Incredibly Poor Software

[simoh1490]

I cannot be the only one who sees these things,  when posting on Thaivisa Forum, god but it's getting tiresome:

 

A text editor that: arbitrarily deletes parts of, or entire posts, once written and/or, recalls random past posting titles and tries to reuse them. I've informed Support about these things and their answer is to use notepad and do a copy and paste....really, is that the best you can suggest!

 

I strongly suspect the silent majority has voted with their feet and have simply given up, how long before more people do - I do hope you are aware of these things but simply not doing anything about them!

 

FIX THESE THINGS, the software is very nearly not fit for purpose.

 

 

[metisdead]

Moving to Forum Support.

[ubonjoe]

11 hours ago, simoh1490 said:

A text editor that: arbitrarily deletes parts of, or entire posts, once written and/or, recalls random past posting titles and tries to reuse them.

Not sure what you mean since I have had not problem doing posts. Could you do a screen shot when you are having problems? That would helps us understand what the problem is.

If you don't complete as post and leave the page you were posting on it saves the incomplete post.

[simoh1490]

16 minutes ago, ubonjoe said:

Not sure what you mean since I have had not problem doing posts. Could you do a screen shot when you are having problems? That would helps us understand what the problem is.

If you don't complete as post and leave the page you were posting on it saves the incomplete post.

If I type a post containing say ten lines over a few minutes, then go back to edit what's already been written and hit enter, it deletes everything from that point on.

 

Second - arbitrarily the editor will include posts in my reply as soon as I hit reply, often completely unrelated posts or posts that I made yesterday! That is a simple matter of deleting what was included but is a pain nevertheless. Surely, I cannot be the only person experiencing this?

[tropo]

Exactly the same for me. I have had MANY long posts entirely deleted, or large sections thereof when going back to correct something or backspacing. When I'm putting in a lot of effort and typing long posts, I have to remember to use Wordpad and then copy 'n paste the completed post when I done in case I lose it and have to start over. I still get caught out from time to time. The deletions are so fast I don't even know exactly how they happen. They just disappear. My best guess is that it happens when I try to edit something back in the post by moving my cursor back somewhere. This never, ever happened before the last major changes on the forum.

 

Sometimes the cursor gets stuck and I can't input text. I have experienced so many bugs it's impossible to recall them all. I have to agree with the OP, whatever text editor the forum now uses is very bad indeed. Surely the 2 of us aren't the only ones experiencing these problems. I've used this forum for over 11 years and posted over 20k posts. I have never had any problems until the latest update.

[simoh1490]

26 minutes ago, tropo said:

Exactly the same for me. I have had MANY long posts entirely deleted, or large sections thereof when going back to correct something or backspacing. When I'm putting in a lot of effort and typing long posts, I have to remember to use Wordpad and then copy 'n paste the completed post when I done in case I lose it and have to start over. I still get caught out from time to time. The deletions are so fast I don't even know exactly how they happen. They just disappear. My best guess is that it happens when I try to edit something back in the post by moving my cursor back somewhere. This never, ever happened before the last major changes on the forum.

 

Sometimes the cursor gets stuck and I can't input text. I have experienced so many bugs it's impossible to recall them all. I have to agree with the OP, whatever text editor the forum now uses is very bad indeed. Surely the 2 of us aren't the only ones experiencing these problems. I've used this forum for over 11 years and posted over 20k posts. I have never had any problems until the latest update.

Thank you for confirming this. There can be no doubt that many other posters also suffer the same problem and either suffer in silence or simply give up and don't post, it's a great way to p*ss off posters who have spent time thinking about the statements they want to make. As for why people don't complain about it: it took me a couple of months to get sufficiently annoyed to where I wanted to vent at someone on the subject, imagine how many others have simply washed their hands of it all and walked away instead!

 

Using Notepad or similar is the work around I was given by Support and that simply is an unacceptable solution past the very short term.

[tropo]

9 hours ago, simoh1490 said:

Thank you for confirming this. There can be no doubt that many other posters also suffer the same problem and either suffer in silence or simply give up and don't post, it's a great way to p*ss off posters who have spent time thinking about the statements they want to make. As for why people don't complain about it: it took me a couple of months to get sufficiently annoyed to where I wanted to vent at someone on the subject, imagine how many others have simply washed their hands of it all and walked away instead!

 

Using Notepad or similar is the work around I was given by Support and that simply is an unacceptable solution past the very short term.

I have also chosen to "suffer in silence" until I read your post. I've written dozens of long posts that disappeared. Mostly I give up and don't retype them... I'm lucky to be a touch typist. I can imagine how it would feel for a 2 finger hunt and pecker to lose a long effort. As you say, they may just stop posting or walk. It surprised me too that no one else is complaining. The problem is the bug is hard to replicate because I still don't know exactly how it happens. If I don't use WordPad, when my post gets to a certain length I copy it, just in case it disappears. This is very important if you need to go back and change something.

[tropo]

It just happened again ... I repositioned my cursor to delete some text and much of it disappeared. I had copied my post to clipboard before I went back to make the changes. After repasting all the text and trying to add more text my cursor was stuck and I couldn't type more. The only way to resolve this was to refresh the page and start again. Now with unrelenting adblocker nag screens that pop up constantly playing radio music, and text editor problems, you wonder how many people are "walking". Perhaps old members like us will persist, but newbies won't deal with that for long.

 

 

[simoh1490]

There is a series of lesser important faults that need fixing also, the most important of these, I think, is that when going to reply to a post, frequently the text editor picks up quotes from other posts, seemingly at random, sometimes a post I was looking at earlier.

 

Another fault is that "followed threads" appear to be random, I've just unfollowed three pages of threads, many of which I've certainly never replied to, some of which are of no interest to me.

[tonray]

CTRL-Z will restore text that is accidently deleted. Very common to do with touchpad and WIN10 more often than not. Hot CTRL-Z and magically re-appear.

[simoh1490]

7 hours ago, tonray said:

CTRL-Z will restore text that is accidently deleted. Very common to do with touchpad and WIN10 more often than not. Hot CTRL-Z and magically re-appear.

This is not a CNTRL-Z type problem, I've tried that.

[tropo]

13 hours ago, tonray said:

CTRL-Z will restore text that is accidently deleted. Very common to do with touchpad and WIN10 more often than not. Hot CTRL-Z and magically re-appear.

I'll give that a go next time happens.  

[tropo]

14 hours ago, tonray said:

CTRL-Z will restore text that is accidently deleted. Very common to do with touchpad and WIN10 more often than not. Hot CTRL-Z and magically re-appear.

Thanks for the tip. I had a chance to try it out twice, and it did bring back the missing text. You have to make sure you hit CTRL-Z as soon as the text disappears before you click the mouse again.

[simoh1490]

I'll try it again and hopefully, it will work this time, it didn't when I tried earlier.

 

I hope that somebody from Support or Moderation is following this thread because there are now enough people supporting what has been said to confirm there's a real problem that's affecting everyone. Perhaps this time you'll actually do something about it rather than recommend everyone use notepad for their posts!

[Crossy]

28 minutes ago, simoh1490 said:

I hope that somebody from Support or Moderation is following this thread because there are now enough people supporting what has been said to confirm there's a real problem that's affecting everyone.

 

I'm not defending the software the board uses, I sure as heck wouldn't be recommending Invision to people intending to start up a forum.

 

I have no doubt whatever that some are having issues, I've had the odd occasion where something has gone awry with a post, but it's not a regular or, importantly for the developers, repeatable occurrence. If we can't make it happen it's very difficult to fix.

 

The advice to use Notepad is good, edit as you wish, save locally, and it adds just a few clicks to your posting experience. It's exactly what I do if I'm doing a long post and don't know exactly when I'll be ready to commit it to the forum mangling machine.

 

[simoh1490]

2 hours ago, Crossy said:

 

I'm not defending the software the board uses, I sure as heck wouldn't be recommending Invision to people intending to start up a forum.

 

I have no doubt whatever that some are having issues, I've had the odd occasion where something has gone awry with a post, but it's not a regular or, importantly for the developers, repeatable occurrence. If we can't make it happen it's very difficult to fix.

 

The advice to use Notepad is good, edit as you wish, save locally, and it adds just a few clicks to your posting experience. It's exactly what I do if I'm doing a long post and don't know exactly when I'll be ready to commit it to the forum mangling machine.

 

A part of the problem is that the extent of the problem hasn't been quantified yet, so whilst you refer to some as having problems, I suspect it is most. And whilst I do understand your starting point on this issue, you cannot be serious that using notepad is a solution, it's just not in the frame.

 

As for repeatability: I am able to repeat it almost at will and everything about my internet connection and PC configuration is standard, Windows 10, Bitdefender, Zone Alarm etc. Where I am perhaps different is that my posts tend to be longer than average hence the idea that refresh might play a role is one possibility, as I recall, poster Tropo's posts are also usually not short and he suffers from the same problem.

[NanLaew]

2 hours ago, simoh1490 said:

I'll try it again and hopefully, it will work this time, it didn't when I tried earlier.

 

I hope that somebody from Support or Moderation is following this thread because there are now enough people supporting what has been said to confirm there's a real problem that's affecting everyone. Perhaps this time you'll actually do something about it rather than recommend everyone use notepad for their posts!

Not everyone, just 2 people right now or if you count those liking the posts, maybe 6?

 

I am not sure what is meant by 'latest update' as I haven't seen many significant changes since the great rebuild and certainly don't have issues with adblocking and noisy radios.

 

FWIW, I am running Win7 (32 and 64 bit) and use Chrome and Firefox. I have only updated to the latest Firefox on one machine as I have found it slow and glitchy on the one machine it is running on.

[Crossy]

23 minutes ago, simoh1490 said:

Where I am perhaps different is that my posts tend to be longer than average hence the idea that refresh might play a role is one possibility, as I recall, poster Tropo's posts are also usually not short and he suffers from the same problem.

If you can detail exactly what you do to make this occur (with browser versions, plug-ins installed etc) we can at least have a shot at sorting it.

 

I'm not a developer and have no influence over the developers (this is commercial software remember) but if we can give them something that they can do to cause the issue that's half the battle.

 

Meanwhile, there is a work-around (Notepad) you can use if you wish.

[tropo]

10 hours ago, simoh1490 said:

I'll try it again and hopefully, it will work this time, it didn't when I tried earlier.

 

I hope that somebody from Support or Moderation is following this thread because there are now enough people supporting what has been said to confirm there's a real problem that's affecting everyone. Perhaps this time you'll actually do something about it rather than recommend everyone use notepad for their posts!

Notepad is too limited - WordPad is better.

 

I tried the Ctrl Z out a number of times when I lost text earlier this morning. One time I didn't retrieve all of the text which disappeared, another couple of times I did. The trick seems to be to hit Ctrl Z immediately after it disappears, before right-clicking or moving the cursor - before touching your mouse or any other keys.

 

This is a bit better than having to always use WordPad, but I'm still not confident if I make long posts. My current technique is to copy and save as I type, after each paragraph.

 

 

[simoh1490]

7 minutes ago, tropo said:

Notepad is too limited - WordPad is better.

 

I tried the Ctrl Z out a number of times when I lost text earlier this morning. One time I didn't retrieve all of the text which disappeared, another couple of times I did. The trick seems to be to hit Ctrl Z immediately after it disappears, before right-clicking or moving the cursor - before touching your mouse or any other keys.

 

This is a bit better than having to always use WordPad, but I'm still not confident if I make long posts. My current technique is to copy and save as I type, after each paragraph.

 

 

Interestingly, I just tried it a minute ago and CNTRL-Z worked and recovered everything that I'd lost.

[tropo]

7 hours ago, Crossy said:

If you can detail exactly what you do to make this occur (with browser versions, plug-ins installed etc) we can at least have a shot at sorting it.

 

I'm not a developer and have no influence over the developers (this is commercial software remember) but if we can give them something that they can do to cause the issue that's half the battle.

 

Meanwhile, there is a work-around (Notepad) you can use if you wish.

The fact that administration has indicated that using Notepad should be used as a work-around indicates there is a serious issue, and it is. I've posted in hundreds of forum over the years - this has never happened anywhere else. I use Chrome with all updates always applied, so perhaps it is more evident in Chrome than other browsers - who knows. 

 

I do feel that support is not taking this seriously enough.

 

I will try to replicate this problem and report my findings here. The problem has been that the deletions are lightning fast and the exact cause is hard to pinpoint. Just hitting the spacebar or backspace has caused it.

 

Having said that, the text disappearing problem is only one of the bugs. I've had many problems with this new software. It's just full of weird bugs that come and go.

[fdsa]

I totally agree with OP - the text editor is frustrating. Is it possible to disable "Rich Text" and always force plain text usage?

[tropo]

On 12/7/2017 at 5:20 PM, tropo said:

 I will try to replicate this problem and report my findings here. The problem has been that the deletions are lightning fast and the exact cause is hard to pinpoint. Just hitting the spacebar or backspace has caused it.

 

Having said that, the text disappearing problem is only one of the bugs. I've had many problems with this new software. It's just full of weird bugs that come and go.

 

As an update. I have replicated the issue over and over and nearly every day. 

 

This is how it goes. For no apparent reason, I push "enter" to start a new paragraph. All my text input disappears. I use 'Cntrl Z' to recover it, which most often it does. At that point, it is impossible to make a new paragraph as all the text will disappear again if I hit 'Enter'.

 

At this point, I have 2 options.

 

1. Copy text then refresh the browser and try over again from scratch.

2. Copy text and use a text editor to finish my reply and then paste it in.

 

This is most definitely a Thaivisa issue as I have had the same problem on 3 different Windows 10 computers, even one with Window 10 reset and everything is working perfectly and all updates applied.

 

I should mention I use Google Chrome. I have no idea if the problem exists in other browsers.  

[Pib]

Deleted...posted by mistake.

[RichCor]

see, see, it just happened to Pib. All his text was deleted!    

[Pib]

Actually I was going to say I hadn't experienced the problem tropo was experiencing on either one of my computers running Win 10 Pro with browsers Chrome/IE/Edge.    After writing a sentence or two I decided not to post but somehow hit the Submit Reply button instead.  My bottle of Leo beer falling over onto the keyboard may have been a factor.   

 

OK, the post is now posted....a person can't delete a post so I decided to delete the original text in the post and replace the text with, Deleted...posted by mistake.   But then my new bottle of Leo beer also fell on the keyboard before I finished writing the post and it was posted with no text...just a blank post.

 

Well, one can't have a blank post....it's just un-expat.  I then wiped off my keyboard, cleared all the bottles of beer at least 1 meter away from my computer to prevent another beer spill onto the keyboard, and then I resubmited the one saying, Deleted....posted by mistake.

 

Summary: Leo beer is the (my) problem.  

 

 

[RichCor]

On 12/7/2017 at 9:47 AM, Crossy said:

If you can detail exactly what you do to make this occur [...] we can at least have a shot at sorting it.

 

50 minutes ago, Pib said:

Summary: Leo beer is the (my) problem.  

 

I wonder if we may have found the repeatable commonality that @Crossy was looking for. 

[jerry921]

Here's a hint for others: You can type ctrl-Z multiple times in a row to go back multiple steps. If one doesn't do it, try two (sort of like aspirin).

 

I've had the reported problem happen. What I think is happening is the editor is losing track of the cursor and placing it at the beginning of the post instead of where it's supposed to be, and selecting all or some of the text already typed, without highlighting the text as selected. Then when the user hits enter or types anything the new typing replaces the text that the editor thinks is selected.

 

The reason I think this is once when I had the glitch instead of hitting enter or typing additional text (that would have replaced what was already typed) I was trying to go into italics using the ctrl-I keyboard shortcut (vs clicking on the I icon).

Whenever I did this, instead of then letting me type a word at the end of the post that was in italics, the first couple of lines of the post became italicized - as if the cursor was at the start of the post and the first bit was selected.

 

I kept trying to click at the end of the text to get the cursor to the end and it kept repeating the italicization of the first sentence. And I think I noticed that I had no flashing vertical bar cursor.

 

As to when this happens, I think when it's happened to me it's been when I alt-tabbed out to another app and then back to the browser. BTW, I'm using firefox. People experiencing this problem should post which browser they're using as it may be a factor.

[TallGuyJohninBKK]

An easier solution than cutting and pasting from Notepad, and one that can also be very useful in other settings, is to install a Firefox extension like Textarea Cache (free, of course).

 

Anytime you're in the browser and typing into a text entry area, this extension automatically saves a copy of your content in the background. So if your PC crashes, or the power goes out, or the TVF software barfs, just relaunch the browser, click the menu icon for Textarea Cache, and it will pop up a list of your recent typings starting with most recent, and then working back in time.

 

It's been a lifesaver for me on many occasions. There was a time recently where the extension was incompatible with the latest version of Firefox. But that's now been remedied and the current version works just fine with Firefox 58.

 

 

[dick dasterdly]

The problems are getting worse IMO - as evidenced by the inaccessibility of the forum at some point most days.

 

Weirdly (in my case), around 7 a.m. Thai time .