Forum upgrade?

[Curt Carpenter]

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. 

That became more and more true to me as I got old 

[Aruna]

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

Hey Gus thank you for the links. Both are interesting. Some examples in the hyperscript.org link reminded me of jQuery.  What I meant was that I have for a very long time been wanting to have my very own custom admin page in a wi-fi router but never actually got down to doing this. I know we have opensource router operating systems such as OpenWrt, DD-WRT, Tomato, pfSense and others. I would love to learn how to install these on a router and undertand how the firmware can be downlaoded, modified then uploaded back again for testing.

There is a *reason* I tend to stick with plain old fashion vanilla javascript when it comes to SPA's or anything that needs front-end work. And that is javascript has been around for a very, very long time and it is tried and tested. But if the new approches mean writing less code, is faster, has no memory or performance overheads then absolutely why not?

That being said two things that always take me back to plain old javascript are:
Universal Support: JavaScript is supported by all modern web browsers (Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Edge) without the need for additional plugins or extensions.
Consistency: Provides a consistent development experience across different browsers and platforms.

Marks concerns are real and valid but there are ways we can work around them. I will expand on this in a later post :-)

[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.

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

I wish we could all go back in time to that era, life was a whole lot simpler back then.

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.

Please do not spend time on any demos. Just point me in the right direction as and when you can and hopefully I will see the light :-) I used Dreamweaver in my windows days then Kompozer and wrote my own editor after a while. Very simple code but gets the job done: Real Time HTML/CSS/JS Editor

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

You must have done some seriously good work for them to do that. Our ISP's here are highly competent in sending us humongous monthly bills. No compliments by any so far :-)   

[Aruna]

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.

For very old laptops, especially those with limited resources (memory, CPU, and storage), choosing a lightweight browser can significantly enhance performance and usability. Some that come to mind are:
 
- Dillo is a multi-platform graphical web browser known for its speed and small footprint.

- Lynx: Lynx is a text-based web browser that can run on very low-spec hardware. It’s suitable for browsing text-based websites and content. Features:
  Extremely Lightweight: Runs on very old hardware with minimal resources.Text-Based: Ideal for users who can navigate the web without graphical content.

[Aruna]

I would like to bring this thread back to it's original authors @Remy Lebeau's question 'Is this forum ever going to upgrade?"

My apologies to @Remy Lebeau for deviating from the topic 

[Gustavo 'Gus' Carreno]

Hey Aruna,

Hey Gus thank you for the links. Both are interesting.

More than welcome.
I'm glad you could find them useful !!

What I meant was that I have for a very long time been wanting to have my very own custom admin page in a wi-fi router but never actually got down to doing this. I know we have opensource router operating systems such as OpenWrt, DD-WRT, Tomato, pfSense and others. I would love to learn how to install these on a router and undertand how the firmware can be downlaoded, modified then uploaded back again for testing.

Okidokes, so I got something right and something wrong.

I do understand what you wanted to convey a bit more.
And I do have to agree that if you're doing something in the realm of embedded, it has to have a very low common denominator.
We're not talking about the new fancy shmancy SPA for this new fab service/tool/trend, we are talking of something that has to operate in an environment where it could be used even by Internet Explorer 
So yeah, that makes a lot of sense to not use whatever is the current trend in JavaScript frameworks!!

Once you get your head around how you can mess with those embedded devices, I would love to hear about your experience if you ever choose to work with either HTMX or Hyperscript, I really would !!!

Cheers,
Gus

[Gustavo 'Gus' Carreno]

Hey Remy,

I would like to bring this thread back to it's original authors @Remy Lebeau's question 'Is this forum ever going to upgrade?"

My apologies to @Remy Lebeau for deviating from the topic

I would also like to apologise to Remy about my own tangents outside his initial ask!!

Sorry Remy !!!

Cheers,
Gus

[Joanna]

I sure hope this forum doesn’t “upgrade” I’ve already lost access to the bug tracker thanks to that being changed. So I can’t report bugs anymore.

[Remy Lebeau]

My apologies to @Remy Lebeau for deviating from the topic

I would also like to apologise to Remy about my own tangents outside his initial ask!!

No worries!

The whole reason I asked is because a user wanted to direct my attention to a post, and had to reach out to me on another forum. So I just thought @user mentions would be a nice feature to have on this forum. Whether through a mod or an upgrade.

[MarkMLl]

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.

Firefox 115 on older Debian-based systems OK here. I really only use Git-anything under protest (and please let us not go off on another tangent) and while I find the new bugtracker adequate (from an occasional reporter's POV) it's no where near as focussed and /encouraging/ as Mantis.

If multiple people are actually having problems accessing the bugtracker it might be worth starting a separate thread, on the understanding that it was not to be coopted for rants (in a rare attempt at diplomacy, I will mention no names here) but instead was for characterising and possibly fixing the problem. It could turn out to be something like poor https (i.e. SSL/TLS) support on older OSes, or something (older Javascript? OS filtering?) preventing the server from pushing state to the client.

MarkMLl

[MarkMLl]

You must have done some seriously good work for them to do that. Our ISP's here are highly competent in sending us humongous monthly bills. No compliments by any so far :-)

This one stands out: they tell their customers what has actually happened when an upstream connection causes problems, a sister company makes specialist routers (hence https://www.revk.uk/2017/11/ada.html which I think is relevant to this community) and of course https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-42338067 .

MarkMLl

[rvk]

I sure hope this forum doesn’t “upgrade” I’ve already lost access to the bug tracker thanks to that being changed. So I can’t report bugs anymore.

I hope the forum does upgrade and gets a decent mobile view.

At the bottom there is still the WAP2 link (which doesn't seem to work) but WAP2 isn't really workable.

I already mentioned mobile view (responsive version) back in 2020 and even in 2016 but since the forum only upgraded to the same 2.0.x version. Not the 2.1.x where responsive view is available.

I haven't tried that version with javascript disabled.

BTW. For the bug tracker not being able to work without javascript... that was reported 6 years ago 
https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-foss/-/issues/43433

@Joanna Do you always have javascript off?
Do you encounter many sites that don't work (due to the disabled javascript)?

[MarkMLl]

BTW. For the bug tracker not being able to work without javascript... that was reported 6 years ago 
https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-foss/-/issues/43433

I'm really not comfortable coopting this thread with stuff discussing the bugtracker, but two things stand out in that report:

In comparison, on GitLab's biggest competitor, github, only some minor things don't work with JS disabled, all of the main functionality when it comes to browsing works (displaying README.md, other files, commit messages, issues, etc).

Over the last couple of years I've seen Github get increasingly reluctant to display file content if JS is disabled.

set browser window width to 1280px (or smaller)

That might indeed be a reason for some people with older computers to have problems, irrespective of OS.

MarkMLl

[Marc]

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.

It depends on whatever comes first:
1) I've the time to upgrade ( 1 reserve a full day for it)
2) The current version runs out of support.

Marc

[Joanna]

@rvk I don’t think I have javascript turned off. the browsers work ok with other sites.
Gitlab doesn’t work right for me on several different browsers on two different machines.

Maybe it decided that all people who don’t have the latest greatest browser  shouldn’t have the privilege of reportIng bugs.

I can see the top line with fpc lazarus Lazarus issues  the link for fpc also gives blank page but this gitlab  link for pricing works great !! https://about.gitlab.com/pricing/