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I’m all for change and progress but I sure liked some of the old features like the names after the postings and being able to see the reply titles. Hope they will be integrated into this format. This software makes reading posts quicker but it looks like I will have to go through more of them. Any thoughts from the rest of you?
Tommy B.
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Replies
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Simply is better.
The old format was quick and easy to scan and read who what and where. This is much like the new Bob Vila board and that was why I found this site. Guess we'll have to move on.
Rob
*Man, I agree. I don't know about this format. Guess I'll try it for awhile. Maybe it's just different, but I don't think I like it.
*I too like the other way , for the same reasons you stated.glenn
*Wow! - did you see the difference between clicking on the title and clicking on the little cartoon bubble in front of the title? Click on the ballon and all you get is the topic and a list of replies with just the name. And the most recently posted to thread is alwasy at the top of the list. Give this software a chance guys, I think its gonna' be really kewl?
*this system is fast, the other one was a dog.
*I feel like the dog just chewed up my favorite slippers...
*The new format is a great improvement. It is especially useful for printing all of the usefull information contained on this site.
*bill et al.,don't tell anyone, but i'm not even aware of all the features this sucker packs (the icon-click was new to me). so keep after me for improvements, and i'll keep learning on the fly. now, to address specific concerns:the old board crashed. couldn't be revived. just too busy and too slow, so we needed to change.approx. 98% of discussion board software is horribly inadequate and dismally-user-unfriendly. this board came the closest to providing flexibility with ease-of-use.i've spent most of the past fortnight trying to devise ways to make this board look like the old breaktime, but there are always going to be differences. i had to adjust at first, but now i really do prefer seeing the topics on one screen, and all the replies and/ or text on another (for all those afflicted w/ excessive nostalgia, let's not forget the concession breaktime 2.0 made to listing all threads was to push topics completely off the first page within a day or so, rendering them effectively inert. this board keeps all active topics at the top of the page where you can always find 'em)finally, this board is just infinitely faster. one of my biggest concerns w/ conducting discussions on the web is speed/ turnaround. you don't have to wait for password confimations, you don't ahve to sign away all your personal info (yet ;), and you don't have to worry about your browser hanging, or, worse yet, our whole server crumbling down like the california coast. we're jsut taking baby steps now, but trust me; stick with it. it'll get better, bigger, and easier, all at once.sean messengerwebmaster
*Well it is different but that is not a bad thing.Sometimes newer is better. We shall see.I have some questions. Will all the archives and previous posts be incorporated into this format?Will there be the ability to add drawings in the future of this format?A picture is worth a thousand words.
*Sean, since it appears that 3.0 is here to stay, I couple of comments. I can't stand the blue bold-face on the first page. Could you make it black, not bold and a little more separation between the lines. Also, is there any way to get the names of the posters in there. There are some people whose comments are always worth reading, and some never worth reading. This way, we can just skip the bad and get right to the good.Thanks.
*color better? i'll try without bold, and see how it looks. tough to add just a little more separation, tho. we can either go single-space or double, but no way to just tweak the leading. as for poster names, that's a good idea, and i'll wade into the code to see what we can do.oh, and btw, we'll be allowing users to post attachments to messages as soon as we get a license (and enough memory to handle this board without frying our server like the house's circuit breaker in 'a christmas story' when dad plugged in all the lights), so the days of augmenting your posts w/ images aren't far away....sean.
*I like the new format - much easier to follow a thread. One question though: how is the listing of topics organized? I don't see a pattern.
*Yes, Yes !, and HIP HIP HURRAY! Oh Great Breaktime god, we grovel at your keyboard. I guess all those virgin sacrifices I was making to you to get the board back up worked. :-) This will take some getting used to, but anything is better than the withdrawl pains. Is there any way to re-post the last two weeks or so before the big crash? It seems that anything from mid Dec to now is floating in the ether.Many blessings upon your house, and may the rosinate naturally insulated fellow bestow merriment and goodies with abandon in your immediate vicinity.
*Sean, I think the brown is better than the blue, and without bold, there should be a little more space. Can't you adjust the definition of a line to give a little more space? This is getting to be fun, kinda like create your own board. I know, let's make posts that are incredibly stupid or nasty show up pink! A internet scarlet letter sort of thing. :)
*Mixed emotions here….I love the hierarchical format. I also like the way that the messages are listed in chronological order. In the old format they were reverse chronological, and you sometimes had to do a little educated guess work in order to figure out what to read first. On the other hand, we have lost some functionality.The hierarchical format is much more efficient - making good use of screen real estate. This is good for people who have relatively slow internet connections - with the old format, you downloaded a line for all the base messages, plus a line for every reply - weather you were interested or not! Not so with the new format. I'd like to see full use of the folders made. I hope that we end up with folders on various broad categories like "Business", "Design", "Materials and techniques", "tools & equipment" and "Miscellaneous". Maybe even subfolders like "energy related" under "Materials and Techniques".The 2 drawbacks I have discovered thus far; 1)when you read a thread, it is highlighted in a different color - as with the old format. With the old format, even if you exited your browser, and then came back into the forum, the links you already read were still in a different color - I think this was because the info was held in cache. Not so with the new format - major bummer. 2) Sorry, but the alphabetical listing that showed up today is no good - I think that people who read often want to look at the latest postings - so maybe the alphabetical listing might make it good for someone to look for a particular topic - assuming that "the" key word is the first word in the subject!A little nit is the budgeting of line space for message topic length - which would be OK if it warned you that you were over the 30 character limit - or whatever it is - instead of just truncating your message title.At any rate, this forum is still a great resource, and I'm pleased to be able to use it. Next, I need to start learning some of the new features, like how to make my postings more interesting.
*Mixed emotions here….I love the hierarchical format. I also like the way that the messages are listed in chronological order. In the old format they were reverse chronological, and you sometimes had to do a little educated guess work in order to figure out what to read first. On the other hand, we have lost some functionality.The hierarchical format is much more efficient - making good use of screen real estate. This is good for people who have relatively slow internet connections - with the old format, you downloaded a line for all the base messages, plus a line for every reply - weather you were interested or not! Not so with the new format. I'd like to see full use of the folders made. I hope that we end up with folders on various broad categories like "Business", "Design", "Materials and techniques", "tools & equipment" and "Miscellaneous". Maybe even subfolders like "energy related" under "Materials and Techniques".The 2 drawbacks I have discovered thus far; 1)when you read a thread, it is highlighted in a different color - as with the old format. With the old format, even if you exited your browser, and then came back into the forum, the links you already read were still in a different color - I think this was because the info was held in cache. Not so with the new format - major bummer. 2) Sorry, but the alphabetical listing that showed up today is no good - I think that people who read often want to look at the latest postings - so maybe the alphabetical listing might make it good for someone to look for a particular topic - assuming that "the" key word is the first word in the subject!A little nit is the budgeting of line space for message topic length - which would be OK if it warned you that you were over the 30 character limit - or whatever it is - instead of just truncating your message title.At any rate, this forum is still a great resource, and I'm pleased to be able to use it. Next, I need to start learning some of the new features, like how to make the look of my postings more interesting, adding pictures, etc.
*WebMasterSeanThe alphebetical listing of topics won't be too bad if the topics all start with a meaningful key word, and there aren't too many of them. It's probably asking a lot, but since this seems to be such powerful board software, maybe you can somehow force people to start their new topic heading with a keyword and then search to see if a topic already exists for that subject.Once inside the topic, it's a really great setup.John H
*Great job Sean!!On the ordering of messages: My vote is to go with a strict chronological ordering. I check in once a day and it'd be great to see the latest additions/changes all together at one end. The format I've seen on other boards is that a thread gets bumped to the top as long as an addition is made to it.Thanks for the efforts,Joe
*Several discoveries - "sign in" and set your "preferences" - including the order of the threads! Also, by siging in, the server keeps track of which threads you've seen and which you haven't - so many "messages" and so many new - you haven't read the "new" - but I admit I don't know exactly what sets a message from new to old.So don't keep asking Sean to make changes that you can make yourselves.But no help on color I guess. Hey, I've got an old monochromatic monitor you could use!
*I didn't care for the alphabetical listings either so I went to preferences and changed it. Personally customized forums....ya gotta like that! I do miss the previously viewed highlighted discussions. Still learning this forum but I like it so far. Thank the wood-elves that it's not a Bob Villa something.
*Thanks Bill!In my previous post I ment to add that I was probably missing something.
*howzat? i can modify anything; i am omnipotent in my virtual world (sound of bellowing james-earl jones-laugh in backgound)!tell of of your puny requests for redesign, i shall make it happen. this feeble discussion board cannot contain my coding; let there be a great feast with meats and cheeses for all (respect to kenny mayne);)
*To log on I am going to the Taunton Press log-in page. Doing it this way uses four seperate pages before I get to Breaktime. Is there a faster way to log on. Also could it be set up to enter both our user name and password on the same page?
*Oh! And I just discoverd that if you click the number after the message (Like I just clicked 16 after Jim Woodrow's message) it make sthat the last message displayed!And Jim, I agree - its tough to keep a webmaster from utilizing every feature of the software. I'm going to try bookmarking the login page to see if that shortens the number of pages I have to hit to get here. Actually, butting the user-id and password on the same page and optionally via putting a cookie on my hard disk so all all those are filled in (something I have seen this software do on other boards) would be cool.
*Sean,Your efforts are much appreciated, but I prefer the old format.Clint Searl
*I don't have much time on any of the old formats but this one seems faster. I like it so far. This is a work in progress and will continue to improve all that is needed is to care and it seems you do. Put out the information and they will come.
*Why do you have to log in? I just have link to the old Breaktime and only logged in once. I can go back to the forum whenever and never login again.
*Please change back to the old style of threads. I prefer to see ALL the replies to messages rather than having to guess if they'll be worth reading. Also I find it difficult to know which reply was for a particular message. There are several other forums on the net that are easier to read and follow along with the thread. And one more thing. It should be first come first serve. If the older messages would get pushed to the bottom of the list then you could determine newer from the older and those newer messages would have a chance of being seen longer and therefore get replied to faster. And with the way it is now if I reply to a mesaage then if someone were to reply back to me, then I do not know it until I open up that particular thread. And I cant even remember which threads I posted or replied to because I cannot see my name nor anyone elses until I actually open something up. Just my opinion.glenn
*Do you get to set your preferences logging on that way? By logging in each time, I receive the page according to my preferences ( older messages at the bottom of the page ) and I can tell which messages are new or which ones I have previously viewed by their tags. If you do get your preferences logging on as you describe, it would be much faster and easier.I really like the new format now that I'm used to it.Woodrow
*If you would login, the messages you had read or not read would be indicated by the "new" tag. And, if your especially interested in a few threads, you can subscribe to them and give them special attention.
How to Talk to Contractors About Exterior Insulation
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I'm all for change and progress but I sure liked some of the old features like the names after the postings and being able to see the reply titles. Hope they will be integrated into this format. This software makes reading posts quicker but it looks like I will have to go through more of them. Any thoughts from the rest of you?
Tommy B.