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  • Vectorworks, Inc Employee

I'll be placing instructions (only on the forums where needed) so that newer users can understand them, as well as informing regulars on how the votes will work going forward. Along with explaining the little Sort By buttons for sorting by most votes or by date.

The "Ask a Question" button thing I agree on, I think some others mentioned it earlier too. That's just the out of the box stock text, going to change it to "Make a Wish" or something similar but leave the Troubleshooting subforum as Ask a Question since there it's appropriate phrasing.

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Hmmm - I know you guys were discussing this in another thread, but now I can't find it....

I would say that the way troubleshooting works (where posts go out of order based on voting) - SUPER CONFUSING!  Please keep it linear related to time of posting. I can't see any value in this here, where threads don't usually go on and on and on for pages.  It might make sense for Apple or Google support threads, but this just confuses me.  It's like skipping around the playlist of a DVD. I'm sure others will disagree, but putting vote out there for linear :)

Also - how can we get back to single spacing by default when hitting (line) return while typing?

That is all :)

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  • Vectorworks, Inc Employee

I'm pretty sure I'm going to be removing the voting system from Posts and only have it live on the original Topic. Topic starters or mods/admins will be able to select "Best Answer" but we want that to display at the top AND chronologically in the reply list.

That way, users can still upvote wishlist items and bug urgencies, but replies to it don't really need votes for the way we normally use the board here. 

  • Like 2
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5 minutes ago, JimW said:

I'm pretty sure I'm going to be removing the voting system from Posts and only have it live on the original Topic. Topic starters or mods/admins will be able to select "Best Answer" but we want that to display at the top AND chronologically in the reply list.

That way, users can still upvote wishlist items and bug urgencies, but replies to it don't really need votes for the way we normally use the board here. 

If I could vote for this I would :D

KM

  • Like 1
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  • Vectorworks, Inc Employee

I'm going to leave voting turned off on replies for now, but it still shows the little widget which is confusing since now it doesnt do anything. I've decided to still keep it off since the posts being reshuffled out of chronological order is MORE confusing than buttons with no function.

Going to see about resetting the votes in all replies to 0 so the sort order defaults back to chronological and I'll see if the web team can completely remove the widget next to each posts, but leave it visible next to the main topic.

Edit:

(OR If i can get it to just default to showing everything chronologically regardless of votes that would solve the problem as well for the threads that got post votes before I locked them.)

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20 minutes ago, JimW said:

Edit:

(OR If i can get it to just default to showing everything chronologically regardless of votes that would solve the problem as well for the threads that got post votes before I locked them.)

I think that's it.


Maybe the current votes can be somehow conserved for a future indicatior field of popularity and acceptance
of posts, without confusing the chronological order. To not lose the many votes already done,
which are kind of content too.

Edited by zoomer
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  • Vectorworks, Inc Employee

Also going to see about getting hover-over text on the various buttons to explain what they do. I can also add "Rules" to specific forums so that it lives at the top to help instruct users how we intend things to work as well within that subforum, I'll be giving those a try too.

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  • 1 month later...
  • Vectorworks, Inc Employee

It'll pop up an alert if things on your page updated, I leave Activity up all the time and get a little notification bar of how many new items there are and can click it to reveal them. The same will happen if you're watching a specific thread.

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  • PVA - Admin unpinned this topic
  • 2 weeks later...

A small formatting thing:

 

When you paste text into the reply box from an external source, there is a temporary message box that says "You have pasted content with formatting." The background of this box is dark grey. The second part of the message box is a really useful button that says "Remove Formatting" but the text is black, so it's barely visible against the dark background. 

 

I tried the take a screenshot but the message box disappears as soon as you hit any key.

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  • 2 weeks later...
  • Vectorworks, Inc Employee
On 11/28/2016 at 4:02 PM, Andy Broomell said:

A small formatting thing:

 

When you paste text into the reply box from an external source, there is a temporary message box that says "You have pasted content with formatting." The background of this box is dark grey. The second part of the message box is a really useful button that says "Remove Formatting" but the text is black, so it's barely visible against the dark background. 

 

I tried the take a screenshot but the message box disappears as soon as you hit any key.

 

This should now be fixed and the text of this element should be white on dark grey.

 

 

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  • 2 weeks later...
  • Vectorworks, Inc Employee

I will soon be entering into talks with the Web and Creative teams for additions and changes to be made in Phase 2 of the Forum upgrade. Below I have posted a list of most of my proposed changes, but if there are any new or existing items anyone feels we should address, please draw my attention to them here. Feel free to link me to the discussion or post anew, either is fine.

 

These items are not in order of importance:

 

1) Copy coloring from the "Online Users" block to the rest of the site. (This is the user name colors for easy role identification, so my name would show up in red since im an admin, employees of Vectorworks Inc would show in green, moderators would show in blue, Marissa in her patented pink, etc.)

 

2) Add styling for longer user defined titles. (This is needed for custom titles later on for user recognition, employee job titles and other related items.)

 

3) Add distributor dropdown selection to user profile. (This is so that users can indicate which distributor they purchased from for easier support and more accurate responses to questions with localized answers)

 

4) Change the button text in the wish list sub forum to: "Request a Feature"

 

5) Change the entire background of the "Best Answer" to green.

 

6) Reinstate the Best Answer system for the Troubleshooting subforum, but have it place the Best answer directly under the original question AND leave it in it's location further down the thread. The reposting of the post orders was found to be confusing by employees and users alike.

 

7) Gallery/Download system to replace the older Resource Share subforums, where users can post multiple versions of custom content and add multimedia support and explanation to these items. (Testing for this has already begun but it will likely roll out with these other general changes)

 

8) Youtube embeded item size control (Currently youtube links embed quite large on screen)

 

9) Dark Theme. <3

 

10) Brighter/higher contrast text in the search bar for both the search text and the search category.

 

11) Custom sort direction for threads.

 

12) Topic-only, compact activity stream.

 

 

 

Again, this is by no means an all-inclusive list, feel free to add any suggestions you like. Not everything here is guaranteed to make it into Phase 2 but anything left off the list will be kept on record for consideration in future updates.

  • Like 3
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While I like the graphics of the new forum, for some reason, I find it hard to follow threads, and specifically to sort things by topic.  Maybe I haven't found it, but I would like to see all recent posts organized by topics, rather than by activity.  The activity stream is quite detailed, even when condensed.  And the topic streams require you go into multiple areas of the website.

 

Screen Shot 2016-12-20 at 4.43.10 PM.jpg

 

Once you are in a post thread, it would be nice to have the ability to toggle newest first or read things chronologically. 

 

Screen Shot 2016-12-20 at 4.48.53 PM.jpg

 

 

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  • 2 months later...

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