A new look

[gstark]

The crashing of Firefox whilst in dslrusers is now becoming constant with this message being shown on crash

Date/Time: 2008-01-13 18:04:27.685 +1100
OS Version: 10.4.11 (Build 8S2167)
Report Version: 4

Command: firefox-bin
Path: /Applications/Firefox.app/Contents/MacOS/firefox-bin
Parent: WindowServer [101]

Version: 2.0.0.11 (2.0.0.11)

PID: 11780
Thread: 0

Exception: EXC_BAD_ACCESS (0x0001)
Codes: KERN_INVALID_ADDRESS (0x0001) at 0xbf7fe628

I'm not seeing anything like this at all, Chris.

Not from the two Windoze boxes I use.

Not from my linux boxes.

And not from the Mac (OS X 10.4) either.

Not in Firefox, IW, or Safari, as appropriate.

The message you're seeing suggests a memory error, but I cannot offer any more insight into this. I'm wondering ifd this may be something strange within your connection: I use two different upstream connections, and (as can be inferred) neither of those are showing any issues.

Is there perhaps a way you can try a different connection?

What about a different browser?

I'm at a loss to understand this.

[gstark]

Hey guys

I'm having trouble posting images from smugmug. I keep getting the message below

"It was not possible to determine the dimensions of the image."

Saved me posting the same thing!

I've just made a change in the settings. Please try now.

[cawdor]

Just an update on the "remember me" issue. Since I logged in this morning the site has indeed remembered my login, even after closing my browser completely. I keep my fingers crossed that this will be permanent!

[ATJ]

I'm using Firefox 2.0.0.11 and I'm not seeing any crashes, and since I cleared the cookies this morning the site has remembered me all day - previously it would only remember me for a session.

Damn. I spoke too soon. I just refreshed and it had forgotten who I was some four hours later.

[sirhc55]

Safari appears to be working fine Gary - Firefox is still crashing. I have set the home page for this site (as I did before) and when I hit the home button that’s when it crashes

[gstark]

Safari appears to be working fine Gary - Firefox is still crashing. I have set the home page for this site (as I did before) and when I hit the home button that’s when it crashes

Chris ...

Ok, I thought I understood what you said, tried something (worked perfectly here) then reread what you said, and now I'm not sure I understand what you've done ....


My first interpretation of what you said was that you set, within FF, your home page to be this site: prefs, put this site's URL into the home page textbox .... then every time that you open a new browser window you should come to this site, to the portal page.

I tried that, and it works fine for me ... I'm doing this on the Mac, btw ...

Then I reread your message, and I now also note that you say "when I hit the home button" .... home button? I don't understand. Which is the home "button"?

Also, which theme are you using?

Thanx.

[gstark]

The login issue is one that we're seeing too, but like the avatar issue, it has me stumped.

We're looking at it .... but not sure why it's happening.

[sirhc55]

Safari appears to be working fine Gary - Firefox is still crashing. I have set the home page for this site (as I did before) and when I hit the home button that’s when it crashes

Chris ...

Ok, I thought I understood what you said, tried something (worked perfectly here) then reread what you said, and now I'm not sure I understand what you've done ....


My first interpretation of what you said was that you set, within FF, your home page to be this site: prefs, put this site's URL into the home page textbox .... then every time that you open a new browser window you should come to this site, to the portal page.

I tried that, and it works fine for me ... I'm doing this on the Mac, btw ...

Then I reread your message, and I now also note that you say "when I hit the home button" .... home button? I don't understand. Which is the home "button"?

Also, which theme are you using?

Thanx.

Hi Gary - the Home button is the fifth button on the right at the top of the window, back, forward, refresh, stop and home. I’m using the Nikon glass theme.

[sirhc55]

OK Gary - the home button is still giving me grief but if I use the return to portal link it works just fine

[gstark]

Hi Gary - the Home button is the fifth button on the right at the top of the window, back, forward, refresh, stop and home. I’m using the Nikon glass theme.

Ok ... found the Home button ... changed my theme to be the Nikon Glass theme ...

Still cannot reproduce this.

When was the last time that you restarted your system?

Or fully closed down Firefox? I am aware of some memory leakage issues within FF, and I know that closing a window doesn't usually close the app within OS X

So I'm thinking a full system restart and see if it still happens?

[gstark]

OK Gary - the home button is still giving me grief but if I use the return to portal link it works just fine

In Firefox preferences, what is the actual URL that is entered as your home page?

Is it actually correct? Can it actually resolve? What happens if you copy this and then post it in your address bar?

[sirhc55]

OK Gary - the home button is still giving me grief but if I use the return to portal link it works just fine

In Firefox preferences, what is the actual URL that is entered as your home page?

Is it actually correct? Can it actually resolve? What happens if you copy this and then post it in your address bar?

The address (url) I have entered into my home page in preferences is: portal.php

OK - I think I have resolved the problem, the above url was far too large

[blacknstormy]

Looks good ... but it's going to take me ages to get used to it ..... playing now

[gstark]

The address (url) I have entered into my home page in preferences is:
http ://www.dslrusers.net/portal.php

OK - I think I have resolved the problem, the above url was far too large

I've just inserted a space into the quoted URL, but it neither seems to big, nor does it cause my system to crash either. Strange ....

Regardless, you seem to have fixed it, and that's what matters.

[ATJ]

I'm using Firefox 2.0.0.11 and I'm not seeing any crashes, and since I cleared the cookies this morning the site has remembered me all day - previously it would only remember me for a session.

Damn. I spoke too soon. I just refreshed and it had forgotten who I was some four hours later.

Well, this morning I didn't have to log on again. That was 11 hours. This is strange indeed. Maybe the cookies expire after a certain amount of time and it doesn't matter how often you visit in that time.

[bwhinnen]

Can I suggest that anyone having issues with the board does a Delete all board cookies first, this can be found down the bottom of the screen on the RHS? The differences between phpBB2 and phpBB3 and the cookies are significant enough to cause errors. I went through this previously when I upgraded the forum for the WRX Club of QLD from 2 to 3.

Cheers
Brett

[ATJ]

Can I suggest that anyone having issues with the board does a Delete all board cookies first, this can be found down the bottom of the screen on the RHS? The differences between phpBB2 and phpBB3 and the cookies are significant enough to cause errors. I went through this previously when I upgraded the forum for the WRX Club of QLD from 2 to 3.

Already did this yesterday. The board then remembered me from 8:43am until sometime 10:28pm (or before) where I was forced to login again. It has still remembered me since then.

[rflower]

The new site looks excellent Gary. Well done to you and Leigh (and anyone else involved) on a great effort.

In the previous version, if you clicked on a link (on the right hand side of the main window for example) and that link was a multi page thread, you were taken to the last page. Now it seems to take you to the 1st page ... Is that a known problem / issue?

thanks.

[gstark]

The new site looks excellent Gary. Well done to you and Leigh (and anyone else involved) on a great effort.

In the previous version, if you clicked on a link (on the right hand side of the main window for example) and that link was a multi page thread, you were taken to the last page. Now it seems to take you to the 1st page ... Is that a known problem / issue?

There's a few new "features" - including this - that I consider to be issues. I think this one is fixable fairly easily though.

[Jonesy]

AS has already been said....

Thanks guys for all of your time and efforts so far.
The site looks great and thanks also for the amount of extra work that you are putting in to nut out the teething problems.

[who]

Looks good Gary, Leigh, et al.

All I can add is a bit of pedantry from when not yet logged in....

Under the bargains heading is the following:

DSLRUsers can provide cheep stuff for suitably qualified members.

Are you importing birds now There is a smiley for it

[Handlebars]

Looks great. Using Canon glass, firefox, winxp and no problems here.

I really enjoy the white text on black background, so much easier on the eyes.

[ATJ]

Another anomaly, but not a huge one is that links don't open in a new window automatically with a left click. Most of the time I right-click and open in new tab anyway, but I guess not everyone does. They might now

Steve,

You're talking about links embedded within a post I presume? My recollection is that they would mostly open in a new tab, and I'm understanding that you're confirming this for the old version of the code, but not for the new?

I don't know of I can do much about it, but I will see.

Thank you.

Gary,

Embedded links are still opening in the same window for me. On the old database, a click on the link opened a new window (I hate tabs). In most cases when I finished with the new window I would just close it - but now I lose the DSLRUsers window, too. I believe the difference is the use of "target=" within the "a" tag.

[gstark]

Another anomaly, but not a huge one is that links don't open in a new window automatically with a left click. Most of the time I right-click and open in new tab anyway, but I guess not everyone does. They might now

Steve,

You're talking about links embedded within a post I presume? My recollection is that they would mostly open in a new tab, and I'm understanding that you're confirming this for the old version of the code, but not for the new?

I don't know of I can do much about it, but I will see.

Thank you.

Gary,

Embedded links are still opening in the same window for me. On the old database, a click on the link opened a new window (I hate tabs). In most cases when I finished with the new window I would just close it - but now I lose the DSLRUsers window, too. I believe the difference is the use of "target=" within the "a" tag.

Andrew,

Yes, but this is standard forum code. I prefer to not mess with it unless I have to.

And if I have to, I need to find where it lives first. I love a challenge.

[gstark]

Looks good Gary, Leigh, et al.

All I can add is a bit of pedantry from when not yet logged in....

Under the bargains heading is the following:

DSLRUsers can provide cheep stuff for suitably qualified members.

Are you importing birds now There is a smiley for it

That's deliberate. Sort of. I need to copy the text from the old page into this placeholder, and I've not yet done so. Maybe on the weekend, whatever that might be.

[ATJ]

Gary,

Embedded links are still opening in the same window for me. On the old database, a click on the link opened a new window (I hate tabs). In most cases when I finished with the new window I would just close it - but now I lose the DSLRUsers window, too. I believe the difference is the use of "target=" within the "a" tag.

Andrew,

Yes, but this is standard forum code. I prefer to not mess with it unless I have to.

And if I have to, I need to find where it lives first. I love a challenge.

OK, if you really love a challenge, don't read this: http://www.easytutorials.org/phpbb3_pro ... indow.html
or this: http://www.phpbb.com/community/viewtopi ... &sk=t&sd=a

[Willy wombat]

Well done guys. Im off to check out the new board. Hope I can still find all the good stuff

[Matt. K]

Nice work forum gurus!Bright and breezy!

[W00DY]

Just an update on the login situation... I have tried deleting the cookies (refer to post earlier in this thread), bookmarking the page at different points (before I log in, after I log in, at the portal, at the Index)

and the forum still forgets me

Maybe it is trying to tell me not to spend as much time here

Any other suggestions Gary or Leigh?

I'm on a mac using Safari (I have tried with FireFox as well and the same thing)

Cheers.

[gstark]

Just an update on the login situation... I have tried deleting the cookies (refer to post earlier in this thread), bookmarking the page at different points (before I log in, after I log in, at the portal, at the Index)

This has got to be local, in some way.

Macbook, Firefox, three different connections, and no need to log in for over a day. That's swapping connections, and no issues. Vry strange. There is a persistent session setting within the configuration, but it seems to be fine ....

Trying to find the answer .....

OK, if you really love a challenge, don't read this: http://www.easytutorials.org/phpbb3_pro ... indow.html
or this: http://www.phpbb.com/community/viewtopi ... &sk=t&sd=a

Andrew, if you read that second thread, what's actually needed is totally unclear, and there's some interesting discussion about how the writers of the forum software have tried to adhere to standards, which means excluding the (obsolete) "_blank" parameter.

I certainly prefer the old behaviour, but I also respect the points made about adhering to standards. As a developer, that's actually a very important aspect to me, and when I need to deviate from them, I need to be able to justify my decision.

Which is where I am now, in this regard. One point was made in that thread that it should be a user configurable setting, and that is something that I would readily support. It's not, and so it comes back to what do the standards mean, and I need to look beyond just this forum, and how users will be, in the future, interacting with applications.

If I break the standard, will that be "damaging" our users' future experiences beyond this forum? That's the implication .... When moving users into Windows from DOS, we had similar issues to consider ...

[ATJ]

Andrew, if you read that second thread, what's actually needed is totally unclear, and there's some interesting discussion about how the writers of the forum software have tried to adhere to standards, which means excluding the (obsolete) "_blank" parameter.

I certainly prefer the old behaviour, but I also respect the points made about adhering to standards. As a developer, that's actually a very important aspect to me, and when I need to deviate from them, I need to be able to justify my decision.

Which is where I am now, in this regard. One point was made in that thread that it should be a user configurable setting, and that is something that I would readily support. It's not, and so it comes back to what do the standards mean, and I need to look beyond just this forum, and how users will be, in the future, interacting with applications.

If I break the standard, will that be "damaging" our users' future experiences beyond this forum? That's the implication .... When moving users into Windows from DOS, we had similar issues to consider ...

Gary,

Over the years I have been both a developer and a web designer. In both roles, standards and user experience are very important and so I appreciate your comments. One thing that I was taught as a web designer is that it is bad practice to send people away from your site that take people away from your site - that is, if you have a link to an external site, you should always open that in a separate window. The user can then navigate all they like on the other site and all they need to do to go back to your site is close the window - rather than hitting back a number of times. All well developed sites I visit do exactly that. As a user I have come to accept that behaviour and when I visit a site that doesn't do that I conclude they don't care about their users. Every other forum I visit has this behaviour (opening links in a new window) I guess I'm going to have to put up with bad behaviour here.

[Mr Darcy]

I too am impressed with the overall look & feel.
The search engine seems to have improved too. I did a search on xcopy the other day & didn't find the thread I knew was there somewhere. Tried it again today & up she came.
One question though,
How do the various font colours work on the different backgrounds? e.g. yellow text works real well on a black background for highlights, but maybe not so well on othersBlack might not work on black at all (Edit) did a preview & black on black is not remapped. So I assume other colours are not either. This could make the use of coloured fonts a bit problematic

Also, I have had logout problems too. They started when I replied to a thread - the second or third one, not the first. Until then I was fine. I have pressed the Delete all cookies button. Will let you know if problems persist.

[Mr Darcy]

Just shut down firefox(Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-GB; rv:1.8.1.11) Gecko/20071127 Firefox/2.0.0.11) (WinXP all patches added). It forgot me when I came back within mnutes, using a link in a topic reply notification.

One other thing. Nikon theme. If I have bookmarks open I have to scroll to see all the text in a message, even if there are no pictures. Secondary monitor set to 1280x1024

[Reschsmooth]

One niggle I have relates to use of the "back" button - I am not sure if this was the same with the old format (I don't think it was), but I have had occasion, a couple of times, to have to move out of the post a reply page (to find other information) and when I go "back" to the reply page, my drafted post has gone.

I know one can save a draft or perhaps should open a new window to find the other information, but it can be frustrating if one has drafted a lengthy response, for example.

I trust this makes sense?

cheers

[ATJ]

One niggle I have relates to use of the "back" button - I am not sure if this was the same with the old format (I don't think it was), but I have had occasion, a couple of times, to have to move out of the post a reply page (to find other information) and when I go "back" to the reply page, my drafted post has gone.

Patrick,

I just tried this and I didn't lose my draft. I'm using Firefox 2.0.0.11 on WinXP.

[ATJ]

Hey, I just noticed that everyone's signatures have gone. Well... almost everyone's. Gary's sig is still there.

[radar]

Gary,

Just an update on the login situation... I have tried deleting the cookies (refer to post earlier in this thread), bookmarking the page at different points (before I log in, after I log in, at the portal, at the Index)

This has got to be local, in some way.

Macbook, Firefox, three different connections, and no need to log in for over a day. That's swapping connections, and no issues. Vry strange. There is a persistent session setting within the configuration, but it seems to be fine ....

Trying to find the answer .....

Same here, Mac OS X 10.4.11 with Safari and Firefox, it does not remember me

Looking at the cookies for dslrusers.net, after I log in with remember me ticked, all there is:

Site: dslrusers.net
Name: style_cookie
Content: null
Host: http://www.dslrusers.net
Path: /
Send For: Any type of connection
Expires: Wed, 14 Jan 2009 11:48:04 AM

This is on Firefox after clearing cache and cookies.

Cheers,

André

[Alpha_7]

My favourite feature is "View New Posts" is available on each page. Makes life much easier for me!

[sirhc55]

Love the Nikon glass but I have had to go back to the more traditional look as I find the red copy virtually unreadable.

[sirhc55]

Gary,

Just an update on the login situation... I have tried deleting the cookies (refer to post earlier in this thread), bookmarking the page at different points (before I log in, after I log in, at the portal, at the Index)

This has got to be local, in some way.

Macbook, Firefox, three different connections, and no need to log in for over a day. That's swapping connections, and no issues. Vry strange. There is a persistent session setting within the configuration, but it seems to be fine ....

Trying to find the answer .....

Same here, Mac OS X 10.4.11 with Safari and Firefox, it does not remember me

Looking at the cookies for dslrusers.net, after I log in with remember me ticked, all there is:

Site: dslrusers.net
Name: style_cookie
Content: null
Host: http://www.dslrusers.net
Path: /
Send For: Any type of connection
Expires: Wed, 14 Jan 2009 11:48:04 AM

This is on Firefox after clearing cache and cookies.

Cheers,

André

Me too

[radar]

A bit more on the login problem:

-tried on WinXP running in Parallels on the Mac.
-Firefox does the same, as the Mac OS X version, it doesn't remember me.
-Firefox does remember the sid link, so if I go to that link, that actually has me logged in
-could be because the cookie is associated with the sid instead of the web site itself??? Just guessing here.

Anyways, hope this helps to shed some light on the problem.

On the Mac, in Firefox, I have the web tools loaded and when I look at the cookies then, it shows be the cookie for the sid once I login, as this:

Code: Select all

http://www.dslrusers.net/portal.php?&sid=cab1c88fba8262585db28460fc7a0cab

André
(PS: one feature I love is when you hit submit, if there has been other posts in the meantime, it shows them and gives you the option to amend you post. Should help in repeating answers )

[ATJ]

[Andrew, if you read that second thread, what's actually needed is totally unclear, and there's some interesting discussion about how the writers of the forum software have tried to adhere to standards, which means excluding the (obsolete) "_blank" parameter.

Gary,

I have done some more investigation. It appears that "_blank" is not obsolete.

Here it is in HTML 4.0: http://htmlhelp.com/reference/html40/va ... rametarget
and in HTML 4.01: http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/types.html#idx-target_frame

Looking at the working draft of HTML 5: http://www.w3.org/html/wg/html5/ , it appears that "_blank" is still a valid "browsing context".

It appears the argument comes down to opposing views of web developers. Some believe they are helping their viewers by opening a new window (by default) when a link to an off site reference is given to preserve the current context. The other camp want to leave it entirely up to the user and let them do whatever they want. While I can appreciate letting users do what they want, at least for me, I expect that clicking on an external link (whether in a forum or on other sites) will open a new window and I hate it when it doesn't.

[Big V]

Does not rememebr my log on with ie and xp pro either. Have tried all the other sugestions to no avail..

[Louie]

Mine is now random - I had to relog on earlier this evening but this session it remembered me ...... but did not update the recent post count from my last visit .......

[gstark]

Over the years I have been both a developer and a web designer. In both roles, standards and user experience are very important and so I appreciate your comments.

Same here, and exactly.

As I said, I personally don't like this behaviour. However, we should contrast this with a recent experience I had on the the Microsloth site, when I needed to renew my partner subscription.

It refused to allow me to do the transaction from the mac. Kept throwing an error, telling me that I needed a better browser. No, I needed to use a Microsoft browser.

Microsoft deny that they do this. They speak with forked tongue.

Having moved to a Windoze box, every screen opened in a new window; buy the end of the process I have 9 bloody windows open!

And as a part of the process, I also needed to do some certification courses. So, I click on the clink for the course; it takes me to the assessment! To do the course you need to allow pop-ups. They say that you can do it temporarily by control clicking the link. Well, every bloody time, perhaps. Who can remember to do that?

So, you disable popup blocking, and thus enable unsafe browsing. This is the Microsoft recommended procedure!




Getting back to the point, the MS experience is an example of this sort of thing gone totally insane. As I said, I don't personally like how this currently works, so I am considering how I will, in the end, address this problem. My gut feeling is that the standard is just bloody stupid, but I'm not yet there.

I would appreciate further opinions and guidance on this - it's not going to be a world crisis if I decide to ignore the standard on this one.

[tasadam]

Please post your comments, and any issues that you see, in this thread.

From http://www.dslrusers.com/index.php
In the members only section, there seems to be a problem with text formatting... A couple of examples -

In the section
Gallery Updates

Code: Select all

<b>only</b>

and

Code: Select all

<b>they</b>

Then there is

Code: Select all

<i>

and another

Code: Select all

<i>

when perhaps it should be a

Code: Select all

</i>

Sorry for using Code to illustrate these, but if I type it as written, all it will do is bold (or italic) my text.

There's another error in the topic underneath Gallery Updates as well.

I don't want to be seen to be pointing out problems, and this is just semantics really, but it would appear it hasn't been spotted yet.
I like the new look and have grown used to it from another forum I frequent (not photography). There, there is an option to customize your profile to decide whether the Avatar / info bar is on the left or right. Some people find it difficult to adapt to change...

EDIT1 - I just found it -
If you would like to revert to having the profile information to the left of the posts, you can easily do this... just go into your 'User Control Panel' (link near top left), click the 'Board Preferences' tab, then the 'Edit Global Preferences' sub-tab, and change the Style from prosilver to any of the other styles - they all have that info on the left...

EDIT2 - I notice that avatars don't want to load now that I have changed to board style DSLR ModernV1. Haven't tried deleting temp files etc yet...

EDIT3 - Yep, deleting the temp files & cookies then logging back in fixed the avatars...

EDIT4 - When I sumbitted the change for EDIT3, it recreated the problem with the avatars...
That's wierd. I deleted the temp files etc and logged back in, all the avatars were working. Then I make one edit to a post and when I submitted, all the avatars are gone again.
It could be that the "problems" I see are already discovered as I haven't read all of this thread. But I did read the FAQ again.........

EDIT5 - And I close the browser and open it up again, the avatars are back... I said "problems" in quotes because it could always be a local thing here... My browser or something.

[gstark]

Greg,

The search engine seems to have improved too.

Yes. it actually seems to work now.

That was one reason we did the upgrade, and why it took as long as it did: the indexing of the words table took about 8 hours on the server here, and probably doubled the size of the database.

FWIW, I moved the files between here and California as .gz files; we pulled the old database down as about 59MB zipped, the new one that went up after the conversion was 81MB zipped.

How do the various font colours work on the different backgrounds? e.g. yellow text works real well on a black background for highlights, but maybe not so well on othersBlack might not work on black at all (Edit) did a preview & black on black is not remapped. So I assume other colours are not either. This could make the use of coloured fonts a bit problematic

Yes, that's quite true, but it's not a new issue: it's always been a problem with any system like this. That's a risk you take if you're going to use specific colours, Where this differs for us (from the older version of the software) is that we didn't really support the different skins before; now we do.

Bottom line is that if you're going to be using specific colours, do so with caution.

Or perhaps not.

Can you please give me more information regarding the bookmarks issue that you're seeing? What I'm hearing you say is that you're using FF in Windows, Nikon Glass Theme; you open the bookmarks treeview (to the left of, but within, your browser viewport) and that will narrow the remainder of the viewport for browsing. Within that modified viewport, you're getting a too wide view of the main forum.

Have I got that all correct?

Thanx.

[gstark]

Hey, I just noticed that everyone's signatures have gone. Well... almost everyone's. Gary's sig is still there.

That is very strange, because they were there this morning/earlier in the week.

I know this because I had cause to check on a couple.

Let me see wtf is happening.

And ... I think that even mine has gone!

[gstark]

Gary,

Just an update on the login situation... I have tried deleting the cookies (refer to post earlier in this thread), bookmarking the page at different points (before I log in, after I log in, at the portal, at the Index)

This has got to be local, in some way.

Macbook, Firefox, three different connections, and no need to log in for over a day. That's swapping connections, and no issues. Vry strange. There is a persistent session setting within the configuration, but it seems to be fine ....

Trying to find the answer .....

Same here, Mac OS X 10.4.11 with Safari and Firefox, it does not remember me

Looking at the cookies for dslrusers.net, after I log in with remember me ticked, all there is:

Site: dslrusers.net
Name: style_cookie
Content: null
Host: http://www.dslrusers.net
Path: /
Send For: Any type of connection
Expires: Wed, 14 Jan 2009 11:48:04 AM

This is on Firefox after clearing cache and cookies.

Cheers,

André

Andre,

Could you tell me what happens if you use the dslrusers.com domain ?

[gstark]

(PS: one feature I love is when you hit submit, if there has been other posts in the meantime, it shows them and gives you the option to amend you post. Should help in repeating answers )

I absolutely loathe that feature. It just gets in my bloody way.

I am looking for a way to disable that.