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I assumed it is OK to be all over the place on this thread — since Susan is participating all over the place on it?

“Worked” is a subjective term.

This forum needs a bunch of tweaks to get the template up to current design standards.  Def count me as a vote for change and the opinion that it was broke and needs fixin’ to make it more usable.

It’s a fail for visually impaired users, too — though it does better than I would have guessed:

https://wave.webaim.org/report#/askwoody.com

Custom templates are very difficult to work with — there will be some hits and misses along the way.

As a fellow non-standard browser user, I feel your pain every day when stuff gets changed and doesn’t work right for me. That’s the price we pay for not using vanilla Chrome, Firefox, Edge, and Safari.  It’s unreasonable to expect site designers to code around a few fringe users.   As a site designer myself, I certainly don’t.

I’m glad the AskWoody tech folks are looking for ways to make things better.  I’m sure I won’t like every single change, either…

I have never had indefinite logins?  The default WordPress session length is 48 hours (assuming you keep your browser tab open), and checking the remember box gets you two weeks.

I have never paid attention to how long AskWoody gives me, though?    Not more than two weeks, I’m pretty sure.

None of my many WordPress sites allow non-privileged logged-in users, though, so I’m not up on the details for a site like AskWoody…

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WCHS

OscarCP,

Well, there are two different styles in use: one for the meat of the page, and one for the sidebar.

I see what you see on the main part of the page.  On the sidebar, I see unvisited blue and visited blue-purple.  And, hover brown.  But, I’m old — if someone told me that visited blue-purple is actually a shade of brown or something else, I wouldn’t argue.

For a good UX, the unvisited/visited/hover colors should all contrast well and match the scheme.  And, there should only be one set in use on both the main page and the sidebar unless there is a compelling reason to violate that rule.

I always use a Web palette selector or phone a friend who has graphic design skills — my kids will tell you that I am not good at color selection…

I’m sure you’re right about the change intentions.  Unfortunately, you are using a non-standard browser that no one is going to worry about while designing. [Same here, since I have NoScript installed w/ Firefox. But, CSS stuff on AskWoody will work fine for me.]

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OscarCP

Firefox’s Storage Inspector can shed light on cookies. Procedure:

1. Visit a page.
2. <SHIFT> <F9>

https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Tools/Storage_Inspector

I forget how to do it in Chrome, but it’s equally easy.

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Cybertooth

Anyone who has ever used a forum with a good interface def finds this interface painful.

The current template *is* broken and not mobile responsive.  I vote for change, and I thank everyone who is working on the UI!

Ah.  Yep, you’ll always get a sub-standard user experience if you stray from vanilla Chrome, Firefox, Safari & Edge.

I use Firefox with NoScript for a very secure, very frustrating browsing experience.  I have to switch to vanilla Chrome at least once per day and any time I need to use Developer tools.

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wavy, OscarCP

Here is what I see:

1. Unclicked links (i.e. not marked visited in the cache) are a shade of blue.
2. Clicked links are a slightly diff shade of blue. [OscarCP: Hitting your browser’s back button might not display the visited color in all cases. Or, also possible: there isn’t enough contrast between the shades of blue and they look the same to you.]
3. Hover color is brown.

I def suggest more contrast between the visited and unvisited blues.  I’m on a 32″ high-res monitor and can barely see the diff w/ my old eyes…

It’s also a best practice to make the visited, unvisited, and hover link colors a site-wide standard (absent a compelling design reason otherwise — I don’t see one?).

Susan: as always, thank you for continuing to refine the UI and make your site even easier to use!

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WCHS, Will Fastie

Arghhhh.  Didn’t realize I wasn’t logged in.  Reposting.

I think the solution to WCHS’s problem is Evernote or a similar product.  It’s designed to do exactly what is wanted, and it provides way more flexibility than bulletin board software ever could.  I Evernote AskWoody newsletter content from almost every issue.

The procedure is simple:

1. Go the page.
2. Use Evernote’s browser extension (“Web clipper”) to clip the page.  Several options are available, and all will also save the URL of the page.
3. Tag the clip w/ something(s) meaningful to you.  I keep it simple (e.g. windows 10, sw util, covid-19, etc.), but some people make up complex taxonomies.  Ex: windows10.hardware.usb.askwoody, windows10.software.os.computerworld, etc.

Note that the above can be as complex as you want to make it — Evernote’s feature set goes way beyond what I need.

I have Fred Langa posts saved in Evernote that pre-date the existence of Windows Secrets Lounge, Windows Secrets, and even Evernote itself.

Feel free to add me to your beta tester list if you’re shortstaffed.  If I’m going to complain about something, I s/be willing to help test the fix…

Thanks, Susan!

My comments refer only to the low visual complexity!  The other back-end complexity (anything built on forum software is wickedly complex on the back end — I used to maintain a site built on YaBB, and I was always in the code hacking it ) should be easy to plug in however it is plugged in now.  That’s the beauty of modern builders — the visual details are handled for you, and the other stuff keeps working the way it always did.

But, could be a dozen things I missed while poking around that would make me say “Oh, that might not be easy. Never mind.”

Well, whether it’s eventually changed to engender tons of complaints (and my praise) or not, thanks for all that you do and for making sure that this treasure of a site keeps on humming!

A bit off-topic — perhaps I should start a diff thread?

I absolutely hate that the Web site template is not mobile responsive.  It’s my #1 complaint. [i.e. I really don’t have any important complaints — I’m a huge AskWoody fan and have been a paid Windows Secrets subscriber since its inception.]

Is there anything that can be done to switch to a 2021-style template?  From a visual complexity point-of-view, the AskWoody site is not complex at all.  Shouldn’t be very hard to replace the theme and use a builder, unless there are issues that a fast glance at the code didn’t surface.  Happy to help out if I can — I use Elementor and, when forced to, Avada and Gutenberg.

Once you move to a real development tool (even Gutenberg qualifies), sky’s the limit on easy enhancements, and they’re all at least minimally mobile responsive.

Thanks!

[kewlputergeek]

I was a happy Windows Secrets lifetime subscription member.  Now I’m a happy AskWoody Plus annual donation member.  I assume that my favorite information sources will cease to exist if I do not support them.  It’s not complicated.

TINSTAAFL.

• This reply was modified 5 years, 6 months ago by kewlputergeek.

Thanks, Tracey!

Definitely agree about adding Directory Opus — it’s phenomenal, and usually enhanced on a weekly basis.

Despite the fact that it is no longer maintained, I find Thornsoft’s ClipMate to be an indispensable Windows clipboard utility.  It’s still better than everything else out there for power users.

I’d also add Hamrick’s VueScan — the best scanning utility in existence.  Also usually enhanced on a weekly basis.

And, finally: I switched to KC Softwares’ SUMo utility for a comprehensive scan of my PC to check for outdated software.  It’s much more comprehensive than the now-defunct Secunia PSI util I used to use.  They offer another util that does drivers, too.

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WSKyle_Katarn