Question Forum Upgrade/Maintenance.

Am I correct in thinking the forum format that I am seeing is temporary during the maintenance period,? The old familiar format disappeared early this week - hope it not a problem with my computer, although everything else seems unchanged.

Peter

It seems there has been no change to the forum format that appeared a couple of weeks ago .

I've attached a screen shot of how the Forum appears on my screen now - is this correct or has the maintenance carried out made it incompatible with my systems (Win XP and Win 7 both appear the same.

If what I am seeing now is correct, then IMHO it is a retrograde step !!

Yes, that is how it looks like now.
There is a discussion ongoing in the German part of the forum.

I think most of the people are not really happy about the new design.

Not happy about the new design, you couldn't be more right.
It is a horrible design.

Hope they change it back.

So glad I am not the only one who thinks the new "design" is truly awful.
What on earth was the thinking behind this change??
At the risk of ruffling someones feathers, dare I say that it looks totally amateurish and unattractive.

Lets have the old one back a.s.a.p.

I've found out the hard way that this awful new format has a really nasty trick laying in wait!!

Several times I have attempted to reply to posts and help where I can, only to find that when I press the "Submit" button, the forum comes back telling me that my session has timed out and promptly destroys what I have written. What a total waste of my time and energy, and frustrating for the original poster who is getting no answers to valid queries

I feel disinclined to bother any more until something is done to restore a more professional forum format ................... AS IT WAS BEFORE !!!!

Peter

Hi all,

Sorry to be moaning again about the new (awful) forum format!!

It still throws out messages when submitted, saying that my session has timed out - please log in again (I'm already logged in damnit!!!) The way around this appears to be to save any message to Windows clipboard, close down and then restart the Forum session. Next go to the original place where the message was generated and transfer from clipboard to message box, then submit again.

For goodness sake , please fix this ridiculous limitation. The old forum worked properly - moral is "If it ain't broke, don't fix it" !!!!!!!

Peter

My experience is a bit different. The error message does not say that the login-session timed out, it only says that you needed too long to respond - it's an write answer timeout. So, yes, I also copy the written text into the clipboard, but after the error message you can go back to the thread and immediately answer again.
Even better: directly write the text in an editor and when done click the reload & answer buttons and paste the text.

Hi Andreas,

The solutions we have both discovered are essentially the same, but the most important point is - why have a timeout at all? Why introduce a timeout in the first place? I've never come across one in any other forum that I subscribe to.

How long are we allowed to cogitate on our replies - not long enough to answer some complicated issues in my experience!!

Regards.

Peter

hi Thomas,

Thanks for that information and for raising the timeout - that's a much more realistic time when answering a complicated query. At least I know how long I have to think.

regards,

Peter

I'd expect that the timeout setting does not work at all. 2400sec = 40min. In the cases I remember we talk maximum about 10-20min. So the old settings should have been fine already.

(I think it's your turn to test your forum before you release it into the wild. I avoid to spend too much time with it since you downgraded)

Time for yet another moan about the awful new Forum format. I hate it!!
It is very noticeable that activity on the English forum has almost stopped since the downgrade too, so maybe I am not alone in disliking it!!
There is also different format on the downgraded German forum - more information fields - hmmm, wonder why?

Peter