Welcome to the Updated MaplePrimes
823I just uploaded a brand new version of MaplePrimes that brings with it a huge number of improvements that should make the site easier and more powerful to use.
WYSIWYG Editor
The most obvious change is a new WYSYWIG editor that appears on all posting forms. This will allow you to enter posts in the same way that you would in most word processors. You do not need to worry about proper use of HTML tags. The editor has a number of toolbar buttons that make it easy to perform common tasks.
This editor has two buttons specific to MaplePrimes:
The Maple tag button makes it easy to insert 2-D Maple Math, the same way you would have used the <maple> tag before
The Upload button uploads a file using the File Manager and automatically inserts a link to the uploaded file into your post.
If you wish to go back to the old HTML style of posting, just click the "Source" button that appears in the toolbar.
Student Forum Updates
We have made several updates to the MaplePrimes Student Forum. First, the theme for the forum and all topics within the forum has been updated. This change will make it easy to distinguish when you are in a different section of the site.
Also, new blocks have been created, seperating the active main forum topics from the student forum topics.
SCR Form
Next, there is a new type of post that you can create, a Maple Software Change Request use this form to send suggestions to Maplesoft about changes that you would like made to our software products. All submissions from this form go directly into our internal Bug tracking database, so they will be seen by developers.
Flag Content
Many users have requested the ability to let the administrators know when they see Spam or other inapproprate content on the site. There is now a new feature that makes this easy. There is a new "Flag Content" link that appears on all Posts and Comments. If you want the administrators to take note of any posts, please click this link.
There have also been many smaller updates throughout the site. I hope that you are happy with the updates. Please comment on this post if you find any problems or would like any more changes.
Update - Comments have been closed on this post since it has become difficult to follow the many threads of discusson. Please post to the MaplePrimes suggestions forum with any comments that you have on the new site.
- Hello there,
How may I plot
3 hours 44 min ago - Some precision
5 hours 19 min ago - Thank you, I am sure this
5 hours 30 min ago - simple
6 hours 14 min ago - error bar
7 hours 16 min ago - Listen
7 hours 41 min ago - errorbar
8 hours 2 min ago - Why plot?
8 hours 53 min ago - deleted
8 hours 46 min ago - lagrange
10 hours 23 min ago
Comments
SCRs
Will these SCRs also show up as posts on primes? Quite often various reports (suggestions, bugs, etc) engender some interesting discussion, so it is important that these generate posts as well as generating an automatic SCR for Maplesoft.
Not posts
The SCRs don't appear as posts, if you wish to have a conversation about a suggestion, it can be posted to the Product Suggestions forum instead.
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William Spaetzel
MaplePrimes Administrator
Software Developer, Maplesoft
Does not solve the duplication of effort problem
The issue is that this does not really solve the problem. Posting suggestions leads to potentially good discussions, but not an SCR; creating an SCR is like sending something off into a black hole. What is needed is an easy tool that does both in one go.
Note that good discussions can often be quite helpful to the developers too, to help them figure out what is really needed and what the root of the problem might be.
Re: Does not solve the duplication of effort problem
It might be argued that posting SCRs should take extra effort, to avoid cluttering things and taking up developers time. My view is that potential SCRs should usually first be posted as Product Suggestions; the SCR can be posted afterward.
As an example, I posted a product suggestion for speeding up
convert(_,binary). The suggested code was based on Knuth, and written carefully. Yet afterwards, acer found a substantial improvement. So any SCR posted by me would have been wasting Maplesoft's time.plain text posts/comments
<p> </p>
<p>Here's what happens when I use the new wysiwyg posting editor and toggle the "Input format" as "Plain Text (HTML not available).</p>
<p>acer</p>
As expected
That is what I would expect to happen.
Should I remove the Plain Text input format? It does have less use now that we have the new editor
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William Spaetzel
MaplePrimes Administrator
Software Developer, Maplesoft
that depends
I suppose that removal of the ability to submit Plain Text posts would depend on the robustness of the wysiwyg editor.
Maybe toggling a post as Plain Text input could throw open the old editor as well as toggle the input form. If that can't be done, then, as you say, the Plain Text input form isn't of much use any more.
If the new editor works well, then we're golden without the ability to submit plain text posts. But if it has issues, then we're at your mercy.
So far, the most idiosyncratic behaviour I've seen in the new editor is related to adding and removing blank lines. It quite often adds 2-3 new lines, or removes too many. It may not be best to have <Enter> shift to a new paragraph.
Trying to join paragraphs by placing the cursor at the end of paragraph and deleting the intervening lines, or by placing the cursor at the start of a new paragraph and backspacing, produces intermittently weird results. Similarly, it can take three or four actions in order to split a paragraph by its usual single blank line.
Also, if I have a few blank lines, and I delete them, then my cursor becomes invisible. Even though that's remindful of the behaviour of the cursor on the last line in the Standard GUI on Linux, it's not so good.
acer
Editor
The WYSIWIG Editor is called FCKeditor and is unrelated to any code in Maple. So any similarities in behaviour are pure coincidence.
I just checked and a newer version of the editor was available, I have installed the new editor on the site. I am also getting some funny behaviour regarding addding/removing blank lines, hopefully this version will correct the problem.
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William Spaetzel
MaplePrimes Administrator
Software Developer, Maplesoft
now unable to post (and Format is empty or _FCK_P)
acer
Not able to post
Are you not able to use the Editor at all? Can you please send me an e-mail: mapl...@maplesoft.com
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William Spaetzel
MaplePrimes Administrator
Software Developer, Maplesoft
firefox, ok
I was unable to use the Editor (and add content to a comment) when using Netscape 7.2 (or mozilla, or Epiphany) on Linux.
But now, with firefox 2.0.0.11 for i686 Linux the Editor works fine.
Thank you for all the cool new features, Will.
acer
bubble hints on the wysiwyg editor buttons
Floating "bubble" hints on the wysiwyg editor buttons would help to explain them. (In case it's just my browser, I'm using netscape 7.2, Linux.)
While I've got this editor open... why does hitting <Enter> always create a new paragraph (skips a line)?
Why doesn't the tag <pre>...</pre> work properly as before if I type in the mark-up code by hand? Can we still mark up the HTML source for a posting, by hand, and if so then how please?
I agree with Jacques -- SCRs submitted from here should be posts here, with discussion allowed. Otherwise they're not significantly different from emails to Tech Support. Ie, people don't always want to bother after having posted an issue here, and the SCRs can't be seen here, people will duplicate them, someone from Maplesoft would still have to scan this site for issues not submitted, etc, etc.
acer
Tooltips etc
I do get Tooltips in my browser (Firefox), they appear in IE as well.
If you want to get a line break without starting a new paragraph, press SHIFT+Enter. Lots of text editors work in the same way:
The <pre> tag seems to work as I expect when I go into source mode. What problem are you encountering?
The copmany decided we wanted the SCR form to not create a post with discussion. I will talk to my colleagues and we may change that behaviour.
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William Spaetzel
MaplePrimes Administrator
Software Developer, Maplesoft
I see, thanks
I see, thanks.
Ok, so the Source button toggles the editor's mode. So code could still be formatted by hand. Great. That means that Plain Text mode is still possible, and so still could be useful. This reply itself is done that way, by toggling to Source mode and then toggling the Input format to Plain Text.
Let's see how it comes out.
A problem with doing that is that hitting Preview will compress all the source to a single line in the editor (possibly marked up as an html paragraph). Further plaintext editing can then only be done by re-toggling as Source and splitting the lines and removing the <p> markup.
It's not clear whether the combination of Source & Plain Text can be Previewed and then Posted without intermediate clean-up of the text.
acer
test
i have the impression it loads faster ...
handling needs some hm ... can not always recognize, what i mark for formating
fine, think i can get used to it ... Willi like that
however each time i edit this post i am loosing 1 point and Will is earning 1 point
tststs ... :-)
Where are the buttons?
I'm not seeing any tool bar at all in Firefox 2.0.0.11 under Windows XP. I do see it in Internet Explorer 7. You don't want to force me to use Internet Explorer, do you?
Same here
Same setup, I do not see a WYSIWYG editor or buttons (other than "preview comment" and "post comment"). I have not configured my browser away from the defaults either!
Otherwise the site update is very nice, it has a nicer look. There are a few new bugs (should I file them in this thread or another?), but nothing ghastly.
JavaScript
Do you have JavaScript enabled? You will need to enable JavaScript to see the editor.
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William Spaetzel
MaplePrimes Administrator
Software Developer, Maplesoft
Javascript
I have Javascript enabled, but I had disabled some of the options (allowing Javascript to move windows, etc). Now that I have reset that, I get the editor showing. So those options apparently make a big difference! It would be a good FAQ to pin down which options are necessary.
Finding the buttons [Firefox]
I had to make changes to all 3 of my Firefox installations for the editor to work properly. Under Tools->Options, Content Tab, one needs to use the 'advanced' button besides the Javascript toggle and also set 'hide the status bar', otherwise the editor will not show up at all.
new site is great
I really like the new version of the site. The look is cleaner and the new features (submit SCR, flag content) are excellent.
My problem is with Opera
With the same setting (Firefox 2.0.0.11 under Windows XP) the toolbar is OK for me.
However, with Opera 9.25 (also Win XP), this blog page is upset: the editor has no toolbar, the "Input format" block appears in the right column, and the blocks that should be on the right colum appears at the bottom, on the left colum (apparently the same occurs with every other page except "Home").
Opera
I get the same result using Opera 9.25 (On XP), I know that Opera supposedly follows the CSS standards closer than IE or Firefox, so I am surprised that it doesn't work. I'll look into it.
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William Spaetzel
MaplePrimes Administrator
Software Developer, Maplesoft
Editor takes focus
A minor issue: When I enter a forum topic from the "Recent posts" I am automatically send down to the input window of the editor, so I have to scroll up the page to start reading the thread.
Info
Are you clicking on the "X new" link in the "Recent Posts"? What browser are you using?
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William Spaetzel
MaplePrimes Administrator
Software Developer, Maplesoft
Recent posts
No, I'm just (as I'm used to) clicking on the "recent posts" link under the Navigation panel. I'm using Internet Explorer 6.0 (a bit old, I know, but it suits me: if something works don't fix it).
To the forums
I mean when you click on a forum topic in the "recent posts", what link are you clicking on?
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William Spaetzel
MaplePrimes Administrator
Software Developer, Maplesoft
Title column
Hopefully, this is an answer to your question :-).
I'm (as usual) clicking on the link in the title column.
IE 6
I just found a machine with IE 6 on it still, and I get the same behaviour. I'm guessing this is due to IE's unusual handling of some Javascript.
I will look into the problem, but since 98% of our users have Firefox 2 or IE 7, it won't be a priority.
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William Spaetzel
MaplePrimes Administrator
Software Developer, Maplesoft
Firefox
I have just downloaded and installed Firefox 2. The problem in IE is not present here.
ago ...
the listing is last post "xxx ago" ... can we also have "xxx before" ? :-)
leaving "ago" out would save 1 line in the overview (at least here at a smaller screen)
Font size
I agree.
And continuing, for a more compact "Recent posts" list I would appreciate a smaller font.
"Aggressive notification of new messages"
In "Account settings" > "Private message settings" there is an option (I think new):
"Aggressive notification of new messages".
Though it sounds a bit "frightening", I have checked it, but I wonder what it means.
May be related to the absence of the number between brackets in "Navigation" > "My inbox".
Notification
As the description says, "Show status message on every page until new messages are read."
It will display a message on the top of every page you visit on the site until you read all of your private messages.
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William Spaetzel
MaplePrimes Administrator
Software Developer, Maplesoft
Pacman post
A cheese is eating away, or so it seems, of an old post of mine: why is there now a big nothingness in that post?
Better?
I removed the <maple> tags that you put around the Matrix syntax.
That caused a lot more content to appear. Does it look as you expected now?
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William Spaetzel
MaplePrimes Administrator
Software Developer, Maplesoft
Maple tags intentional
The maple tags were intentionally put there to render a nice image of a matrix instead of the maple code itself. So although the nothingness has disappeared, it is not what I would like to see, sorry.
"My recent posts" changed?
It seems that "My recent posts" now shows only the threads which was initiated by me. As I recall, earlier "My recent posts" showed all threads to which I had contributed any post. Is that change intentional?
Please change that back
I found the old "My recent posts" quite useful. This change is definitely not an improvement from my point of view.
Changed to old behaviour
As with many changes, I did not intentionally change this functionality.
Fortunately, I was able to change it to work as you are used to.
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William Spaetzel
MaplePrimes Administrator
Software Developer, Maplesoft
Code tag removed?
It seems that the code-tag, which I use for inline mathematics, has been removed from the editor. Is that correct?
Code tag is now undocumented rather than removed.
See how this Maple code
map(foo, [1,b,`*`])is formatted? I manually inserted a code tag, and it worked. But I did have to edit HTML [by using the 'Source' button] to do it. It would indeed be nice if that were one of the standard buttons.The online documentation for the FCKEditor makes it pretty clear that this is easy to configure server-side. As is obvious, since the 'maple' tag sure isn't standard!
<code>
I wanted to keep the toolbar uncluttered and to reduce the number of buttons in order to keep it simple to use.
I didn't think the <code> tag was nessecary since anything that you type in the editor appears with the same formatting in the post. What is the advantage now of the <code> tag? Other than changing the font of the text?
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William Spaetzel
MaplePrimes Administrator
Software Developer, Maplesoft
Font
To be able to change the font is nice because it makes this (mathematical)
xstand out against this (non-mathematical) x.But the toolbar is highly cluttered!
There are all sorts of really useless buttons - paste from Word (too uncommon), Replace (can be done with the mouse), underline (bad style, not recommended), strike-out (too uncommon), the 3 justification buttons (rare for posts here), and maybe anchor (ditto, though it might be nice to use that in the future). So there is lots of room to clean things up, which will make room for more useful buttons [like <code>]. To post Maple code, it is very important that it visually look different than the surrounding text!
[This is what happens when the developers of a product, in this case mapleprimes, are not also users of the product, independently of their task as developer/administrator. You don't get to really know and understand the common usage patterns. I am sure Scott03 could have told you that lots of people use <code> and <pre> all the time.]
The pre tag
I agree with you concerning the pre-tag.
Actually, having this made available as a button in the new editor would be an improvement over the old one, where it was not so even though the pre-tag was/is very much used.
<code>
I would definitely like support for <code>, for the same reasons that others have given.
I agree
That was exactly what I meant: not to have to assort to manual insertion of code-tags in source-view.
The code and pre tags
Any update on these?
I am still missing them. The only way now is to switch back and forth between the WYSIWYG view and the source view.
preview changes source input
First, I want to say I like the new MaplePrimes. Maintaining this site must keep Will on his toes. (I bet it's also a lot of fun.)
The new editor is not fun - at least for me. I have not been able to get past the crazy behavior when I try to backspace. Maybe I need to use the buttons more but, as I have said in other forums, I like to keep my hands on the keyboard.
So, I tend to enter my posts in source mode.
Has anyone else been annoyed, or even noticed, that after you preview a post written in source mode that the editor changes the source? I think it is mainly trying to ensure that the source fits into a default style. For example, it adds paragraph tags and changes the ordered and unordered lists.
If the changes did not change the content or appearance of the post, then there is no real problem. But, the appearance does change (sometimes). And, the careful formatting of my input (indentations, ...) are lost.
Is there a way to prevent the editor from making changes to my source?
Doug