NI Discussion Forum Upgrade - May 20, 2009

[Laura F.]

I am happy to announce that we have just performed a forum upgrade that offers great new features and a number of bug fixes.

New features:

• Image Gallery [to be turned on May 22]: You will now be able to upload an image from the editor and have it automatically inserted into your post. The image will also be stored in your image gallery. No more editing your post to insert an image! You can also choose from four different sizes for your image as well as choose where to have the image align. Uploaded images must be less than 333 KB in size. Allowed extensions are JPG, JPEG, GIF, and PNG. You can upload an image as you are creating your post or you can upload it to your image gallery and then select that image as you are posting. You can access your image gallery from your profile page and you can view other's images from their profile pages.
• Insert code button in editor: this button allows you to insert text code without any parts of it being automatically translated into emoticons
• Date Format: You can edit how the date format is displayed for you on the Preferences tab in My Profile.

Bug Fixes:

• ") No longer automatically displays as a winking smiley.
• You should now return to the message you replied to after completing your reply.
• Attaching a VI in Safari works correctly
• Extra "phantom" spaces in the editor in Firefox. (I think this has been fixed, but let me know if you still see it, it can be hard to verify)

Known Issues:

• Uploading a file larger than the limit of 5.12 MB gives an unexpected error rather than the error that you are trying to upload a file that is too large.
• Video icon displays next to some messages even though there is no video present in the message.

Thanks,

Laura
Web Support & Operations
National Instruments

Message Edited by Laura F. on 05-22-2009 08:27 AM

[tst]

This certainly includes some welcome changes and fixes for annoying bugs. Thanks.

The last big feature we still need is the ability to easily track new posts to threads we posted in.

[altenbach]

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Laura F. wrote:

• Image Gallery [to be turned on May 21]: You will now be able to upload an image from the editor and have it automatically inserted into your post. The image will also be stored in your image gallery. No more editing your post to insert an image! You can also choose from four different sizes for your image as well as choose where to have the image align. Uploaded images must be less than 333 KB in size. Allowed extensions are JPG, JPEG, GIF, and PNG. You can upload an image as you are creating your post or you can upload it to your image gallery and then select that image as you are posting. You can access your image gallery from your profile page and you can view other's images from their profile pages.

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OK, that sounds interesting, but I have some questions.

• WIll the images disappear from old posts if I would delete the corresponding image from the gallery?
• If I upload a new image and give it an existing name, will the existing posts update their embedded image accordingly?
• Choosing sizes hopefully applies only for the embedding. The full size image should be available in a new window if I click the image.
• Can I hotlink to images in the gallery from the outside (e.g. from the NI community)?
• Is there a limit on the gallery size?
• Is there a reasonable way to organize a large image library, e.g. by tags, subfolders, etc.

(I like the file size limit! but I just hope that users don't post 4000x4000 jpegs with the compression turned all the way up to get below the size limit :D) Still, hopefully this will prevent BMPs with fake png extensions, etc.)

Message Edited by altenbach on 05-20-2009 11:23 AM

[smercurio_fc]

Any particular reason why some text shows up in different languages all of a sudden?

EDIT: Didn't intent to post such a huge picture. Also noticed that this only happens sometimes. 

Message Edited by smercurio_fc on 05-20-2009 01:58 PM

[smercurio_fc]

Found one strange behavior when switching to/fro "Edit As HTML"/"Graphical Editor". I clicked "Reply" and then clicked "Quote". I edited it to get what you see in pic1. I then clicked on "Edit As HTML" and saw a bunch of gibberish, which looked like a an embedded XML island as well as some style definitions. (Looks like you might have copied and pasted from an Office app.) I made no changes.  When I clicked "Graphical Editor" I got what you see in pic2.

[smercurio_fc]

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Laura F. wrote:

Bug Fixes:

• Extra "phantom" spaces in the editor in
  Firefox. (I think this has been fixed,
  but let me know if you still see it, it can be hard to verify)

---

Still see it, though not as much as before. Using Firefox 3.0.10. 

[smercurio_fc]

OK. What the heck happened with my Reply #6?

Here's what I was doing (I think): Composing reply #5. Posted it. I then clicked "Reply" again to post about the phantom space. Wrote only the text "Still see it, though not as much as before. Using Firefox 3.0.10.". Posted it. Ended up with what you see. Note: while composing reply #5 I had two reply windows open so I could create the screenshots, but I had canceled from one of them and had posted in the other before I started on reply #6.

[RavensFan]

The changes for the image posting are long overdue.  Thanks for  getting them done.  There seems to have been a rash of people posting images incorrectly in the last few months such as the traditional, "embed an image from the hard drive" to what seemed like a growing "I almost know what I'm doing, attach a web URL, but it is from my preview screen rather than a posted message."

Are there any special instructions to follow related to image posting?  I see the dialog box has changed, but I haven't had a chance to post an image today yet.

Quick question.  The button says "post"  did it used to say "submit"?  No problems, it just seems different, but I can't put my finger on it.

[smercurio_fc]

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smercurio_fc wrote:

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Laura F. wrote:

Bug Fixes:

• Extra "phantom" spaces in the editor in Firefox. (I think this has been fixed, but let me know if you still see it, it can be hard to verify)

---

Still see it, though not as much as before. Using Firefox 3.0.10. 

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 I take it back. It's about as bad as before.

[RavensFan]

Did the forums change the indicator of new messages in a thread from [NEW] to [New]?  I can't be sure, but I thought it was the former.  I liked it in all caps because the new message jumps out as you a bit more if you are scrolling down a screen of messages.