New forum - big change for the worse

Yeah, a text search works. Looking at the HTTP headers, I’m not sure how it’s actually making the determination how to map from the old thread to the new - there are two 301 redirects that take place; one that goes from:

https://forums.opensuse.org/showthread.php/576499-Tumbleweed-zypper-upgrade-to-6-0-kernel-wipes-grub2-GUI-menu

to

http://forums.opensuse.org/thread/576499

(Weird that it goes to http rather than https), and then from the HTTPS version of that link to

https://forums.opensuse.org/t/tumbleweed-zypper-upgrade-to-6-0-kernel-wipes-grub2-gui-menu/153131

non_space’s issue, though, is that his bookmarks all use the parameterized URLs. I suppose it might be possible for him to export those links and automate the search on Google to get the static links (Python with Mechanize, maybe?), but that’s going to be pretty custom stuff.

Ah, yes, 1.2+ million. That’s a huge redirect table to build, and even if it were automated by the content migration process, the time to do the lookup from old link to new link wouldn’t be instantaneous. But now I’m curious how the static link redirect works at all.

ETA: The redirect from HTTP to HTTPS is handled by another request header - “upgrade-insecure-requests”. So that mystery is solved (I should’ve thought of that, too early in the morning and I haven’t had my tea yet).

ETA2: And it looks like the migration tool does build topic-level redirects, but those seem to be handed using a “thread ID” mapping to “topic ID”, which clearly is pretty quick. But with threads in vBulletin that could have hundreds of messages, doing the conversion of “post ID” (which seems to be the parameter in the links that aren’t working) to “topic ID” would be more time consuming to do.

ETA3: It looks like the mapping table is a static table (looking at the code for the migration tool), but it looks like it also should work with bookmarks/links that use the topic ID (looking at the code) - it pulls from Topic.listable_topics (that’s the Ruby variable name) - so it’s based entirely on the vBulletin topics and not posts. But it does that and just creates a CSV file with the redirects in it.

Perhaps start a trend to put one’s name or initials in the picture.

This worked great, thank you.

Here’s a quick and dirty Tampermonkey script that will add a line to the topic cell in the table with links to the users. I haven’t tested it extensively, and I’m not a Javascript developer (this code was generated using ChatGPT), but it seems to be a good starting point. Perhaps someone with more Javascript experience (and Tampermonkey script experience) can tweak it to do what you’re looking for.

I find that I sometimes have to refresh the page for the script to run. It’ll probably mess with the formatting in weird ways if the number of users in the list is too long, and the usernames aren’t added to a <div> tag, so they’re not styled in any way whatsover. It’s just a list of usernames that link to their user pages.

Seems to work OK on the ‘Latest’, "New’, and ‘Unread’ lists that show up. No idea how to have it run on the page while the page is loading more rows, either - someone with a lot more knowledge of how TM and Javascript works than I do will need to tweak it to account for that. This should be a starting point for someone who’s interested in pursuing this idea further.

// ==UserScript==
// @name        User Data Card List
// @namespace   https://forums.opensuse.org/
// @version     0.1
// @description Displays a list of user data card values in the previous td element
// @match       https://forums.opensuse.org/*
// @author      ChatGPT generated script
// @grant       none
// ==/UserScript==

(function() {
  'use strict';

  // get all elements with the class "posters"
  const postersElements = document.getElementsByClassName("posters");

  // loop through each element
  for (let i = 0; i < postersElements.length; i++) {
    const element = postersElements[i];

    // get the previous element (the element in the previous column)
    const previousElement = element.previousElementSibling;

    // get all elements with the attribute "data-user-card"
    const dataUserCardElements = element.querySelectorAll("[data-user-card]");

    // loop through each element
    for (let j = 0; j < dataUserCardElements.length; j++) {
      const dataUserCardElement = dataUserCardElements[j];

      // get the value of the "data-user-card" attribute
      const dataUserCardValue = dataUserCardElement.getAttribute("data-user-card");

      // create a new link element
      const link = document.createElement("a");
      link.href = "/u/" + dataUserCardValue; // set the href to be the value of the "data-user-card" attribute
      link.innerText = dataUserCardValue; // set the text of the link to be the value of the "data-user-card" attribute

      // append the link to the previous element (the element in the previous column)
      previousElement.appendChild(link);

      // create a new text node element
      const textNode = document.createTextNode(" ");

      // append the text node element to the previous element (the element in the previous column)
      previousElement.appendChild(textNode);
    }
  }
})();

The problem is that there is any rule applied from the server side. Those who find line length too long have a simple option to narrow their window width. The opposite is unfortunately not the case. No matter how wide the browser window, a server-applied fixed or maximum length, will be applied, absent CSS heroics on the client/user side.

Never did this kind of tinkering before. However I installed Stylus in Firefox, pasted the code snippet and saved.

.wrap {
 width:99%;
 max-width:99%;
}
.topic-body {
  width: calc(100% - (100px));
}

I got what I was asking for at the first try!

UX is always built on the server side.

If you want to tweak it, use a browser extension. The project didn’t create Discourse, so as @hellcp stated in the ticket you opened, if you want DIscourse to have options to do this, you need to open a ticket in the upstream project. We’re not interested in maintaining a fork of Discourse because a small number of users want tweaks to the UI.

You’re free to do whatever you want with Stylus or Tampermonkey to format things just the way you want them. Then if an update to the software breaks it for you, you can work on fixing your custom CSS.

I doubt the real number is small. Surely you don’t have numbers on those it turns away either to the mailing lists, other forums, or other distros, or on the timid, or those who only ever come for help and haven’t been here since vB was retired.

When I want or need help, the mailing lists have been, and look destined to remain, my first choice, where the background stays white, the text stays maximum contrast, highly legible black, and the gray on gray mobile phone/kindergarten UI is entirely absent.

Were it not for my compulsion to assist those in need of help who come here, and enough understanding of CSS, my absence from here would have been permanent.

For those not aware it exists, linuxquestions.org has an openSUSE-specific forum that gets little traffic, but overall ample useful traffic on other topics that are not distro- or even Linux-specific. It’s the unofficial forum for Slackware users, so there’s quite a bit of posturing, sysvinit touting, and systemd bashing. It uses responsive, friendly old forum software that doesn’t feel like it’s running on 400k+ of CSS and needs at least 4 4.0GHz cores to do it.

“The anonymous masses” is not a strong argument for change, Felix. It’s been less than a week since this system went live, nor is “I’ll go somewhere else”.

If we start tweaking everything to meet the needs of the few people who have said they don’t like x, y, or z, that’s going to confuse people about what the forum looks like and how it works. So we’re not changing it for now.

Oh, and if you want a white background, here’s what you do:

1. Click your user icon in the upper right corner.
2. Click the icon that looks like a lttle person.
3. Click “Preferences”.
4. Click “Interface”.
5. Under “Color Scheme”, select the options that give you a black-on-white option. They’re there, I’m using them right now:

image1418×844 91.5 KB

In the time that you’ve spent complaining about the color scheme, you could’ve taken a minute to look at the new platform’s user preferences and found a solution to your “problem” with the color scheme and theme. I guess it’s easier to complain than to look around.

I expect you’d be asking a different question if you had seen and remembered any of my bug report screenshots or the ones I made before making that report. When I mention black on white what it means is low contrast equals hard on people with poor vision equals reduced accessibility/usability. People disliking too much contrast can dial down their display’s brightness and/or contrast. People needing more are limited to what they can get from the 100% they’re almost certain to be using already.

You don’t seem to have read what I wrote or looked at the screenshot that I shared.

Whatever. You have an option for black-on-white, which is what you asked for. The input form pane can be expanded by draging it up (as far as the entire full screen ifyou wanted to).

Modern browsers allow you to also increase the font size (a feature I have used myself after upgrading to a 4K monitor and realizing that the font sizes are too small for me to read any more).

From here, it looks like you’re just looking for things to complain about, rather than looking at the configuration options available to you in the user preferences. Black-on-white is an option for you, so I’m not sure what you’re complaining about when you say it’s not available. It is.

Where did I write anything about availability of “black-on-white”? I’ve always only used “black-on-white” for some definition of “black-on-white” on these forums.
All my screenshots related to the migration result are of a “white” background theme that is the only theme, or whatever Discourse calls its themes, that I have had applied. My objection is to fake black objects, such as text that is assigned the CSS colors #808080 or #444 on a dirty white background such as #f9f9f9 or on pastels, especially when text is CSS assigned a size less than 1rem.

None of my primary browser profiles have utilized a browser’s shipped default font size more than temporarily in at least 20 years. I spent most of the intervening years advocating good web design that embraces whatever size a user has specified his UA’s EM is to be, instead of imposing mousetype, so I don’t need instruction on how to use a browser’s own features. My well used browser profiles all have default sizes adjusted to as close to genuine 12pt as I can make them, e.g. 20px @120 DPI.

I own no mobile phone. I don’t read icon. Too much trouble understanding what they’re supposed to mean. I read English. Icon hover text causes eyestrain. Other languages cause me only frustration.

I made some tweaks on my end to reduce annoyances, so I can keep focus on problem solving. The root FG/BG colors here are not a problem worthy of further discussion.

The biggest remaining annoyance is the rubber band connected to the slider. When I drag it to the top or bottom, that’s where it should go, and stay!

I quoted what you were saying about wanting something “where the background stays white, the text stays maximum contrast, highly legible black”. OK, you didn’t say exactly “black-on-white” - you described it.

And now they’re not a problem. OK, that’s fine. Not sure why you brought it up in the first place.

For the user icons/names, I posted a quick-and-dirty TamperMonkey script that gives you what you want. Feel free to tweak how you see fit. I don’t really care about seeing user names, so I’m not interested in maintaining it.

Hi @hendersj you seem particularly involved in this discussion. Being such a large thread I don’t have the time to read it all. Are you a dev for the website or something?

I am one of the admins here - not responsible for the code or development, though.

It seems that, a vocal number of Users are loudly expressing their issues with the usage of this Forum.

• But, the Users who are not having any major issues with the usage of this Forum are not expressing any issues with the usage of this Forum.

Do we have, somewhere, the count of the number of Forum Users?

• We can then compare that number to the number of major issues raised …

Have a look at About - openSUSE Forums

It is always the case that most users are willing to learn and are open to change. Even if they don’t agree with everything, they adapt and learn to deal with it. And that’s what open source is all about: driving the overall process forward with changes and innovations.

And then there is the group that is against everything new because “we have never done it that way before”. And this group which only complains is the loudest…even if they are only a few.

From the “About” statistics the number of “active” users is a very small fraction of the total number of users… so for purposes of your comparison which of the figures would you use?

“There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.”