard work SB, I love this forum and I spend an inordinate amount of time here every day. Iā€™d be remiss for sure if you werenā€™t at the helm.

My pleasure, onetrickpony! Thanks for saying so.

If you have a moment, you can quickly click the [ Preview ] button. I used to spend a lot of extra time copying my replies & pasting them into Notepad ā€œjust in caseā€. The Preview function gets it into the browser quicker and easier.

Yeah I was pretty excited when IE11 came out as well. Now I can download Chrome and Firefox 20% faster on a new install!

Truthfully, I have not tried IE in a LONG time. MS let it stagnate for quite a while and Firefox and Chrome were far superior. A buddy of mine works for MS and keeps telling me that it is competitive now, but I just canā€™t bring myself to try it. Shared bookmarks between my Chromebook, phone and desktop are pushing me more and more towards Chrome. I have not had any problems with lost posts in Firefox, and I too have a tendency to research and switch tabs a lot while writing things up.