CommunityServer 2.0 Is Here!


  • ♿ (Parody)

    If you couldn't tell by now, CS 2.0 is finally here. I spent a bit of time doing this upgrade and customizing the layout -- so let me know if you have any issues or bugs.



  • I am currenly adjusting.



  • The real WTF is that you only replaced the index page when going down for maintenance.



  • I tried to edit my post, and it said the Edit Notes field is required.

    That's nonsense, of course.


    I'm happy that we can theoretically edit posts now!

    [i]Edit[/i]

    Edited this with flurp in the edit notes.



  • I'm not liking the pseudo-web 2.0 look. It has the web 2.0 "features" but done in the web 0.5 way.

    And ignore my last comment, the index page was caching. cough



  • Woohoo! The "Post" button's gone!

    Let's see if I can be the first to break quoting:

    @Someone said:
    Something

    I'm still not gonna risk the "design" mode. HTML seems to work, tho.



  • There are decent prefs to be set, such as:

    • bigger font size (yay!)
    • plain textarea instead of the not-so robust rich text editor.

    So.

    I'm currently posting from a plain textarea. Let's see what happens if I put in some HTML.

    STYLED!

    And here is a special character:

    »

    And here is [i]some[i] [b]BBcode[/b]



  • Aha.

    In plain textarea mode, my linebreaks aren't converted to
    .

    HTML is stripped completely. Preferred would be to display it, instead of stripping or rendering.



  • Wait, I was wrong.



    The style attribute is stripped. HTML seems to render. Linebreaks are not converted
    (SHAME!!)


    This bit is in a DIV with align=center


    All linebreaks are inserted manually by me as BR tags. :(



  • Testing ...

    test

    ^ there should be newlines here


    test



  • THIS post was created with the "Rich Editor (for developers)"

    I assume it converts linebreaks to BR.

    HTML? <div>in a div</div>



  • @Avenger said:

    Testing ...

    test

    ^ there should be newlines here


    test



    NO BREAKS FOR YOU.



  • Quitting coffee.... NOW.



  • My conclusion is that it's the same horrible forums with a few bugs fixed and a whole slew added.



  • @dhromed said:

    Wait, I was wrong.



    The style attribute is stripped. HTML seems to render. Linebreaks are not converted
    (SHAME!!)


    This bit is in a DIV with align=center


    All linebreaks are inserted manually by me as BR tags. :(

    I figured this out before on the test forums - newline is replaced with <br> if you're using the ordinary text-entry box users of some browsers get, but not if you're using the HTML view of the rich editor. (As a Konqueror user, I would normally get the former, but I'm imitating Firefox and get the rich editor, which is why I can say "<br>". It also allows me to quote users of other browsers who used the HTML tab of the rich editor without any newlines they inserted turning into <br>)

    @Avenger said:

    I'm not liking the pseudo-web 2.0 look. It has the web 2.0 "features" but done in the web 0.5 way.

    I dunno, the Preview tab at least seems Web 2.0 enough to me. They should change the post time in the preview from "a few seconds ago" to "sometime in the future", though. On the plus side, it does seem to apply HTML cleaning (and possibly content filters too).

    @dhromed said:

    I tried to edit my post, and it said the Edit Notes field is required.

    That's nonsense, of course.

    I'm pretty sure it didn't use to do this on the test forums.

    Edit: But it does now. Oh, and the Design view of the rich editor still doesn't display quotes properly - big surprise(!).



  • @makomk said:

    I dunno, the Preview tab at least seems Web 2.0 enough to me. They should change the post time in the preview from "a few seconds ago" to "sometime in the future", though. On the plus side, it does seem to apply HTML cleaning (and possibly content filters too).

    I'm talking about their Quick Reply, annoying tab usage, using rollover images instead of good techniques (like using 10 images for the 5-star rating and using three images for rollover tabs). Also, they're using AJAX in places where it's entirely unnecessary like viewing someone's profile.

    Also, Quick Reply using the lightbox-like greying and displaying a virtual window but displays and iframe and displays it only on the top screen of the page, not following like it should.

    I don't know, perhaps my standards are just too high because I have my own community system.



  • @OpBaI said:

    I asked the question in the test forum bot nobody replied... how to put code in the new forum?

    That is, indented code that may use less-than and brackets. I fail to find any way of inserting the less-than sign... just writing it does not escape it and passes it through as HTML, replacing by < makes a literal < appear.

    ..
      ..
        if(x < y)
          ..
        else if(x < y)
          ..
    


    I'm quoting you.

    And poof we have lessthans.


  • @dhromed said:

    @OpBaI said:
    I asked the question in the test forum bot nobody replied... how to put code in the new forum?

    That is, indented code that may use less-than and brackets. I fail to find any way of inserting the less-than sign... just writing it does not escape it and passes it through as HTML, replacing by < makes a literal < appear.

    ..
      ..
        if(x < y)
          ..
        else if(x < y)
          ..
    


    I'm quoting you.

    And poof we have lessthans.

    This particular problem seems to only occur if you're using the fall-back text-only posting - if you're using the rich editor (in either design or raw HTML mode) this doesn't happen. Konqueror/Safari users should set their User-Agent to imitate Firefox, then use the HTML mode (the Design mode doesn't work at all in Konqueror; it might in Safari though, try both choices of rich editor in your user preferences and see what happens). I'm not sure if manually selecting the textbox-based posting in your preferences can cause this too, or if it just happens if the forum decides your browser doesn't support it.

    Also note the disappearing newlines/<br>s between the first and second sentences when you quoted him - another symptom...



  • I "demand" one of three solutions to these bugs in the forum software:

    1. Fix them. Shouldn't be too hard since the HTML box in the design view does work.
    2. Make the author fix them - after all you have bought the script and can expect some service.
    3. Document all these bugs in the FAQ (which does not fit CommunityServer at all at the moment) linked above.

    You can't expect users to fake the Firefox identifier and then switch to the HTML view.

    ...
      ...
        if(x < y)
          ...
    

    This was Raw &amp; Entitized.



  • @makomk said:

    Konqueror/Safari users should set their User-Agent to imitate Firefox, then use the HTML mode

    Both of these can simply be hacked into the existing script: change the part that checks for the User agent, and at least make HTML view the default for Konqueror users.

    I don't see why this is something the USER has to do. It's the SCRIPT which is broken, not the BROWSER.

    (The main problem is that this "Web 2.0" stuff is not standardized yet and not compatible between browsers, and Konqueror for example only supports changing HTML data at runtime using the W3C DOM and not using the IE or Netscape model; and Konqueror does not support keyboard events at all (neither does anything the W3C has released - yes, that IS sad))

    BTW, can I just use single <p> tags like in old HTML 2.x times?



  • @Sonic McTails said:

    Well, I still think a new forum solution is order. I beta tested Alex's CS2.0 server, but you really don't see how bad something is until it's abused on a large forum and in this case, ironically on one about coding WTFs.


    It's not even a very large forum, and it's been being abused for all of 12 hours or so now.

    Fuck, Alex, just demand your money back.  It's shit.  You [b]know[/b] it's shit.  I've been forced to use a different browser to my usual one and turn javascript on just to post this (which, will, in all likelihood, be my last post here, ever) I shouldn't have had to do this, because [b]it's only a forum and shouldn't need javascript to function[/b].  I appreciate the time and effort you've spent getting this up and running, but I honestly can't see why you're so attached to CS.  As the old saying goes:

    Fool me once, shame on you.  Fool me twice, shame on me.


    Have you noticed how useful "threaded" view is?  Go on.  Try it.  I dare you.  It's a fucking scream.

    Opera and Safari users should set their user-agent to Firefox?  For fuck's sake.

    W3C validator reports 220 html validation errors on the edit page, 93 css errors, 1759 css warnings.  That's gotta be some sort of record, surely?  There is a delicious irony in running a website about bad coding on a forum that can't even produce valid html.

    For fuck's sake, this is worse than CS1.  At least that was vaguely usable without fucking ajax shenanigans; it could have been made tolerable by removing the "post" button at the bottom of the page and turning off the rich text editor.

    Telligent are a bunch of fucking cowboys.  Their coders should stick to fucking cows, and stay away from fucking the internet.  Feel free to use that quote in bug reports, by the way.

    Signing off.  S'been fun while it lasted.

    Simon



  • This new forum just has to be a joke.
    As the poster above was noting, threaded view is not even close to working, and wtf is going on with this javascript layer animation thingee when replying.
    It might 've been acceptable if they just fixed a bunch of the 1.0 version, but they just added upon the pile of crap.

    The software here really is the uber wtf and I just don't see why you would continue to use it.



  • Every forum software sucks. However, PHP-based software usually at least works well on other browsers than IE.

    So, to conclude...

    • ASP stuff: Runs only well on IE. Typical M$ stuff, nothing else. Might be nice in an Intranet, but is not suitable for public use. In this specific case it's also full of bugs, but that's not representative for ASP stuff.
    • PHP/MySQL stuff: full of SQL injection security holes, but runs on any browser; SQL injection bugs can usually be removed by a short audit by grepping for mysql_ calls
    • PHP/file system stuff; Perl stuff: usually secure apart from JavaScript injection; not many scripts available though, and the available ones aren't that flexible

    So I'd say... ditch CommunityServer and use something PHP based that you audited before putting online - or write your own. Every forum sucks, but use one that you can fix the bugs in.





  • @tufty said:


    Have you noticed how useful "threaded" view is?  Go on.  Try it.  I dare you.  It's a fucking scream.

    Threaded view just plain doesn't work though, right?

    I tried it, got me a JavaScript error and an empty page (without even the option of going back to list view, hah). Then I tried it again on another thread and got a nice White Screen Of Death telling me: "something's terribly fucked up, please go post a bug report here".

    Gah. Idiots.



  • cough SMF on Secunia cough

    At least they are all resolved. I wouldn't trust it before having done at least a simple audit of all MySQL calls.



  • In firefox I view a thread.
    I then click the post or quote button and get to the rely form.
    I then click the browsers back button to go back to the thread. Then click the browsers forward button to go forward to the reply form.

    Now the page keeps reloading many many times a second.



  • In an earlier thread...
    @Alex Papadimoulis said:

    I was strongly considering switching away from CS -- but the new
    direction they're going is really good. I've played around and seen the
    insides of 2.0 enough to know that these guys are going the right way.
    Yes, it was a complte clusterfuck, combining a number of different .NET
    web apps -- but it's much more consistant and cleaner now.


    <insert hollow laugh here>




  • I just have one question : why did you spend time putting in an RSS feed (at thedailywtf.com/rss.aspx) when a perfectly good one (at thedailywtf.com/forums/rss.aspx?forum_specific_stuff) existed? BTW, your RSS feed is broken, at least when I look at it myself. You have two identical <?xml?> tags.



  • @makomk said:

    @dhromed said:
    @OpBaI said:
    I asked the question in the test forum bot nobody replied... how to put code in the new forum?

    That is, indented code that may use less-than and brackets. I fail to find any way of inserting the less-than sign... just writing it does not escape it and passes it through as HTML, replacing by < makes a literal < appear.

    ..
      ..
        if(x < y)
          ..
        else if(x < y)
          ..
    


    I'm quoting you.

    And poof we have lessthans.

    This particular problem seems to only occur if you're using the fall-back text-only posting - if you're using the rich editor (in either design or raw HTML mode) this doesn't happen. Konqueror/Safari users should set their User-Agent to imitate Firefox, then use the HTML mode (the Design mode doesn't work at all in Konqueror; it might in Safari though, try both choices of rich editor in your user preferences and see what happens). I'm not sure if manually selecting the textbox-based posting in your preferences can cause this too, or if it just happens if the forum decides your browser doesn't support it.

    Also note the disappearing newlines/<br>s between the first and second sentences when you quoted him - another symptom...

    Slight correction - if it thinks you're using a browser that supports the rich editor, you can manually switch to the text-based editor and it'll work exactly like the HTML view of the rich editor. I'm guessing it's like the old software - what it does depends on the User-Agent you submit the post with. (I reckon that's al WTF, but there you go...)

    @tufty said:

    Opera and Safari users should set their user-agent to Firefox?  For fuck's sake.

    ...

    For fuck's sake, this is worse than CS1.  At least that was vaguely usable without fucking ajax shenanigans; it could have been made tolerable by removing the "post" button at the bottom of the page and turning off the rich text editor.

    Telligent are a bunch of fucking cowboys.  Their coders should stick to fucking cows, and stay away from fucking the internet.  Feel free to use that quote in bug reports, by the way.

    Signing off.  S'been fun while it lasted.

    Simon

    I take it you never used the old forums with, say, Konqueror or Safari, or saw all the mangled posts from people who did? (Basically, it converted the quote tags to HTML, then escaped the entire post as though it was plain text). Only difference with that version was, you had to set the user agent to IE6 instead of Firefox.

    Most of the actual AJAX isn't too bad (somehow, the post preview works in Konqueror, which is nearly a miracle); the use of JavaScript is annoying though, but not noticably worse than before, and they've fixed the pager to be normal links.



  • When I login, I get my username in a dropdown in FFX. I hit enter BAM it logs in because of the crap key capturing.

    Somehow my login setting wasn't saved -- a cookie problem. I've deleted my cookies from tdWTF, and am trying again now. Will see.



  • @dhromed said:

    When I login, I get my username in a dropdown in FFX. I hit enter BAM it logs in because of the crap key capturing.

    Somehow my login setting wasn't saved -- a cookie problem. I've deleted my cookies from tdWTF, and am trying again now. Will see.

    Ah yes, that. I believe that's so that the right action is taken, despite the fact that the entire page is one single form (so if you hit Enter in one entry field, it does a search, and if you hit Enter in another it logs you in - there's a field in the form indicating the action). Apparently, a combination of ASP and laziness on the part of Telligent is responsible for this particular piece of brillance...



  • @makomk said:

    I take it you never used the old forums with, say, Konqueror or Safari, or saw all the mangled posts from people who did? (Basically, it converted the quote tags to HTML, then escaped the entire post as though it was plain text). Only difference with that version was, you had to set the user agent to IE6 instead of Firefox.


    Oh yes.  Oh yes indeed.  I was bitten by it myself, many times.

    I've said it before, and I'll say it again.  There's never justification on deciding what a client's browser can and can't handle based on the user-agent.  For example, I generally browse using links (for reasons I'm not about to go into) which can even do javascript.  But presumably only a certain number of browsers are on the "allowed" list, and links is not one of them.  Go figure.

    CS1 was shit.  A steaming pile of ordure of the highest order.  And, less than 24 hours in, CS2 is arguably surpassing it, leaving CS1 in its wake as it ploughs whole new furrows of crapness.  It's vastly slower, for starters, it's totally nonfunctional without javascript, and large chunks of functionality that could, in theory, be useful, simply don't fucking work, although whether that's due to CS itself or Alex's modifications I can't say.

    Most of the actual AJAX isn't too bad (somehow, the post preview works in Konqueror, which is nearly a miracle); the use of JavaScript is annoying though, but not noticably worse than before, and they've fixed the pager to be normal links.


    The javascript is far worse than annoying.  It makes it impossible to log on without javascript.  And even if you could get on without javascript, you wouldn't be able to do anything.  Sure, provide ajaxy stuff as an added extra for those that have the
    capabilities, but you don't lock people out for not having it.  That's just plain bad work.

    And hey, sites have had post previews for donkey's years.  You don't need javascript to do it.  It shouldn't be a fucking surprise when something actually works.

    Simon


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @Fred Foobar said:

    I just have one question : why did you spend time putting in an RSS feed (at thedailywtf.com/rss.aspx) when a perfectly good one (at thedailywtf.com/forums/rss.aspx?forum_specific_stuff) existed? BTW, your RSS feed is broken, at least when I look at it myself. You have two identical <?xml?> tags.

    Most readers access site through that URL. It's fixed now.



  • Did you disable Ink?  If so, could you please reenable it?


  • ♿ (Parody)

    I didn't disable it. That's the thing that lets you use a tablet pc to write posts?

    Who would use that? IS it worth introducing the functionality and the accompanying bugs?



  • CS2 puts a scrollbar in a post when a post has really long lines, like big URLs.

    Very  good!



  • @tufty said:

    @makomk said:
    I take it you never used the old forums with, say, Konqueror or Safari, or saw all the mangled posts from people who did? (Basically, it converted the quote tags to HTML, then escaped the entire post as though it was plain text). Only difference with that version was, you had to set the user agent to IE6 instead of Firefox.


    Oh yes.  Oh yes indeed.  I was bitten by it myself, many times.

    I've said it before, and I'll say it again.  There's never justification on deciding what a client's browser can and can't handle based on the user-agent.  For example, I generally browse using links (for reasons I'm not about to go into) which can even do javascript.  But presumably only a certain number of browsers are on the "allowed" list, and links is not one of them.  Go figure.

    There's something worse than that in the new forums - if you use an unrecognised browser, the login form still uses JavaScript, but it omits the function used to submit the form. (Unless, of course, Alex has fixed this, but it doesn't look like he has.)

    @tufty said:



    CS1 was shit.  A steaming pile of ordure of the highest order.  And, less than 24 hours in, CS2 is arguably surpassing it, leaving CS1 in its wake as it ploughs whole new furrows of crapness.  It's vastly slower, for starters, it's totally nonfunctional without javascript, and large chunks of functionality that could, in theory, be useful, simply don't fucking work, although whether that's due to CS itself or Alex's modifications I can't say.

    Most of the actual AJAX isn't too bad (somehow, the post preview works in Konqueror, which is nearly a miracle); the use of JavaScript is annoying though, but not noticably worse than before, and they've fixed the pager to be normal links.


    The javascript is far worse than annoying.  It makes it impossible to log on without javascript.  And even if you could get on without javascript, you wouldn't be able to do anything.  Sure, provide ajaxy stuff as an added extra for those that have the
    capabilities, but you don't lock people out for not having it.  That's just plain bad work.

    And hey, sites have had post previews for donkey's years.  You don't need javascript to do it.  It shouldn't be a fucking surprise when something actually works.

    Simon

    Yeah, but the login form's always required JavaScript AFAICT, and it's nice to have any sort of vaguely working preview (though not as essential now we can edit posts). More annoying is the fact that some site keeps running synchronous XMLHttpRequests in the background, causing Konqueror to stop responding - and oddly enough, once I closed The Daily WTF, it stopped happening.



  • TDWFT storse my login cookies but does not auto-log me in.



  • @makomk said:

    Yeah, but the login form's always required JavaScript AFAICT, and it's nice to have any sort of vaguely working preview (though not as essential now we can edit posts). More annoying is the fact that some site keeps running synchronous XMLHttpRequests in the background, causing Konqueror to stop responding - and oddly enough, once I closed The Daily WTF, it stopped happening.

    It's really bad if they go for the Web 2.0 "look and feel" and can't even get AJAX, the core concept, to work. AJAX implies asynchronous. Come on, Telligent, it's two more lines of code!



  • I've found 2 major problems:

    1.  It doesn't store my login, so I keep having to do it manually
    2.  It doesn't scroll with arrow keys.  I use a tablet pc (IE no mouse scroller wheel) so I like to use the up and down arrow keys to scroll, but they do nothing on this site - unless, of course, I click on the tiny bit of dark grey on either edge of the page, in which case they work.



  • <FONT face=Tahoma size=2>so far so good (i think)...i hope this doesn't mess up because i'm using design view...</FONT>



  • @Avenger said:

    @makomk said:
    Yeah, but the login form's always required JavaScript AFAICT, and it's nice to have any sort of vaguely working preview (though not as essential now we can edit posts). More annoying is the fact that some site keeps running synchronous XMLHttpRequests in the background, causing Konqueror to stop responding - and oddly enough, once I closed The Daily WTF, it stopped happening.

    It's really bad if they go for the Web 2.0 "look and feel" and can't even get AJAX, the core concept, to work. AJAX implies asynchronous. Come on, Telligent, it's two more lines of code!

    All of the obviously AJAXified stuff seems to use asynchronous requests though (I mean, why do you think the preview takes so long to load?), so I'm not sure what the hell is going on...



  • I don't have nearly the complaints of the other posters, having seen the torturous machinations others have had to try and get their posts to not come out completely manged.  But what happened to the little colored balls beside our Avatar?



  • Ytram likey, Ytram want to test edity!

    I noticed people mention that the Edit Notes field was required, but it hasn't said that to me yet.



  • @Alex Papadimoulis said:

    @Fred Foobar said:

    I just have one question : why did you spend time putting in an RSS feed (at thedailywtf.com/rss.aspx) when a perfectly good one (at thedailywtf.com/forums/rss.aspx?forum_specific_stuff) existed? BTW, your RSS feed is broken, at least when I look at it myself. You have two identical <?xml?> tags.

    Most readers access site through that URL. It's fixed now.


    Thank you. I use the RSS feed to get my new doses of WTF, and couldn't stand to see things broken. But anyway.

    makomk, would you care to help me out a bit here? Let's see how well the CSS and JS blocking works. Let loose the cat, like you did on the test forum! But then, if it works, please edit your post and kill the thing. It's cute, but it can get on the nerves.

    As to the various types of fsckage that seem to be happening, I can attest to some of them. I use FFX, so I can't say much about the Konqueror/Opera problems, but I do have major problems with threaded view. Everything gets all shoved up toward the top. I'm gonna blame Alex for that one, because it worked fine before the customizations.

    I haven't used Quick Reply, so I haven't had the chance to see how things work with the customizations. But anyway, here's [i]BBcode[/i] and <i>HTML</i>.

    P.S. Alex, at the bottom of the page, you replaced the CS2 logo with the old CS1 logo, but this is only at the bottom of certain pages. Put up the CS2 logo - the old one is plain fugly. Also, let's have laughs at the expense of the unregistered and put the captcha back up. This time, turn the expiration time up a bit. 2 minutes is fine for a login dialog box, but not to write a whole post.

    And also, if anyone can give me the exact text of the new error page, it would make a disgruntled coder very happy. I have a sig to update.



  • ♿ (Parody)

    I do take responsibility for some of the bugs on the site -- I hacked the platform without spending the time understand the architecture. I do put some blame in the hands of the platform developers -- they've invented a complex templating system on top of ASP.NET and provide no documentation on how to use it.

    Where do you see old CS1 logos? I transfered no fines from CS1 -- I recoded all modifications into CS2.

    CAPTCHA -- the module i'm using is obviously broken. I'm going to write my own. A temp hack is in place now.



  • I like how some of the ajax-y features bug out when I click back
    in Firefox. 



    I can't get it to consistently happen, but if I go to HTML mode, click
    preview, click back, say, "crap!" as I realize that I meant to go back
    to compose and accidentally went back to the thread [this part is
    important], then click forward to pray that my post is still there, it
    goes into a spastic loop trying to do... something.  Not that I do that
    a lot...



    It IS a step up from the old forums, where I didn't click anything
    because I knew that it would mangle my post/format my hard drive/send
    me spam/attempt to conquer Russia in winter.  If I can just get used to
    the new GUI.



  • @xrT said:

    <font face="Tahoma" size="2">so far so good (i think)...i hope this doesn't mess up because i'm using design view...</font>


    Please don't manually make your font so very tiny. It looks small even with my enlarged font size. I can't imagine how unreadable it is at the default size.

    9px? 8?


  • ♿ (Parody)

    @TheDauthi said:

    I like how some of the ajax-y features bug out when I click back in Firefox. 

    Back button? In Web 2.0? Yeah, right -- that's crazy. Like trying to bookmark a page or something!


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