Update: Release Notes 1/12/10

January 17, 2010

WinXP/IE6. Come on Groundspeak, how can you expect your users to put up with no maps?

Actually I can understand that Groundspeak doesn't support IE6. IE6 is old and making things work for it can easily eat up the hours a development team is allowed to spend on a certain release. If you can update or change browser, you should. If you are not allowed to change (e.g. at work), try to get those in power to upgrade. See more here: http://www.bringdownie6.com/

iller

Is this Groundspeak's stand: that as of last Tuesday they will no longer support IE6 and that we users will have to upgrade our PCs if we want to use geocaching.com?

2.8k · January 17, 2010

WinXP/IE6. Come on Groundspeak, how can you expect your users to put up with no maps?

Actually I can understand that Groundspeak doesn't support IE6. IE6 is old and making things work for it can easily eat up the hours a development team is allowed to spend on a certain release. If you can update or change browser, you should. If you are not allowed to change (e.g. at work), try to get those in power to upgrade. See more here: http://www.bringdownie6.com/

iller

Is this Groundspeak's stand: that as of last Tuesday they will no longer support IE6 and that we users will have to upgrade our PCs if we want to use geocaching.com?

Have you heard or read that?

January 17, 2010

Is this Groundspeak's stand: that as of last Tuesday they will no longer support IE6 and that we users will have to upgrade our PCs if we want to use geocaching.com?

Or just get the FREE IE8 Download: IE8

4.8k · January 17, 2010

Is this Groundspeak's stand: that as of last Tuesday they will no longer support IE6 and that we users will have to upgrade our PCs if we want to use geocaching.com?

Or just get the FREE IE8 Download: IE8

FYI, the business of telling members that they need to upgrade their software/hardware to support the "new" changes is not a good practice.

If I wanted IE8 on my computer, I would have IE8 on my computer.

January 17, 2010

I have a PQ for caches hidden in 2000 and 2001 and I called it: 2000-01

It shows up in my list of PQ's as: 2000-01">2000-01

Wasn't like this before!

1.9k · January 17, 2010

Is this Groundspeak's stand: that as of last Tuesday they will no longer support IE6 and that we users will have to upgrade our PCs if we want to use geocaching.com?

Or just get the FREE IE8 Download: IE8

FYI, the business of telling members that they need to upgrade their software/hardware to support the "new" changes is not a good practice.

If I wanted IE8 on my computer, I would have IE8 on my computer.

Same here.

January 17, 2010

Logging Wherigo's redirects to http://www.Wherigo.com/error.aspx?aspxerro...=/logs/log.aspx. This is a nice error page which causes one to retry submitting the same content... with the same error. The logs do successfully post and those I had to delete my duplicate posts... however, the error being returned when simply selecting "Submit Log" should be corrected.

4.2k · January 17, 2010

can't say i am entirely happy with the new look, but i can live with it

i have read both threads and i can't say i have experienced any of the issues some describe

what boggles my mind is how many people are having issues in IE6 and request changes be made to that it will work

come on people, get with the program IE is outdated, especially IE6, even the new ones are slow as molasses and resource hogs.....its about time you all try FF, you'll never look back

1.2k · January 17, 2010

IE6 was a joke on the world. IE8 still has a revealed unpatched security issue. Opera or FF is a much better option.

4.8k · January 17, 2010

can't say i am entirely happy with the new look, but i can live with it

i have read both threads and i can't say i have experienced any of the issues some describe

what boggles my mind is how many people are having issues in IE6 and request changes be made to that it will work

come on people, get with the program IE is outdated, especially IE6, even the new ones are slow as molasses and resource hogs.....its about time you all try FF, you'll never look back

What boggles my mind is how some people want others to change. What if I were to tell you that you need to switch to Linux?

psh

8.3k · January 17, 2010

What boggles my mind is how some people want others to change. What if I were to tell you that you need to switch to Linux?

psh

That wouldn't be bad at all, especially with a bit of wine.

January 17, 2010

IE6 was a joke on the world. IE8 still has a revealed unpatched security issue. Opera or FF is a much better option.

Thanks for the advice non-IE6 users (about upgrading) but I’m really only looking for feedback from Groundspeak. I understand my options and also understand why the options are not ideal for me and for other users. The bottom line is:

Study’s show that 12-15% of PCs still run IE6. Groundspeak states they have between 3 & 4 million users. Using the bottom end of both numbers this means that 360,000 Groundspeak customers are without critical mapping functionality. If Groundspeak expects these users to upgrade from IE6, that takes some time. Let’s give each user just 30 minutes to get the download, install it, and take a little time to grasp the changes in the new browser; a VERY minimal time investment. That would mean that Groundspeak is asking its customers to contribute 180,000 man-hours because of their release changes on Jan 12. That is 86 man-years or the equivalent of 86 people working 40 hours a week for a year without any vacations, holidays, or personal leave.

I would bet anything that Groundspeak could correct the problem in far less than 180,000 man-hours and then provide a user-friendly approach to migrating off of IE6 (such as youtube is doing).

MODERATOR: How about an official statement from Groundspeak. Will Groundspeak support IE6 or are your IE6 users suddenly out of luck due to the Jan 12 software release?

4.2k · January 17, 2010

What boggles my mind is how some people want others to change. What if I were to tell you that you need to switch to Linux?

psh

i already switched to linux on my laptop and i use FF :rolleyes:

i know many are averse to change, but at some point you have to because its not possible for developers to work with new technology and make it work for everything that was released 10 years ago and its obsolete, too much work and effort is wasted

why not make the change now, while you can still use IE5 as backup, before you are forced to do it?

@artemis&apollo

doesn't take 30 minutes to dld and install new IE, and those upgrades are coming automatically, if you upgrade your windohs PC as you should, at some point long time ago everyone still on IE5 and 6 have deliberately choose to say NO to upgrading

very nice calculations there, but totally irrelevant...you comparing the time will take 360,000 customers @30 minutes each with perhaps 10 programmers that work for Groundspeak

fixing compatibility issues is not an easy job

Edited January 17, 2010 by t4e

8.3k · January 17, 2010

I finally figured out what I don't like about the decryption key for hints. It should be below the hint. Where it is now the hint gets lost visually, if it was below the hint would not get lost visually.

Edited January 17, 2010 by jholly

January 17, 2010

An amusing use of numbers/statistics. By your suggestion, the other 88% of that 3 to 4 million users should expect Groundspeak to hold back on enhancements or changes that could be implemented with newer/modern browsers because some users can't find the time to keep their systems up to date? The minority of users should be able to hold back the majority of users? Really? I'm both a Windows and a Linux user, and Linux is my primary system, but I would never expect Groundspeak to all of a sudden manage their operations to cater to my desire to use Linux. I know I'm in the minority, and I know that by continuing to use my operating system of choice, I may have to deal with some inconveniences. Users of IE6 should learn to accept that fate as well.

IE6 was a joke on the world. IE8 still has a revealed unpatched security issue. Opera or FF is a much better option.

Thanks for the advice non-IE6 users (about upgrading) but I’m really only looking for feedback from Groundspeak. I understand my options and also understand why the options are not ideal for me and for other users. The bottom line is:

Study’s show that 12-15% of PCs still run IE6. Groundspeak states they have between 3 & 4 million users. Using the bottom end of both numbers this means that 360,000 Groundspeak customers are without critical mapping functionality. If Groundspeak expects these users to upgrade from IE6, that takes some time. Let’s give each user just 30 minutes to get the download, install it, and take a little time to grasp the changes in the new browser; a VERY minimal time investment. That would mean that Groundspeak is asking its customers to contribute 180,000 man-hours because of their release changes on Jan 12. That is 86 man-years or the equivalent of 86 people working 40 hours a week for a year without any vacations, holidays, or personal leave.

I would bet anything that Groundspeak could correct the problem in far less than 180,000 man-hours and then provide a user-friendly approach to migrating off of IE6 (such as youtube is doing).

MODERATOR: How about an official statement from Groundspeak. Will Groundspeak support IE6 or are your IE6 users suddenly out of luck due to the Jan 12 software release?

4.8k · January 17, 2010

What boggles my mind is how some people want others to change. What if I were to tell you that you need to switch to Linux?

psh

i already switched to linux on my laptop and i use FF

i know many are averse to change, but at some point you have to because its not possible for developers to work with new technology and make it work for everything that was released 10 years ago and its obsolete, too much work and effort is wasted

why not make the change now, while you can still use IE5 as backup, before you are forced to do it?

@artemis&apollo

doesn't take 30 minutes to dld and install new IE, and those upgrades are coming automatically, if you upgrade your windohs PC as you should, at some point long time ago everyone still on IE5 and 6 have deliberately choose to say NO to upgrading

very nice calculations there, but totally irrelevant

fixing compatibility issues is not an easy job

For me, I have one computer that runs IE6 because it's tied to a legacy program that uses IE6. It's a great program that I paid top money for and the company that created it no longer exists so there won't be any upgrades. Tell me to upgrade my computer to use these services, I just wouldn't use these services. It's as simple as that.

But that's just my situation. I have other computers that run newer browsers.

It doesn't negate the fact that these recent "upgrades" were done irresponsibly and haphazardly.

I will say, that when I managed software developers, if one had released to the public, this mess, I would have asked for them to be reprimanded or terminated. And they would have.

In the company I worked for, this type of mess would have been responded to with a rollback to the previous version until the bug removal and more beta testing were done. Also, if we had 3-4 million users (paying and non-paying, we would have tested any changes on a small focus group.

But, hey, what do I know....

7.7k · January 17, 2010

I finally figured out what I don't like about the decryption key for hints. It should be below the hint. Where is is now the hint gets lost visually, if it was below the hint would not get lost visually.

I have a GM script that gets rid of the key. I'm not good enough with GM yet to put the key to the right of the screen like it used to be.

8.3k · January 17, 2010

I finally figured out what I don't like about the decryption key for hints. It should be below the hint. Where is is now the hint gets lost visually, if it was below the hint would not get lost visually.

I have a GM script that gets rid of the key. I'm not good enough with GM yet to put the key to the right of the screen like it used to be.

I'm not disturbed by the key, it just seems to break things up visually. It seems to make sense to bring it over by the hint, I just think the eyes would flow better if key was below the hint.

1.9k · January 17, 2010

IE6 was a joke on the world. IE8 still has a revealed unpatched security issue. Opera or FF is a much better option.

I refuse to upgrade to IE8, myself.

1.9k · January 17, 2010

One other issue I've bumped into is when I try to add a line break in the HTML in a particular place on the page on a new cache that I'm working on, it gets moved up to a different place where I've already got a line break.

This is how the HTML was entered:

This is how it looks after I saved the page:

Notice the very wide spacing between the top WSGA link and the second one.

This is what the HTML looks like after the page was saved:

This is how it's supposed to look:

Note the space between the lower WSGA banner and the Northwest trails banner.

8.3k · January 17, 2010

deleted a pq and got this

15.4k · January 17, 2010

One other issue I've bumped into is when I try to add a line break in the HTML in a particular place on the page on a new cache that I'm working on, it gets moved up to a different place where I've already got a line break.

This is how the HTML was entered:

That's invalid markup. You can't put anything inside a tr element except td and th elements. The br elements need to go inside a td element.

January 17, 2010

I have a GM script that gets rid of the key.

Care to share?

January 17, 2010

When I try to edit cache descriptions with scandinavian letters it is almost impossible as letters have became cryptic.. Can't explain more just look at the image. Everything with ä etc. are wrong. I have tried this in IE 8.0.6... and FF 3.5.6. Very annoying problem. :rolleyes:

January 17, 2010

When I try to edit cache descriptions with scandinavian letters it is almost impossible as letters have became cryptic.. Can't explain more just look at the image. Everything with ä etc. are wrong. I have tried this in IE 8.0.6... and FF 3.5.6. Very annoying problem.

Yep, very annoying. However, using accented characters like åäö instead of th &-codes in html might be causing other problems so it is not sure that allowing them directly in html is the way to go. What this problem really shows is the lack of a simple html editor in the caching listing editor. If there was such an html editor, you would be able to write the text with proper scandinavian letters and then click on a button to create html code for it. It would also solve the problem with beginners not being able to insert images in their cache descriptions because they don't know html.

Until this problem is fixed, I recommend you use an external html editor to edit your listings. Then you will also have a backup copy of your descriptions and can try out different things before you upload them to geocaching.com. Personally I use the html editor in SeaMonkey (SeaMonkey Composer, previously Mozilla Composer) and it works great for me. It generates html code that work very well in cache listings, clean and efficient code that renders properly also on GPS devices with paperless caching ability.

Some people prefer the online geoching html editor on this Danish page: http://www.crumlin.dk/geocaching/html/editor/ and it seems to work fine too.

However there is a really annoying bug with the new release: The generated GPX files contain strange looking &-code sequencs (& followed by auml; etc) and these files do not render properly on paperless GPS devices like Garmin Oregon!!!

iller

Edited January 17, 2010 by iller

38.2k · January 17, 2010

I didn't feel like going through all the posts to see if this has been reported, so please forgive me if this already has been.

On the cache submission page, the text describing each of the boxes has been moved below the box. This is OK but the actual text has not been updated. So it tells cache owners to"Enter any hints or spoiler information below." Below is the note to reviewer box.

Either the text should be moved back to the top of each box, or the word "below" needs to be changed to "above"

January 17, 2010

It may be a Firefox thing (I'm on v3.5.7) but it looks like if it sees "--" in the comment text, it'll continue on until the next "--", ignoring the actual comment end tag. The comment, which now contains a huge chunk of HTML content, ends after the next instance of the owner name followed by the comment end.

Double hyphens are technically the comment delimiters – they need to be escaped somehow for that comment.

http://www.w3.org/MarkUp/html-spec/html-spec_3.html#SEC3.2.5

http://www.w3.org/TR/1998/REC-html40-19980...ut.html#h-3.2.4

January 17, 2010

Not a fan of the new look, but not all that bothered. However, there are a few problems with how it renders in Safari whilst using a Mac.

On Cache Pages: Navigation Panel renders beyond the boarder of the page.

TB Pages with Photos: Render badly, photo overlays text.

Checked these on my Firefox browser (not my primary browser), and it's not a problem there, so something wrong with how it operates in Safari.

Sorry if you're already aware of the problem- just a bit of a pain to work with!!

1.9k · January 17, 2010

One other issue I've bumped into is when I try to add a line break in the HTML in a particular place on the page on a new cache that I'm working on, it gets moved up to a different place where I've already got a line break.

This is how the HTML was entered:

That's invalid markup. You can't put anything inside a tr element except td and th elements. The br elements need to go inside a td element.

OK, that's what I get for messing with HTML written by someone else! I just copied and pasted in the HTML for the example of what it should have looked like to solve the problem.

January 17, 2010

I have a GM script that gets rid of the key.

Care to share?

Using stylish rather than GM...

@-moz-document
 url-prefix("http://www.geocaching.com/seek/")
{
 .DecryptionKeyWidget {display:none !important;}
}

10.1k · January 17, 2010

Is this Groundspeak's stand: that as of last Tuesday they will no longer support IE6 and that we users will have to upgrade our PCs if we want to use geocaching.com?

Or just get the FREE IE8 Download: IE8

FYI, the business of telling members that they need to upgrade their software/hardware to support the "new" changes is not a good practice.

If I wanted IE8 on my computer, I would have IE8 on my computer.

If I keep agreeing with bittsen, will I turn into a dragon?!?

As I noted on the page complaining about freezing, my caching buddy had Windows XP with MSIE 6.0. We could not get more than a page into GC before everything froze up. Didn't happen at any other site; only at GC. I use MSIE 8, and had no problem. (Okay. Youtube no longer supports MSIE 6.) My caching buddy is not the techiest person in the world, but, on my suggestion, upgraded to MSIE 8. The problem has been resolved. Geocaching no longer supports MSIE 6. That's obvious. Nothing had to be said, but it certainly should have been said! GEOCACHING NO LONGER WORKS WITH MSIE 6!!!!

I do find it quite bizarre that geocaching was unaware of the problems that this has caused. I certainly hope that geocaching is doing something to resolve this problem! A lot of us are not techie enough to upgrade to MSIE 8, much less realize that that is what is causing the problem. I certainly hope that the lackeys are working hard to resolve this problem. A lot of people are being left in the dust.

January 17, 2010

Just realized that the problem with the table cell padding not working its just corrected. Fine.

But the line spacing is too long. That HTML Tidy thing you talk about, must be reworked, please.

January 18, 2010

I'm not sure if this is a release problem but I don't have any Field Notes before the New Years Day after Jesus was born! Could you fix the 'Ignore logs before 1/1/0001 6:00:00 AM' problem? I don't want to upload all my field notes from my Delorme evrytime I upload to the site!

Thanks

Upload Your Field Notes File

By default, the site will not upload Field Notes contained in your file before 1/1/0001 6:00:00 AM to reduce accidental duplicate logs. Uncheck the option below to include all Field Notes.

Ignore logs before 1/1/0001 6:00:00 AM

1.4k · January 18, 2010

Something new I'm seeing on my profile page (excuse me, I meant to say Your Profile page...seems it's no longer mine, rather it's yours)...

What does "Your Profile (Close)" mean?

It's not a clickable link.

It's just plain text that I never remember seeing before the recent update (I can't call it an upgrade because I think it's actually a downgrade...yes, I'm one of those members who liked the way the site looked before the recent changes).

Will it go away after I finish posting my pending field notes?

Thanks,

fegan

P.S. bring back the old site or at least get rid of all the extra white space

4.8k · January 18, 2010

Something new I'm seeing on my profile page (excuse me, I meant to say Your Profile page...seems it's no longer mine, rather it's yours)...

What does "Your Profile (Close)" mean?

It's not a clickable link.

It's just plain text that I never remember seeing before the recent update (I can't call it an upgrade because I think it's actually a downgrade...yes, I'm one of those members who liked the way the site looked before the recent changes).

Will it go away after I finish posting my pending field notes?

Thanks,

fegan

P.S. bring back the old site or at least get rid of all the extra white space

I only ask that they bring back the old software till they fix the new software.

This customer service sucks.

January 18, 2010

WinXP/IE6. Come on Groundspeak, how can you expect your users to put up with no maps?

Actually I can understand that Groundspeak doesn't support IE6. IE6 is old and making things work for it can easily eat up the hours a development team is allowed to spend on a certain release. If you can update or change browser, you should. If you are not allowed to change (e.g. at work), try to get those in power to upgrade. See more here: http://www.bringdownie6.com/

iller

Is this Groundspeak's stand: that as of last Tuesday they will no longer support IE6 and that we users will have to upgrade our PCs if we want to use geocaching.com?

DAY 5: Still no MAPS and still no response from Groundspeak!!!!!

4.8k · January 18, 2010

DAY 5: Still no MAPS and still no response from Groundspeak!!!!!

It's the programmers weekend. There won't be any progress today. Wait till tomorrow.

1.2k · January 18, 2010

The default log for an Event Cache is still "Attended". This has already caused several erroneous logs to be entered for an upcoming event near here. Can we please have it returned to "Select".

And, perhaps Event Caches could be improved to prevent "Attended" logs until the date of the event (and, conversely, prevent "Will Attend" logs after the event date!).

1.6k · January 18, 2010

I think the new white space is ugly less than attractive, and inefficient. When I'm at work with dual 19" LCDs I have no problem. But on a small laptop screen it's a pain because of all the scrolling; unfortunately, most of my geocaching-related browsing is on a small laptop screen at home. So it's not just an "ugly" issue, it's a functionality issue.

Also, comparing the number of complainers in the forums to the total number of geocachers is a very dishonest use of statistics. The vast majority of geocachers do not post here in the international forums. Of all the geocachers I know in real life, NONE are regulars here, and few post here at all. Some do not participate in any forums anywhere, and some participate in the hundreds of local or regional forums.

January 18, 2010

DAY 5: Still no MAPS and still no response from Groundspeak!!!!!

It's the programmers weekend. There won't be any progress today. Wait till tomorrow.

Do you work for Groundspeak or speak for Groundspeak? I'm getting a little tired of forum users stepping up and speaking for Groundspeak. Let's let Groundspeak speak for Groundspeak!

P.S. I've been in the IT business for 25 years and if I had been a part of this kind of release I would not have had a weekend. It's different, I suppose, when you have a monoply.

4.8k · January 18, 2010

It's the programmers weekend. There won't be any progress today. Wait till tomorrow.

Do you work for Groundspeak or speak for Groundspeak? I'm getting a little tired of forum users stepping up and speaking for Groundspeak. Let's let Groundspeak speak for Groundspeak!

P.S. I've been in the IT business for 25 years and if I had been a part of this kind of release I would not have had a weekend. It's different, I suppose, when you have a monoply.

No need to get pissy. I'm with you. When I managed programmers, they didn't go home till they fixed the issue if it was there fault. We wouldn't hesitate to roll back to a working model either if something horrible (like this) happened. But we had competetion, no monopoly.

January 18, 2010

DAY 5: Still no MAPS and still no response from Groundspeak!!!!!

It's the programmers weekend. There won't be any progress today. Wait till tomorrow.

Do you work for Groundspeak or speak for Groundspeak? I'm getting a little tired of forum users stepping up and speaking for Groundspeak. Let's let Groundspeak speak for Groundspeak!

P.S. I've been in the IT business for 25 years and if I had been a part of this kind of release I would not have had a weekend. It's different, I suppose, when you have a monoply.

Nobody I know that works in IT uses IE let alone version 6.

3.8k · January 18, 2010

If you go to a persons profile, click on gallery and then link through to next pages the Tab at the top highlights profile again instead of keeping on the Gallery tab.

8.3k · January 18, 2010

DAY 5: Still no MAPS and still no response from Groundspeak!!!!!

It's the programmers weekend. There won't be any progress today. Wait till tomorrow.

That is if they don't have Monday off for a holiday.

5.2k · January 18, 2010

DAY 5: Still no MAPS and still no response from Groundspeak!!!!!

Have you tried going to the page in question and held down the ctrl key (or shift key in Firefox) then clicked the refresh icon? This has worked for many others in these threads.

5.3k · January 18, 2010

Problem: sending email to another user removes all line breaks in the sent message. everything gets mashed together into a single paragraph, at least as it is shown by the site after it is sent.

January 18, 2010

Re the problem ading waypoints to a log (see posts from Friday near the end of page 2)

I've worked out the problem.

If I add a waypoint to a log that is on the prime meridian (i.e. longitude 0 0.000) then the website does not recognise that a waypoint has been entered. The waypoint is therefore not saved with the log.

Presumably the same thing would happen on the equator.

Thanks to knowschad for allowing me to test on one of his caches.

It's low priority (for me anyway), but I'd appreciate this being added to the bug list.

Mark

January 18, 2010

I have a GM script that gets rid of the key.

Care to share?

Using stylish rather than GM...
@-moz-document
 url-prefix("http://www.geocaching.com/seek/")
{
 .DecryptionKeyWidget {display:none !important;}
}

Thanks! Works great, and it's better in Stylish because I could just add it to your existing script

January 18, 2010

I'm not sure if this is a release problem but I don't have any Field Notes before the New Years Day after Jesus was born! Could you fix the 'Ignore logs before 1/1/0001 6:00:00 AM' problem? I don't want to upload all my field notes from my Delorme evrytime I upload to the site!

Thanks

Upload Your Field Notes File

By default, the site will not upload Field Notes contained in your file before 1/1/0001 6:00:00 AM to reduce accidental duplicate logs. Uncheck the option below to include all Field Notes.

Ignore logs before 1/1/0001 6:00:00 AM

Just upload a new set of field notes, next time the date/time should be for the last log in the uploaded field notes.

19k · January 18, 2010

What boggles my mind is how some people want others to change. What if I were to tell you that you need to switch to Linux?

i already switched to linux on my laptop and i use FF

Well, good for you. And I suppose you made that switch because somebody told you that you had no choice?

Update: Release Notes 1/12/10

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