New Board Features

[boatbuilder]

Over the next day or so I will be adding some additional new features to the forum's board.

Tonight I have added two of them, the first of which you will no doubt have already noticed at the top of the page - a 'Board Announcements' panel. This will only be present when there is a 'live' announcement. For example, the current one will automatically disappear from the board when the current 'Picture of the Month' poll closes.

Those who have been with the forum since the early days will no doubt recall that there used to be an Ajax 'Chat Room' on here. Well I have now installed the latest version and this can be accessed from the 'Chat Center' button below the header image. The layout is somewhat different from the original 'Ajax Chat' and I may still have to make some modifications to this one's settings for the best experience. Once I have fully conversed myself with this one's functions, I will post more details in this topic.

I will let you all know as and when I add more board features.

[boatbuilder]

I have now added some further additional features to the board, which you may find of use, as follows:

1. At the top of the page above the Board Announcements banner added last night, is a rolling ‘Active Topics’ bar. This shows the EIGHT most recent topics that have been posted in and you can access the most recent post in them by clicking the tiny icon to the right of the red text. If you click the red text it will take you to the very first post in the topic.

2. At the bottom right of the screen are either one or two arrows. If there is only one arrow, then you are at either the top (down arrow) or bottom (up arrow) of the page. If you are elsewhere on the page you will see both arrows. By clicking the appropriate arrow, you will be taken to that end of the page.


3. On the Member-list pages there is now a small thumbnail of the member’s avatar alongside their name – if they have one active.


4. If you now wish to post a YouTube video in your post, you can now have the video display in the post without any Bulletin Board Code being used. However, you must post the full URL of the video, rather than just the video code that was previously used with the YouTube BBCode.


5. There are now a number of new BBCodes on the main 'Post Reply' page (not the ‘Quick Reply’). I will eventually post more details of what can be achieved with them, although you are free to check them out for yourself. You would be advised to use the ‘Post Preview’ before submitting your reply when using any you are not sure of, just to make sure they fit with what you are trying to do.


6. One of the codes in the above (a small black right-pointing arrow in a black circle - the last one on the bottom row) can be used for posting videos like YouTube, Vimeo, etc., to display them within your post. However, for YouTube you don’t need to use this as you can use the method described in (4) above. I haven’t tried any of these other video sources yet myself, so don’t know how well they function. If you click the appropriate icon it will open a small window in which you choose the source of your video from a drop-down list. It will then show an example of a URL for that source’s video in a panel below. You should paste your similar URL in the box below that before clicking the ‘Insert into Message’ button. When you do that it will place the necessary code into your post, where your cursor was at when you first clicked the icon.

If you have any queries on any of the above then you can ask about them in this topic.

One final point to mention is that I am having to modify any posts that contained YouTube videos prior to today as these will now not display on the board because of the change of coding. I have changed some of them so far but it will take some time to get through them all, so please bear with me if you should happen to encounter any that don't work in the short term. I will advise when I think I have done them all and if, after that, you come across any, you can draw them to my attention.

[boatbuilder]

This latest board feature I have just added should prove useful if you find the Forum Index (Board Index) page a bit too long.

At the top right corner of each forum heading is a (-) sign which will collapse each forum. This will then change to a (+) sign to open it up again.

[boatbuilder]

Just to test out the new video capabilities referred to in an earlier post, here is a video I posted elsewhere on the forum a while back, via YouTube. I thought I would try out the Vimeo website and here is the same video which I have uploaded on there. As with the YouTube ones, you can also post these to display by just using the full URL link for the video, without using the BBvideo code.

[boatbuilder]

And here is a post using some of the new BBCodes in the main reply box. Hovering over the icons will tell you what they are so just note the action mentioned in each of the following:

1. This is the highlighted text. Just change the colour name from the default 'yellow'. Now cyan!

2. This is the Glow text. Just change the colour from the default 'red'. Now glowing blue! Note: In this one the colour of the text will always be white, no matter what the glow colour is (this is grey).

3. This is the Shadow text. Just change the text colour from the default 'blue'. This is now green.

4. This is the Drop Shadow text. Again just change the default from 'blue'. This is now brown.

5. This is blur text if you can read it. Once again change the default colour from blue. This is now purple.

6. This is fade-in/fade-out text. There are no colour options, unless you use the separate text colour option as well - as used here.

7. This is text direction right-left. [it reads from right to left - but not 'mirrored'].

8. This is marquee text scrolling to the left across the screen.

And this is it scrolling to the right

You can also have it going up or down the screen - just change the word in the code for any of the four
This is up ...... This is down

9. If you plan to post a spoiler of a film or TV program that some may not want to read you can hide it and anybody who wants to read it can do so by clicking the box. Try it here:

► Show Spoiler

The main character in the film get's murdered.

Hidden Content

This board requires you to be registered and logged-in to view hidden content.

That's all for now. Have fun and brighten up your posting!

[boatbuilder]

Those who have been with the forum since the early days will no doubt recall that there used to be an Ajax 'Chat Room' on here. Well I have now installed the latest version and this can be accessed from the 'Chat Center' button below the header image. The layout is somewhat different from the original 'Ajax Chat' and I may still have to make some modifications to this one's settings for the best experience. Once I have fully conversed myself with this one's functions, I will post more details in this topic.

Further to the above in the first post in this topic, I have changed the chat program to 'mChat' as this is a better layout and has better visible notifications on the forum.

The 'chat room panel' is located at the bottom of the index page by default but can also be opened in a separate window/tab using the small menu alongside your 'notifications' link at the top of the page. The menu icon will also display the number of users currently using the chat room when there is anyone 'in there'. This information will also be displayed in the 'statistics' area at the foot of the Forum Index page

There is also a settings tab for 'mChat' in your control panel where you can make changes to personalise it to your own liking, including placing the 'chat room panel' near the top if the Forum Index page instead of the bottom, or removed it from the index page which means you would access it in a new tab/window from the menu icon referred to in the previous paragraph. The panel can also be collapsed to hide it using the [-] icon at the top right of the panel.

[boatbuilder]

I have tonight added a couple more new features to the board.

1. In the main 'Reply' window (not the 'Quick Reply' box) ALL forums smilies are now inside a scrollable box on the right of the text panel. This means that there is no longer a link which used to open the 'additional' smilies in a new pop-up window. It also means that the height of the reply area is significantly less that before which means you don't have to scroll as far down the page to get to the 'Options' and 'Attachments' tabs.

2. Whenever you post a reply to a topic and your post happens to start a new page after you submit it, the last post on the previous page will also be displayed at the top of the new page, and will include the following text in bold print at the top of that previous post:

"Latest post of the previous page:"

This could prove particularly useful in the word game topics as there will always be at least two posts on the page as the last post from the previous page will always appear at the top the subsequent page at all times, no matter which page you are viewing within a topic.

[boatbuilder]

I have added two more features to the board today.


1. Following on from the scrolling smilies box as mentioned in the previous post, you will now find four additional options in the scroll box. These are accessed using the small tabs along the top of the box and can be used as an alternative to using ALT-codes which you have to know before you can use them. They are:

1. Accented characters

   

   Annotation 2019-10-29 213621.jpg (18.38 KiB) Viewed 1357 times

2. Maths symbols

   

   Annotation 2019-10-29 213751.jpg (18 KiB) Viewed 1357 times

3. Miscellaneous symbols

   

   Annotation 2019-10-29 214033.jpg (16.41 KiB) Viewed 1357 times

4. Greek letters

   

   Annotation 2019-10-29 214233.jpg (18.19 KiB) Viewed 1357 times

2. The second addition is a 'Lightbox' which enables the viewing of the uploaded images in a post in a pop-up viewer - larger than the image as displayed in the post. Clicking any image in a post will activate the 'Lightbox' and if there is more than one image in a post, when you hover over the left or right side of the image a clickable arrow will appear at that side of the image if there is another to be viewed in that direction. To close the 'Lightbox' you can either click the 'X' at the bottom right or click anywhere else outside the box.

You can try it out with the above four images, although these will only display at the size shown as they are displayed above at their original sizes.

Note: The Lightbox function does not work on tablets and mobile devices, nor with images posted directly from URL links. For the latter reason it will not work with the images displayed in the 'Picture of the Month Poll' topics as those topics are created using URL links from their original locations on the forum.

[boatbuilder]

Two further features have been added to the forum today:

1. When you have new Notifications or Private Messages which are highlighted with a red flag containing a number alongside the links at the top right of each page next to your username, from now on those red flags will 'blink' to make them more obvious, and will continue to do so until you have attended to them.

2. This next feature enables you to carry out a couple of different actions when you wish to quote posts or parts of posts in your reply. Firstly, you can highlight (select) parts of posts and quote only that highlighted part.

Once you have selected (highlighted) a part of a post, a floating "Quote" button appears near your cursor. Clicking that floating “Quote” button does the magic. The "Quote BBCode" and the text you selected is inserted in the Quick Reply text area at the foot of the page not the usual reply box, and you can complete your post there. This option can be used with more than one quote providing they are all on the same page your first quote is made from. Just keep highlighting (selecting) your text and click the 'Quote' button after each selection. They will all show up in the 'Quick Reply' box.
Should you need to use other BBCode as well, you can then click the 'Full Editor and Preview' button which will transfer the 'Quick Reply' box contents to the full editor for you to complete your post.

A second feature is multi-quoting of entire posts. You can tick a new multi-quote button on each post. This is the last icon on the right at the top of each post. When you have selected one or more posts to quote, a floating quote button appears in the bottom right corner. Clicking that button takes you to the posting screen as with regular quoting but now you have multiple posts quoted in your message text area.

The multi-quote option also works over multiple pages in a topic and even in multiple topics.

You can continue to use the original quote button as before if you are only quoting the one complete post in your reply.

If you have any questions about this feature then please ask.

[boatbuilder]

There is another new feature which I forgot to mention in my previous post.

At the top right of the screen below your username is a new link 'Notes'. This is there purely for your own private use for you to make any notes you wish and which you can access at any time. You can add to them at any time (or delete them) but you must remember to 'Save' them before leaving the page. Your notes are yours and cannot be seen by any other member.