VE Announcements

Welcome to the new look VE which is now fully device-friendly!

Those that browse on tablets and phones, and those who use wide computer screens screens will appreciate the new layout, I'm sure, as it adapts itself to the screen size.

With any change there are always things which some may have preferred with the old. I apologize for any frustrations that some might have with the new look, but overall I hope that it will be a positive change for everyone. Also, no technology is perfect, so please bear with me as we may still need to iron out some glitches and imperfections.

Issues which are known, and for which there is no current solution:

Latest forum post list on home page doesn't take you to the very latest post on a thread, when browsing on a device (it works on a normal computer screen)

Likewise, clicking on a thread on the Recent Topics page of the forum also doesn't take you to the very latest post when browsing on a small device. These 2 issues should be addressed in later software updates.

We did try and test in all the main browsers: IE, Edge, Chrome, Firefox, Opera, Safari as best we could. So far they all seem to work fine with the site, except for Opera Mini (not the normal Opera). Things do work on Opera Mini, it just messes up the layout.

There may be more issues which are unsolvable currently, I will be monitoring things over the next few days to see how certain things perform.

It is recommended to hit the refresh button on your browser a few times when you browse different sections of this site, just to make sure parts of the old look are not still in the browser cache. You may also want to clear your browser cache, especially if you see strange behaviour, or if the layout looks weird. If you discover bugs, please send me a PM.

Many thanks to the guys who helped with the testing: diverian, Smurfratefog, Viking, Macc, Papa Dragon, JonWells & andrew r, appreciate the help!

Enjoy!

mayake wrote: I do like .
with my smartphone android version I can't see the date of each posting, It may be useful (for me)... Or maybe something like "new" or "unread" or "color spot" testing date of the post with the previous login ...

The "new" indicator should be showing when viewed on devices. It does on my two Android devices, one of them having a very small screen. Can you confirm that you are logged in and the "new" indicator is not showing? I realize the way to reach the latest posts on small screens is not that great (it relates to the two issues mentioned earlier). It is a limitation we have to live with for now but I will definitely be looking for a way to improve this.

There are a few more updates coming soon. These shouldn't cause any major downtime of the site. Will announce in due course.

Papa Dragon wrote: Any idea what the smallest screen size is that will display like the first screenshot? Will that display only be on a tablet and not a phone?

Minimum screen size for the first view is 770px. I think most phone screens are below 500px, so typically you will only get the first view if you are using a tablet at horizontal orientation. At 1031px it will switch to the full blown dekstop view.

I've made some adjustments and it should now be possible to publish/unpublish your own images in the Gallery, either by clicking on the edit button below the detail view of an image, or by using the list view under the My Panel page. It is unfortunately not possible at the current time for members to fully delete an image. If you need to fully delete an image please don't hesitate to ask the moderators as they will be able to do it. Note that it is possible to move the image to a different category by editing it.

In order to make new private messages notifications more visible, there is now a small animated envelope icon that appears with the notification below the logout button. For those with really bad eyesight (like Smurfatefrog) there is now also the option of activating a pop-up notification that will appear for a few seconds in the top left part of the screen every time you browse to a new page, if you have unread messages. For those that want this, it can be activated in the Private Message settings page (browse to Private Messages and Look for the "Settings" link in the red bar at the bottom of the main view). Scroll down, check the "Show a popup when a new message arrives" option and hit Save.

I have also re-established the ability to set your personlised forum signature. It can be set by editing your profile and browsing to the "Forum Settings" tab. Note that if you have previously set your signature, it should continue working, but if you edit it, it will appear blank
in the edit screen, until you save a new signature. This will just be a once off occurrence. Please note that forum signatures should be of a personal nature and may not be used for advertising.

Over the last while several software updates have been installed on the site. It is not unusual for there to be one or two minor glitches that need to be tweaked after these updates so let me know if any of you comes across any.

One of the significant improvements is the new WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) editor in the forum section. So when you post a message on the forum, the editor behaves like Microsoft Word does when you make text bold, underlined etc. Image uploads remain unchanged in the regard however - they are still added as tags in the text.

For those that prefer the old BB code approach, you can still use this by clicking on "BBCODE" on the right end of the editor.