Release Notes 7/23/08

[+Harry Dolphin]

Okay. Found your new 'print' button. I was used to printing the normal way. Print version doesn't decrypt hints. PDF version definitely needs work. It prints 'additional hints' in light blue.

Any pages with photos (as with some of my mystery caches) many thing run off the right hand side of the page.

And, It's too bright! Bright white bothers my eyes.

[+CanToo]

The new release seems to have a changed the printing of the description pages:

The left part is truncated so some text is missing. This is in IE and FF.

 

Until now I used to print the description pages. Before this, I decrypted the hint (very ugly that now the page is reloaded as noted before) and printed two or three pages. So I have some logs and were happy outside.

 

PDF formatting is ugly because it writes all the text in one line and does not print the decrypted hint - even if I decrypted it before.

 

"Print Simple (no logs)" is ugly because the missing logs and it does not print the decrypted hint - even if I decrypted it before.

 

Please bring back the old printing!

 

Rgds

Walter (walter1)

 

I agree. I can't file/print the screen anymore. This was what I took to the hunt with me as a reference. The other options are too small to read.

Edited July 23, 2008 by CanToo

[+IDLookout]

Not a big deal, but my avatar is forced into a "square" on the home page. It's squished.

[+London Rain]

Some remarks and questions.

 

Updated email notifications for Premium Membership

 

What has been changed here? I just found it to use the new general site layout.

 

An audit log note is now created when an adoption is complete.

 

Is this a new log type? Is it only used for this?

 

Improved spacing between username and log out link on home page

 

I can no longe click my name near the log out link on all cache pages. All other page types still work well. Using Win XP SP3, Opera 9.51. Could somebody confirm this?

 

Removed find and hide count from friends list

 

This really is a step backwards I can't understand. I'd love to have this back in a way that it shows the cache count the same way the stat bars so. Hides were without archived caches I think.

 

Added to cache pages the ability to click through to a complete list of shared Bookmark Lists

 

I can't see this. The only difference to me is that it shows the number of book mark lists where it showed "There are more" before. On a side note: If everything else in the bookmark list column now is blue the phrase "There are no Travel Bugs in this cache." should be too.

 

Fixed rating functionality for bookmark lists to properly display or hide based on ratings

 

Extremely cool and my favourite! Eventually all this stupid My Ftfs, My Todo and I've been here lists will disappear. How many negative ratings are needed to make them disappear? And did I get it right that once enough negative ratings are reached it will only be visible via the owners profile?

 

 

Driving Direction on the cache pages is very useful as well. Thanks!

 

I'd love having the trackables at the my page in the same right column as the rest as well

[+mertat]

• Re-ordered page titles for cache pages. e.g.: GCTANE Trees of Greenlake: The Empress (Multi-cache) in Washington, United States created by licibear & drizzle
  

Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!

[+sTeamTraen]

Why are major updates like this done in the middle of summer? Surely the site is quieter in the winter months and such an update would cause far less disruption. I'm sure the updates will be great, but it seems to be an annual event... sit down to plan some pocket queries and caches along a route ready for the upcoming vacation I get 500 Server Error... :-(

 

I'd bet money that the site traffic on any winter Sunday is higher than a summer Wednesday; that's if you can compare with 40% or so annual growth (in cache numbers, so I presume in other things).

 

Groundspeak gets enough flak for not fixing bugs quickly enough. Running a big site and fixing bugs at the same time is just... hard.

[+avgraphics]

[*]Removed find and hide count from friends list

Looks like a lot of great fixes, but I can't understand "Removed find and hide count from friends list". You have now removed the only useful feature of the Friends List.

 

P.S. Also just noticed that my avatar pic displays on GC.com, but it is "squished". Does it require different formatting than in the forums?

 

I think that the find and hide counts were ALWAYS wrong so I think the programmers decided to NOT display them instead of fixing the issue once and for all.

Perhaps something to do with synchronizing a couple dozen hamster servers.

Hmm, the counts were always correct for the few friends I have on my list. But I guess that is one way to "fix" something on the website: just get rid of it entirely.

I'm one of those town cryer types who likes to watch when my many many friend hit significant milestones. The new Friends feature - when it showed all the find and hide counts - was terrific one-stop-shopping to see how everyone is doing. At this point, without that info being displayed an longer, I no longer see any reason to go to that page. It's just a static list with no info worth checking in on.

 

Please bring back the only part of the Friends page that had any value. Please restore the find/hide count. Pleeeeease.?.?.?..

 

Now don't get me wrong - I agree with most that the site improvements are cool! Nice job..

 

Only a couple thing I'd like to see restored:

 

1. From the home page, when you try to search for waypoint GCXXXX it keeps bouncing you back to the homepage.

 

2. The listing of trackable items in my inventory should be brought back up closer ot the top of the My Account Details page.

 

3. When displaying my avatar (as now seen on the home page and my account details pages) - it would look much more pleasant if it wasn't distorted.

 

Keep up the great work!!!

[+MaxB on the River]

QUOTE(MaxB on the River @ Jul 23 2008, 05:38 PM)

 

What an absolute Inconvenience to have to move the bottom of 1 months worth of logs (several thousand for some of us) to find the My Inventory of travel bugs.

 

Please move it back up to the top side panel where it was before!! TB's are going to get forgotten by many users.

 

Also this was posted in reply to my first forum post:

 

Markwell: Your Moderator replied in the My Inventory thread about this problem in the following manner.

 

"I have an "end" key on my keyboard. Does that take you to the bottom?"

 

This seems to be completely unnecessary when many others are complaining about this same feature on this thread. He didn't post that smart remark here. Some type of appoligy should be forwarded.

[+Stan&Ruth]

A new bug seems to have crept in with this update. Now it doesn't matter what date you select for the logging of a new find....it puts in the current date.

[+Caching Scout]

I noticed that the unvistited link and visitied link colours are very close to each other and I have a hard time trying to see which shade of blue the link is.

 

I miss the changing image where the geocaching logo is when you select different items on the left hand menu.

 

On the PQ screen, it allowed you before to view your PQ in google earth ( with a little button next to preview pocket query), but it is gone, but still has it in the "legend" at the bottom of the screen.

 

On the instant notification service, the icon for GPS Adventure Exhibits doesn't show, just the alt text.

 

I find alot more white spaces on the site. The link navigation (geocaching home > page > ) takes up alot of space, move it back please

 

When you type in the wrong address, you no longer get an error page.

 

When I try to do a PQ from a route, I get an error message pop-up box, saying that IE can't open page...... operation aborted.

[+Pengana]

KUDOS.... The new design is a huge improvement. THANKS

 

I understand there are some tweaks that need to be made to the internal changes... but WOW. The home page is MUCH MUCH more user friendly. It is much better looking - and makes the site and the sport more inviting.

 

In the past the home page was particularly unfriendly to new cachers. If you run into a muggle and try to introduce them to geocaching you're going to say "go checkout geocaching.com" NOW I know they can get to the site and figure out what to do. They can find a cache in their neighborhood in seconds!

I love it! Thanks so much! Yes... we'll all have to adjust to some 'change' - it happens, get over it!

 

Pengana

(PS: professional web designer by trade... specializing in user center designed... so I think my comments should count double!)

Edited July 23, 2008 by Pengana

[+Jennifer&Dean]

I agree with those who use the Friend's list to check for milestones. I would have missed a friend's 500th find today!!! I checked the list and saw no numbers. Knowing he had been getting close, I randomly clicked all the way through his profile and to his found geocaches, causing a lot more page openings than should have been necessary.

PLEASE, that was the only thing I really used that section for and you have made it useless!

 

So far, I like the rest of what I have seen of the changes. The TB Inventory was a bit hard to locate and I'll probably forget to check it way down there as I only really use the top of my account page and don't scroll to the bottom very often.

 

Thanks for all your hard work!

J

[+IDLookout]

From a cache page, there is only a small area of my user name in the upper right that I can click on to go to my profile page. On my profile page, my entire user name is clickable.

[+Dittie Bear & C.J.]

FYI:

 

For encrypted logs, text within brackets [like this] never used to be encrypted but now the whole log is being encrypted, including text within brackets!

 

For example:

 

http://www.geocaching.com/seek/log.aspx?LU...52-7f7e601cd39a

 

- Dittie Bear.

[+LeGodFather]

Special characters in notifications email title and body shows "& # 2 3 3" (w/o the spaces) instead of é (for example) since the 22nd.

 

This was a problem in the name of cache owners in GPX files (that seems resolved now).

[+Puppy Dawg]

I know this wasn't a new "feature" here but a while back, the maps on cachepages were changed. Could the maps be changed back to the way they used to be? Printable, and zoomed to a decent level, for instance. Now if a FTF comes up I have to zoom in the map to see what streets its near.

 

Also, the site just became unavailable.

[+avgraphics]

As mentioned by others already - I feel that the web pages should display visited links and unvisited links using the web browser's default colors. The custom colors don't help viewing - or add anything cosmetically - I say take out the custom colors.

[OpinioNate]

Thank you for all your comments, folks. I will try to briefly remark on the big ones.

 

Refresh for encrypt/decrypt: We had some issues with the Javascript involved and found it quickest and easiest to simply refresh the page. This will get another look soon to return the old functionality.

 

Log backdating: We are working on this now and should have it working very soon.

 

Pocket Query map preview: The results.aspx map was not supposed to be released quite yet (you got a little preview of another sort!). We are going to return the two icons to /pocket for previewing in Google Maps.

 

Avatar squished: 75x75 pixels is the ideal height/width for avatars on the site. If you don't care to change your avatar it's really only yourself that has to view the mini-avatar on the homepage.

 

Bookmark rating rules: If, after receiving a minimum of 5 ratings, a bookmark has less than 50% favorable votes it will disappear from cache pages. This has always been the rule but it didn't work properly until now.

 

Trackables list moved: For now the list will stay where it is, but the /my/ page is next on the chopping block for redesign. We will take your desires into account when it is created.

 

Removal of Friend's List hides/finds: These stats never displayed properly. As with the encrypt/decrypt feature above, we had not time to make it work, but neither did we want to leave something that was obviously broken up on the site. This will get another look in the future and return when it can be done right.

 

Cache page layouts wonky: (e.g. this cache) HTML Tidy is causing problems with certain cache pages. We have a developer on the case at this moment.

 

Cache page link to your username (upper right): At some point the clickable area was reduced to a couple pixels tall. We'll increase this so you can click more easily.

 

We will continue to monitor this thread and make tweaks to the update. Thank you again for your comments.

[+The Jester]

I just checked and the dates of logs seems to be working correctly now. Thank you!

[+JeepinOregon]

"Removed find and hide count from friends list"

Looks like a lot of great fixes, but I can't understand "Removed find and hide count from friends list". You have now removed the only useful feature of the Friends List.

 

 

Yep, useless otherwise (it seemed to work fine for me before). ...and the Inventory way at the bottom of My Account Page, that's just senseless. Too much scrolling for active cachers... Other than those two things, looks "ok" so far.

 

EDIT: and the new text coloring, gads! Default, so we can see links visited.

Edited July 24, 2008 by JeepinCalifornia

[+alien88]

Removal of Friend's List hides/finds: These stats never displayed properly. As with the encrypt/decrypt feature above, we had not time to make it work, but neither did we want to leave something that was obviously broken up on the site. This will get another look in the future and return when it can be done right.

 

They always seemed to be displayed properly for me. I often used this page to keep track of my friends to see where they stood with finds. How was it obviously broken?

 

IMO, this is a -big- loss for the friends page.

[+IBcrashen]

The "Preview Pocket Query" icon doesnt work.

[+Team ARK-ville]

Just started to check out the new format. My only dislike so far is that I have to scroll left to right to see the whole page. Had to some on the last format but find this to be worse. Guess I will get used to it.

[+roolku]

Since the original thread was closed (why was it not merged?), here my comments again:

 

Could someone please explain the rational behind the move of the "My Inventory" to the bottom of the page? It used to serve as a visual reminder that one had to drop off some TBs/coins - now I doubt many people will even notice it as there is usually not a reason to scroll down? I hope that doesn't lead to even more trackables going missing while in geocachers' hands, simple because people forget that they picked up a tb.

Also I quite enjoyed looking at the icons I had collected during a recent trip, a pleasure that the move takes away for no reason I can understand.

Not happy.

[+NMS68]

QUOTE(MaxB on the River @ Jul 23 2008, 05:38 PM)

 

What an absolute Inconvenience to have to move the bottom of 1 months worth of logs (several thousand for some of us) to find the My Inventory of travel bugs.

 

Please move it back up to the top side panel where it was before!! TB's are going to get forgotten by many users.

 

Also this was posted in reply to my first forum post:

 

Markwell: Your Moderator replied in the My Inventory thread about this problem in the following manner.

 

"I have an "end" key on my keyboard. Does that take you to the bottom?"

 

This seems to be completely unnecessary when many others are complaining about this same feature on this thread. ...

 

Good interface puts the important parts of the page near the top or at least somewhere you can see it without searching. I think that the best place for inventory is between Search Options and Field Notes.

 

That advise is also quite impractical. I'm sure that I'm not the only cacher who has right hand on the mouse and left hand on some support where it can't reach the End and Home keys without raising the elbow off the support (left hand is used to press Shift, Ctrl and some other keys). Or you can move the right hand from the mouse to the keyboard and back to click something, but you are not supposed to do that if you are using the mouse. If you start to write something then it's different, because you have your right hand over the keyboard.

 

You can compare this to some games where you use mouse for aiming and left hand to other controls which are all on the left side of the keyboard. The user interface of those games would be broken if you have to use your right hand to press some keys during the combat in those games.

 

There is too much empty space in the new layout. At least there should be some user preferences we could use to change that.

 

It would be nice if you could test that important parts (logging caches etc.) are working correctly before updates. Perhaps you could set up testing.geocaching.com where we can try the new features and check that everything is ok.

 

Sorry for my bad english.

[OpinioNate]

FYI:

 

For encrypted logs, text within brackets [like this] never used to be encrypted but now the whole log is being encrypted, including text within brackets!

 

For example:

 

http://www.geocaching.com/seek/log.aspx?LU...52-7f7e601cd39a

 

- Dittie Bear.

 

It seems as though adding a line break to your log will remove the protection brackets afford you. I rearranged your log so that the proper info is encrypted, but unfortunately it doesn't look so hot. I will open a bug so this gets fixed.

[+SUp3rFM & Cruella]

The "Preview Pocket Query" icon doesnt work.

 

They're working on it.

 

Nate, another tiny issue.

 

I've logged 4 finds today. Went to my account, did a refresh and the stat bar shows our find count correctly. But in the new "profile" box it's still minus 4.

 

 

A small desynchronization?

 

EDIT: Yes, I blurred the renewal date.

Edited July 24, 2008 by SUp3rFM & Cruella

[+Tyren]

http://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_detai...ee-6645a98268de

 

I can't send this to GPS (because of the & character in the username)

[+UncleJimbo]

Avatar squished: 75x75 pixels is the ideal height/width for avatars on the site. If you don't care to change your avatar it's really only yourself that has to view the mini-avatar on the homepage.

I never noticed that 75x75 pixel recommendation. I wonder if it was added since I put up my avatar?

 

Anyway, I just went to my profile and uploaded a new pic for my avatar, but the new avatar does not display on GC.com or in the forums (and yes, I did refresh the pages and re-registered the forums). The new avatar does display on my edit-profile page. Odd. Another bug?

[+two ninjas and mom]

I too miss the friends finds/hides information - I hope it's restored soon

[+WizCreations]

Why are the links gray in the upper right corner where Usernames and the Log Out buttons are located? That makes it very difficult to see.

 

And everything seems... bigger, less space friendly and a bit cramped together.

 

Oh, and a bug I found is that when you put in a GC code that doesn't exist for the search thing on the homepage, the text that says, "Geocache Code not found" goes over the picture of the map.

[+Nozzletime]

None of the pages I have looked at are easier to read.

[+webscouter.]

All of the Cache across America cache pages look bad since the change.

 

I am making an assumption that this is also what is causing my profile page to "fall off" the right side of the page.

 

http://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_detai...14-22eaf46e5bb8

[+WizCreations]

Why do the hints now reload the page when you click decrypt and encrypt?

[+two ninjas and mom]

well, after looking around more, I'm actually finding the new layout more confusing - i'm glad i signed up before these changes came about - I don't think I would have signed up with this new website....it's not very user friendly imho.

[+monstermunch]

I've just found this thread and posted this elsewhere.

The problem is with my cache Invisible ink GC1E0GR. It worked fine until these changes. The HTML image attribute <title=> no longer works with my browser or operating system. I have Mozilla Firefox and Windows XP. It works on my fellas Internet Explorer and Windows Vista but it's vital for my puzzle cache to order the coordinates. Will this be rectified or do I have to change my HTML?

Also the spaces between lines is more squashed.

 

http://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_detai...ec-a9dd3cf8d8d3

Edited July 24, 2008 by monstermunch

[OpinioNate]

All of the Cache across America cache pages look bad since the change.

 

I am making an assumption that this is also what is causing my profile page to "fall off" the right side of the page.

 

http://www.geocaching.com/seek/cache_detai...14-22eaf46e5bb8

 

We haven't had standard compliant code for a long time, and now that we do all of the allowances we made in the past are coming back to bite us. We're investigating options for some kind of compromise now, so I'll let you know as soon as I know.

[+H2"O"]

I have the same issue as walter 1. It's useless trying to print the cache pages, the're truncated/missing sections altogether, and jumbled. I scaled down to 30% and it was still a broken up mess. The only thing I can think of is to print screen shots, but I haven't tried that yet and it will be a true pain to do that with a decent number of caches for each day!

 

OK, now I found the print buttons so the print is good, but no logs. If I want logs, I have to go with PDF phooey!!

Edited July 24, 2008 by H2"O"

[+Girls Phind Squirrels]

Jury's out---But I suspect, although I have not yet tried it, that the new colour scheme will be easier to read off my Blackberry in the field.

[+minnesotabrad]

When trying to send to GPS I get the following error, Fatal Error: File Path: String Stream, line: 17, char: 143 Message: Expected end of tag 'img'

[+Ambrosia]

It seems that some people are reporting the new pages are too wide and that they need to scroll right and left, or that html looks wrong (for the same reason I assume). I'm not seeing those things. I'm thinking it must be because I'm on my 15' monitor laptop?

[+BAJA Clan]

The cache pages no longer display 'No logs by you' or 'Found It' on DATE or 'Did Not Find' on DATE in the upper right corner. This was a feature I used often.

[+beejay&esskay]

I have 3 pages of personal routes created.

 

When I try to access any page beyond the first, I get:

 

You requested has resulted in an error.

 

You may choose to retry your previous request.

 

Or you may tell us what you were doing when this error occurred.

 

(And I am not just complaining about the horrendous English in that first sentence. I have reported on that screen what I was doing.)

[+monkeybusiness23]

Please bring back the section of the /my/ page that shows your current inventory of trackables!

 

 

I would also like this feature listed immediately to the right side of the screen, where it is visible rather than scrolling down. Also - I prefer the "profile badge" on the top of my account, but that's minor. The PQ preview in Google maps seems to working again - thanks!

 

Is there any way that GC.com can send a friendly reminder if a cacher has had a trackable for more than a month? Just a standard message... not personalized. I've noticed that some trackables go unmoved simply because the cacher forgot about them. Sending an e-mail would be a nice added feature. Just a thought.

 

Keep up the good work!

[+London Rain]

Oops. I accidentaly posted this in the wrong thread first:

 

Two more things:

 

1) I noticed different line spacings which are small in some logs and larger in others. I assume that the general line spacing was increased. While IE and FF use the same (larger) spacing for all logs Opera has its problems. This looks very bumpy. Please see attached picture.

 

 

2) The site throws an error if I try to go visit a cache page and I am not logged in.

 

Server Error in '/' Application.

Runtime Error

....

[+beejay&esskay]

I have 3 pages of personal routes created.

 

When I try to access any page beyond the first, I get:

 

You requested has resulted in an error.

 

You may choose to retry your previous request.

 

Or you may tell us what you were doing when this error occurred.

 

(And I am not just complaining about the horrendous English in that first sentence. I have reported on that screen what I was doing.)

[+TotemLake]

• Fixed issue with URLs not displaying properly in cache logs
  

As usual, please reply in this thread with any problems that come up as a result of this release. If you need clarification on any of these, just ask.

 

We still have plenty to keep us busy, so if your favorite bug didn't make it into this release, fear not. We will get to it as soon as possible.

 

Broke the URLs in cache logs. I had just put up three utube video links that worked and today they opened up blank pages. Adding

<a href="URL code">Video</a>

ended up with the URL removed and the label left behind.

 

I removed the links so people don't click on them in frustration but it would be nice to have this functionality back.

Edited July 24, 2008 by TotemLake

[+Stan&Ruth]

I just checked and the dates of logs seems to be working correctly now. Thank you!

 

Yep...it's fixed now! Thanks!

[knowschad]

Why are major updates like this done in the middle of summer? Surely the site is quieter in the winter months and such an update would cause far less disruption. I'm sure the updates will be great, but it seems to be an annual event... sit down to plan some pocket queries and caches along a route ready for the upcoming vacation I get 500 Server Error... :-(

 

You, like me, are obviously in the northern hemisphere.

[+beejay&esskay]

Does the preview for PQs on the screen that lists all my PQs still work?

 

The Google Maps version does (and when I mouse-over that spot I see the link it will execute) but I get nothing on the icon for normal PQ.

 

Edited to add:

 

Well, I do get the alt text that shows "Preview Pocket Query" but no URL appears at the bottom as it does with Google PQ and clicking on it doesn't result in anything.

 

(I timed out the first time I tried to "add reply". And then when I tried again I got the "flood control" warning. Great.)