see?

As it is now, you have to manually paste the text in between the quote tags for it to work.

As it is now, you have to manually paste the text in between the quote tags for it to work.

No you don't..HIGHLIGHT the text in the post you want to quote and PRESS the quote button and the text is automatically pasted into your topic.

Ideally: - By default it should search the body and author fields as well as title (ie: search *every* field). - Non-default search options could be made available by having an "advanced search" button that takes you to a search page with assorted options. Here's a good forum search page example: Link and another: Link - An author-only search option would be nice, to be able to find all my posts (not just those threads I started) or, say, Frogboys. - Similarly, it'd be nice if the "My Posts" button showed *all* my posts, not just those I've started. - And it'd also be great if I could click on another user's profile and from there be able to get a list of all his/her posts. - If you think these author searches will take up too much forum server horsepower, you can help that by adding options to search only the "last 5 days", "last 30 days", etc.

Those are excellent Ideas in my opinion. I'm not sure what the bosses think, but I like those points. I would find the personally quite useful too, and probably something everyone would benefit from. We'll see how things go though. I'm really not sure what the plans are for "new" features. We're in bug hunting mode at the moment.

Those are excellent Ideas in my opinion. I'm not sure what the bosses think, but I like those points. I would find the personally quite useful too, and probably something everyone would benefit from. We'll see how things go though. I'm really not sure what the plans are for "new" features. We're in bug hunting mode at the moment.

Thank you! I think everyone would benefit as well. Well, here's hoping for it.

No you don't..HIGHLIGHT the text in the post you want to quote and PRESS the quote button and the text is automatically pasted into your topic.

Yes, you do. It *used* to work like you described it, but then it just stopped. I highlighted your text, pressed quote, then went back between the [quote ] and [/ quote] tags and hit ctrl-v to paste what I wanted to quote. When the forums still had that 'new forum smell' to them, it worked like you're saying it does. Now, not so much. I think it's a fuction of more users than they anticipated/can handle.

Also, Brad, I HATE, LOATHE, DESPISE how it dumps everything into the GalCivII thread in addition to the one you try to post it in. I think this feature is broken as I will often go back to the board I meant to post it into in the first place and it will never show up there. I have to go back to the general forum and edit my post in order for it to end up in the right place. Even if this feature functioned like it should, it would turn general GalCivII into some kind of hellish WoW-esque forum, wherein every 5 seconds if you refresh the entirety of the topics will be different.

@Jeysie Post #20.

Great post - you hit the nail on the head.

Stardock is great at what they do - but they are not Forum software specialists. This is not meant as a bad thing.

IMO these forums are a bad reflection on the company as they stand. Very amatuerish compared to 'real' Forum software that has been developed over the years and already have the features users want.

The GC2 forums look spiffy, but like a Yugo, things under the hood ain't so great.

When I want bread, I buy it from a baker. When I want meat, I go to the butcher. I don't expect the butcher to be selling top notch baked goods he made himself. It is okay if he has other folks bread for sale to use to make a sandwich.

That said, I mean no disrespect to SD or the content of these forums - both are outstanding - just trying to offer some constructive criticism.

Yes, you do. It *used* to work like you described it, but then it just stopped.

Still does, actually. I'd always been under the impression that it was broken, too, but I just tried it the way it's described above (highlight it, but DON'T copy it (as that'll un-highlight it)... just strictly highlight and leave it alone, then hit the Quote button while the text is still highlighted), and it worked perfectly. It sounds like you're highlighting, copying, then hitting Quote, which, as we have all known, will not work properly.

Now, it could conceivably be a browser problem causing it to work in different ways. I'm currently using IE6 (at work, no Firefox ), so it seems to work fine in IE. Are you using a different browser?

As far as general suggestions about the forum, though, now that (at least for me) the quote functionality is fixed, I'd definitely like to see a way to watch my own replies (I don't start threads myself, so the "My Posts" button is useless for me, and it's a pain to have to "Watch" every thread I post a reply in... how about just automatically "Watching" a thread where you post a reply?).

Yes, you do. It *used* to work like you described it, but then it just stopped.

It works in IE not in FireFox. With FireFox all you get now is the quote begin/end brackets.

It works in IE not in FireFox. With FireFox all you get now is the quote begin/end brackets.

Doubly confirmed. Back home now on Firefox 1.5.0.1, and it doesn't work.

How about gif files for the avatar? i want my animated Daleck from Doctor Who. png and jpg are static i wish also that you had some sort of drop down so that you can jump to forums instead of having to click the tiny home button then jump to another forum.

Also i get issues where the forum post are wider then the frame and the text being white is hard to read over the frame. i use IE at work and FF at home so it happens on both

I'd just like to point out that sometime ago, after some forum code update, it has become impossible to access the hidden subforums (Ideas->colonies, etc.) using the "more" selection at the bottom of the GalCiv II main forum. I have had to resort to bookmarking the "idea" subforum as a separate entry just so I can get other there (because there are no tags at the top for it). Someone might want to take a look at that form code.

@ post #20 by Jeysie

Exactly!

And as a side note: These are most of the same "issues" that the Wincustomize, Total Gaming, etc. sites exhibit. One would think the sites share the same code.

Oh and one more thing.... can we get lowcase equivalents for the smiles... a lot of the other places I visit use lowercase 'lol', 'hot', 'notsure', etc. It would make it that little bit more usable.

watch function seems to be fixed now

They give us great games and (censored) forum software. Swings and roundabouts, maybe ?

I can't understand why Stardock wouldn't just use one of the bajillion freebie off-the-shelf packages. NIH-itis?

With respect to the need to highlight for quote to work properly:


Well that is completely counter-intuitive and different than any other forum software that I have ever seen and I have seen a
lot!

1. Fix the quote function. There is nothing wrong with the quote function. Highlight the text you want to quote, hit quote, voila, quote added to post.

Yes, but in ALL other fourms I have been too, the Quote button simply quoted every work in the post you pressed it on. And since thats the way it usually work thats the way people expect it to work.
This is handy if you know about it, but I know I never learned of it until you told me in your post.

1. Fix the quote function. There is nothing wrong with the quote function. Highlight the text you want to quote, hit quote, voila, quote added to post. Yes, but in ALL other fourms I have been too, the Quote button simply quoted every work in the post you pressed it on. And since thats the way it usually work thats the way people expect it to work. This is handy if you know about it, but I know I never learned of it until you told me in your post.

same here, I didn't know about that highlight thing until I read this thread.

also, it needs to update the number of replies properly because it doesn't always do this and sometimes its different for different sections and theres a delay.

The only thing I don't like is that links you get in email notification don't bump directly to last post you haven't seen before in the thread.
They just bring you to the thread, when you manually need to serach and find last post you read.

That's my main gripe.

Also an option for threads to automaticly get watched after posting in them.

I also noticed that edits are not real time.
Often, when I need to edit thread more then once (very often consideing those ugly HTML tags), after I start second edit, the changes from first edit are not there.
It usually results in completly messing my posts.

Also, recent edits sometimes don't appear in posts immediately after edit.

There is one and only one problem with these forums.

They are a sad victim of "reinvent-the-wheel-itis".

I believe there was a reason why they are custom-made, and that is so they can show up in the SDC application, but SDC could have been coded to access the data through a PHP linking application to an existing forum software. Any other reason for building a custom application when many forum packages already exist with much richer feature sets and capabilities, and that actually work (or at least, work somewhat better), is a question only Stardock can answer.

There is nothing wrong with the quote function. Highlight the text you want to quote, hit quote, voila, quote added to post.

We should not have to.


hehe

I'm sorry but we are not all programmers or internet pro. It would be simple to use existing model of forum that work truly better than this one. If anyone ever played the game "SuperPower 2", you saw there a great forum where it was easy to spot your message and most of topics, wich is not the case on this forum.