Smartphone issues...

[Kyflintguy]

I just wanted to see if I was alone on my struggles with in particular my keyboard on the forum. As most are aware there were issues with smartphone compatabillity to the new forum as far as being able to upload fullsize photos, send or receive Pm's etc. But ive been dealing with a keyboard issue, When I replace my cursor to delete a typo or edit a sentence I end up with jumbled mess. Most of the time mashes the word Im correcting with the last word ive and the more i try to delete the worse it gets. Now Im not to tech savvy but Im not experiencing this issue on any other areas of my phone besides when Im typing on the forum. Ive already had to recorrect multiple sentences in this post elongating my time typing. Its become quite the aggravation as any member who does a lot of posting could imagine. Ill leave some example sentences uncorrected so are tech whizzes can have a gander. Thanks for any help or advice in advance.

Texampleence for example.

Correct sentence is "test sentence for example" I placed my cursor between the "t" and "e" and hit backspace and that's what I end up with. The more I try to correct the more jumbled it becomes.

Another test sentencexampleample.

Correct sentence typed was "another test sentence for example". I placed my cursor between "x" and "a" in example pressed the backspace key and it completely erased the word "for" and did what you see there.
This has became an aggravation among other issues that ive dealt with through workarounds on the forum. Regardless I hope that there is still someone dedicated to straightening out these issues and we haven't been abandoned by the developer's and owners of the forum. I was under the understanding that the bugs would continue to be addressed. And eventually things would be back to normal either through fixes or a mobile app for us mobile users. And more adjustments would be tweaked as the newer forum had more "bells and whistles" to play with. So are we still looking at future improvements to come or are we stuck in a " it is what it is" scenario? Thanks for your answers.

[Kyflintguy]

I forgot to add Im using a LG phoenix 2 with Android version 6.0.

I also see a few typos and left out words in my above statement but I know if I go back to edit that it will remove any paragraph form and condense my post into one paragraph which is another frustrating glitch...

[Hoss]

What browser are you running?

[Kyflintguy]

Chrome

[Hoss]

I wish I could advise you on this one Josh but I have no idea why it is happening to only a few folks. Chase has trouble with his Andriod but it is that he cannot log in using it. SO that is different from what you describe. ANother member is having issues posting pictures via andriod. Hopefully Vbullitin will come along with a fix for all of this stuff and make our page more mobile/android friendly.

[Kyflintguy]

Thanks for the response Matt. Fingers crossed on a fix. I appreciate all you administrators do for the site.

[2ndoldman]

Josh, I too have a very hard time when I use my phone to make a comment. The problem that I have is that the actual window for viewing the text that is being written is so small that it is impossible to properly place the cursor to correct the spelling error.
I do wish that the developers would get off of their butts and roll out a mobile version of the forum.

[2ndoldman]

Matt, I use Firefox.

[Hoss]

You are using firefox on your mobile device? I never tried it do you like it? I mean As you mentioned it is not working here but for other pages is it working out for you? I am going to look into it for iphones and run a test myself. Normally I would try to run a test and see if I could make my device mimic what has been described but as I said no longer possible with all the different models out there and the many new browsers that come stock with them. Safari. Nougat, Ice cream sandwich, Dolphin, Opera, Firefox now offers one chrome, Just the many browser types must keep web developers on their toes. ,

[2ndoldman]

Matt it works great on smartphones. I have used it successfully on an HTC1 and most recently on a Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge.
Which unfortunately bit the dust at the end of my trip. :-( But I am thinking about replacing it with a new iPhone 7+ and we will see how it works on it.

[painshill]

... Hopefully Vbullitin will come along with a fix for all of this stuff and make our page more mobile/android friendly.

Maybe they already have! Trouble is, we're still running a version of the software that is out of date and have been for many months. There have been several upgrades that should have improved performance, but they haven't been installed on our forum. The software license we (John) originally purchased includes future upgrades and also included a mobile suite which wasn't installed (and still isn't). There has been no word from the developers about why not or whether the mobile suite was rejected, is still under consideration or is pending.

I think the text issues in relation to editing will be device/software dependent and not affect all smartphones. I have found that even on a PC, with Microsoft's new edge browser editing is problematical. The cursor sometimes leaps to the end of blocks of text irrespective of where you place it, inserting new text sometimes doesn't respond, text formatting doesn't always work, and there are intermittent issues with copy & paste not responding properly. Those problems don't happen with Internet Explorer. I believe the problems in general relate to the HTML editor (CKEditor) built into our software. Again, that has been updated by its developers to improve compatibility with more devices/browsers but we will never see those benefits while we are still running an old version of the software.

I'm fed up with pointing this out.


Bruce: the small text size issue may not be a forum software problem as such. Can you not simply resolve the issue by changing the screen magnification on your device. There are several websites where I have to do that on my smartphone and then swap back afterwards.

[Hoss]

That is not necessarily what will fix this trouble Roger. It could well be user error or fat fingers little screen syndrome! It could be what ever browser came stock with the devices these guys are using. It could be a million things. We have the mobile suite running on this forum. The trouble is upgrades do not come out every time samsung or any of the other manufacturer creates something new to give its users a buzz. Just about every 6 months some manufacturer is coming out with something new.! I just got an IOS update from Iphone it changed everything on my Iphone6 I guess they created this for iphone7 I had to learn a bunch of new crap on my same old phone. Do we need to upgrade ? Yes are upgrades available? Yes.
John has given Shane the green light on this stuff. I am not sure what exactly is holding things up on his end. A month ago Shane said he was just buried in work. So much so that he claimed to have been training two new interns to help him out. Meanwhile we wait!

I will copy this and mail it to John in a few minutes.

[Hoss]

Just so you guys know there are updates available but that does not mean it will fix any of these problems!

[2ndoldman]

Roger, I have had this problem with 2 different cellphones.
The problem does not exist on any of the other sites that I inhabit, just this one.

[painshill]

That is not necessarily what will fix this trouble Roger.
Agree, but the developers of CKEditor (on which our forum software depends) constantly make improvements to try and keep on top of compatibility issues with new platforms. Because it’s a major piece of work to embed new versions of CKEditor into vBulletin, the vBulletin guys don’t take advantage of the updates as often as they should. If we also lag behind on updating our software then we potentially get disadvantaged in two ways.


It could well be user error or fat fingers little screen syndrome! It could be whatever browser came stock with the devices these guys are using. It could be a million things.
Yes, it could. But unless our software is up to date then we’ll never be able to distinguish those issues from unnecessary difficulties arising from us being out of date. Talk to any software company about any problems you’re having and the first thing they will ask is: “are you running the latest version?”


We have the mobile suite running on this forum.
Actually, no I don't think we do. The additional program known as the “vBulletin Mobile Suite” that came bundled with vBulletin 5 Connect has never been installed as far as I can tell. I don’t see it in the setup. What I do see is an independent utility called “Forum Runner” which is a generic piece of free software that is not specifically tailored to the quirks of vBulletin in the way that the dedicated Mobile Suite is claimed to be.


John has given Shane the green light on this stuff. I am not sure what exactly is holding things up on his end. A month ago Shane said he was just buried in work. So much so that he claimed to have been training two new interns to help him out. Meanwhile we wait!
Fair enough, but in my working career it was never acceptable to plead that you were too busy to accomplish something unless you also committed to an alternative timescale on which it would be achieved.

[blackbull]

Hello Guys,

Thank you so much for giving your thorough walk through regarding the issues with our new Forum special the one discussed on this thread. I have started investigating the issue and will update you as I make any progress with it.

Regarding upgrades and Mobile compatibility. Our forum is too big, its not just a few files or scripts here and there. It has a lot of files, scripts, images and database related files that all need to be updated with care. A single mistake during upgrade could lead into a real trouble that might prevent us from doing our daily routine tasks. Why I haven't upgrade to the latest versions was because I wanted our current version to reach some maturity and the developers of the forum get used to the vB5 issue troubleshooting and fixing. Coz they are the right people to fix such issue rather than us who just installed and started using it. I might be able to fix issues by myself but we see vB dev are releasing new upgrades and our work will all go in vain if we do anything by ourselves.

So I had been waiting for a few reasons: To ensure that this forum software reaches a maturity level. The developers get enough knowledge about the problems and provide fixes. And also our users and mods get used to the new forum.

Now its over a year. And I feel that we should bring on upgrades and fixes that vB5 dev have offered. I am looking back into the issues for quiet long time but could not reach a satisfactory level during recent times to bring on on all those upgrades coz i felt it might be risky and could break other parts rather than fixing this and that... Anyways I will do whatever is best for our community. This might sound silly to some of our members but that is how we have to move along. Please keep reporting the issues. And we will see when its time to fix those issues. I am comparing options.

Thank you,

- Shane

[2ndoldman]

Thank you Shane. Sooner is better than never my friend.
There have been some ship jumpers, and others who have simply given up posting because of the issues.

[blackbull]

Best advice!

[gregszybala]

Ah, the yearly check in. Should only take at least another six months to work out the bugs then folks. Continue to remain extremely patient.

[2ndoldman]

Nice tongue in cheek comment Greg. I hope that you don't plan on holding your breath.

[blackbull]

Ah, the yearly check in. Should only take at least another six months to work out the bugs then folks. Continue to remain extremely patient.

Yes we are working on that... please also keep in mind that the forum on desktop web browser you see is not compatible with mobile web browsers... You will always have issues like this almost on every forum. There might be other vB5 websites that you will see are working they just implemented patches right or have some of the features simple off on mobile browsers.

[Kyflintguy]

I might be jumping the gun here. But im noticing im not having the issue anymore. I hope this is a result of the new updates.... I also saw metacom post 38 pictures with text between them, those are definite improvements...

[Kyflintguy]

False alarm, issues with editing text still exist! Sorry.

[painshill]

I might be jumping the gun here. But im noticing im not having the issue anymore. I hope this is a result of the new updates.... I also saw metacom post 38 pictures with text between them, those are definite improvements...

Please note that Metacom's ability to post 38 pictures relates to the fact that they were posted as hotlinks to Photobucket albums. Those pictures are not actually uploaded to our site, where the upload limit for attachments remains at 8 per post.

Generally, it is not recommended to use image sharing sites such as Photobucket for adding pictures to your posts, unless there are compatibility issues that prevent you from doing a true upload. The forum now has many posts with missing pictures, arising from broken links to sites such as Photobucket. If users reorganise their albums on these sites, it breaks the links here and we lose sight of the pictures.

[Kyflintguy]

Roger that!

I apologize for the false alarm. Yesterday was the first time I logged in and didn't have the editing text issue. It took me by surprise. When I logged out and logged back in, the issue was back...oh well.

[Kyflintguy]

Trying out the new update here.... I DONT have the options to like, edit, quote, comment or flag to any post....


I can now upload pictures fullsize and emojis....

That's excellent!
Hopefully this issue can be fixed

[2ndoldman]

I also no longer see the notifications on my phone Josh. But I still can not upload full sized pictures directly from my phone. The file size is to large from my phone.

[Hoss]

There will always be a file size limit on the forum. It is how the forum is able to load so quickly. When we changed the file size on our old forum to except larger files all hell broke loose and we lost some great members over that. This program we are running right now is 4 megs per picture only 8 pictures per single post. You can upload using URL no need for phtotbucket. You can get a url from any picture you have on the web and post it. This picture is from my facebook page.

[357magnumnut]

You can try requesting the desk top site. upper right corner three dots. Click and scroll down to request it. You will need to log in again after it is requested. Not sure if it will help with that I have samsung galaxy s7 all functions working for me so far.