ECN Forum Forums General Topics of the Trade General Discussion Area *** New ECN Forum ***

Al,

Thanks, So, that's better, right? It looks like the General area has over 50 pages. Does everyone see that?

Bill

57 pages going back to 10/16/2000.

Bill,
Does the new forum have "Smilies", like the old one?.
Just wondering.

Trumpy,

Yes, it's got Smileys too. It's looking like the Consensus is to stay with this version for now though.

Bill

I post all the time on a BB that uses a later version of UBB than this board does but not as new as the one Bill posted a link for. One feature I think all would enjoy is the ability to easily quote another poster within your post. Just click the post you want to reply to and the posters name and his original text will appear in your new post. Very nice feature that makes for getting your point across easier, My 2 cents


As far as smilies go, the newer version has them at the side, you just have to click on them and in your post they go:P

I think setting the default to "show all topics" is probably a good compromise for now Bill.

I've looked at those other links again, and I have to agree with some of the other comments that they do look less clean and more cluttered than ECN's present format.

Walrus,

The Quote Feature is available with this version too, but it was turned off because it seemed to be used too much. People were quoting Multparagraph posts and including Pictures and it was just making threads too long, slow-loading and more dificult to follow. It would have been much better if it allowed you to just select, say an individual sentence and quote that, but it would do the whole thing by default and that was not good.

To All,

BTW, If anyone would like to know how to quote something the instructions are at the *UBB Code is ON Link to the left of the Box where you type your replies into. The Smiles Legend is also there that lets you put in these Guys: etc. If you see something that you would like to do such as Italics, Bold Lettering etc. you can see how it was done by clicking the edit button ( ) above that particular post and you can see how it was done. Don't worry, you cannot edit or change someone elses' post without knowing their password.

Bill

[This message has been edited by Bill Addiss (edited 01-09-2003).]

Bill,

Thanks for the tips on how to edit the text. i always wondered how to do that.

Scott

If we are anyway talking about improvements, I would have appreciated if there would be a simpler way to add a picture to a message. e.g just by uploading it?

Belgian,

I suppose that would be easier, but it is not a standard Feature of this BB Software. And, frankly, that may hurt us if things were that easy because there would be no control at all over what is posted here and if it is appropriate material or not. Also, with many users still on a slower dialup connection, speed is also important. Pictures usually have to be edited and compressed somewhat before they are really suitable for us here. I've been sent Pictures that are close to 10M in size and if posted as is it could take almost an Hour to display for someone with a 28.8 Modem connection. An extreme, for sure, but even much smaller pictures posted in the same thread can really slow things down. And, many pictures as taken are really too Dark or Blurry to be of much use. They can usually be improved a bit if necessary to present a little better.

If you, or anyone else has any pictures they would like to submit, Please Email them to me along with a description or comments and I will get it posted. Jpg or Jpeg format is preferred, but we can work with others. If you just want it inserted into a particular thread to help you better make a point, we can do that too, just include a specific location.

Bill
Bill@Electrical-Contractor.net