PattiCakeUS
Android Expert
Grr it's frustrating when I start a new words with friends game with a random opponent, & we seem to be about evenly matched skill wise; I check to see if it's my turn & they've quit.
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Grr it's frustrating when I start a new words with friends game with a random opponent, & we seem to be about evenly matched skill wise; I check to see if it's my turn & they've quit.
I use a clunky flibbertygibbet called Kingsoft Office. It's free, and it has many of the features that Office has. I avoid most anything that comes from Microsoft, because of security concerns (remember Internet Exploder?). Now that Microsoft Office is cloud-based, I shudder at the thought of using it with security-sensitive documents. My nickel's (it used to be two cents) worth... LWAt work I had Office 2007 & was recently upgraded to Office 2013 - it's a whole lotta white with the option of super light grey, or a tiny bit darker light grey for a little contrast. I spend most of my work day in Word & Outlook & it's hard on the eyes... I miss the color!!
P.S. I really only posted this to see if I had an "Edit" button when posting...
P.P.S. But the Office 2013 gripe is legit.
Some Xenforo information - what really happened:
The original site was designed when there were a handful of Android phones. If you Google for the Internet Wayback Machine you can see our site in 2010 just before the Android explosion - the front page was clean.
We were and are the first forum devoted explicitly to Android, Phandroid was the first Android centric news site.
Back in 2008 when we needed more features and vBulletin didn't have them, custom coding made a lot of sense so we went for it - lots of it over time.
As we grew, the front page started looking like a car parts catalog. It was a mess so newcomers gave up and posted in any thread they felt like. Staff burnout was high and some staff simply decided that organization was too tiring and quit.
To arrange new forums, I and a few others have had to set position index values by hand in order to maintain alphabetical order of phones and tablets. And the entire site needed reindexing - by hand. That would have taken a week with the available trained staff, provided we could quit our jobs and just do this. Impossible.
Btw and fwiw - now you know why the old forum was alphabetized with more user friendly features than the other good sites using vBulletin - hard work.
Over two years ago I began the initiative to update the forum layout. We spent months on layout taking input from hundreds of you.
While deciding on a workable implementation plan, we discovered Xenforo. It has standard plug-ins for a great deal of what we were custom coding.
We prototyped the new approach with our new gun forum. It worked really well and that's in Xenforo. We had months on the Xenforo learning curve.
We prototyped the whole AF secretly in Xenforo and shook out all of the import bugs - no one ever anticipated that their import tool would have to handle over a million user accounts and nearly a million threads. That took time.
The transition then stalled while the entire approach was evaluated again - just transition or transition while introducing some of the reorganization elements was the issue. The decision was somewhere in between.
A cache error occurred on the first attempt. It took 15 hours to rebuild and along with some details I won't go into, led to bugs that many are seeing and thinking that we just didn't think or something.
Those will be solved. Those of us responsible are working every spare moment around the clock.
In addition to the above, I haven't even mentioned how we eradicated over 10,000 spambots in a single week and what that did to our blacklist data table. Nor have I time to explain a number of other joys we've spearheaded on your behalf, fighting our own custom software as well as an older version of the forum software along the way.
For all of the above, a major change was necessary for our survival.
I'm sure it's very frustrating.
Please consider that we're not happy and eating popcorn laughing at you all - try living with the same bugs while trying to sort this out lol!
The bugs have to go first and the full basic experience intended put to work for everyone.
Then we can start looking at enhancements. And by looking I mean doing. I've requested that the dark theme and online indicators move to the top of the list. Sometimes they agree with me, sometimes they don't. If not, those are the first two things that I'll be fighting for, for you all.
As for the mobile view dilemma, yes, we know how to improve that. After the bugs and other critical enhancements.
And here's the part you're going to really hate - we are not going to have a full desktop view on mobile because - wait for it -
Because of Google.
Their master search policies and future plan is hundreds of pages long and is completely public. Look it up if you like but here's the truth -
Sites that respond to the desktop / mobile user agent string rather than the auto-scaler we've gone to are going to be either pushed to the bottom of the search stack or delisted.
When you operate with the scope we do, and the reach we have, paying operating expenses out of advertising that everyone hates and blocks, that Google ranking means whether or not you can keep the doors open. Like it or not, all sites are going to have to go this way.
And we know that the mobile view can improve. It will. But we can't do it all overnight and it takes longer when your key staff, yours truly included, are volunteers with time limited by work, family and the rest of real life.
Your patience in the transition is highly appreciated.![]()
Stinky is missed. Some of his posts had me worried about him, and whatever circumstances he's in the middle of... he even sent me some audio of him playing piano (a song he called "Dark Keys") earlier this year. I hope that he shows up once again, with his crazy, off-the-cuff observations that are distinctly his own style. We miss you, Stinky Stinky - please make an appearance here at the Forums, to let us know that you're all right. Your friend, LWOT - Has anyone heard from Stinky? Haven't seen him post here in a while, and the new format should have given him something to say.
The double-entendre kills me. Someone must be from Colorado, or California... either that, or auto correct must be cannabis-friendly... LWGrinds your grass?
Right back at ya! And sent out to everyone else too!!Happy Thanksgiving - no rants here - we're all kicking, that oughta do.![]()
oh my god. Ok my rant is for everyone that Cruises in the passing lane. please don't force me to pass on the right and break the law. As a matter of fact it's against the law to impede the flow of traffic so when you're done passing in the left lane move back to the right lane so you don't impede the flow of traffic.and out of fairness if you're in the UK where you drive on the other side of the road and do this just reverse everything I said lol