Hey Everybody!!! Forum Software Upgrade in the Works

My guess is that account has not-quite-regular-user permissions...

I've used IE7, IE8, Chrome and Safari...same view for all.

The signature doesn't display for any view or from any device -- that appears to be a configuration issue, not a software glitch.

A quick test of IE8, Chrome and Safari reveals that Safari and IE8 are loading the upper-right set of menus quickly, while Chrome does not -- it hangs showing only "Search..." and not the upper-right menu items (username, inbox, alerts, Log Out).

I'll have to check my devices (iPhone and iPad) to verify again how they handle the upper-right features.

That's weird... maybe it has to do with the non-mods accounts that were ported over from the old software?

I'm using Chrome on this computer...no option for a sig there

Agreed with cornutt that maybe it's to do with when the users were created.

Hmm. Maybe there's a difference between accounts that were migrated from the old DF and accounts that were newly created after the switch? (I'm grasping at straws here and too lazy to create my own new dummy account to investigate.) Perhaps there's an old inactive/banned user/spammer that got migrated that could be used for additional testing. Well, it's just an idea.

Sure, but just like in the original Netscape-vs-Mosaic days, there will be some non-standard things that Chrome supports and standard/common things it doesn't. This sort of thing is constantly in flux. Basically portable web programming is very hard and time-consuming and expensive because browser vendors all have economic incentives to keep it that way.

Software customers can and do expect all sorts of things, including that websites will play nicely with their browsers of choice. They have no idea how much money is spent/wasted on web portability efforts, and they don't care either. This goes in the bucket of "the customer is always right".

Believe me the folks who make Xenforo and run DF have my sympathy on the difficulty of this problem, but the problem is what it is. Developing portable web services is expensive in time and money for development, maintenance, and testing. It's not fair, but such is life.

Hmm. If browser and migration issues and account age issues are ruled out, I'm fresh out of ideas for low-hanging fruit. There could be weird issues related to other account-related state (number of posts? most recent login prior to migration?), but there's no apparent evidence implicating anything in particular. Umm, good luck.

FWIW, that sounds like a "best practice" to me, for exactly the reason you mention.

Quite true... I've got sysadmin/IT experience going back to the early '80s, and there has been a long-standing problem of the software developer or IT admin who tests something using their privileged admin account, pronounces it good, releases it, and then it doesn't work for ordinary users and someone has to figure out what privileges it needs in order to run. (For old-time operating system geeks: The worst about that, of all the systems I ever used, was VMS. It was always a challenge to find a combination of privilege flags that enabled the application to run, without letting the user do anything dangerous. There was a privilege called "system logical names" that a lot of useful applications had to have in order to run, but it also allowed the knowledgeable user to replace the entire system account file. DEC never really found a way to fix that; it was too deeply embedded in the OS kernel.)

I know I'm grabbing for straws, here, but I wouldn't necessarily rule out account types just yet. For example, user titles (In this software, new member, member, active member, well-known member) are defined differently than in the past. In the old software, it was strictly number of posts. More posts, higher level, period. In this new software, someone with relatively few posts who is currently posting a lot has a "higher" level than someone with a bunch of posts who hasn't posted in in a long time. Or so it seems.


Not assuming that this is related to screens and permissions. Just pointing out that the algorithm used to define user type in this software appears to be less straight-forward than in the previous software. There could be something subtle going on. *sigh*


Aside: @cornutt. VMS. Yeesh. Does that ever bring back memories. I'm not a systems geek, but I do remember VMS well. The first computer I ever had at work was on a VAX/VMS operating system. Ay yi yi. Was that ever a dinosaur! The system-admin geeks definitely had their hands full, keeping us system-user geeks from killing ourselves or, worse yet, our data. lol.

Newp. Just tried Firefox and Chrome. No .sig option in the drop down.

Just for the record, in case my previous post was unclear... I don't have a signature option either (I use firefox). But I haven't had as much trouble with some of the other problems that people have been reporting, and I know the browser can make a difference, so that's why I mentioned the browser thing, just in case.

I cannot figure out how to do screen shots, so this post may be of limited usefulness.

In comparing my display in IE8 and firefox, I've noticed that there is a frame near the top right side of the screen that contains the search box, my avatar, Messages, Likes and Points. In IE8, that box is relatively small and rectangular and it is below my rightmost four buttons (my username with dropdown, Inbox, Alerts and Log Out.)

I realized last night that, in firefox (at least for me) those four buttons are not gone. They are hidden under the frame I referenced above. That frame is much larger and more square than rectangular. I think that the buttons are there because I can see the p at the beginning of my username peeking out. If I click on that p, my user panel and the drop down show just like normal.

I hope this makes sense.

I'm not seeing that in Firefox. For me, it looks the way you describe as your IE8 view. The screenshots I posted were from Firefox. I'm running 13.0.1.

Hmm. I just did some zooming in and out with Firefox, and everything worked perfectly.