sorry guys the new format sucks

[Joe Link]

I appreciate your thinking on this subject.

The issue we have with that is the members who are replying to the notification emails, regardless of where they go, still lose those emails they've typed out. Most of the people who would reply to the notification emails are the same ones who wouldn't know how to copy/paste or retrieve what they've sent from their sent email boxes. This would mean they'd have to re-type their reply, and in their mind the site is 'broken' due to the error. I know because we've tried it for a period of time about a year ago.

I'm going to consult with a developer and see about making this an option. Those who prefer the quoted notifications could turn it on, my thinking would be that they'd know better than to reply to them. The less than tech savvy would continue to receive the unquoted messages.

 

[JackThompson]

I appreciate your thinking on this subject.

The issue we have with that is the members who are replying to the notification emails, regardless of where they go, still lose those emails they've typed out. Most of the people who would reply to the notification emails are the same ones who wouldn't know how to copy/paste or retrieve what they've sent from their sent email boxes. This would mean they'd have to re-type their reply, and in their mind the site is 'broken' due to the error. I know because we've tried it for a period of time about a year ago.

I'm going to consult with a developer and see about making this an option. Those who prefer the quoted notifications could turn it on, my thinking would be that they'd know better than to reply to them. The less than tech savvy would continue to receive the unquoted messages.

That's a good solution.

 

[Mikej]

Good Lord I need beer! I don't have the foggiest idea what the hay you guys are talking about, twists my brain!

I'M gettin' on around here OK though....Thankfully.

 

[Grunwald]

Sure you can stick with it, but what about when you need some kind of support? If the developer no longer supports the product, then you're completely on your own. No patches, no upgrades, no fixes, no one to help you if you have a problem. You might be able to keep it running on your own, but why do that? I work in an industry where our products are supported by software. When it's time to upgrade, the companies eventually stop all support for the previous version, leaving customers waving in the wind.

As someone who develops software for a living I can tell you that is horse poo. Once software is stable you do not need support for it. We're talking about a bloody website here. This is not rocket science and anyone with experience and a brain could whip up a far superior product in relatively short time.
The problem is that a new generation of coding teams are complete morons when it comes to the user experience portion of what they produce. I know that first hand because of the arguments I have had with them. They are enamored with what technology can do but ndver really consider the person that will use it. This is why you have car stereos that have menu systems 5 levels deep. It never occurs to them that you cannot navigate such a menu while driving a car.

Personally, I don't find the design of the website to be too bad, but it is way too slow on my BlackBerry PlayBook tablet to be usable so I have stopped my visits to it almost completely.I suspect that the new version has a ton of client side scripting that just hammers older hardware.

 

[etrain16]

As someone who develops software for a living I can tell you that is horse poo. Once software is stable you do not need support for it. We're talking about a bloody website here. This is not rocket science and anyone with experience and a brain could whip up a far superior product in relatively short time.
The problem is that a new generation of coding teams are complete morons when it comes to the user experience portion of what they produce. I know that first hand because of the arguments I have had with them. They are enamored with what technology can do but ndver really consider the person that will use it. This is why you have car stereos that have menu systems 5 levels deep. It never occurs to them that you cannot navigate such a menu while driving a car.

Personally, I don't find the design of the website to be too bad, but it is way too slow on my BlackBerry PlayBook tablet to be usable so I have stopped my visits to it almost completely.I suspect that the new version has a ton of client side scripting that just hammers older hardware.

I have to disagree. I may not develop software, but I sell and support software on a number of systems we install. It doesn't matter if your platform is stable or not - the problem comes when everything around you changes, and the software has to change with it. OS changes, hardware changes, platform changes, browser changes - you should know well enough if you're a developer that upgrades and patches are always necessary, no matter how stable your platform. And once those changes impact your 'stable' software, you have little choice but to upgrade. And with each upgrade and patch, comes the need for support.

And what about coming up with new options and features? Doesn't that necessitate a need for upgrades, and with it, further support? I don't know many folks that would invest in software that never changes, never upgrades. Why else would customers sink so much into SMA fees?

Can you offer up some examples of stable software platforms that have been around, unchanged, for 5, 10, 20 years? That have no need to offer support? That are so stable that they work with every new OS, every new piece of hardware, without being upgraded/updated themselves? I'd be surprised if you could. As for support, I wouldn't own software I couldn't get support on - for exactly the reasons I noted above.

 

[Grunwald]

Majority of change in software is simply for the sake of charge. The reason behind it is to continue the revenue stream.
I have written production control and quality control software for an international tire company and they are still running it unchanged 15 years later. It serves its purpose, is rock solid and so they don't mess with it. Of course if they decided to replace it with newer technology and don't get it right the fiscal consequences could be millions of dollars of raw materials being turned into industrial waste.

I will leave you guys to argue the benefits and drawbacks of this upgrade amongst yourselves. I don't like it and find it too slow so my visits went from pretty much daily to bi-weekly at the most. I also don't care for threads getting locked down nor the policies which are now much more strictly enforced. I find it all too limiting and topics that I got a kick of reading are now history.
That's the great thing about free market. Those who find value and enjoyment here will frequent and contribute and those that do not will not.

 

[powermad]

At least with a web site there is support from staff and other members to help out.

Really sucks when you install new software and you have to figure it out all on your own.
It took me nearly 10 hours to get our new Cummins Insite 8 software to work this week.
I was really disappointed with the lack of support and information.
2 hours of that was spent on hold. And then when you finally get your turn they have no idea what is going on or what to do.

Try to install on current laptop, won't run on XP.
Buy new laptop with W7 and try again. Find out that you have to first install and activate a previous version. Installed and activated, hook up all included gear and now it won't recognize the com box.
Drivers installed with latest firmware and still nothing.
Finally get through to the help desk again and find that the cord from the com box to the computer is to long and there is to much noise for the new laptop. Find that the com box needs to sent in to be "repaired" so it will work with a long cord. The "work around" is a short cord.
Get it all happy and running and need to remove the password to reprogram the engine ECU.
Now there is nowhere to access that portion of the program.
Get put on hold and do what they say to do and our account is removed from the system. ARGGHHHHH!
Do everything all over again and after more calls find where they put it.

Volvo is even worse, updates and patches everyday that need to be installed or it won't work.
Recently they changed the log in page, after log in the legal safety/warning message comes up, which like most is 9 pages long and at the bottom says I have read and understood all this.
You used to be able to just click the continue button and go to the next screen.
Now it's grayed out until you scroll all the way to the end of it.
Of course they didn't bother to tell anyone and you sit on hold for an hour to get told to scroll all the way through the warning. Good grief, are you kidding me?
Then you only do one computer if you are smart because sometimes the patches make it worse as some are corrupted and have to be remotely removed and everything reinstalled, which can take hours.

We had to make a RO just for messing with computers as you can't charge a customer for that nonsense.
A guy just want's something simple, like changing road speed parameters, which is usually a 20 minute process and you spend 2 hours just getting the computer to communicate with the truck.
Then it's almost done and it it decides to take a left turn at Albuquerque and the ECU gets bricked, wiped clean, nothing inside anymore.
With Volvo they suck out everything in the ECU and it's stored on the server in Sweden, then it's all sent back with whatever they added to it. Sometimes all the ones and zero's get scattered to the 4 winds of cyberspace on the way back and poof. Most of the time you can get it back.
If not replace it and start from scratch. The old one is sent back so it can be re-introduced to the hive.

Add all that with guys who barely know how to navigate a computer other than facebook or porn and it's chaos.
You just about need a computer science degree to work with this stuff anymore.

 

[powermad]

Personally, I don't find the design of the website to be too bad, but it is way too slow on my BlackBerry PlayBook tablet to be usable so I have stopped my visits to it almost completely.I suspect that the new version has a ton of client side scripting that just hammers older hardware.

FWIW it's faster now than it was on my droid using the chrome browser.
Same with the Toshiba tablets I have. No lagging and seems to load almost instantly.

 

[Caveman Jim]

I am waiting for the massive EMP so my life will get back to normal (people asking me stuff that I can answer)
I'm a caveman for Gods sake!!!

 

[JackThompson]

As a professional in the computer industry I find this thread quite interesting. Lots of good input on all sides.

One of thing things that eases the pain of an upgrade for me is to read the release notes and find out what I can do now that I couldn't before, and what bugs have been fixed.

Are there such release notes available for this upgrade?

What can we do now that we couldn't before?
What bugs have been fixed?

 

[JRuby]

I personally would never run enterprise class software without major support - the problem with that statemenis the cost of that support and the knowledge and practices of the company providing that enterprise class of support. I have worked in the IT field for over three decades - and I know of no software that doesnt get upgraded / supported or it gets decommed. The way to tell if a piece of software has reached its end of life / support is when there are no more upgrades. A company will use a piece of unsupported software only until it has found a way or replacing it with something that is supported. In most cases the software is replaced before end of support or else the management is looked on poorly for lack of dilligence.

 

[JackThompson]

I personally would never run enterprise class software without major support - the problem with that statemenis the cost of that support and the knowledge and practices of the company providing that enterprise class of support. I have worked in the IT field for over three decades - and I know of no software that doesnt get upgraded / supported or it gets decommed. The way to tell if a piece of software has reached its end of life / support is when there are no more upgrades. A company will use a piece of unsupported software only until it has found a way or replacing it with something that is supported. In most cases the software is replaced before end of support or else the management is looked on poorly for lack of dilligence.

I have worked in the computer industry for only 2 decades, but I can tell you there's a vast difference between LOB (Line of Business) software and Internet Forum software.

As long as your code is fairly up to date (Protected from hackers) and provides what your target community wants you are fine.

I don't see a lot of desire to run HTML5 apps (Reloading databases for instance, interactive maps or video games) at NWFA, or connect it with Pintrest, Facebook, Twitter, Vine or Instagram.

The features required here:
Post
Read
Search
Email Notification and Private Message
Polls
Like/Reply/Quote
Moderate/Ban/Manage
An editor that allows you to insert video, images and web links.

These have all been available for over 10 years, and in some cases 30 years.

So unless there are some cutting edge features required you just need to keep the database optimized and and moderate it.

So if you are overhauling your site from the ground up, with the purpose of maintaining security and security patches, but in the process you are changing some core functionality, there should be some discussion with the end users about these core changes.

 

[JRuby]

The end user doesnt own the site the admin and others do - guess what they dont need our permission or even our insite. It would hasve been wise to ask but that is why some sites no longer exist - due to pissing off to many users. This is my opinion - I dont like the new format and I dont like having to relearn how things work here but I choose to participate even though this software doesnt make sense.

 

[JackThompson]

The end user doesnt own the site the admin and others do - guess what they dont need our permission or even our insite. It would hasve been wise to ask but that is why some sites no longer exist - due to pissing off to many users. This is my opinion - I dont like the new format and I dont like having to relearn how things work here but I choose to participate even though this software doesnt make sense.

"Guess what"? I don't get where that statement comes from. That sounds like hostility, and a lack of understanding of the point I'm making (If it was directed at me?).

But you summed up your post saying pretty much the same thing I've been saying, so I'm confused.

 

[deadeye]

Hmmmm
http://www.northwestfirearms.com/threads/recent-issues-with-northwestfirearms-com.127005/
http://www.northwestfirearms.com/threads/welcome-to-nwfa-2-0.164989/
http://www.northwestfirearms.com/th...r-what-do-you-think-of-the-new-design.166924/
http://www.northwestfirearms.com/th...w-hidden-exciting-features-share-here.164821/
http://www.northwestfirearms.com/threads/preview-the-new-nwfa.161028/
http://www.northwestfirearms.com/th...rent-forum-platform-input-appreciated.147431/

 

[Bunny]

This format is better than the old format when viewed from a phone. I have not tried it on the computer yet.

I agree. I like it better on my phone. Seems a little link-heavy, redundant, and compartmentalized on a pc, but I can get used to it. Overall a good change IMO. I like it.