New forum tips

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coulomb
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New forum tips

Post by coulomb »

Now that we have a new forum, we're all going to be learning how to do things a little differently.

Firstly, there is the New Posts option under the Quick Links drop-down near the top left corner:
Quick Links.png
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If you're looking for the control panel, it's under your user name near the top right corner:
Control Panel.png
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You can see your Private Messages there, and the Control Panel.

One thing you may care to use the Control Panel for is to change your time zone. Somehow we didn't transfer the time zone across with other user information, so you'll be defaulting to London time (UTC). To change it, select User Control Panel from the drop-down as above, and select the Board Preferences tab:
Board Prefs.png
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It's pretty obvious what to do from there.


How to post an image

When it comes time to add an image to your post, if you're using the Chrome browser, the not-so-obvious thing you'll need is this, near the bottom left of the post's main edit window:
Image        Image

[ Edit: it seems that Chrome only shows the "hamburger" at certain zoom levels. ]

Clicking on those stripes will switch from Options to Attachments. On Firefox, the tab is already called "Attachments".

From there, click "Add Files" and it's pretty obvious. You can also do this by simply dragging and dropping your file into the post editor. Usually use "Place inline" for images (though you might want to keep a large schematic as an attachment), or leave other files as an attachment. You can inline other files if you want, like this:
BMU.zip
Example zip file, I don't even remember what's in it
(66.95 KiB) Downloaded 191 times
Remember that [size=xx] is different now; [size=1] is unreadable, because it's a percentage. So for small text, use [size=85] or so. For large text, [size=150] is pretty big. You can get these, and other sizes, from the "Normal" menu in the post editor.

Hopefully, that should get us started. Feel free to add other tips to this topic, but I'd like to keep the chatter to a minimum.

[ Edit: Added info about [size=], where to find the attachment stripes. Attachment stripes issue only for Chrome browser. Simplified the [size=xx] part. ]
[ Edit: Placed the two "Attachments" images side by side. Added info about dragging and dropping attachments, and using "Normal" menu to change text size. -- weber]
Attachments
Attachments_ff.png
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Attachments.png
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weber
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Re: New forum tips

Post by weber »

Some other things you may want to do with the User Control Panel (UCP) (accessed from the menu at your username, near the top right), in addition to:
  • Setting your time zone: UCP > Board preferences > Edit global settings
are:
  • Choose to receive email for various kinds of notification: UCP > Board preferences > Edit notification options
  • Change your password to something more memorable: UCP > Profile > Edit account settings

This forum software has all of the same BBCodes as the old forum software, and then some. But unlike the old post editor, in this one you can select a piece of text and click a button to enclose it in the appropriate tags. For the bold text above, I was able to first type the text, then select it and click the B button above the edit pane.

To change the size of text, you can just select the text and choose "Large", "Small" etc from the Normal ⌄ menu above the edit pane.

To upload attachments (including images) you can just drag and drop them into into the edit pane.
One of the fathers of MeXy the electric MX-5, along with Coulomb and Newton (Jeff Owen).
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coulomb
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Re: New forum tips

Post by coulomb »

A few more tips with images.

When you have multiple attachments, including images, note that the forum software inserts new attachments at the top of the list of existing attachments. So if you have a particular order in mind, start with the attachment you want at the bottom first. In other words, add your attachments in reverse order.

You can also of course use "Place inline" to place an attached image where the text cursor is. Click in the appropriate part of the post just before using this button, as the operating system seems to often move the focus elsewhere, and the image ends up at the end of the post. If this happens, you can just move the [ attachment... ] text to where you want it.

If after you upload an image you get the warning triangle and the message "It was not possible to determine the dimensions of the image", as below, then there is something that the forum software doesn't like about the image. Perhaps a future update may stop it. In the mean time, I find that opening the problematic image with "Paint 3D" (most Windows computers will have this) and saving it (perhaps under a different name) will correct the format, and make the image considerably smaller (in bytes) as well. (Thanks to Weber for this one.) Edit: this only seems to happen with JPEG images. So another workaround is to convert to another format.
Attachments
impossible dimensions.png
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MG ZS EV 2021 April 2021. Nissan Leaf 2012 with new battery May 2019.
5650 W solar, 2xPIP-4048MS inverters, 16 kWh battery.
Patching PIP-4048/5048 inverter-chargers.
If you appreciate my work, you can buy me a coffee.
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Adverse Effects
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Re: New forum tips

Post by Adverse Effects »

Image
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When will you have time to do it over

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