Forums Issues (not product support)

Announcements

• September 09 Release - List of Forum Fixes and Changes

  Brent SerbusMSFTFriday, October 02, 2009 12:21 AM

  New Features

  Code Formatting Support for C++: Code formatting now includes support for C++ language.
  
  RSS Feeds for Community Activity: We have created a few new RSS feeds for some integration scenarios with MSDN coming in a few weeks.

  Most Popular Threads Brand/Locale: http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/threads?sort=popularity&outputas=rss
  Most Popular Threads Any Category: http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/category/visualbasic/threads?sort=popularity&outputas=rss
  Top Participants Brand/Locale: http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/user/leaderboards?outputas=rss
  Site Stats Brand/Locale: http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/stats?outputas=rss
  Recent Posts Any Category: http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/category/visualbasic/recentposts?outputas=rss
   
  RSS support for Forum Syndication: We have added RSS to the forum syndication options (previously we only enabled atom feeds). We have changed the default behind the syndication orange buttons in all the forums to RSS.     
  
  Answers Specific Updates: We have done a few things specific to the answers forums platforms. We have updated the Ask page for a variety of reasons, most of them usability related. We ran some usability tests on the Ask a Question page and implemented some of the suggestions from the usability folks. The page is also easier for use to maintain and enhance in the coming months. Aside from updating this page we did some additional back end work on instrumentation which ultimately helps us understand more about how users are using the application.
               
  Error Logging and Reporting Enhancements: We have done some internal work to integrate some error handling libraries to help us more quickly address 500s and other errors some of our users have reported. We will have more accessibility into the error text being logged on the back end which should lead to a more reliable application later.
  
  MSDN Specific "New Thread" log in text: MSDN Users asking questions when not logged in will see some additional useful information when posting explaining there are some related useful external sites and resources to get help. Prior to this change we simply showed users a link to sign in. The new text and links explains there are asp.net and other sites available, provides links and also explains to users they need both a live id and profile to participate.   
             
  New Locale Support (fi-fi, en-ie, en-sg, de-ch, fr-ch): Have added some support for a new locales. These will come online sometime in the coming weeks and months depending on the internal resources to create and maintain forums in these newly supported locales.

  What about the Bridge? Users of the offline client NNTP Bridge beta will have to wait a few more weeks for an update. We simply have not been able to make enough progress on the really important bugs we think were blocking and did not want to make an update available just for the sake of making an update available. We want to address the blocking bugs and this will take a little more time.

  
  Bug Fixes

  Forums: Top Answerers Users Missing
  Locale: List of Categories are not displayed in the forums category list box if there are no forums specific to that locale
  Feed RSS : Thread title is not a hyperlink in RSS result page
  Arrive word is misspelled in My Settings page
  Text "You cannot vote again or vote on your own post" should be changed based on user signed in or not.
  RSS: Feeds are generated for Private forums as well
  Forums:  404s thrown from MyThreads, My Forums Threads and other multi brand views (pages and RSS)
  Wrong Locales appearing in the Masthead locale dropdown
  SR# 2-2914967297 : Forums:: Bug in forum eyebrow for Answers.
  Forums: Default syndication urls to =rss instead of =atom
  Forums: Wrong category in eyebrow
  Updates to ensure the application at least functions on the mobile pocket IE.
  Ensuring forum threads are only viewable in their intended brand/locales
  Locale : Leaderboards failing for all of the new locales except Fi-Fi
  Web.Config: The new locales should be enabled for forums and all other apps
  Locale: HelpFile is not localized for new locales (fi-fi, de-ch, fr-ch)
  tooltip (answers brand specific) message should be different for join a question
  Locale: This user has not yet visited or participated in forums is not localized
  Private search page:: Clicking on display name on Private search result page doesn’t redirect to profile page
  Message View::Voting icon and text in the message for thread are close (i.e. don't have space)
  Ask your question: (answers brand specific) Watermark does not disappear if user clicks on the ordered list button
  A lot of German Localization bugs wrong strings in a lot of places
  Locale: "Partner" key word is localized in fi-fi locale. Partner key word (used for affiliation) should not be localized
  Locale: Tooltip is not localized for the text "You cannot vote again"
  SR# 2-2784225228 : Forums:: Broken forum post. Illegal characters.
  Forums: Voting ux region is too narrow
  Forums: Search term not found
  Forums: (answers brand specific) Join a question need singular versions: "1 persons" doesn't sound good
  (answers brand specific) Locked thread allows users to join a question
  
  Known Issues
  
  Forum threads from shared forums takes the user to the default forum brand. So users looking at a forum in a brand it is shared in (like forums issues in MSDN) will link across domain to the generic microsoft brand domain. We are investigating a fix to this to preserve the context of the current brand.

• October 09 Release - List of Forum Fixes and Changes

  Brent SerbusMSFTSaturday, October 17, 2009 3:34 AM

  The October 09 release focussed mostly on some minor user interface updates, bug fixes and additional locale support. Even though the update was functionally minor there were a few minor interface annoyances the team will be looking into over the next few weeks. These include:
   
  Some fonts in the system are a little too large, such as the filter interface causeing some wrapping in the filter bars above thread lists
  
  Code snippet fonts became too large, we'll reduce them soon
  
  For those beta testing the NNTP Bridge Client beta, no update this week. We plan to post an update the next release in mid November
  

  October 16th Update Includes:
  
  Substantial effort to support the MSDN Redesign and maintain visual consistency and user navigation contexts across our shared online properties
  
  Doubled the number of locales supported (bringing the total to 35 locales). The following are the new locales introduced with this release: Australia (English), Austria (German), Belgium (Dutch & French), Bulgaria (Bulgarian), Denmark (Danish), Greece (Greek), Indonesia (Indonesian), Kazakhstan (Russian), Netherlands (Dutch), New Zealand (English), Norway (Norwegian), Portugal (Portuguese), Romania (Romanian), Slovakia (Slovak), Sweden (Swedish), Ukraine (Ukranian)
  
  Forum feeds fueling the Community Activity control on the MSDN Home Page
  

• August 09 Release - List of Forum Fixes and Changes

  Brent SerbusMSFTSaturday, August 29, 2009 2:45 AM

  The August release included some new features, bug fixes and an update to the Forums NNTP Bridge Beta.

  New Features

  Related Threads
  This feature was implemented initially in the answers brand forums last month and we are going to turn this on soon for the rest of the branded forums, likely early next week. This feature gives users more helpful options when landing at a thread page from an external search engine.

  "Need an Answer" (answers brand only)
  This feature is implemented only on the Answers brand forums, focusing on the consumer forums. The feature allows users to declare they also need an answer to a particular question. The feature is intended to enable a few key scenarios.

  • Allows users to quickly subscribe a question so when an answer is provided, they receive a Live Alert
  • Increments a value to help enable teams to gauge the impact of a particular answer
  • Enables answer providers and markers the ability to filter and sort by questions that the most users are waiting on
  • Informs forum owner which questions impact the most users
  • Help reduce duplicate questions by enable users to get answers to existing ones

  The feature is one of a few changes to enrich the experience for users landing on a forums thread from a search engine, giving them additional options to participate.
  
  Identicons
  The drab default redundant user avatars are now random images.

  Forums NNTP Bridge August Beta
  The Forums NNTP Client Bridge is a .Net client application a user can install to configure their NNTP Reader of choice to read and post to forums. The August beta is the latest beta update, prior betas were only made available to MVPs and Microsoft affiliated users. More information on how to get up and running on the client bridge can be found in a Microsoft Connection here: http://connect.microsoft.com/site/sitehome.aspx?SiteID=927 Users can download the bits, try them out and log bugs at the connection.

  Bug Fixes
  Below are some of the bug fixes in this release.

  Fix for live alerts failures when moving threads (in some scenarios)
  Database Job Fixes: Fixes to the aggregators to address outages and latency issues in My Threads, My Alerts and Recognition Point updates
  New Windows Live Account Creation bug where new users are not properly redirected
  Incorrect redirects for some merge thread scenarios
  Forums post order is changing when a post is marked as helpful
  Flat View::When “Always Show Answers First On Thread Page” is checked in My Settings. Then Answered post should be shown in Answers and All Replies section
  IE6::problem with posting reply (other than root post) using IE6
  IE6::Forums UI is disturbed on IE6 Browser
  Splitting a thread throws 500 error under some scenarios
  Marking a post as helpful, deleting a post and undeleting a post is taking some time
  IE 6::UI::Medals, User Avatar, Display name on message view are not aligned displayed
  Users who don’t have access to Private forums Category URL fall back to Forums Home page after Signing In using Private forums Category URL.
  Forums: Posting takes users to their recent posts
  On Clicking Reply or Quote the bottom scroll bar on message view page is moving to right side (Only on IE 7)
  Vote icon should not be dispalyed in the Edit window
  Unmarking a post marked as Abusive doesn't display unmarked text in message view of the post
  Related Threads: Box container for related threads title should be “Related Threads” instead of "Related Topics"
  IE 6: UI issues in Expression brans
  Forums UI:  404 error returned in UI when clicking on Italian Breadcrumb
  Forums: Live alerts failing silently
  IE 8 & FF::Forums: Post Ordering: Thread Page View : Answered posts are not dispalyed above all replies for Unauthenticated User
  UnMarking post as Abuisve display's the text "Flagged Abusive by" in the message history of the post
  Moving a thread to another forum (Across different shards) resets view count
  IE6:: Feeds are not dispalyed properly on feed results page where OutputAs = Atom is passed in feeds URL
  Forums: Message history for delete adds mark as abusive flag unecessarily
  Expression Brand : Display names are cut off in thread preview and browse users page
  UnMark Abusive post is failing results in error message
  Change type thread fails for Thread starter with error message "You are not authorized to perform this action"
  Mark As Abusive::Mark as Abusive posts are displayed as red for normal users
  Abusive Posts should show "already reported" label

• Post July 09 Fixes

  Don TanMSFTFriday, July 17, 2009 12:31 AM
  We're looking at a minor release on 7/17 which covers:
  
  UI/Feature Changes:
  
  - We're making minor UI changes to the voting UX to make it more discoverable. The voting UX Control is left as is with the addition of Text below the control that changes state depending whether you’re signed-in or not and voted on a post. Also, we've made the entire region of the voting UX a clickable control.
   
  Bug Fixes:
  
  - Order threads by date time: If you're in non threaded view, all replies will be sorted in descending order to show the flow of the thread (instead of helpful votes). All Answered posts will be shown in the "All Replies" section whether you have the option of "Always Show Answers First On Thread Page" selected or not.
   
  - Italics don't render in IE 8, FF (and Chrome)
  
  - Having “tag” word in the title renders wrong title in the “Related Threads” in Expression brand.  (Only IE7)
  
  
  
  
  
  

• July 09 Release - List of Forum Fixes and Changes

  Don TanMSFTWednesday, July 08, 2009 4:38 PM

  Our July Release was completed on 7/9.
  
  UI/Feature Changes:
  
  - None. 
  
  Note: The team is working on a fix regarding ordering of posts (thread page) by vote count. We're also discussing minor UI changes against the voting button to make it more visible to users. We're targeting a release early August however not yet confirmed and subject to change. 
    
  Bug Fixes:
  
  - RSS:: User Threads::RSS feed is broken for users having DBCS in display name
  - Cannot edit a post (When editing a post, the contents of the post flashes and disappears)
  - Forums Feeds: Atom date times are not correct
  - Always Show Answers First option is ignored (When unselected in the "My Settings" page)
  - Answered threads are not showing Answered posts within "All Replies" section. (When “Always Show Answers First On Thread Page” is unselected in the "My Settings" page)
  - In IE 7, replying to a post automatically scrolls to the right.
  - FireFox::On Clicking the Edit post or Edit root the RTE is displayed out the frame on FF
  - Sign In/Out: Users signed into Live ID without a forums profile doesn't see "Create Profile" in My Forums Links

• June 09 Release - List of Forum Fixes and Changes

  Don TanMSFTTuesday, June 16, 2009 2:18 AM

  UI Changes:
  
  - Voting Image/Icon is now shifted on the top left of each post.
  - Has Code Icon is shifted on the Top Right of the post
  - Top Section of the "My Settings" page (showing user contributions) has been moved to that users Profile Page/Forums tab.
  
  Bug Fixes:
  
  - Multiple Reply Window:  We've just pushed a fix on 6/15 where folks are seeing multiply reply windows when replying to a post.
  - Fixed numerous Encoding Issues.
  - Move/Merge Thread: When moving/merging a thread, the old URL will redirect to the new URL. (Specially if you bookmark the old URL)
  - All User DisplayNames will be redirected to that users Profile page
  - Sort By Filter in Forum View (List of Threads) renders smoothly.
  - Message History Fixes (Text and White Spaces)