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New Website display not satisfactory for desktop users. (IOW not on cell phone)

jimdempseyatthecove
Honored Contributor III
3,370 Views

I use a desktop computer with a 4K monitor. The text display, that is the columnar layout is too narrow. For longer posts, I must unnecessarily scroll vertically due to paragraphs wrapping too soon. And for code posts containing code</> I have to unnecessarily scroll both horizontally and vertically.

Please take into consideration the display settings .OR. permit the forum message text box to be dragged wider.

Also, the Intel Community is now missing the HPC section.

And...

When I am in a section location, and start a new post, the New Message page does not remember the section I was creating the new message from.

Jim Dempsey

43 Replies
Steve_Lionel
Honored Contributor III
1,684 Views

@mecej4 

The @ thing is where you type the character and a popup appears with the usernames of people who have posted in the thread. You can type a couple of characters of their name to filter it. Then click the selection and it appears as it does above.

The content bit is a bit more confusing. Initially a random assortment of your own threads appears, but you can type anything and it will find other posts in all the forums containing that keyword.  Unless your keyword is very unusual, I don't find that useful. But here's what it looks like: Doctor Fortran has a new home! 

We also seem to have lost the ability to quote text from an earlier post.

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jimdempseyatthecove
Honored Contributor III
1,653 Views

When clicking on Steve Lionel (name where picture is supposed to show), it shows that he has been a member since 2017.

Well I know I have been communicating with him on IDZ much longer than that. 2017 may have been his retirement date. I hope all of his marvelous earlier posts are not missing. 6-18-2018 was the earliest on this new Community website.

Jim Dempsey

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JohnNichols
Valued Contributor III
1,645 Views

I find it interesting and perhaps significant that on this topic I agree 100% with FortranFan. 

I am not saying this is unusual, merely never observed previously. 

Dear Intel - perhaps that has a statistically significant meaning. 

As a final note - I highly respect everything Fortran Fan writes and usually FF has a significant impact on my opinions and thoughts. 

At the moment, I am doing a lot of COVID death analysis and so I am seeing a lot of sad stuff, this place gives me a chance to chill and listen to real experts and to calm down. 

But I am willing to give anything a go, I mean I once thought about having a Bud Light and then I thought better, but you know a Bud Light is probably ok sometime, just not now, ok never, but I am sure someone drinks it somewhere. -- This is humour aimed at my father who drank lite beer.   

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Steve_Lionel
Honored Contributor III
1,622 Views

Jim, my Intel and post-Intel posts are from different user IDs. I would hope that my current one is from at least 2016, as I created it then, but 2017 is ok. My old employee posts are still here - for example: Visual Fortran Newsletter Articles 

However, I note that my identity is tagged "Employee" whereas it used to say "Retired" by my name, so there's some confusion there.

As for not seeing my posts prior to 2018, that's because the forum feature showing "all activity" tops out at 100 pages, and doesn't allow you to sort. Here's one of my early ones post-retirement .

Another issue I have found is that if I leave my PC for a few hours and then try to open the forum again, I get a "401 - Authentication Failed: Error validating SAML message" error. Closing the browser and reopening, or deleting the site cookies, lets me log in again.

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jimdempseyatthecove
Honored Contributor III
1,586 Views

>>that's because the forum feature showing "all activity" tops out at 100 pages

I see this as a major problem with the newer format. It is as if the website designers assume the "community" are here for a chat of current topics. Whereas (IMHO) the community members are (were) using the forum as a support resource. IOW you have an issue, you search the forum, and hopefully get some useful responses. I regrettably suspect that the new forum construction has lost significant capacity for community support.

401... I too have a gripe about that. I prefer to log in, read/post, minimize, and stay logged in until I reboot. Note, my preference is to NOT have my device remember my log in creds as this would compromise site security as to who is actually posting.

Jim Dempsey

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Steve_Lionel
Honored Contributor III
1,581 Views

"Note, my preference is to NOT have my device remember my log in creds as this would compromise site security as to who is actually posting."

No problem there - the old forum didn't provide that and neither does the new one. For myself, I do like such a feature as the risk of someone being able to post on my behalf is so low as to be unmeasurable. It's annoying to me how many extra clicks are needed to re-log in each time.

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avinashs
New Contributor I
1,568 Views

I have some additional concerns regarding the new forum website:

1. I have been a forum member since 2003. I have had separate accounts for maintaining my Intel licenses that I renew every year for logistics and privacy reasons since the licenses are tied to companies whereas the forum is for personal education.
2. With the new forum, all my accounts (3 in total) have been consolidated into one master account. Is this the case with anyone else?
3. One of my accounts is for Intel drivers that was tied to the various PCs that I manage. Once combined, the sidebar and main topics section default to combined forum posts for various forums including Intel drivers. This is inconvenient since I rarely use that forum.
4. I was earlier a Brown Belt, but that designation has been replaced by New Contributor I. The name is not that critical but are older posts being phased out in the new system? If so, I would want to archive the responses.
5. The recommendations I receive on the RHS are irrelevant to the topic and in fact not even for Fortran. This is a result of the accounts having been consolidated. For example, I just posted on "is it possible to create += to mimic C" and the attached picture shows the recommendations.

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Steve_Lionel
Honored Contributor III
1,562 Views

@avinashs ,

The "belt" system has been phased out. Black Belts keep their status, but I think all the other color belts are gone, replaced with the new levels. They don't mean much anyway.

I would be astonished if your accounts were somehow merged - I don't see how they can do that. What I did find, and this probably doesn't affect you, is that the "display name" rules changed so that a lot of us who had spaces and other characters in their names got them rewritten and collapsed. One can select a new display name that follows the new rules, like I did.

As best as I can tell, all the posts are still here. It just may be more difficult to find them given the poor search feature.

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mecej4
Honored Contributor III
1,558 Views

Avinash,

About your point 5:

No, the irrelevance of the "recommended" list is not a result of multiple user-id-s being consolidated. At present, nobody is exempt from this mal-feature. See the earlier posts in this thread, where this deficiency was noted and discussed.

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avinashs
New Contributor I
1,520 Views

Thanks for all the useful responses. Some consolidated comments for the responses:

1. I am able to access my earlier posts when I click on my hyperlinked username avinashs.

2. Intel has confirmed that my accounts were consolidated. Now that it has been done, I am working with the new system. My username for the forum has remained the same and so have the posts (which was my concern with the new account username and status).

3. Intel software manager had stopped updating sometime last October for me. With the consolidated accounts, I could access the 2020 Update 1 directly. Now installed compiler reports "Compiling with Intel(R) Visual Fortran Compiler 19.1.1.216 [IA-32]". Thanks to the forum, I realized that I did not have the latest update (also mentioned in different post), which has now been successfully obtained.

 

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JohnNichols
Valued Contributor III
1,516 Views

Darn this site is hard to use now. 

Steve_Lionel
Honored Contributor III
1,689 Views

@MaryT_Intel 

I can now set an avatar, but all I can do there is select from a bunch of different colored generic outlines. My former photo avatar is gone and there's no option to re-upload it. Curiously, some users (such as Jim) still have their photo avatars.

All my private messages are gone, too, and I have lost the Black Belt's privilege of starting a new private conversation.

It was also annoying that usernames now have more restrictions, but I'll cope with that.

Another thing gone is the link to the Fortran compiler FAQ that was in a "sticky". Oh, and the stickies themselves are gone.

I am trying not to get discouraged here, but I have been through too many of these forum conversions at Intel, and each one seems to be less useful to users than the last.

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MaryT_Intel
Employee
1,679 Views

Hi Dr. Fortran,

I will re-post the IDZ stickies today. Sorry I couldn't get to it yesterday but it's on my list.

I appreciate everyone else's input here, we are taking a look at your feedback.

I need to investigate the Avatars so hang tight, it's all new to me too. Thanks!

Mary T.

Support Community Manager

intel.community@intel.com

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andrew_4619
Honored Contributor II
1,656 Views

Well In have found a couple of improvements in the new forum! The spell checker now lets you select a suggested spelling rather than just saying 'wrong'! But there is still some way to go to get this bedded in and working in a satisfactory manner.

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FortranFan
Honored Contributor II
1,616 Views
   print *, "Hello World!"
end

 

Hello Mary,

Please see this simple code snippet.  I do not see line numbers.  Is there an option to see the line numbers?  Also, the recognized Fortran language tokens such as 'print', 'end', etc. are not getting highlighted.

You would have taken note with the previous design of this peer-to-peer forum for Intel Software Tools including Fortran did provide highlighting (with bold fonts, colors, etc.) and also line numbers which were helpful with technical discussions related to Intel Fortran.

Thanks, 

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DavidWhite
Valued Contributor II
1,603 Views
As Fortran users, to quote a New Australian of a bygone era, are a Weird Mob! We are different to those who use so many of the newer scripting and programming languages. Like the post a few days ago where someone asked for += to be implemented in Fortran.

Well, in terms of the so-called improved forum, it looks like "they" got us!

We want to be able to have a forum that works for us a Fortran programmers, not something that just looks nice, or give us whiz bang features.

The developers of the forum should listen to us more. After all we are seasoned, accomplished programmers who know what we need, not what we're told is good for us.
andrew_4619
Honored Contributor II
1,595 Views

The old forum was a bit clunky and over time various features have been dropped (such as private messages) because of security/spam issues. On the new forum PM works again, attachments seem easier, the spell checker works, and some other things .....  The new layout is poor on wide screens, we don't have syntax highlighting/line numbers for code ( see, below, a plugin that will come soon I hope), avatars are broken, ....

 

Program Test
   implicit none
   integer :: ii
   ii = 1
   write(*,*) ii
end program test

 

 With a few tweaks I think this could be an improved platform compared to the old forum. And yes I hate change just for the reason it looks different and a bit of work is needed to come to terms with the changes....

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andrew_4619
Honored Contributor II
1,591 Views

Oh and you can now set your time zone and date display preference, I always had to double think the crazy month-day-year dates.....

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andrew_4619
Honored Contributor II
1,690 Views

Agree but there is a "top" button at the very bottom.

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David_DiLaura1
1,677 Views

This same thing happened (often) in the company I worked for (now consult for). The front-end of a project would get handed over to the UX team and they would screw it up. Users would howl, developers would rage, and management would wonder innocently "what happened?". The result was uniformly unsatisfactory and always required serious re-working and delays. They never acquired the habit of checking with us developers or the users. The UX team was a dangerously self-certain lot and this happened so often that they were finally turfed. 

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JohnNichols
Valued Contributor III
1,666 Views

Dear Mary:

I think you should relax, it is ok, these people have fairly strong opinions. I am sure you will solve the problems over the long run and I for one are happy with all your efforts. 

Teh attached file is the ODE analysis for the Corona Virus, the model is steady even though the cases are rising. Weird. 

John Nichols

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