New FORUM Server is Running... WooHoo

[Forum Boss]

I seem to have a quirk. When I look at the main page for a section it is normal screen width. When I click to open a thread it seems to be about 3 screens wide.
This is using 2 different machine with Internet Explorer. If I use Firefox the screens are all normal.

The server change should not have caused this issue as we did not change anything in the layout. I suggest you clear the cache in your browser ("Internet Options"). If you're running a real old version of IE everything should be fine. We tested with six different browsers and didn't encounter issues with IE7 and IE8.

 

[Steve Blair]

BTW, the site images just fine from Firefox 3.6.24 on Linux. The XP and Win7 machines worked fine with IE, Firefox and Chrome. Now, if you could just provide a mobile device interface, I'd be happy.

 

[ridgeway]

Everything is fine and dandy using Dolphin on my Android based phone, which I use for 90% of internet surfing and mainly all email's.

 

[bozo699]

I use my laptop 99% of the time but I just used my android to post this and it worked fine.
Wayne.

 

[Steve Blair]

Everything is fine and dandy using Dolphin on my Android based phone, which I use for 90% of internet surfing and mainly all email's.

[br]
Try browsing to amazon.com from your phone for an example of a correctly designed mobile interface.

 

[bozo699]

Everything is fine and dandy using Dolphin on my Android based phone, which I use for 90% of internet surfing and mainly all email's.

[br]
Try browsing to amazon.com from your phone for an example of a correctly designed mobile interface.

Steve,
My android just went to amazon fine, I never use amazon for anything but no problem getting there?
Wayne.

 

[Steve Blair]

Wayne, [br]
The point was that Amazon has a completely different interface when the site detects a mobile device. The mobile interface is optimized for smaller, lower resolution screens and works in either portrait or landscape mode. All of this is in compliance with W3C guidelines for mobile device interfaces. [br]
Obviously, unless the software accurateshooter.com is already using provides this interface, they cannot afford the expense of developing one. Many sites now provide a mobile interface. Some require accessing it via something like "m.sitename.com" but others, like Amazon, automatically detect what kind of device is accessing the site and provide the correct interface. When any browser accesses a site, the server can interrogate it for a variety of information (browser name, version, screen resolution, etc.). If they want to, sites can use this information to provide an optimized experience for a given browser. Another approach is to push the interface down to a level that is common for all popular browsers. Either is fine, it just depends upon what the site is trying to accomplish. [br]
Sorry for the IT jabber, old habits die hard.

 

[bozo699]

Wayne, [br]
The point was that Amazon has a completely different interface when the site detects a mobile device. The mobile interface is optimized for smaller, lower resolution screens and works in either portrait or landscape mode. All of this is in compliance with W3C guidelines for mobile device interfaces. [br]
Obviously, unless the software accurateshooter.com is already using provides this interface, they cannot afford the expense of developing one. Many sites now provide a mobile interface. Some require accessing it via something like "m.sitename.com" but others, like Amazon, automatically detect what kind of device is accessing the site and provide the correct interface. When any browser accesses a site, the server can interrogate it for a variety of information (browser name, version, screen resolution, etc.). If they want to, sites can use this information to provide an optimized experience for a given browser. Another approach is to push the interface down to a level that is common for all popular browsers. Either is fine, it just depends upon what the site is trying to accomplish. [br]
Sorry for the IT jabber, old habits die hard.

Steve,
You are obviously much more experienced at all this then I, I had to read the post twice to understand half of it ;D I now know who to come to for IT problems
Wayne.

 

[Steve Blair]

I now know who to come to for IT problems

[br]
I learned to accept that a long time ago. But, I will not fix my ex's machine. There are some things where a man has to draw a line.

 

[bozo699]

I now know who to come to for IT problems

[br]
I learned to accept that a long time ago. But, I will not fix my ex's machine. There are some things where a man has to draw a line.

;D

 

[Forum Boss]

We'd love to have a perfect mobile interface for the Forum. But forum software is actually very, very sophisticated and complex, and much more difficult to modify than even a typical shopping cart site. We use SMF open-source forum software. There are two other more commercial forum suites, Invision board and VBulletin. They both have some interesting features, but even though they are expensive installs, neither offers the simple, elegant (yet bulletproof) All-OS mobile interface people would like. At some time down the road we might switch to VBulletin (the Microsoft of forum suites), but at the present time, VBulletin is slower, more processor intensive, more expensive to operate, and it has more security vulnerabilities. VBull does appear to have at least "factory" support for iPhone though. FWIW, creating a rock-solid forum template to run ideally on All mobile devices with no conflicts with the main site would be a pretty big task. There are some possible options that might allow the Forum to run on iPhones, but they are a couple years out of date already. We will investigate further however.

If you want an idea of what's involved in displaying a Forum page, take your mouse, right click and "view source". What you see will fill pages. And that doesn't even include the background scripts that compile the posts and pull them together....

 

[TheSnake]

Everything seems to be working well. The only thing I have noticed is the loss of history (posts) on some folks. It seems the migration only brought over the last 10 posts of history for some people when their stats show much more.
iPad, IE and Chrome working well.

 

[Jay Christopherson]

That's interesting. Do you have a member that you see that problem on that I could look at? As long as their history is in the database, it should be there.

Everything seems to be working well. The only thing I have noticed is the loss of history (posts) on some folks. It seems the migration only brought over the last 10 posts of history for some people when their stats show much more.
iPad, IE and Chrome working well.

 

[TheSnake]

That's interesting. Do you have a member that you see that problem on that I could look at? As long as their history is in the database, it should be there.

I sent you a PM with the data.

 

[Jay Christopherson]

Thanks!

The issue in the case you sent me is that posts were removed by moderators (Forum Boss) so they won't be visible in the post history. In general, that will be the case.

That's interesting. Do you have a member that you see that problem on that I could look at? As long as their history is in the database, it should be there.

I sent you a PM with the data.