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Geocaching.com Design Updates


OpinioNate

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I use IE6 and I can tell you that there is only one problem with IE6. That being that the maps don't display. It's only one problem but it is devastating. If GS will Fix that one problem all the arguments about IE6 should go away and they could then phase out support for IE6 in a user-friendly way like YouTube, and others, are doing.

I'm using IE6 and I don't see any maps, but I can't get as far as seeing any page that should have maps on it anyway (the best I can get is either the home page or a blank screen)! So there's another problem. Luckily I can use IE8 which seems fine.

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The hotfix has been rolled out this morning. You should now see the decrease in line spacing on pages throughout the site. As Nate mentioned in a previous post, we will continue to review other pain points associated with the new design and make adjustments where appropriate. Please realize that we do read the forums and take all comments, feedback and suggestions seriously and that we live and love this site and this game. Please be patient while we work to address issues, and once again thank you for all of your feedback and support!

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Thanks for the update, but I am a little bit confused.

 

Before the first update we had a line spacing of 1, after the update a line spacing of 1.5.

Now I have the feeling, it is a line spacing of 0.7. Not the same as weeks ago as it was perfect to read.

 

Problems with my old eyes or what do other users see?

 

dbox.

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I guess this hotfix is only for the CSS? Overall it's an improvement, though the cache details page, like dbox pointed out, seems to have the lines closer together than they used to be.

 

It looks like some extra line wrapping and line breaks are not addressed in this hotfix, since they involve either HTML or server code changes. So while Stylish is no longer a necessity, it looks like my Greasemonkey scripts still serve some purpose.

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Thanks for the forum updates and fixes to the site. Things look much better than they did and the communication has been better too!

 

Now my only complaint is the my/your issue....

 

Seriously, communication is key and has been much better in the last couple of days.

 

Ken

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The hotfix has been rolled out this morning. You should now see the decrease in line spacing on pages throughout the site. As Nate mentioned in a previous post, we will continue to review other pain points associated with the new design and make adjustments where appropriate. Please realize that we do read the forums and take all comments, feedback and suggestions seriously and that we live and love this site and this game. Please be patient while we work to address issues, and once again thank you for all of your feedback and support!

Heh, I was 10 seconds away from uploading a Greasemonkey script I wrote last night to revert the line spacing to its former glory. But when I tested it today, I couldn't see any difference with or without the script.

 

Now if you'll just revert the table cell padding back to normal...

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Unfortunately, I have since the new release, an ever-poorer side construction. Either will be shown only half the page, or I can not scroll, or am I just an error with connection problems. Page is canceled ...

Why might that be? On my computer, not more, everything is up to date

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Detail work like this isn't easy and there are always bugs to clean up after a big push.

 

Really? LOL !

 

Yes fellow, someone screwed up (again). The line spacing became something like 0.7 indeed. Or perhaprs are our tortured eyes adapting back to normality.

Edited by Torgut
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You know, one of the purposes of CSS is to allow users to customize their view of the site. Maybe a choice of sitewide stylesheeets could be part of the user profile. That way, you could leave the whitespace for non-members browsing the site (which was the original idea) but let long-time members get rid of it.

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The hotfix has been rolled out this morning. You should now see the decrease in line spacing on pages throughout the site. As Nate mentioned in a previous post, we will continue to review other pain points associated with the new design and make adjustments where appropriate. Please realize that we do read the forums and take all comments, feedback and suggestions seriously and that we live and love this site and this game. Please be patient while we work to address issues, and once again thank you for all of your feedback and support!

 

Better, thanks. :lol:

 

Still other issues, but this reduces the scrolling.

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We have the CSS change ready but are hesitant to hotfix in the evening in North America. We will update in the morning instead. Here is a preview of the change:
Much improved look - even with more info on the page. Thanks for taking us that direction as soon as you have. Would have hated to wait until another major release.

 

Will the CSS changes also deal with the problems that CSS implementation has created on many cache pages, or is that a separate fix?

 

We have already exempted the user generated content areas of the site from CSS control.

 

Um, what if we want to use the site CSS for the user content portion? Is there an option for that?

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Thanks for the update, but I am a little bit confused.

 

Before the first update we had a line spacing of 1, after the update a line spacing of 1.5.

Now I have the feeling, it is a line spacing of 0.7. Not the same as weeks ago as it was perfect to read.

 

Problems with my old eyes or what do other users see?

 

dbox.

 

It does seem a bit closer together like you see it. I would rather have the 0.7 than the 1.5 any day.

 

I still dont like the excessive width but I can live with that now that the line spacing is fixed.

 

Please consider making the logs any color but white. It blends in with the cache page and is still too much whiteness.

 

Thank you.

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Still having problems with column widths, example is from my "My/Your" page.

If you're running FireFox (which you are, obviously, from your screen shot) and don't mind installing GreaseMonkey...

 

http://forums.Groundspeak.com/GC/index.php...t&p=4191848

 

765051007_oHa3T-O.jpg

 

Thanks for the help, I really don't want to mess around with lots of extensions. Plus that's the only area of the site where I don't like the spacing. Seems overkill for one place. And yes, "Log" should suffice, not "Visit Log".

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Thanks for the help, I really don't want to mess around with lots of extensions. Plus that's the only area of the site where I don't like the spacing. Seems overkill for one place. And yes, "Log" should suffice, not "Visit Log".

That was how I initially felt about GreaseMonkey, but it is really very useful. It's like a hammer - after you become more proficient in it, every problem looks like a nail.

 

Prime Suspect and Lil Devil both have tons of scripts to enhance different areas of the site. There's another script that will display thumbnails of photos in the log, instead of just the name. And if you didn't notice, I used the script to get rid of some of the widgets on the right column that I don't use.

 

Working on a script is also very therapeutic - that way you don't feel frustration at Groundspeak for not fixing some issue, but instead you get frustrated at why your code doesn't work B)

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Thanks for the help, I really don't want to mess around with lots of extensions. Plus that's the only area of the site where I don't like the spacing. Seems overkill for one place. And yes, "Log" should suffice, not "Visit Log".

That was how I initially felt about GreaseMonkey, but it is really very useful. It's like a hammer - after you become more proficient in it, every problem looks like a nail.

 

Prime Suspect and Lil Devil both have tons of scripts to enhance different areas of the site. There's another script that will display thumbnails of photos in the log, instead of just the name. And if you didn't notice, I used the script to get rid of some of the widgets on the right column that I don't use.

 

Working on a script is also very therapeutic - that way you don't feel frustration at Groundspeak for not fixing some issue, but instead you get frustrated at why your code doesn't work B)

 

I agree, I have been playing around with some of the scripts and made some personal changes, like I reduced the State name with the 2 letter abbreviation.

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The site's looking a lot better this morning! Thank you! The extra white space between text lines is gone. It's a GREAT improvement.

 

There's still a problem with "plain text" cache listings. Both of my cache pages lost the line feed between the Short and Long Description. The HTML cache page GC1Z0DE was easy to fix. GC1XE27 Jenny Brown, my other cache page was not HTML, and that one was NOT easy to fix (I had to turn it into HTML).

 

I cannot figure out how to add a "line feed" between the Short and Long Description, if it's a plain text cache description. Since there's no preview mode, it's tedious, even disastrous, to fiddle with text formats on my live cache descriptions.

Edited by kunarion
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OK, where to start..?

I am using IE8, Firefox and Chrome. :mad:

 

I tried all 3 and the design of my TB site looks terrible! :(

The picture is moving inside the text collum.

There is a line break inside the page counter ...

 

When writing a log, my nick is huge...why? I know my name!

Why change of colour for the logs...I liked it better before....

 

The friends list is a desaster. I can only fit one friend in one row (normal setting char size).

Why different letter sizes?

 

Why borders on the frames?

 

When looking at someone elses trackable list, I can only chose on type at the time, not the overview!

 

On the Cache Listings site: Why is "logged visits" so big?

 

Uh, and how come, you can't decide whether it's "My profile" or "your profile".

 

There is more to come, I'm sure. I only can't think of more right now!

 

(except for all the problems with printing the listings and putting them on a mobile and all that, but that didn't happen to me...not to say, they didn't exist!)

 

Feedback constructive enough for you, Jeremy ;)

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Thanks for the update, but I am a little bit confused.

 

Before the first update we had a line spacing of 1, after the update a line spacing of 1.5.

Now I have the feeling, it is a line spacing of 0.7. Not the same as weeks ago as it was perfect to read.

 

Problems with my old eyes or what do other users see?

 

dbox.

 

It does seem a bit closer together like you see it. I would rather have the 0.7 than the 1.5 any day.

 

I still dont like the excessive width but I can live with that now that the line spacing is fixed.

 

Please consider making the logs any color but white. It blends in with the cache page and is still too much whiteness.

 

Thank you.

 

Although the line spacing is tighter, it's a vast improvement on the previous version. That said, I can see where the present 0.7 might be an issue for people with poor vision. Is there some particular reason that it can't be restored to the 1.0 we were accustomed to seeing?

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I'm wondering if the IE6 problem was the result of a conscious decision to change strategies for building pages, or is somehow purely a function of new tools being used by gc.com to create the pages? That things broke badly for IE6 seems to have come as a surprise to gc.com, not to mention the users of IE6.

 

I work for a large corporation and they have a lot of internal programs that are custom developed to run in IE6. As a Security Specialist, IE6 poses one of the worst threats in terms of exploits, and I have been bashing them on not getting their apps upgraded to use the new safer broswers. I also run some of my own websites utilizing opensource code, so I see a variety of concerns and issues.

 

I found in the last couple of years, the IE 6 browser is very slow in comarison and is one of the major Aurora launch vectors. I upgraded to IE7 because I liked the TAB feature, and it rendured websites in general better and faster, but we all know this is how well HTML complient each vendor is with their browser coupled with how well you write the HTML code.

 

On one of my websites I manage, I had nothing but grief with this constant error "Explorer wss unable to view the site, operation aborted" A message something to that effect. I couldn't find a tangable fix for it. When the new updates were launched, I was getting the same errors from www.geocaching.com, and realized suddenly, it was a combo of both, the HTML and the broswer.

 

What I am finding is website owners are staying on the forefront of code developement and seem to develop more for the newer Browsers. This means they still support a variety of vendors, but face it, everyone should be upgrading to the latest browsers. Yes, I realize there is a time when the new browsers comes out it can be formating disruptive, but this is where things get fixed quickly, as everyone is now on the forefront. "A typical open source phenomenon"

 

I am seeing more and more today, it is user communities do not upgrade the browsers to the latest versions to help fix this delema. I went ahead and upgraded all my browsers to IE8 and suddenly, the Aborted error stopped on GC.COM! I then went back to my website where I was having the trouble, and the issue is gone!

 

So, I don't know why the user community out there is still using IE6. If GC.COM decided to stop support for IE6 it would NOT hurt my feelings.

 

The day the changes went out, I was using my Acer NetBook at an event, and the 3 things that I noted as a hmm, as detracting features was the White Space, having to scroll right to read logs in browser full screen mode (1024x600) and the Log submit button relocation to the left.

 

All in all, with the white space fix and now it appears the pages render all the logs to be visible, I am very happy with the look and feel. The only gripe left is the Submit button when posting a new log or making changes to a log, you TAB your life away, or get carpal tunnel syndrome with a mouse to submit.

 

So my recommendation is find the browser(s) you like the best, and get the latest "stable" version, then as a Testing community, we would get more consistent results. When a company has to write the HTML to be compatible for 10 browers with 20 versions each, that render slightly differetly all amongst themselves, I can see some serious overhead in dollars to support the effort. Frankly, I thought Geocaching was supposed to be fun and cost effective, not a development group for HTML and browser version developemnt. I would hate to see the membership fees go to $40.00 because of the development costs.

 

Anyway, I also wanted to give cudos, as it was mentioned there has never been a data loss in GC.com, so you guys get a lot of credit in my book. I always dred the day I would have to send GC.com a pocket query of all my finds to restore the site. :( MR

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I'm wondering if the IE6 problem was the result of a conscious decision to change strategies for building pages, or is somehow purely a function of new tools being used by gc.com to create the pages? That things broke badly for IE6 seems to have come as a surprise to gc.com, not to mention the users of IE6.

 

I am seeing more and more today, it is user communities do not upgrade the browsers to the latest versions to help fix this delema. I went ahead and upgraded all my browsers to IE8 and suddenly, the Aborted error stopped on GC.COM! I then went back to my website where I was having the trouble, and the issue is gone!

 

So, I don't know why the user community out there is still using IE6. If GC.COM decided to stop support for IE6 it would NOT hurt my feelings.

 

:( MR

 

I don't believe that it is the "user communitiy" has the responsibility to upgrade software to meet the needs of the company that they are paying money to. Technology forces changes and we all have to adapt to that. But we should never be forced to make those changes at the whims of the company we are doing business with. Proper planning, advanced notice, and time to adjust are fundamental to change.

 

I cannot view any maps at geocaching.com and have not been able to since jan 12. I could upgrade my PC to meet Groundspeaks new, unpublished, requirements but I don't choose to do so.

 

Ironically, Groundspeak just sent me an email advising me that my membership was due. I replied as follows to contact@Groundspeak.com and bizdev@Groundspeak.com (If the monitor removes one of the email addresses again go to the Groundspeak.com website and click "contacts"). I encourage you who have problems to emails these addresses.

 

This is really a matter of principle. Goundspeak does not have the right to disenfranchise customers, without any notice, for the sole benefit of its technical addenda We are customers. We deserve respect and an accommodating attitude. Groundspeak has not shown us that respect and we deserve more!

 

MY EMAIL TO Groundspeak:

 

I received a notice regarding my Groundspeak Premium Membership dues and just wanted to let someone know that I am not able to renew my membership at this time because I have not been able to use the geocaching.com website since the software release was installed on Jan12.

 

I have tried to resolve my issues via email and the forum but I still cannot view any maps. Someone on the forum did indicate that this might be fixed next month. I think I will just wait to see if the problem does actually get corrected. There is no point in paying membership dues for something that I cannot use. I have enjoyed my three years of Geocaching and am sorry that it has to end.

 

See GEO #UVP-544521 (latest email below) and artemis&apollo posts on the forum.

 

 

Artemis&Apollo

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"Technology forces changes and we all have to adapt to that"

 

My point exactly! This is one of those days we woke up and things needed to change, and we must be flexible to change. I have seen many updates to GC.com in the last 5 years, and they were all for the good.

 

I have bought lots of software in my day, and we are really not buying software here, we are paying for premium memberships. Even it it were software, the way warranties and guarantees are written, we are SOL in every case.

 

I completely understand the end user experience here, and to make a suggestion, in terms of making announcements, I receive the Groundspeak weekly news letter, and went back and looked them over, and there was no mention of a pending site update. This is the exact vehicle that should have been used to let the "User Community" know that changes are coming.

 

One other comment I would like to make in terms of disenfranchisement. This word implies we have a right to vote for the changes or not. If Groundspeak asked for a vote of all the "Premium Mebers" (the only members who bare the right as "Paying Members" in my opinion) if it were ok to make changes to the site, they would never get anything accomplished.

 

BTW, I am not having any map issues, perhaps you could provide an example link where you see the problem, and I can help assist in mitigating the issues with Groundspeak. But my bet, there is a better thread for that than this one. Have Great day and be Happy! :( MR

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I'm going to ask again. Some one whos knows something....please answer.

When is the next release going to be?

Im sure, not soon enough for all of us paying premium menbers, who cannot access the site. Why dont they

resort back to the previous version of the site? Im sure they are smart enough to save a "backup copy" of it.

And what's all this about IE 6 ?

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I'm going to ask again. Some one whos knows something....please answer.

When is the next release going to be?

Im sure, not soon enough for all of us paying premium menbers, who cannot access the site. Why dont they

resort back to the previous version of the site? Im sure they are smart enough to save a "backup copy" of it.

And what's all this about IE 6 ?

 

They could offer another option. They could have something like "old.geocaching.com" for those who are running older operating systems in the interim.

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I'm going to ask again. Some one whos knows something....please answer.

When is the next release going to be?

Im sure, not soon enough for all of us paying premium menbers, who cannot access the site. Why dont they

resort back to the previous version of the site? Im sure they are smart enough to save a "backup copy" of it.

And what's all this about IE 6 ?

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I'm going to ask again. Some one whos knows something....please answer.

I recall reading somewhere that (I believe) OpinioNate said the next release is in February. If I can find the post I'll edit to add the link.

 

Edit : here you go. Post 49 of this thread.

 

We have no plans to phase out support of IE6, and are aware of the mapping issues that exist currently. They will be fixed in the February release. I'm very sorry for the delay.
Edited by Chrysalides
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I'm going to ask again. Some one whos knows something....please answer.

I recall reading somewhere that (I believe) OpinioNate said the next release is in February. If I could find the post I'll edit to add the link.

 

Edit : here you go. Post 49 of this thread.

 

We have no plans to phase out support of IE6, and are aware of the mapping issues that exist currently. They will be fixed in the February release. I'm very sorry for the delay.

In general Nate does not announce a particular date for a release because things happen and the date gets pushed back causing complaints about that as well. The release will come when they are ready to release it.

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I can get to the home page just fine, but when I click on My Profile it starts to load that page and then the "hour glass" just hangs there forever. I then get the "Program Not Responding" box and so I have to "End Program" Is anyone else expierencing this same problem. I'm running IE 6.

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I can get to the home page just fine, but when I click on My Profile it starts to load that page and then the "hour glass" just hangs there forever. I then get the "Program Not Responding" box and so I have to "End Program" Is anyone else expierencing this same problem. I'm running IE 6.

I experience slowdown when running IE6 as well. It doesn't hang forever, but it takes up to 30 seconds sometimes.

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I have scrolled through most of the comments since the site update and while agreeing with many of them and not understanding some of them, the biggest surprise is that no one has mentioned the fact that printing out of the maps is totally unacceptable. I am a Firefox user, running XP. Printing out the goggle map from the site was always a neat clean output with the printout matching the online page. Since the site overhaul, the size of the map is not controlled, It extends beyond what is displayed (to the East) and overlaps the information boxes on the right side of the page. I use the maps extensively to plan out my caching activities for the day, and this bug is really annoying. :)

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A couple problems still with the recent website update:

 

It is very hard or impossible to tell which of your owned caches under 'Geocaches (Yours)' are archived or just disabled...they look the same. Also, the visual layout of waypoints is very confusing; each waypoint should be isolated visually with lines around it or something so you can tell which waypoint the coords and description belong to. Also, why does there need to be a huge space between the cache writeup and the hints/logs area? I've also noticed for a year or so that sometimes huge bits of corrupted text apparently from an outside source appears in my cache page writeups, often containing foreign characters, and sometimes even legible text!!? It's definitely not something I added to the cache page; it's not even in my cache page writeup, but still displays. This problem seems to come and go, and was there before the recent updates. Anyone else notice this?

Edited by kc12345
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I still have the bad html generated bug from January 12th that I had reported back then on the "Your Pocket Queries" page at http://www.geocaching.com/pocket/default.aspx. I haven't read all the forum posts lately but I thought I'd repost it to see if it's on the list of known problems. All the processing works fine, it's only the html on the displayed page that doesn't look good.

 

In the table with alternating white and blue background rows, any pocket query that has already run so is striked out, that also happens to fall on an even numbered row with the blue background has incorrect html generated for the Name column: (e.g.)

 

(500) d311 CUR2c 01-07-2010 thru 01-12-2010 GC22RA7 Total Records: 479">d311 CUR2c 01-07-2010 thru 01-12-2010 GC22RA7 Total Records: 479

 

The name is listed twice separated with a doublequote and lessthan character pair with only the last rendition of the name struck out. It looks like the bug is in your code that inserts the strikeout.

 

The name of this pocket query actually is:

 

d311 CUR2c 01-07-2010 thru 01-12-2010 GC22RA7 Total Records: 479

 

Here is the html generated for the cell:

 

<img src="/images/silk/database_lightning.png" alt="Pocket Query"> (500) <a href="http://www.geocaching.com/pocket/gcquery.aspx?guid=2e9d1d86-1c6e-4eef-8b55-61de9bc0fc11" title="<span class=" strike="">d311 CUR2c 01-07-2010 thru 01-12-2010 GC22RA7 Total Records: 479"><span class="Strike">d311 CUR2c 01-07-2010 thru 01-12-2010 GC22RA7 Total Records: 479</span>

 

Notice that the problem is at the title="<span class=" strike="" generated html code. By the time you look at my Pocket Query page the queries listed will have changed, but the bug has shown up every day for the whole month.

 

When I add a pocket query that bumps them down in the list because the name comes earlier, the rows that are corrupted change to the new rows that have already run that happen to be on an even row with the blue background. This proves that the problem is only a display problem with the page when the html is generated just before it is sent from the web server to my browser.

 

The problem shows up with both Firefox 3.5.7 and Google Chrome 3.0.195.38 on Windows XP 5.1sp3.

 

Gary

aka Nudecacher

 

ps. Oh, by the way, I like the way the format has come out. Thanks.

Edited by Nudecacher
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But we should never be forced to make those changes at the whims of the company we are doing business with.
Ironically, it was a 3rd party application that prevented the company that I work for from upgrading to IE7. So, it does go both ways.
Lemme guess -- you're an SAP house? Edited by ecanderson
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