What Happened to the Blocks, Boxes, Lines??
 

First of all, it's great to have the new FT back on line, and I'm looking forward to trying all the new additions. But, a question: Last night on FT, all the usual lines, boxes, etc., were there, around each individual thread and forum. Today (now), no lines, boxes seperate any of the threads and forums. IMO that makes it much harder to read, and slows down the process of sorting and finding useful threads in each forum.
Did I do something to change the settings on "My FT" to make it appear this way, or are the FT techs experimenting with not having the lines and boxes around each seperate thread and forum?

Anyone else notice the difference, and if so, what's your opinion?

Thanks,

bj-21.

It happened to me also at around the same time that it happened to you, blackjack-21. Furthermore, the text is now in Times Roman and much smaller as well.

I think this is more of a technical glitch than a personal settings issue. I agree that it is somewhat more difficult to navigate and differentiate between the different posts, but at least FlyerTalk is still fully functional.

Hopefully, this will be corrected on Monday or even sooner.

Moi aussi....there is a drop down in the preferences, that asks:
'Standard view' or 'Simple Text'
Mine is unchanged from default which appears to be 'Standard view' but I am viewing it in txt only.
It may be a help to Post your browser type:

IE 6

Phew, glad it's not my computer!! Browser is Netscape 7.1, and everything showed fine last night (ie., the lines, boxes, etc.), and I don't think I've changed any settings on FT to account for the difference today. Hope the lines come back, makes for easier reading.

bj-21.

Please fix this problem. Thank you!
 

Things were working fine through Friday for me, but are quite broken now on Saturday. It appears that in IE browsers some window pane and font colors are now using the settings from a user's operating system configuration, rather than the standard colors that FlyerTalk has been using for years. Unfortunately this isn't working at all for me, the FlyerTalk screens are now generally unreadable - you can't tell where things begin and end.

Please restore the colors, lines, boxes, etc. back to the way they were on Friday. Thank you!

same problem here
 

Same here. IE 6. I thought maybe they took the heavy graphics out to make the speed better..

This subject is already being discussed in this thread:

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/showthread.php?t=310570

Actually, I logged out and restarted my computer. Everything is back to normal.

For me, the problem has been fixed — at least, for now...

I spoke too soon.

The problem has returned.

I've been having the problem inconsistantly over the last few days. I'm not sure what's happening. It's almost as if the colors and boxes is the last layer to load when the page is loaded. And then the page just runs out of steam.

I closed my browser just now and when I reopened, boxes back!!

It's been happening to me all day

With both Avant and Mozilla, had to make sure it wasn't the browser ;)

Since I have not been able to get out of the house or do much, since they are installing new carpet, I am stuck infront of the computer

It's baaaaack.
grrr

I just got back home and found I had the same problem. Mozilla 1.5

I quite from the browser, restarted it, and everything is back to normal.

Here's a twist...

I run a couple of browser windows at a time, and one of the windows has the nice formatting, and the other one is the TNR font with no boxes and lines. I can navigate in both. :confused: :confused:

I'm using IE 6.0 on Windows NT. I've tried closing and reopening my browser, and emptying the browser cache.

The background and text colors are still messed up, and the boxes and lines are still missing. :(

And, the site is still very slow. :(

Similar to me - I'm currently "boxless" clicked on a link to another thread and the thread opened in new page with the correct format. However when I went to post a reply it turned into the unboxed format.

This is caused by the absence of the CSS StyleSheet on the server. Only the techies could explain why it keeps getting removed. Perhaps they're making changes to it?

Sometimes the style sheet is on, sometimes it's off. So far as I can tell, it is random. Could be teething problem with the new board. Should be fixed in due time I hope.

Starting to Get Used To......
 

After spending more time on FT today and tonight, I'm starting to get used to not having the boxes and lines on the individual forums, but I sure miss the seperation of each response in every thread. Seems that I'm scrolling back up more often as I read.

Also, what the heck is a "vCard", as shown in the options, regarding your email address? And "automatically parse links in text" when submitting a reply--what's that?

Now that I've subsribed to the forums I want to read, how do I then bring up ONLY those forums when I sign in to FT?

Guess time will bring the answers and, hopefully, the lines back where they belong.

bj-21.

No need to get used to the mess
 

There are two 'versions' of flyteralk located at different IP addresses. One of these loads the correct stylesheet (nice and pretty) and one does not (huge mess, bad fonts, no lines). If you open flyertalk using the IP address Flyertalk then everything should work nicely. I am sure this will be fixed soon.

Progress!!!
 

The lines and boxes are back, making for much easier browsing. Thanks to the tech team for getting it straightened out. ^

Now as to those parses and vCards. And how do I get only those forums that I subscribed to, to appear? Still seems a bit unwieldy, as it's necessary to jump back and forth to the main forum each time.

We're gettin' there!!!
:D

bj-21.

"Parsing" means, in this case, processing text (originally it had to with linguistics and syntax/grammatical analysis, but as with many other words, the electronic age has expanded its usage). Having that preference means that if I just type a URL like this:
http://flyertalk.com/forum/forumdisplay.php?f=457
it will automatically be turned into a clickable URL. If it weren't, you'd have to select the text, copy and paste it into your address bar. What a pain!

This way I don't need to bother with the "URL" forum code or the link button on the message composing toolbar, though I still might if I wanted to link arbitrary text like this (though usually I would want the linked text to specify what I'm linking to. do as I say, not as I do! ;)) I'm not sure why one would not this preference enabled, as it is by default. The old board always behaved this way, as have all other modern ones I've seen out there in use.

vCard is a standard for exchanging personal/contact information. If I sent you my full vCard from my computer's address book, it could include physical addresses, home, work and cell numbers, e-mail addresses, web addresses, company name/title/department, a photo, birthday/anniversary dates, relative/friend names, and on it goes. In this particular case, however, all it does is give your member name and e-mail address. This does expose your e-mail address, so for privacy reasons it is not enabled by default. It is, however, the only way for people to e-mail you, it seems, with the new board, as it says "Sorry! That user has specified that they do not wish to receive emails.", even if you've specified the preference to allow mail from other users, as I have. It seems, however, that private messaging is really a good way to communicate without needing any personal info at all. The days of "YGM" may be ending - or being replaced by "YGPM", perhaps? :)

"MyFlyerTalk" on any page, or http://flyertalk.com/forum/usercp if you want to bookmark it directly, will take you directly to the list of forums to which you've subscribed. This will also show new subscribed threads - not all, but rather only with new posts since you last read them - as well as newly received "reputation"/feedback comments about your posts, as long as the feedback system continues to generally exist for the time being.

Thanks
 

Thanks, MK,

So now I'll leave the parsing "on" and the vCard "off". Sounds good to me.

I thought that by subscribing only to the certain forums that I usually read, that when I get to FT each day, only those forums that I subscribed to would be listed on the main forums thread. So far, that's not the case. "My FT" only shows recents threads that I've posted.

Thanks for clearing up my confusion on the parse and v though.

bj-21.

Strange. Is there no list of Subscribed Forums at all in My FT for you? If so, you may want to go back to those forums and try subscribing again. My FT is definitely where your list is supposed to live (the main list of forums, which is not part of My FT, will still always show all of them, since everybody still needs a way to see all the forums, even if they only want to subscribe to some).

Not Forums
 

MK,

Nope, nothing in MY FT shows subscribed forums, even thought I spent some time last night subscribing to probably 12-15 forums. Possibly something changed when the techs fiddled with the set-up today to bring back the boxes, etc., but the only subsriptions showing in My FT are the threads, nothing for the forums. Will try again.

Thanks,

bj-21.

I set up myflyertalk & it has the forums I subscribe to in there.

BTW - I wish more people WOULD say yes to the Vcard. I find the private messaging new thing on FT to be a pain. Now if I get a message I have to log onto the FT site to retrieve it! Before if I wanted to send a message, I could just click on the person's email address (most folk have hotmail, AOL, yahoo rather than their work etc emails) write & send it, and check my email for response.

SanDiego1K & I were just im'ing each other about this. We both prefer the email vs having to log onto FT every time we want to get a message. Now, for some folk when I do send a message I'm going to ask them to give me their email address so I can add it to my address book (this would be people I've gotten to 'virtually' know on FT; not just the occasional person I might p.m. cuz of a thread topic), so no weird FT stalking :D

Edited to add: BTW, I think the reason so many vcards are turned off is that everyone's been having so much trouble accessing FT in general, much less had time to check out all the myflyertalk options, so most don't realize it exists. I didn't catch it right away, but when I realized what it was, I turned it on.

Finally Got the Forums!!
 

Okay, tried again. This time the forums loaded into My FT. Only difference from last nights efforts seemed to be the confirmation box for each forum didn't show then, now it does, each time I entered a new one.

Thanks again, MK. ^

Sharon, I think the reason that many people may be hesitant to let their emails show is because of the recent rash of spamming that happened a few months ago, when someone, or several spammers, collected our email addreses from FT.
I had my email addy showing on the "old" FT, don't mind having it up now if thats the concensus.

bj-21.

It might actually be more difficult for spammers to snag addresses from the vCard than from a plain HTML page, since vcf is a much less common format. All the same, it'd be nice if the "mail-proxy" feature were enabled, since it's really a good solution in that it doesn't expose your address publicly at all (but does generate a real e-mail - the recipient, only, then sees your address and can reply).

Mail Proxy
 

The mail proxy feature sounds like a good way to stop spammers on here. Can it be enabled? Or is it programmed in already?

FT Tech Crew, can we have the mail proxy feature??

Thanks,

bj-21.