Hidden Application

[GregChapman]

Hi Pedro,

Are you playing with the system?

Now half an hour later I go to another page on the blog and it shows as I want it.

[Pedro]

I have not done anything yet. Is everything normal again?

[GregChapman]

Yes, everything is normal now.

Things were going wrong during the same period that this support site was off-line around 10 hours ago.

I wondered if you may have been doing something with the system more generally that affected some of the customised macros you wrote rather than thinking that you were editing the stuff on my site directly.

Something very similar happened in the week or so after the big "problem" upgrade. It took several days to recover then, but I had other priorities at the time so did not post about it then.

[GregChapman]

Arrgh! It's doing it again.

Opened the app at:
http://www.rustonreaches.co.uk/blog.html
this morning and it had lost my customisations (colour scheme and font size).

I tried re-setting things and found my customised colour scheme was available from the "Color" button on the Change Appearance bar. The colours took - for a time - but once again it is now refusing to accept and hold on to the font size, "Narrow" setting (to remove the blog sidebar) and colour scheme and the setting which remembers to hide the "Ruston Reaches" root application.

As I said before, this issue has kept re-appearing since the "big" upgrade a couple of weeks back so that upgrade seems at the heart of this problem.

[Pedro]

We were working on n2 server these two days. That's why it happened twice.

[GregChapman]

In that case something that's been done in the last two days has affected all your macro changes on that forum.

The root forum continues not to be hidden in the breadcrumb menus. The feature to remember the last forum used on logoff is not working and the "Blog" page (A newspaper app) is still showing the sidebar regardless of wide/narrow setting.

[GregChapman]

Hi Pedro,

I've done some more investigation and I can't pin it down. Sometimes it's working but mostly it is not.

For example, I visited the site just now and the news app (call "Blog" on the main site's menu) appeared without sidebar (as I want it) and the breadcrumbs only showed the blog app. Then I realised I was logged out. I logged in as my admin user and I got the full path shown in the breadcrumbs and the blog showed with sidebar.

Thinking it might be affecting only my admin user, I logged out and in again as my test user (Anyone and Registered groups only) but that displayed the same as my admin user. (The user permissions were working. I couldn't see the apps that should only be visible to an admin user) I logged out and the blog continued to show with the root app on the breadcrumbs and the sidebar displayed.

The one good thing was that I wasn't losing my colour scheme as I was yesterday.

[Pedro]

There was an error on your naml code. The star code was being called and I removed it.
Please, describe for me what have changed with this fix.

[GregChapman]

Thanks Pedro!

Initial tests suggests that has fixed it, but will report again if I uncover anything in the next few days.

(I cannot believe that the Starred Posts system was so expensive in terms of server time and overheads that removing that facility could be justified - on the grounds that only 1% of users used it. The resources used must have been minuscule as a proportion of your overall system. For those who did use it it is sorely missed. For the first time it sent me hunting for an alternative embedded forum service. Its disappearance means I find it far harder to point people to previous useful posts on the Support Forum.)

[Pedro]

Have you received your starred posts? I sent them to you and asked three times for a confirmation.

[GregChapman]

Hi Pedro,

Yes I did. The loss of stars, the upgrade and the hiccups that it caused all arrived at a very busy time here and may have overlooked a lot of mail here around that time.

Many apologies.

One of the good things to happen in the same period was a bit of organisation (pinned posts) appearing in the NAML section of the forum. That should begin to help those attempting to get their head round the language. Keep up the good work!

[GregChapman]

Hi Pedro,

GregChapman wrote

Initial tests suggests that has fixed it, but will report again if I uncover anything in the next few days.

Bug found!

I have just added a group membership to a user on their profile screen. As I entered the screen there was the expected "Back" link where the breadcrumb menu appears, but when the screen refreshed after making the change the "Back" link was missing and I am left with no way out of the profile screen (other than using the menu on the site in which the forum is embedded).

(I suspect this isn't related to the recent update, but has been there a while and I hadn't encountered it before.)

[Pedro]

Please, take a look now.
I've looked into this message to understand http://support.nabble.com/Hidden-Application-tp7587027p7588431.html. So I added this code:

        if(title.search( 'Change User' ) >= 0 )
        backButton ();

in order to add a back button at Change User groups page.

[GregChapman]

Thanks for the try!

I now realise there is a more fundamental problem.

The "Back" link is there, but all it does it take you back to the screen before the refresh, so now the "Back" link just toggles between the screen where I added a group to my test user and back to where it was before I added the group in a permanent cycle.

I still can't get out of the Profile Screen.

[Pedro]

Please, see the update I've made on your code.

[GregChapman]

I haven't looked at the code itself, but I am still getting the same effect.

Go to a users profile (GregC is my test user), add a group, save it and after the screen refresh the "Back" link takes you to the profile screen before the group was added and the "Back" link there takes you to the screen with the group added locking you into a permanent loop.

EDIT: Also just discovered, if you do a "Refresh" on the page then then "Back" link has no effect at all as it appears to send you to the screen that was seen before the refresh, i.e. the same screen.

[Pedro]

I see. I sounds simple, but it is very complex to make a back button as you want there.

[GregChapman]

Hi Pedro,

If I recall it was your suggestion that a simple JavaScript "Back" link was used. I guess another approach that's needed. I'm open to suggestions.

You'll recall that I see this forum as a test bed for those Nabble users who want to independent applications with a common set of registered users, a feature which I have seen requested a number of times while I have been with Nabble.

In my case I need to separate users who are owners of holiday cottages from holiday makers. I don't want the owners of the cottages to have two separate registrations to deal with and I don't want holiday makers to be aware of the various sub-forums cottage owners can access.

The approach has been to handle registration at the root level and create various sub-forums for the two classes of user. I know all cottage owners so add them to the "Shareholders" group before they even register, so as soon as they do register or logon they instantly gain access to the "private areas" of the forum. Holidaymakers are much more  conventional and will register in the normal way to post on the "public areas".

The trouble comes because, with the standard Nabble product, as soon as holidaymakers get into the Profile and related account management screens, they are sent to the "root level" and, in spite of hiding the root application on the breadcrumb menu, then become aware of the "private areas" of the forum.

My original suggestion had been some kind of flag was set when entering the root application for account maintenance functions, and on exit from that level the flag should read so the user could be returned to the sub-forum they had entered the root area from.

An alternative, might be to associate certain user groups with a specified sub-forum and when members of those user groups exit the root section they get sent to the specified sub-forum rather than the root application, as they do with the standard Nabble product. (In my case registered users could be sent to the holiday makers sub-forum, and Shareholders sent to the shareholders sub-forum.

This alternative is less appealing than my original "flag" suggestion, because there is also my "blog" (a News application) and users could have been there when they went to the account management section and then get returned to a different area - but that is no different to what happens at the moment anyway with the standard product. (This alternative also produces problems for me as the "Forum" and "Blog" are embedded on different pages in the main site and appear under a different menu item on the main site and that means (as happens at the moment) that users often end up in a forum area when the site's main menu still indicates they are viewing the blog.)

In short, the objective is to find a way to access a particular sub-forum when returning from any of the "account management" screens. You have a better understanding of the mechanics of Nabble than I do, so I leave it to you to decide on the best/easiest approach - if it is even practical!

[Pedro]

I've improved the Back button. Sometimes you don't get back to the top level on the first hit, but you get there without looping.
Please, take a look.

ps: I haven't read your last message yet.

[Pedro]

I remember your intentions. That will be very useful nabble wide.
I think we are almost there, please take a look at your back link, it is not 100% yet but is I believe the loop issue has gone.

Em 13/05/2014 19:02, "GregChapman [via Nabble Support]" <[hidden email]> escreveu:

Hi Pedro,

If I recall it was your suggestion that a simple JavaScript "Back" link was used. I guess another approach that's needed. I'm open to suggestions.

You'll recall that I see this forum as a test bed for those Nabble users who want to independent applications with a common set of registered users, a feature which I have seen requested a number of times while I have been with Nabble.

In my case I need to separate users who are owners of holiday cottages from holiday makers. I don't want the owners of the cottages to have two separate registrations to deal with and I don't want holiday makers to be aware of the various sub-forums cottage owners can access.

The approach has been to handle registration at the root level and create various sub-forums for the two classes of user. I know all cottage owners so add them to the "Shareholders" group before they even register, so as soon as they do register or logon they instantly gain access to the "private areas" of the forum. Holidaymakers are much more  conventional and will register in the normal way to post on the "public areas".

The trouble comes because, with the standard Nabble product, as soon as holidaymakers get into the Profile and related account management screens, they are sent to the "root level" and, in spite of hiding the root application on the breadcrumb menu, then become aware of the "private areas" of the forum.

My original suggestion had been some kind of flag was set when entering the root application for account maintenance functions, and on exit from that level the flag should read so the user could be returned to the sub-forum they had entered the root area from.

An alternative, might be to associate certain user groups with a specified sub-forum and when members of those user groups exit the root section they get sent to the specified sub-forum rather than the root application, as they do with the standard Nabble product. (In my case registered users could be sent to the holiday makers sub-forum, and Shareholders sent to the shareholders sub-forum.

This alternative is less appealing than my original "flag" suggestion, because there is also my "blog" (a News application) and users could have been there when they went to the account management section and then get returned to a different area - but that is no different to what happens at the moment anyway with the standard product. (This alternative also produces problems for me as the "Forum" and "Blog" are embedded on different pages in the main site and appear under a different menu item on the main site and that means (as happens at the moment) that users often end up in a forum area when the site's main menu still indicates they are viewing the blog.)

In short, the objective is to find a way to access a particular sub-forum when returning from any of the "account management" screens. You have a better understanding of the mechanics of Nabble than I do, so I leave it to you to decide on the best/easiest approach - if it is even practical!

Just a Volunteer Nabble Helper - because the nice folk at Nabble have helped me!

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