OSDev.org

Why on earth does this forum disable the Post and Preview buttons after one has clicked them. That is absolutely the worst possible solution for avoiding double posting, because if the initial request fails (which does happen in real life!), or one hits "Stop" before Preview loads (because, say, one wants to correct a typo before re-previewing) then one is stuck, and has to do ugly copypasting of the whole post into a new instance of the post form.

It's easy enough to avoid double posting on server side, and it's easy enough to disable the buttons temporarily (say, for 5 seconds) if one wants to avoid excessive server load from impatient users. At least the user isn't totally stuck then.

Ok, I know it's probably not the fault of anyone reading this forum. But it's still a good example of user hostile design, so I wanted to mention it as a warning.

Accidental double posting isn't even prevented actually, because not every web browser on earth cares about Javascript. Server side solution would prevent that as well.

If I've ranted about this before, then please ignore this message.

it has annoyed me on occasion too. i had thought it was a 'visual' thing, so if you clicked, they depressed... but if you hit esc.. bad luck..

Speaking of annoyances, here's one (not so hostile):

you have 4 messages, 0 are new

-do I care how many _old, read_ messages I have? (I just prefer to keep them, not count them every time)
-(assuming someone does care) why does it go first, instead of _new messages_ which is IMO more relevant?

yet, the "4 messages" grabs attention first, also being a link.. bleh.

poor presentation, useless information.

"No new messages" (or nothing at all)
or
"XYZ new messages" (maybe in a bright color and/or an image)

Disabling signatures would also be nice. They're cool and all, but reading them for the 100th time in the same topic... information noise all over..
All decent forums have an option.
(I know, PHP problems and all..)

mystran wrote: Why on earth does this forum disable the Post and Preview buttons after one has clicked them. That is absolutely the worst possible solution for avoiding double posting, because if the initial request fails (which does happen in real life!), or one hits "Stop" before Preview loads (because, say, one wants to correct a typo before re-previewing) then one is stuck, and has to do ugly copypasting of the whole post into a new instance of the post form.

It's easy enough to avoid double posting on server side, and it's easy enough to disable the buttons temporarily (say, for 5 seconds) if one wants to avoid excessive server load from impatient users. At least the user isn't totally stuck then.

Make an interface that an idiot can use and only an idiot will want to use it (that's a quote).

@df: seems like the winds of change are arriving.
What about upgrading to SMF or something?

Neo wrote: @df: seems like the winds of change are arriving.
(...)

Did anybody fart?

*gets his coat*

Some of the issues listed would be fixed by SMF... unfortunately the upgrade is currently impossible. The requirements to run SMF are just not met which means it won't run.

So unless df gets a new host, or his current host upgrades some software, or he passes on the board to someone to put on another server, then the upgrade would be possible.

what are the current req's? my host did a backdoor upgrade...

php 4.3.9.. still on mysql 3.23.49 tho...