rs2mike:
Also How do I find my past posts I have some good stuff i want to go back and reference it.
Looks like Kalmbach's computer staff better check if old posts need to be reindexed or some such thing to be searchable - I only get posts from the last couple of days when searching for posts by myself, too. Both when I click on my name to the left of a post I have made and then click on my post count, and when I do a straight search in the new search box to the righ of the columns of posts.
Edit3: Bergie just posted in another thread that it will take about 24 hours for all old posts to be indexed - they should be back by Friday sometime.
A very preliminary evaluation of new format: doesn't feel like an improvement for me as a user. Most things that worked reasonably well in the old format can still be done, but most things seems to be more convoluted for the user - you have to scroll and click way more to do the stuff that was fairly easy to do with the old user interface.
Like checking if there is any new posts in any threads in any trains.com forum I have been taking part in, like quoting another user when replying (in both cases a simple one-click approach on top of the page has been replaced by a process that involves a lot more scrolling and multiple clicks),
Edit: I found a list of "my discussions" - in plain view on the right margin of the main forum front page (http://cs.trains.com/trccs/forums/). Looks like it will show the last 10-15 or so threads you have taken part in. No idea how it will show things when you get a couple of hundred threads you have taken part in - I expect there will be a "more" link at the bottom.
And I found an explanation of why the quote functionality was changed - you can now highlight just the part of the the text you want to quote before hitting "quote" and only that part gets quoted, not the whole post. Will perhaps make it a little easier for people who struggled with quoting when replying. Or not - since these people probably won't figure out on their own that you can highlight a part of the text before clocking "quote", either :-)
Oh well, times change, and we must change with them. No doubt more shortcuts and functionality will become apparent over time.
But I still suspect I will miss the old format, which had a pretty good user interface for a web forum, as opposed to the new format, which so far gets a C - it gets the job done, but in a rather mediocre way.
Edit2: found a slightly improved feature. You still can chose sort order "newest to oldest" (instead of the default "oldest to newest") in the drop down box at top of a thread.
Forum software now seem to remember your choice for that thread - so if you return to that thread, you see the posts sorted in the order "newest to oldest" - allowing you to quickly see if there is anything new in threads you follow.
Setting only seems to preserved in the context of the current browser session, though. Doesn't seem to be preserved if you close your browser and restart it.
Still - a potensially nice feature if you like to leave a web browser open with the trains.com forums. As I recall it, you had to click "last" or choose "newest to oldest" every time you returned to a thread to see the latest posts in the old forum.
And then another little onion - when I paste text way down in a post, focus is returned to the top of my text again, instead of being left where I pasted text.
Text marker is still at the right place - if I continue typing focus returns to where it belongs. But it is disconcerning to feel that you lost what you just pasted.
Poor user interface design. Not Kalmbach's fault - but the people who designed the forum software ought to get a swift kick in the posterior for such little annoyances. Haven't they tried to use their own software ?
Grin,
Stein