Information to users
The trains.com forums was upgraded to new software on October 15th 2008. There is still quite a bit of teething problems with the new software, and how you do some things have changed.
Browsers: web site do not work correctly with older browsers. Totally up to each user if he or she chose to upgrade to a browser that works with the website or whether they want to live with web site features not working. Btw - I agree that it stinks to make a website that doesn’t work with IE6 or FF2 …
For PCs: IE 7 or Firefox 3 seems to work with all features of site
For Mac: firefox 2.0.0.17 seems to work with all features of site
Updated 10-28-08: Someone has fixed menus on top (e.g “resources”), so you get a new web page when when you click on menu item with IE6, instead of nothing showing up ?
Where is search ?: right margin. Old posts are slowly being added to search, at a rate of about 1 week of history every 24 hours of processing - all of 2008 should be available for search in about 30 days …
Where is “new posts” ? Forum front page, right margin (under “Active”)
Where is “my threads” ? Forum front page, right marging (under “My discussions”). Yes, it only shows last 10 threads or so, and I also miss the functionality that I easily could see which of the threads I participated in had gotten new posts …
I finally gave up on IE8 after only two days. I changed two days ago when it seemed like there were problems with IE7, but I found little improvement, whereas other applications on other sites were having problems. For example, online games would not close down properly, and in order to get out, I’d have to do a Ctl-Alt-Del., and then have IE ask me upon re-insertion if I wanted to re-open the first improperly closed down page or open a new browser window. Sheesh!!!
I am now typing this on IE7 and getting no glitches at all…text wrap works for a change. Whew!
So, I am back on IE7 (if you follow suit, remember to install it first, then get rid of IE8!!). Happily, even though I had to go through all the set up again, IE retained my favourites…thank God for that! Thumbs up there.
I would like to see the links to the forum topics at the bottom of the pages also. On the old site it was at the top and bottom. Because it is only at the top now, we have to scroll back to the top to hit the link to get back.
Just pointing out that IE8 is still in Beta. That means its gonna have issues. In my opinion, and I’m approaching my 30th year in the IT/Development industry, you should not even consider upgrading any Microsoft product for at least a year from its initial release.
Hi, Doug, and thanks for the advice. I will keep that in mind from now on. Who’d have thought an organization would unleash a browser rife with errors on its unsuspecting public? Even a Beta should be constrained to a select few thousand, not made available for all to use.
It’s not really a big problem, but it seems that I’m getting e-mail notification of replies to subscribed threads even when I’m the replier. My memory may not be the best, but it’s not that bad! [swg]
Wade and his team are aware of the email notifications problems, according to Bergie, and are working on that one plus some others. With luck, we should all hope to be enjoying the forum problem free within a few days.
As Crandell stated, hopefully that will all get worked out fairly soon. I wrote a review a couple of years ago (Nov '06) here on the forum that no longer is accessible via a link from my web site. I would still like to see it as a searchable thread, if possible.
A couple of days ago I got 404 “Not found” if I used the old style links - now they seems to be automatically redirected to the new format, so links from the outside (e.g from google or people’s web pages) seems to start to be redirected correctly.
I just replied to a post that has some large photos in it. When viewing the post in the thread, the photos were shrunk down to the size that fits and the “click here to display full size” link displayed correctly. However, when I clicked the reply button and got to the “compose” window, in the quoted test at the top of the “compose” tab the photos get displayed full size (and these were some big photos, like 1650 pixels wide). This caused the compose tab to be really wide including the text box where I was typing. As a result, my response just kept going off to the right of the screen and I had to scroll over to see what I was typing. After posting, the message displayed just fine in the thread. Jamie
If you clear your cookies after logging out, and then log in once again, you will almost certainly find that the forum software works when you attempt to open a particular thread. It worked precisely that way for me on Sunday morning, even though I had been active on the forum for a couple of days after “the change”.
The Resources tab at the very top goes nowhere. At the bottom of my IE6 window, a little text message comes up that says Javascript; void(0), indicating that nobody programmed the tab to go anywhere.
Using IE6 and Windows XP, each web site’s name appears on the Taskbar at the bottom of the screen. For this site, it says “Train.com - Model Railroader…” I would expect it to say “Trains.com,”, not the singular “Train.” Yeah, it’s just an oversight, and certainly doesn’t detract from the overall online experience, but I thought I’d say it once so that someone in Milwaukee would look at it and go “Doh!”
To the right of the black bar that has “Topics” in its, find “Search Community”. Type your key words in the blank, select the forum you think initially held the topic, and let 'er rip.
This seems to be working now - at least when using IE 7.0. I agree that it is not particularily nice to force users to upgrade browsers to be able to use use a web site that used to work pretty well with old browsers, but such is life.
I also see that view counts are starting to appear for new threads - looks like they are getting that fixed.
Indexing of old posts are progressing, albeit at a somewhat glacial pace - 56 of my 1004 posts have now been indexed and appear when searching for posts by me - oldest at the moment is from September 27th. At this pace old posts back to July 2006 (when I joined) ought to be indexed sometime around - umm - Christmas Eve or so ? [:)]
Oh well, I guess it takes as long as it takes - at least there is progress on several fronts.
It’s great to see the second bar back with the size and colour tabs back on although the SMILEY box is still small and scrunched up. Please try and make it a little larger.
I am still having the same problem with my “PAGE BACK” button not working. With the old system, when I finished reading a thread, I just had to click once on the “PAGE BACK” button and it would take me back to the previous page of the Thread if there were multiple pages to the thread. If there was only one page to the thread, I would be taken back to the page where the threads are listed and I would be at the location of the last thread that I had clicked on. I could then click on the next thread on the list or page down further to another thread. The list did NOT refresh until I wanted it to. Since you stuck us with this New & Improved??? version, for me to get to the main Forum page from any thread that I am reading, I have to click on the GENERAL DISCUSSION, Model Railroader link and that takes me back to a REFRESHED page #1. But before I can even do that, I have to shrink my TEXT 2 sizes from 150% where I have to have it to read the print, back to the 100% size. The reason for this step is because the Links above GENERAL DISCUSSION, Model Railroader, namely FORUMS & OUR STORE interferes with that link when the text is enlarged to 150%.
Please do not tell me that it is my computer as I did not have this problem prior to the Upgrade, and I do not have any problem at ANY OTHER Web Site that I frequent. As a matter of fact, I can click on a Link to another website from any of the threads here and when I am through there, I just click on the PAGE BACK bu
It’s great to see the second bar back with the size and colour tabs back on although the SMILEY box is still small and scrunched up. Please try and make it a little larger.
I am still having the same problem with my “PAGE BACK” button not working. With the old system, when I finished reading a thread, I just had to click once on the “PAGE BACK” button and it would take me back to the previous page of the Thread if there were multiple pages to the thread. If there was only one page to the thread, I would be taken back to the page where the threads are listed and I would be at the location of the last thread that I had clicked on. I could then click on the next thread on the list or page down further to another thread. The list did NOT refresh until I wanted it to. Since you stuck us with this New & Improved??? version, for me to get to the main Forum page from any thread that I am reading, I have to click on the GENERAL DISCUSSION, Model Railroader link and that takes me back to a REFRESHED page #1. But before I can even do that, I have to shrink my TEXT 2 sizes from 150% where I have to have it to read the print, back to the 100% size. The reason for this step is because the Links above GENERAL DISCUSSION, Model Railroader, namely FORUMS & OUR STORE interferes with that link when the text is enlarged to 150%.
Please do not tell me that it is my computer as I did not have this problem prior to the Upgrade, and I do not have any problem at ANY OTHER Web Site that I frequent. As a matter of fact, I can click on a Link to another website from any of the threads here and when I am through there, I just cl