Forum improvements?

[kbalch]

We all, naturally, have opinions about how to improve the communities to which we belong. As folks who participate online, those widely varied forums are no exception.

While everyone's comments and suggestions are always welcome, I'd like to specifically solicit ideas this week for improving our Homemade Tools forum.

What are your top three suggested forum improvements?

[Hotz]

One idea here ...
http://www.homemadetools.net/forum/o...9030#post26778


Other! remove ** Thank you ** the posts ..
Reason encourage the participant to write more, (perhaps complicated for the member for lack of time).

Link to the history of HT.Net.
I believe that many would like to know how it all began.

Just remember suggestions from a guy who can not even write or understand English, much less the concept of life of Americans. (I am learning)

Paul Hotz.

[Christophe Mineau]

Hi,
Unlike Hots, I do like the "thanks" feature, it is all what did the success of facebook !
It's cool to see that someone is in line with what you posted, even if he had not the time to write a full answer, and sometimes the "well done, cool, great ..." one line answers are not really usefull. (But I respect your opinion, and maybe it could be enanced with some well choosen emoticons ?)

I have only one suggestion for the moment : the [IMG] tag, it would be a good enhancement if we had a size optional attribute on it.

For the concern of the language, like says Hotz, I think it is really the limiting factor.
On the French forums, I sometimes make reference to my tools here, but people always complain about English.
On my Web site, I do everything in two languages, but it is a lot of work ...
Maybe you could think about how embedding some Google translation features, like a button to choose the reading language, like does Microsoft.
For the post, I don't know, maybe a tool box for people who want to post in their native language and that could post into English for them...
(I know that what I'm saying here is a challenge, but it would be a great differentiator).

For the rest, I must admit that the HMT forum is already probably technically the best made I have ever met, with lots of little features not commonly seen on other PhpBB based forums.
Interesting also to know the reverse side of the thing, who should we thank for that ? (Jon and Ken for sure, but do you develop by yourselves ?)

Christophe

Edit, I'm thinking about one last question/suggestion : why aren't there any date information in the database : date of introduction in the encyclopedia, date of initial post ?

[kbalch]

Thanks for the great ideas, guys!

Since I don't want to skew the contributions in any way, I'll hold my comments until the end of the week. I am reading along though, so keep 'em coming!

Ken

[Hotz]

Christophe honestly sometimes I miss (Like) used on Facebook.
As the translator I believe everyone nowadays use, in my case my browser already has is opição (Chrome).

Nice to see the participation of French friend, now just wait for the other members post their suggestions.

We know an attractive Forums, it becomes part of our lives.



if I had full dominion of English can be sure that I was going to write much here.

[kim]

It´s great to see people from other parts of the world here, what can be improved? A dictionary (Glossary would be the correct word), although I lived and studied in the US, some technical terms/names are difficult to chew.

[Toolmaker51]

This unlike many posts on HMT.net; just a few comments!
Now, a lot has been added to the site since then [week of 29 June 2015] that appear initiated since then. I'm thinking our intrepid Jon might get this in one of the updates that we receive. Re-booting this among the thousands of new participants and venerable members should generate a new wish list.
AS long as it doesn't turn into facetious-book, twiddler, gnomeandtroll...

I'd like a limited quantity of symbols, maybe as emojis, better yet, drop down from the toolbar. I had but can't relocate keyboard shortcuts for 70-80 items from word, that didn't translate online html. But then, none of the sites [hint hint] have them yet either. [hint hint]
Degrees [min' sec'' use apostrophes], centerline CL [C underlaid L] diameter [zero underlaid fwd slash]......

[mklotz]

In Windows, if you hold down the Alt key while typing the numbers below (including the leading zero) on the ten key numerical keypad, you will get the characters shown when you release the Alt key. There may be more of these; the ones shown are only the ones I use most frequently.

± 0177
² 0178
º 0186
× 0215
÷ 0247
µ 0181
Ø 0216
ä 0228
ö 0246
ü 0252
£ 0163
€ 0128
é 0233
è 0232

[Toolmaker51]

Good Morning Los Angeles!
Marv K., Your suggestion sent me afield, hunting symbol shortcuts. My occasions for Fn+Numlock or Alt keystrokes were in Word documents, compiled that list out of the Insert drop down. Well, never occurred to me to take it with me, or realize instances for use online. That was 2012 Thanks for the google hint, stumbled upon entire covey...
Here are a few...... https://tools.oratory.com/altcodes.html
For those with unrestricted search diets https://www.google.com/search?q=wind...utf-8&oe=utf-8

[mklotz]

This isn't exactly on topic here but it is a useful hint for older folks (myself included).

If your eyesight is less than perfect, it's sometimes easy to lose the pointer on the screen, especially so if the image on the screen is very complex. The description here...

https://mcmw.abilitynet.org.uk/findi...r-windows-8-1/

will show you how to arrange things so that simply pressing the Ctrl key will cause a series of diminishing circles to appear on the screen and collapse onto the pointer location. The apparent motion of these circles is quickly noticed by the eye (evolution has made us very sensitive to things moving in our vision field) and the eye is automatically drawn to the cursor location.