Forum upgrade?

[Remy Lebeau]

Not sure where is most appropriate to post this...

This forum is still using SMF 2.0.19, which is almost 3 years old.  SMF is now up to 2.1.4, which was released over a year ago.  Is this forum ever going to upgrade?

One feature this forum could use is @user mentions.  There are mods available for that in older versions, but I also understand it is actually implemented natively in 2.1.

[Joanna]

I’m happy with the forum as it is. It works on my old machine unlike the bug tracker

[MarkMLl]

Not sure where is most appropriate to post this...

This forum is still using SMF 2.0.19, which is almost 3 years old.  SMF is now up to 2.1.4, which was released over a year ago.  Is this forum ever going to upgrade?

One feature this forum could use is @user mentions.  There are mods available for that in older versions, but I also understand it is actually implemented natively in 2.1.

I'm fairly happy with it as it stands, but presumably an @user would send some sort of notification to a user if he is mentioned... is there a risk that this could be abused to drag somebody into a thread in which he'd rather not be involved, with no ability to resign?

Does any version of SMF allow a user to resign from a "thread from Hell" which he'd incautiously joined? I appreciate that this could be inadvisable, since it would allow somebody to be deliberately provocative (e.g. by telling Joanna that she needs to learn how to use the bug tracker :-) and then escape the consequences.

Could the [1] [2] [3] ... [all] setting be enabled, so that it's possible to get a full picture of a thread on a single screen?

Apart from that I would like to say that having rooted around the entrails of such things in a fair amount of detail I consider SMF to be pretty good, although there's likely to be some pressure to consider something like Mastodon in the future. An overwhelmingly important consideration is that there should be some way to generate a URL (strictly, a URI) for a specific message that looks the same to all users, which is where- in particular- NNRP falls down.

MarkMLl

[Joanna]

Please don’t add javascript to the forums 

[MarkMLl]

Please don’t add javascript to the forums 

Roughly translated: at present, forum posts may be read (but not necessarily created) in a browser with Javascript disabled. FWIW, I agree that that's highly desirable.

MarkMLl

[Joanna]

It seems that websites that are highly dependent upon javascript often  like to dictate which web browsers will work there.

I’m not too happy about websites telling me which browsers to use especially when it may not even  be possible to have the “correct “ browser on older machines.
I want nothing to do with the constant upgrades treadmill for this very reason. All I can do is try to boycott these types of websites.

[MarkMLl]

It seems that websites that are highly dependent upon javascript often  like to dictate which web browsers will work there.

I’m not too happy about websites telling me which browsers to use especially when it may not even  be possible to have the “correct “ browser on older machines.
I want nothing to do with the constant upgrades treadmill for this very reason. All I can do is try to boycott these types of websites.

Depends entirely what you mean by "older machines" in this context. I've seen things... I've seen a Sun with lots of 80MHz processors giving a good account of itself when compared with kit 20+ years younger.

I've told you in detail what I'm running, and I have good reason to believe that it would be happy in kit from the early 00s. Now if you don't like that I suggest that you complain elsewhere, rather than messing up the thread that Remy's (entirely reasonably) started.

MarkMLl

[Kays]

[…] SMF is now up to 2.1.4, which was released over a year ago. Is this forum ever going to upgrade? […]

I would withhold that thought until CVE‑2024‑7437 and …38 published about a month ago are resolved.
^{NB: The new CVE.org is not accessible w/o JS shit, which is quite ironic (or moronic) for a security-related site.}

Please don’t add javascript to the forums 

Nobody has suggested to introduce JS crap. As a matter of fact SMF wants to work w/o JS as far as possible.

[Aruna]

Nobody has suggested to introduce JS crap.

JS has always been there in smf..

As a matter of fact SMF wants to work w/o JS as far as possible.

JS crap? The web developer tools shows( screenshot attached) me stuff that to me looks rather useful :-)

Code: Text  [Select][+][-]

1. var cur_topic_id, cur_msg_id, buff_subject, cur_subject_div, in_edit_mode = 0;

Why are so many people against using JS? Correctly used it is one of the best languages, to me anyway. 

[MarkMLl]

Why are so many people against using JS? Correctly used it is one of the best languages, to me anyway.

Because it puts a lot of compatibility demands on the browser, makes it difficult to search and process forum content (including printing etc.), has a long history of being used for malware injection, and makes it particularly difficult to monitor what data is being sent to what remote site. I've probably missed a few...

In practice, my experience is that it's possible to use a combination of server-side scripting and CSS to do a lot of what "conventional wisdom" considers to need Javascript, e.g. for a router etc. user interface.

MarkMLl

[Aruna]

Why are so many people against using JS? Correctly used it is one of the best languages, to me anyway.

Because it puts a lot of compatibility demands on the browser, makes it difficult to search and process forum content (including printing etc.), has a long history of being used for malware injection, and makes it particularly difficult to monitor what data is being sent to what remote site. I've probably missed a few...

Ah, that is true it has been used for malicious purposes time and again. I never thought about JS and printing hmm... you learn something everyday :-)

In practice, my experience is that it's possible to use a combination of server-side scripting and CSS to do a lot of what "conventional wisdom" considers to need Javascript, e.g. for a router etc. user interface.

Now that is something I have always wanted to do but I either had no time or no access to a router I could mess with and learn. If you have any router 101's please send.

[Gustavo 'Gus' Carreno]

Hey Aruna,

Now that is something I have always wanted to do but I either had no time or no access to a router I could mess with and learn. If you have any router 101's please send.

Not sure if I'm understanding this well, but in any case, you should have a look at:

• HTMX: https://htmx.org
• Hyperscript: https://hyperscript.org

These are new approaches to less JS on the frontend. Also called Hypermedia.
They are very small pieces of JS( around 15KiB ) that allow you to use HTML attributes to do a lot of what is common on Single Page Applications.
They also mean that a lot of the logic is now back to the backend and it also implies that you can use ANY language of your preference for it.

This will not solve the issues that Mark was pointing at, though. It's just a new way of doing SPAs.

If I didn't understand it, then please excuse my confusion and just dismiss my reply.

Cheers,
Gus

[MarkMLl]

Now that is something I have always wanted to do but I either had no time or no access to a router I could mess with and learn. If you have any router 101's please send.

All custom stuff, but very much early-90s technology with the addition of frames and CSS.

It would take me a fair while to put together some sort of demo, but (from a few minutes looking at things) I was using Kompozer to generate an outline page, then in various frames embedding CGI URLs to mimic SSI 's ability to expand environment strings. Dynamically-generated output can contain Javascript for "frills", but also tailor CSS state depending e.g. on which menus are to be expanded, force timed reloads and so on.

Got a compliment from our ISP, which is one of the geekier ones.

MarkMLl

[JuhaManninen]

Because it puts a lot of compatibility demands on the browser, makes it difficult to search and process forum content (including printing etc.), has a long history of being used for malware injection, and makes it particularly difficult to monitor what data is being sent to what remote site. I've probably missed a few...

Adding to the list, it uses lots of resources, memory and CPU time, on a client computer.
I have the same experience as Joanna here. The Gitlab site is the worst resource hog. I cannot even login there with my eMachines mini-laptop from year 2009. It tells me to check my internet connection although it is good. Without logging in the site is slow and a browser hogs memory. Actually the site is slow with any computer.
The mini-laptop is getting unusable because of Javascript. It has enough resources for Linux and for Lazarus development but not for internet browsing any more.

[440bx]

disclaimer: I don't know if what I'm going to state applies to the latest version of SMF but, in a way I want to echo @JuhaManninen statements.

It has much too often been my experience that upgrading to the latest version of something is actually a significant downgrade.  For a few new features, often of dubious value, the loss of performance and/or use of system resources is significant. 

IOW, often not a good deal.

Fortunately, Lazarus and FPC have been exceptions.

The day I want to completely ruin my text editing experience, I'll upgrade my copy of my 2007 programmer's editor with any one of the "modern editors".