Thanx & 'Bugs' n 'Features' & desire 2 Improve

simoninedinburgh

The issue

Hi 🙂

I want to thank all the people whose code I'm running - What a fantastic effort 🙂 There is the prospect of generating real life improvements for one of my communities and real value in the other - I hope in the fullness of time there will be something shareable 🙂

I said some time ago that I would write some user oriented documentation and put that into the public domain when I had something worthwhile.

That's getting closer 🙂

On this journey I'm discovering stuff that from a user point of view impedes uptake.

If there's a better place to put this I'll amend the process but at the moment I'll list challenges here

there are two platforms for access ie mobile and desktop. It's possible to access a forum from a mobile with the browser set to the desktop environment - If one is using the PWA the process to get back to mobile view of mobile website is extremely arcane - the UX UI would benefit greatly from a user level toggle in the menu (pref) or settings. There are many UX scenarios where swapping is desirable for example trying to update a tag description is impossible in the mobile interface on a mobile device but is possible in the desktop interface on a mobile device.
A number of other things don't work in the mobile apps/ config; for example acronyms will not expand, title attributes for HTML anchor tags don't pop
There seems to be no way to insert a comment into a post while it's being written which would be very useful when trying to debug the BBC (It's also very unclear to me how much of Mark down/ BBC is faithfully supported)
When saving a draft the message is "are you sure you want to discard this draft"!. Also if you have more than one window open (eg one on PC and one on mobile too) it would seem that the draft retrieved in each window is different - a refresh challenge?
the 'side by side' edit just doesn't work side by side when editing a post! And a large number of buttons in the 'more BBC' extension don't show an icon or a tool tip- plus they often offer a entirely inscrutable unexplained fragment of BBC code.
and related, the edit window sits on top of the page being edited which can be dynamically updating which would be marvellous but it has a semi-transparent overlay and on the mobile the edit window cannot be resized to either take advantage of un used screen real-estate or move it out of the way to see the effects of edits which are often not as expected
(hence the desire for an inline comment capabilit (and a working side by side edit!!))
pinned posts don't seem very controllable I've got one I would want to be first and I can't get it to be other than last in a set of pins
It seems that once the welcome banner has been dismissed it is gone forever for a user! That limits it's usefulness as a guaranteed starting point for when the labyrinth becomes confusing
the number of notifications signalled is often at odds with number listed. Negative numbers are shown at some points! And often a number is shown when none are listed!

There's more and I apologise for not being comprehensive and systematic but that is not the aim of this post

Adopters and particularly users are not aware of the social structures by which you develop the software. They look at the finished product in their hands. there is either an integrated consistent usability conformance or there is a reduction in uptake.

I suggest It's your best interests to consider how you polish the presentation of the whole even though it is compiled of bits crafted by folk with a loose affiliation

That user documentation I mentioned above is beginning to take shape as a piece of text with hyperlinks inserted into the Admin | Basics | Welcome banner That leads to a pinned post that explains why this forum exists and has links onwards to how to interact from a social/ subject and content point of view AND how to interact from a navigation/ menus and edit point of view

I'm setting up two forums serving very different purposes. on
-( https://bit.ly/big-cic-community

( https://bit.ly/StrokeCommunity

You can see what fledgling guidance I am providing. It's very much a case of the partially sighted (me) leading the blind (community members)

If you feel there's anything worth adopting borrow with my best wishes. If you have any guidance to me to improve what I'm doing I am a grateful recipient 🙂
That will include the best way to donate into the public domain. I'm not familiar with how to use git, It's on my reading list but is delayed by the amount of time I have to spend trying to reduce my ignorance of how flareum works
(A point of philosophy 😕; writing code provides no value. Running code is where the value is. Running is a combination of 'warmware' and software. If the warmware doesn't know how to operate the software then there was no point in to the prerequisite 😥 )

Post some information here like what you expected to see, but got instead. If you can find any logs in /storage/logs or in your browser console that relate to the issue, add them.

Flarum information

Post your output of php flarum info here. Without this information providing support will take longer!

Not applicable 🙂

clarkwinkelmann

simoninedinburgh thanks for your feedback. It would probably make sense to split this at least by vendor, as you are commenting on a lot of different features, the first half seemingly all in third-party extensions.

If you encounter any bug or have a suggestion for improving a third-party extension, the best would be to write your comment as a reply in the official extension discussion on this forumExtensions , or as a GitHub issue if the extension has a GitHub repository.

For suggestions in Flarum core and the core extension, the best would be to separate each suggestion and create a discussion inProposals

You talk about mobile and desktop views, but Flarum doesn't really have such a thing natively. The UI is responsive, and adapts to the screen size. Are you having issues with high density pixels displays, or with the desktop mode toggle of a specific mobile browser? Or is this about a custom theme provided by an extension?

You also mention a side by side view, but I have no idea which extension this could be part of. Flarum doesn't offer such a thing.

Your php flarum info output would be most useful as it will tell us which extensions you use and which versions.

flarum

Your question in theSupport tag seems to be missing the php flarum info output.

Providing this information in your initial request:

reduces back and forth asking for this information
can help us identify the root cause even when they're not apparent from your report
will result in more accurate answers to your request
allows us first-hand to identify the issue in case the Base URL is provided

Please consider editing your post and providing this output, see https://docs.flarum.org/troubleshoot for more information.

Thanks for your understanding.

[bot:require-info-command]

simoninedinburgh

Hi clarkwinkelmann

How do I run PHP info?
{{EDIT: scratch that! i wrote my1st php script! the o/p is 825 long! so ive just included a bit below and doesnt seem to mention flarum extensions - is it sensative to where its run? i ran it in the flarum root and the flarum public

php Vn 8.3.14
Build Date Nov 21 2024 10:16:37
Build System Linux buildfarm04-new.corp.cloudlinux.com 4.18.0-553.8.1.el8_10.x86_64 #1 SMP Tue Jul 2 07:26:33 EDT 2024 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux
Configure Command './configure' '--disable-dependency-tracking' '--prefix=/usr' '--exec-prefix=/usr' '--bindir=/usr/bin' '--sbindir=/usr/sbin' '--sysconfdir=/etc' '--datadir=/usr/share' '--includedir=/usr/include' '--libdir=/usr/lib64' '--libexecdir=/usr/libexec' '--sharedstatedir=/var/lib' '--mandir=/usr/share/man' '--infodir=/usr/share/info' '--build=x86_64-redhat-linux-gnu' '--host=x86_64-redhat-linux-gnu' '--target=x86_64-redhat-linux-gnu' '--program-prefix=' '--prefix=/opt/alt/php83' '--exec-prefix=/opt/alt/php83' '--bindir=/opt/alt/php83/usr/bin' '--sbindir=/opt/alt/php83/usr/sbin' '--sysconfdir=/opt/alt/php83/etc' '--datadir=/opt/alt/php83/usr/share' '--includedir=/opt/alt/php83/usr/include' '--libdir=/opt/alt/php83/usr/lib64' '--libexecdir=/opt/alt/php83/usr/libexec' '--localstatedir=/var' '--sharedstatedir=/usr/com' '--mandir=/opt/alt/php83/usr/share/man' '--infodir=/opt/alt/php83/usr/share/info' '--cache-file=../config.cache' '--with-libdir=lib64' '--with-config-file-path=/opt/alt/php83/etc' '--with-config-file-scan-dir=/opt/alt/php83/link/conf' '--disable-debug' '--enable-calendar' '--enable-exif' '--enable-ftp' '--enable-huge-code-pages' '--enable-jit' '--enable-shared=yes' '--enable-shmop' '--enable-static=no' '--enable-xml' '--with-bz2' '--with-freetype=/usr' '--with-gettext' '--with-gmp=shared' '--with-gnu-ld=yes' '--with-iconv' '--with-jpeg=/usr' '--with-layout=GNU' '--with-mhash' '--with-password-argon2=/usr' '--with-pcre-jit' '--with-pic' '--with-readline' '--with-webp=/opt/alt/libwebp' '--with-xpm=/usr' '--with-zlib' '--with-zlib-dir=/usr' '--without-gdbm' '--without-pear' '--with-curl=/opt/alt/curlssl11/usr' '--with-openssl-dir=/opt/alt/openssl11' '--with-openssl=/opt/alt/openssl11' '--with-pcre-dir=/opt/alt/pcre2' '--with-kerberos' '--with-apxs2' '--enable-fpm' '--with-fpm-systemd' '--enable-litespeed' '--enable-bcmath=shared' '--enable-dba=shared' '--with-db4=/usr' '--enable-dom=shared' '--enable-fileinfo=shared' '--enable-gd=shared' '--enable-intl=shared' '--enable-mbregex' '--enable-mbstring=shared' '--enable-mysqlnd=shared' '--enable-opcache' '--enable-pcntl' '--enable-pdo=shared' '--enable-phar=shared' '--enable-posix=shared' '--enable-soap=shared' '--enable-sockets=shared' '--enable-sysvsem=shared' '--enable-sysvshm=shared' '--enable-sysvmsg=shared' '--enable-xmlreader=shared' '--enable-xmlwriter=shared' '--with-enchant=shared,/usr' '--with-external-gd' '--with-mysql-sock=/var/lib/mysql/mysql.sock' '--with-mysqli=shared,mysqlnd' '--with-pdo-mysql=shared,mysqlnd' '--with-pdo-odbc=shared,unixODBC,/usr' '--with-pspell=shared' '--with-tidy=shared,/usr' '--with-unixODBC=shared,/usr' '--with-zip=shared' '--with-pdo-pgsql=shared,/opt/alt/postgresql11/usr' '--with-pgsql=shared,/opt/alt/postgresql11/usr' '--with-imap=shared,/opt/alt/libc-client11' '--with-imap-ssl=/opt/alt/openssl11' '--with-ldap=shared,/opt/alt/openldap11' '--with-ldap-sasl' '--with-pdo-dblib=shared,/opt/alt/freetds11/usr' '--with-snmp=shared,/opt/alt/net-snmp11/usr' '--with-pdo-sqlite=shared,/opt/alt/sqlite/usr' '--with-sqlite3=/opt/alt/sqlite/usr' '--with-pdo-oci=shared,instantclient,/usr/lib/oracle/21/client64/lib' '--with-sodium=shared,/usr' '--with-ffi=shared,/usr' '--with-pdo-firebird=shared' '--with-xsl=shared,/usr' 'build_alias=x86_64-redhat-linux-gnu' 'host_alias=x86_64-redhat-linux-gnu' 'target_alias=x86_64-redhat-linux-gnu' 'PKG_CONFIG=/usr/bin/pkg-config' 'PKG_CONFIG_PATH=/opt/alt/sqlite/usr/lib64/pkgconfig:/opt/alt/curlssl11/usr/lib64/pkgconfig:/opt/alt/openssl11/lib64/pkgconfig:/opt/alt/sqlite/usr/lib64/pkgconfig:/opt/alt/pcre2/usr/lib64/pkgconfig:/opt/alt/libzip/usr/lib64/pkgconfig:/opt/alt/libxml2/usr/lib64/pkgconfig:/opt/alt/libicu/usr/lib64/pkgconfig:/opt/alt/libgd/lib64/pkgconfig::/usr/lib64/pkgconfig:/usr/share/pkgconfig' 'CFLAGS=-O2 -g -pipe -Wall -Wp,-D_FORTIFY_SOURCE=2 -fexceptions -fstack-protector-strong --param=ssp-buffer-size=4 -grecord-gcc-switches -m64 -mtune=generic -Dmp_bitcnt_t=long -fno-strict-aliasing -Wno-pointer-sign -I/opt/alt/sqlite/usr/include -I/opt/alt/curlssl11/usr/include -I/opt/alt/openssl11/include -I/opt/alt/pcre2/usr/include -I/opt/alt/libzip/usr/include -I/opt/alt/libxml2/usr/include/libxml2 -I/opt/alt/libicu/usr/include -I/opt/alt/libgd/include -I/usr/include/libpng15 -I/usr/include/freetype2 -I/usr/include/uuid -I/opt/alt/libssh211/usr/include -I/opt/alt/libidn2/include -I/opt/alt/nghttp2/include ' 'CXXFLAGS=-O2 -g -pipe -Wall -Wp,-D_FORTIFY_SOURCE=2 -fexceptions -fstack-protector-strong --param=ssp-buffer-size=4 -grecord-gcc-switches -m64 -mtune=generic' 'KERBEROS_CFLAGS=-I/usr/include' 'KERBEROS_LIBS=-L/usr/lib64' 'WEBP_LIBS=-L/opt/alt/libwebp/lib64 -Wl,-rpath=/opt/alt/libwebp/lib64' 'SASL_CFLAGS=-I/usr/include' 'SASL_LIBS=-L/usr/lib64'
Server API CGI/FastCGI

My hosting co doesn't provide sh(1) access but does give crontab access so I could write a shell script to run 'myshellhack.bash' which I can then edit whenever I need shell access! %-)
Maybe there's a more elegant solution built into the flareum core?
I installed flareum via cpanel and softelicious

The elements of git, raising proposals, commenting elsewhere etc I'm very happy to do but I don't actually know where or how and here we're running into flareums root cause problem

You want to be attractive to a user base but are not A product (and as an aside I don't have any buttons in this composer window at the moment So I'm going to have to copy this code to the clipboard and then start another apply it and paste it in and hope I've got a send button 🙁 )

There's a golf between a collection of folk hacking excellent standalone functions and the user experience requiring functionality of an integrated whole

If That conundrum has been solved a while ago and there's a well-trodden path then I've just not found it

Otherwise I think I'm flagging up a integration/ service provision opportunity

Btw
The side by side & a lot more is from extension 'BB Code More New'
It's not clear to me at what level that's operating.
When a user sees a served page Apache must be processing HTML that it received.
Whats stored in the MariaDB database When I end a composer window? I guess its BBC? so the extension is fired every time a request is made to serve a page and the HTML is generated dynamically? I guess this is a level at which I can use my PHP admin to go and read the tables -

I guess discuss.fl.... isn't running the save drafts extension? So I'll post this and I'll go to the PC to look for other ways to run PHP info 🙂

Thanks for responding and for the code you written that I'm running cuz I am running several of your extensions 🙂
Caio

In fact I had to terminate running instance of the flareum app on my phone and to get any buttons back and now I see the drafts extension is running