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GeneralWelcome to the new site!

11th Jan 2015 04:27 UTCJolyon Ralph Founder

After six months of work the new site is live. It's a major upgrade (the first in nine years) of the code. We will inevitably have some teething problems, so please bear with us.

I'm preparing an article now detailing all the new features. Watch out for that shortly...

Jolyon

11th Jan 2015 05:51 UTCCorie Mattar

Congratulations!

It looks great, nice work!

Corie

11th Jan 2015 11:22 UTCPaul De Bondt Manager

That must have been a time consuming task.

But it's worth it, congratulations.

It will take time to get used to it. It's like with a new car, the first days/weeks, one have to search for things he used to find eyes closed.

Just a few little constructive remarks :

In the Mindat news, Last members' articles and dealer news, the text is running over with date and names.

On my homepage, http://www.mindat.org/gallery-9845.html I can open all the localities except the first, Porphyry quarry.

And it is quite slow to open but that could be my PC.

I hope this helps.

Take care and best regards.

Paul.

11th Jan 2015 12:54 UTCMaggie Wilson Expert

Love the fresh look!

11th Jan 2015 13:20 UTCChris Stefano Expert

Very nice!

I like the new events list- Is there a way for users to add additional events?

11th Jan 2015 14:52 UTCPaul De Bondt Manager

Hi all,

I looked at the pictures posted today.

After 2 pages, this message appeared at the bottom of the page:

Fatal error: Allowed memory size of 134217728 bytes exhausted (tried to allocate 74456367 bytes) in /home/mindat/www/cform/cform.php on line 2983

I hope this helps.

Take care and best regards.

Paul

11th Jan 2015 15:02 UTCColleen Thomson Expert

Loving the new look and feel of the site - the home page is alot less cluttered looking.

Thanks for the continued hard work and innovations jolyon :-)

11th Jan 2015 16:03 UTCLuca Baralis Expert

Sorry to say it, but with Firefox it doesn't work! The home page is a real mess...

Running Firefox 34.0 on Ms-Windows 7

11th Jan 2015 16:07 UTCScott Rider

Thank you so much for catering to our curiosity of the wonders of this world Mindat. The new site is streamlined and much more user friendly! I greatly appreciate the hard work that has been put into this website!

I am new to prospecting and collecting, and in the two years exploring this site, I have learned how to not only categorize my expanding collection, but how to locate the minerals of Colorado! I would never have found my topaz pocket last year had it not been for all the rockhounding tips, the images so I could see what type of peg to look for and location inferences.

So thank you Mindat, but all who use this site and have helped me find me a new career path!

11th Jan 2015 16:16 UTCKristopher Dingfield

What happened to the mineral quiz? I loved that!

11th Jan 2015 16:19 UTCMike Royal

that went long time back i miss it allso

mike

11th Jan 2015 16:28 UTCJolyon Ralph Founder

We will do a new one eventually - it was a great thing! But it relied on Adobe Flash and we aren't supporting that in Mindat any more.

11th Jan 2015 16:35 UTCBecky Coulson 🌟 Expert

The site looks great! I have a request (or question) - on the old format, every page carried a search area for locality/mineral at the bottom of the page. Is it possible to have this? A sincere thank you for all the work - the mindat site has become an essential part of my mineral interest.

11th Jan 2015 17:02 UTCSteve Hardinger 🌟 Expert

To Jolyon and the whole crew: Thanks again for all the work.

I like the new look: cleaner. It has that 'new website' smell.

11th Jan 2015 17:48 UTCRui Nunes 🌟 Expert

Well done Jolyon! Congratulations :)-D

11th Jan 2015 18:01 UTCRick Dalrymple Expert

I love it. Thanks(tu)

11th Jan 2015 18:03 UTCSimon Taylor

Very nice. Well done! (tu)

11th Jan 2015 19:04 UTCThomas Loomis 🌟 Expert

Looks good - good look and feel - - navigation is much improved as are the photo gallery layouts. There are some issues and errors, where would you reported problems like these sent?

11th Jan 2015 19:31 UTCJean-Marc Johannet Manager

Did you clean your web cache before using the new site?

Luca Baralis a écrit:

-------------------------------------------------------

> Sorry to say it, but with Firefox it doesn't work!

> The home page is a real mess...

> Running Firefox 34.0 on Ms-Windows 7

11th Jan 2015 19:37 UTCTimothy Blackwood

Hi,

The new website looks great. I'm using Firefox 34.0 and everything seems to work. However, I tried looking at "New Photos Today" and received the message "No photos". Is this feature disabled for further repairs? Just wondering as I love seeing the new additions. Thanks in advance. :-)

Best wishes,

Tim Blackwood

11th Jan 2015 19:39 UTCPaul Brandes 🌟 Manager

What I really like so far is the new font which is much easier to read than before.

I am using Firefox and am having no issues; in fact, it seems to be working much better and much more stable than the previous version. I also like the fact that the donors now have a prominent spot for all the world to see. This is a great idea and nice to see that I am an important part of Mindat and that my donation is appreciated, unlike some places where I have donated in the past and got nothing in return as promised.....

Great job Jolyon........ I'll be looking forward to the "instructions" for this new version.

11th Jan 2015 20:19 UTCDuncan Hill

Looking good on mobile - Chrome on Android.

11th Jan 2015 20:23 UTCA. M.

When I went to change the displayed photo on my home page - when I clicked "update" not only the chosen photo did not show up - the entire contents of the page are now gone. I rewrote it, but when I went to update - the same thing happened. I have nothing on my home page now. I guess I'll try later?

I enjoyed the search boxes on the bottom of each page, perhaps they may be added sometime in the future?

A.

11th Jan 2015 20:23 UTCMilan Rokanovic (2)

Great Work,thanks.....

11th Jan 2015 20:25 UTCturtledove thrushe

Thanks Jolyon and the team for this wonderful update. It really helps to make the Mindat website more contemporary and modern. Backward compatibility with previously saved locality links also seem to be working as well. The forum interface is also much cleaner and more streamlined now as well.

Is Minfind.com still being migrated to the new server as I noticed it has the same message as that of yesterdays server migration.

Also would it be possible to have the description displayed when using the photo viewer on a mobile/tablet interface. It only displayed the locality and the species but not the description?

11th Jan 2015 20:31 UTCGeorge Creighton

Not impressed non functional with latest firefox and pale moon browsers(td)

11th Jan 2015 20:36 UTCSteve Stuart Expert

Looks fresh and new! Especially like the format on my Android smart phone; much easier to view and navigate.

I have noticed some problems in uploading and viewing pictures. Added one this morning, and it shows up in my personal gallery, but not in the gallery for pictures added today. In fact, no images show in today's gallery, nor in yesterday's gallery. Also, there is no choice for "most recently viewed" in the personal gallery. Nor for, "most viewed" or "least viewed".

Regards,

Steve

11th Jan 2015 20:38 UTCDavid Von Bargen Manager

I didn't have any problems with Firefox.

11th Jan 2015 21:41 UTCJosé Zendrera 🌟 Manager

I love this clean, minimalist design, congratulations to author and many thanks to all who have put it into operation.

11th Jan 2015 22:02 UTCGeorge Creighton

David Von Bargen Wrote:

-------------------------------------------------------

> I didn't have any problems with Firefox.

Is this how "" my photos "" side should appear?

Regards

11th Jan 2015 22:38 UTCPaul Brandes 🌟 Manager

Ok, first casualty of the new rollout......

I went to make small change to my homepage writeup and when I clicked save, it disappeared completely.

No big deal as I can rewrite it, but why did it go away??

11th Jan 2015 22:38 UTCKeith Compton 🌟 Manager

HI Jolyon

I see you had to put in a few extra hours at the last minute !!!!

Looks good so far

One comment: the mineral list after a locality is showing up as a single long long column rather than multiple columns

Cheers

Keith

11th Jan 2015 22:40 UTCJean-Claude Costes

nice work Jolyon!

Congratulations

Tom & Jean-Claude Costes

11th Jan 2015 23:05 UTCBob Harman

Nice new font, fresh pages, and minimalist approach, but apparently some major bugs exist. My pix, and the pix of others, both old and new, and in all the threads, don't show up without extra steps. This is cumbersome at present. Other steps seem cumbersome as well, but may be just that way until I get used to the new sequence of steps to navigate thru. Just like the nav system in my new vehicle …..cumbersome until you get used to the sequence….

At this early point, I reserve final judgement until the bugs are worked out and I get used to the sequence of steps to work thru the various threads. The lack of ease of posting pictures along with my posts is the big thing for me. CHEERS…..BOB

11th Jan 2015 23:28 UTCJohn R. Montgomery 🌟 Expert

Tim you have to fill in filters.. SEE "ORDER BY" CLICK "newest: to get "NEW PHOTOS TODAY"... trouble is you ALSO get all the other pic, not JUST "todays"....but it is in order

chhers

John

Edit: NEW PHOTOS TODAY (AND YESTERDAY) NOW WORKING

12th Jan 2015 00:31 UTCSamuel Stewart

Congratulations on the look of the modified site. Wonderful job to all who participated !!!!!

Regards,

Sam Stewart

Marietta, OH. USA

12th Jan 2015 02:50 UTCEckhard D. Stuart Expert

I just realized the changes and guess I have to get used to them. I would like, however, to second Becky Coulson's comments. Why don't we have separate search options for minerals and localities anymore? I loved the possibility to search an area for potential localities before going out on a field trip. Entering as an example "Maricopa County, AZ" just gave me 15 localities. Way short of what should have come up!

12th Jan 2015 02:54 UTCJolyon Ralph Founder

Keith

> I see you had to put in a few extra hours at the last minute !!!!

Is this actually possible without a time compressor? :)

12th Jan 2015 04:15 UTCKeith Wood

Time expander. It takes a time expander to enlarge the last minute. Otherwise you can only fit a small fraction of an hour into it.

12th Jan 2015 04:23 UTCKeith Compton 🌟 Manager

Hi J

I would have thought you would have had one of those old English phone boxes in the lounge room for that sort of thing !!!!

and ... If it was covered with a red cloth and had a light inside when working - might look like the Mindat logo !!!

Cheers mate

Keith

12th Jan 2015 09:51 UTCBecky Coulson 🌟 Expert

Eckhard, I realized that you just need to click on "advanced search" at the top of the page, and then you get combined locality and mineral searches. The "Maricopa Co." page comes up with a full list of localities and minerals. Only one extra step - a good trade-off for the excellent photos, etc.

12th Jan 2015 11:03 UTCDon Swenson

I assume one important reason for the format change is to make the site more user friendly. I know that I can still access the old search mechanism by clicking on advanced search; however, I am wondering you decided not to include a list of "major sites" on the new search function. For example, I entered uraninite on the new one and was greeted by 3 excellent photographs from 3 different localities. All well and good, but I am referred to 434 photos without any guidance as to which sites they represent. There are obviously more than 3 localities that have produced noteworthy specimens. For someone just learning about this mineral it seems a tremendous jump from 3 to 434. Why not include a list of other sites that have produced some of these noteworthy specimens?

12th Jan 2015 12:03 UTCDavid Von Bargen Manager

12th Jan 2015 15:40 UTCBarb Matz

I love the new look, especially the relocation of Photo of the Day - I always felt that needed to be more visible.

Thanks for all your hard work!

12th Jan 2015 16:15 UTCcascaillou

Nice to see the new site running!

Jolyon, would you want us to report things not working as we discover these? (mentioning our web browser and windows version too)

12th Jan 2015 16:24 UTCSpencer Ivan Mather

Brilliant, and thanks to you Jolyon...

12th Jan 2015 16:55 UTCLuca Baralis Expert

Jean-Marc Johannet Scritto:

-------------------------------------------------------

> Did you clean your web cache before using the new

> site?

Uhm, not sure... However now it show correctly! Good impression at first glance!

12th Jan 2015 17:18 UTCWilliam Ryland

So how do I add stuff when this is all I see and it won't minimize to allow more fields

12th Jan 2015 17:46 UTCPierre Clolus

Nice !

Thanks for your hard work :)-D

12th Jan 2015 18:04 UTCNorman King 🌟 Expert

Great stuff!

I can see the fixes as they come on board. And here's one more for you. I cannot add the means of identification of minerals I want to add to a locality (Reno, Washoe Co., Nevada). The minerals are quartz and calcite. I claimed I could identify them visually, but it wouldn't accept that! See photo 659551 which is in the system, but it still doesn't show on photos added today.

12th Jan 2015 18:32 UTCBecky Coulson 🌟 Expert

Just curious - I notice that on locality pages, the lists of minerals are in single (and sometimes very long) columns, rather than in multiple columns that use the entire page width. Is there a reason for this? Jolyon, I hope we don't drive you crazy with all our comments, questions and glitches.

12th Jan 2015 19:34 UTCDan Fountain

Looks great!

Two issues - I no longer see the images imbedded in messages. I get an Image Error with a link to view the image URL. And I still have a phantom new PM.

12th Jan 2015 19:56 UTCturtledove thrushe

I seem to be encountering various issues when browsing Mindat. Just this morning Mindat went down with a 522 Error and recently there were various failed to connect to database issues/errors. Is this part of the routine maintenance or improvements?

12th Jan 2015 19:59 UTCJolyon Ralph Founder

The new server is struggling a bit because of the demands on it at the moment. Our site relies on heavy caching to perform properly, and because the new pages are entirely unlike the old ones, the old cache had to be completely cleared out. This means the server is doing a lot more work than normal. Over time it will calm down, and as the server is a much higher specification than the old one it should perform much better in the future than it ever did before. But for the next week or two it may still be erratic - unfortunately there's not much we can do to help with this given the budgets we have available for hosting.

12th Jan 2015 20:06 UTCHenry Minot 🌟 Expert

I like the look of the new site , but when I go to "Collection statistics" in my catalog, I get nothing but a blank page...

12th Jan 2015 22:03 UTCKeven Semple

It's probably just me - but I can't find the old 'new mineral names' and 'new locations' info any more. And I miss them already

12th Jan 2015 22:52 UTCMartin Rich Expert

Looks great and has a modern layout!

Watching a photo in full view, the loupe-tool is very practicable. The main page of a locality looks nicer and has 2 or 3 photos on the top - I like it and there are some other features that I like.....

BUT, I miss some things!

On my mindat-homepage, I can't find the tool "most recently fiewed photos" and the view count near the thumbnail photo. I liked this, because I can see if my effort of making and uploading photos is right.

If I click on a thumbnail photo from the "new photos today" to see it full view and I want to go back to the "new photos today", I can not use the rigth mouse button with the arrow for "one page back" (I use Firefox). So I have to click on the top left of the page clicking on the mindat icon, than clicking on "photos", than clicking on "new photos today", than clicking on the page I visited recently,.... Nearly the same for watching the photo in the messageboard for the talk pages. :-S This needs too many clicks and time. Sorry for my crude comment, but this is a joke! In my profession, I like ergonomically designed tools, maybe I'm too sensitised, because I am a sinistral.

Anyway, thank you for your great work and keep on running!

12th Jan 2015 22:54 UTCTony Peterson Expert

I think Becky was right the first time......I liked the quick mineral/locality search boxes at the very bottom of the page and would like to get them back. Yes, the new search mode is powerful but quick & easy can be better. I could search for minerals and localities from ANY page with those and I used them routinely.

Two other things now missing I'd like to see.....photos in my gallery (and everyone else's I presume!) no longer have the # of views listed beside the thumbnail (you have to actually go to the photo page). Yah, it's vanity, but it's also a way to track the value/importance/impact of an upload and I'd like to get that back.

Also, a list of the discussion pages of my photos is gone from my home page. THAT was important because it alerted me when there was a problem with a new upload.

When you aren't busy attending to all my other requests, of course. :-D

Tony

12th Jan 2015 23:49 UTCcascaillou

I'm using windows vista and google chrome browser

Issues with website:

-search minerals by properties not working

Declaration of searchrule_X::minrow() should be compatible with searchrule::minrow() in /home/mindat/www/searchrule_classes.php on line X

Issues with message board:

-pictures embedded in messages aren't displayed: "image error"

-I also noted that if I want to post a link to an image from the web, there isn't anymore an option to display it as an image, so I can only share images as links. Is that normal?

-the forum navigation is also strange:

First, once I enter let's say the 'how to' section and then a subcategory let's say 'identity help', I cannot get back to the 'how to' section by cliking on it (doesn't work), the only way being to click another section such as 'general' and then I can click on 'how to' again.

Another problem is that if I enter several sections successively (for instance I enter the 'general' section, and then click and enter the 'how to' section), then clicking on the previous page arrow of my web browser doesn't get me back to the previous section I was reading, but to the mindat homepage instead.

-also a few errors when clicking the previous page arrow of my web browser several times: ERR_CACHE_MISS

Hope this helps. I'll report if I find more.

13th Jan 2015 00:11 UTCSteve Stuart Expert

There is a lot to like about the new Mindat. But, I'd like to see the number of hits shown for images without having to open them up and adding to the total. For me, seeing how many hits my images get helps gauge what is effective regarding species, locality and composition of the image. Thanks!

13th Jan 2015 03:20 UTCSteve Pegler

When I click on "maps" at a location, there is no location icon on the map display like there used to be. When I click on "nearest locations" I do get location icons on the map display. I'm using Google Chrome on an Apple computer. Am I doing something wrong?

I love the professional look of the new website. Thank you for all your hard work.

Steve

13th Jan 2015 03:25 UTCJolyon Ralph Founder

Some locations had a problem which I have now fixed, but the old pages are still cached so it may take some time.

13th Jan 2015 03:46 UTCTony Peterson Expert

Yah Steve, I'm repeating myself but I'll echo your point: Jolyon, obviously quite a few of us miss that. And instead of being able to sort our photos by # of views, we can do it by "rating". This mystifies me: some rather poor and I know seldom-viewed photos are very near the top of my sort by rating. It can't be right, unless "rating" is some obscure calculation. How is it determined?

Despite my complaints here, this is a wonderful upgrade and I know more is to come!

Tony

13th Jan 2015 03:59 UTCBill Cordua 🌟 Manager

I really like the upgrade, especially the multiple photos on the location pages. Neat, clean looking site. Been doing some data entry and modification on sites in Wisconsin and things seem to work well, although some pages are slow to load. Could be me. How are the photos that appear o location pages selected? Do I have some control on the photos selected for the pages I working on?

13th Jan 2015 06:21 UTCWalter Kellogg

Help:

I am an advertiser and can't find how to add a news story.

13th Jan 2015 06:33 UTCJohn R. Montgomery 🌟 Expert

I see what you mean TONY... when filtered by "rating" it certainly doesn't mean number of hits...

13th Jan 2015 10:40 UTCAntonio Borrelli Expert

Becky Coulson Wrote:

-------------------------------------------------------

> Just curious - I notice that on locality pages,

> the lists of minerals are in single (and sometimes

> very long) columns, rather than in multiple

> columns that use the entire page width.

Yeah I also second this. Not very handy on locality pages with long mineral lists.

But for the rest I like the new upgrades (tu)

13th Jan 2015 11:08 UTCRui Nunes 🌟 Expert

I've been discovering the new Mindat and I'm very well impressed indeed. The new look and some new features are very friendly.

A question: in my photo gallery how can I access to "my" alpha locality list (as available for minerals). I only have access to a country list which is not nothing practical. Thank you.

Rui

13th Jan 2015 11:23 UTCDon Swenson

"Why not include a list of other sites that have produced some of these noteworthy specimens?" - That is one of the purposes of the "Best Minerals" pages that are on the messageboard. Also in the location list for the mineral, those sites marked with gold and silver stars are some localities that have provided good specimens of the species.

I'm not sure your solution is helpful to a newcomer unfamiliar with the features you have cited. Let's say someone shows a neophyte his/her killer uraninite specimen then tells the neophyte he/she can learn more on Mindat. When said neophyte enters uraninite in the new search, he/she learns about 3 sites, none of which may be appealing or useful. As a neophyte he/she might be stymied and/or frustrated. If adding a list for each mineral is going to be a large operation, then I understand why it wasn't included right away. I fully appreciate the time and effort needed to produce the new format and I'm not demanding that the list feature be added immediately. I would like to know if Jolyon is considering this idea as something to be tackled in the future. I am trying to help refine the new format.

13th Jan 2015 11:52 UTCAlfredo Petrov Manager

There are still ways to get the whole list: 1) click on "Advanced Search" and type in "Uraninite"; 2) a list of mostly obscure varietal names comes up - Click on the highlighted "Uraninite"; 3) Scroll to the bottom of the long Uraninite page and click on "Show localities", after which all 2,815 of them should appear. I agree that this is not something a newcomer to Mindat is going to intuitively bring to completion.

13th Jan 2015 12:34 UTCOlav Revheim Manager

Don,

The purpose of the "Best Minerals" articles is to list major sites of minerals. Unfortunately, there is still no such article for the majority of minerals and it also appears that the link from the mineral page to the corresponding article is temporarily lost.

Please see the following article in progress and please let me know what can be done to meet your expectations for a presentation of noteworthy localities.

Olav

http://www.mindat.org/forum.php?read,69,338287,338287#msg-338287

13th Jan 2015 12:57 UTCPaul De Bondt Manager

Yes Steve Stuart.

That's what I think too. You can only improve when you know where to look.

The minID on the pictures would be interesting too instead that the picture size. I think not very much people care's about the size of the pic. What is important is that the pic is good.

The minID could help reporting more easily the uploading of child photo's when they are not uploaded as such.

I hope this helps.

Paul.

13th Jan 2015 13:43 UTCRolf Luetcke Expert

Have been looking at the new site and have mixed feelings. I assume some is just learning to navigate the new site. I have not had success with the whole child photo thing. I often put several photos of a specimen but have not found a way to find those except by going to the edit feature. None of the photos seem to show there are child photos at the moment.

Rolf

13th Jan 2015 14:38 UTCDavid Von Bargen Manager

" I often put several photos of a specimen but have not found a way to find those except by going to the edit feature."

There are multiple mindat icons in the upper left corner of the photo to designate there are child photos available.

Once you are viewing the main photo page, the arrows to the left and right of the photo allow you to step through the child photos.

13th Jan 2015 15:15 UTCKevin Czaja

A.Mathauser Wrote:

-------------------------------------------------------

>

> I enjoyed the search boxes on the bottom of each

> page, perhaps they may be added sometime in the

> future?

>

> A.

I absolutely second this sentiment!! It was very convenient to not have to take another step and clink on a link to access the form I use constantly on the site. But otherwise, everything looks wonderful.

13th Jan 2015 16:08 UTCLarry Maltby Expert

The new site looks great! Here is some feedback on editing articles.

On the edit page the “shortcut icons” at the top are not working. Editing can only be accomplished if I type in the code.

On my published articles, the text that I wrote to the right of a photo now overlaps with the edge of the photo. Previously the text was properly spaced. Perhaps the new border on the photos is interfering with the spacing. (See the article about the Seaman Museum) If this cannot be corrected let me know and I will reformat the articles.

I hope that this is helpful.

Larry,

13th Jan 2015 17:06 UTCRui Nunes 🌟 Expert

Larry,

I have the same problem with my articles. I have edited some and changed the photos from float=left to float=right

See: http://www.mindat.org/article.php/1461/Calcite+Aragonite+Eccentric+Speleotherms

Rui

13th Jan 2015 17:53 UTCRolf Luetcke Expert

David,

I had always used that before and looked for it earlier today but the multiple image indicator was not there. My wife keeps telling me "a work in progress" and I realize that. I had just looked this morning and couldn't find that feature. As I had said, lots different and have to figure it all out.

Rolf

13th Jan 2015 18:00 UTCRolf Luetcke Expert

Just checked and the multi image icon is just not anywhere in any of the images. I will just have to keep looking until things are all up and working.

13th Jan 2015 18:05 UTCJohn Betts

I too miss the search boxes at the bottom of every page. It saved a click by not having to call up a separate search page for every query.

13th Jan 2015 18:08 UTCDavid Von Bargen Manager

The child icons are on the gallery pages

http://www.mindat.org/gallery-14872.html

Photo page:

13th Jan 2015 18:10 UTCDavid Von Bargen Manager

"I too miss the search boxes at the bottom of every page." - They will probably be back in the near future.

13th Jan 2015 18:17 UTCLarry Maltby Expert

Rui,

Thanks for the information. Your solution looks very nice! I sometimes like to have text next to the photo so that the photo can be seen while reading in the same screen. It would be nice to have a (“text box” float left”) and a (“text box” float right) each having word wrap with an extending bottom like the “quote box”. We could then easily position text and pictures. I will try your method.

Larry,

14th Jan 2015 04:42 UTCDouglas Merson 🌟 Expert

Just had most of the buttons at the top for message board, about Mindat, and others switch to Japanese characters. The only way out was to close browser and log back in. Seems fine now.

14th Jan 2015 16:35 UTCRolf Luetcke Expert

David, the photo is one of what I was experiencing. My wife checked on her tablet and the child photo were there, we checked on two other computers, all there. Just my computer refused to have them. I was not missing how to see where the icon was, it was a P.C. problem. I had to completely switch to a different computer. Something was wrong with my computer, not mindat. I was not missing where the icon was as you can see. It was just funny to have to figure that out, luckily we had other computers. Guess my laptop was dying or something.

Wanted to comment, do like the new site very much, will get used to it quickly.

Thanks for trying to help.

Rolf

14th Jan 2015 17:24 UTCDavid Von Bargen Manager

You might have to do a hard refresh (to get the css file to update) hold the shift key down when you refresh.

14th Jan 2015 18:02 UTCJolyon Ralph Founder

Rolf, what web browser are you using?

14th Jan 2015 20:17 UTCHarald Schillhammer Expert

Just found another glitch: the locality search does not recognize umlauts.

14th Jan 2015 21:57 UTCRui Nunes 🌟 Expert

Following the last message... neither the accentuation characteres like "ã ç ô á à" in the search functionalities or for example in the website generated text, as in the screenshot

14th Jan 2015 23:55 UTCRolf Luetcke Expert

Jolyon,

Thanks for your reply also. We use internet explorer. As I had said, we found it was only the one old laptop I had been using, all the others worked fine.

Now that I am using a newer spare laptop everything works great. It was just the oddest thing that it happened only on that one computer. My wife had said my old computer was slowly dying anyway and now I have everything I need again.

Thanks again for the helping comments.

Love the way the photos are now. It is just getting used to things.

No Worries

Rolf

15th Jan 2015 01:31 UTCIan Whitlock

Why can't you drag and drop the photo's onto your desktop anymore? Instead it just zooms in & out on the photo :[

15th Jan 2015 03:47 UTCPaul Brandes 🌟 Manager

Another issue discovered.

I am no longer receiving email notifications when someone has replied to a private message or when new photos were uploaded that need to be reviewed. I checked my preferences and and all the boxes are checked.

Any ideas???

15th Jan 2015 04:45 UTCMartin Rich Expert

Just curious.

I noticed on new photos from yesterday, there are different locality names for the same photo. The locality name given on the thumbnail photo and the locality on the headline in the full view are the same. The locality name in the detail description is longer. E.g.: Lechnerberg, Kaprun,.... and Lechnerberg (slag locaity), Kaprun,.... http://www.mindat.org/photo-659722.html

In the new photos today and in the member photo-pages it is able to sort the photos by rating. What or who make this rating (Standard & Poor's :-D) and how does this work?

Final question:

Can everyon share my photos on facebook etc. without my agreement?

15th Jan 2015 08:54 UTCUwe Kolitsch Manager

"Lechnerberg" photo: Jolyon programmed the photo display such that any parentheses are omitted for easier readability.

However, in that case all info on that the locality is a slag locality is lost.

"What or who make this rating?"

The uploader him/herself.

15th Jan 2015 10:36 UTCJolyon Ralph Founder

So it needs to change from

Lechnerberg (slag locality)

to

Lechnerberg slag locality

Parentheses are for alternative names and shouldn't really be used for descriptors like this.

15th Jan 2015 11:34 UTCDavid Von Bargen Manager

"In the new photos today and in the member photo-pages it is able to sort the photos by rating. What or who make this rating (Standard & Poor's grinning smiley) and how does this work?" The rating orders by the number of votes the photo got from managers , then the number of votes by users and then the number of views.

15th Jan 2015 11:43 UTCJolyon Ralph Founder

> I am no longer receiving email notifications when someone has replied to a private message or when new photos were uploaded that need to be reviewed.

The email is being sent out OK, I got a notification last night of a private message. As it's a new server maybe your email provider is now sending the mail to your spam folder.

Jolyon

15th Jan 2015 11:44 UTCJolyon Ralph Founder

> Can everyon share my photos on facebook etc. without my agreement?

They are not sharing your photo on Facebook, they're sharing a link to your photo on facebook (ie when you click it in facebook it goes straight to your mindat page).

Unlike before the new sharing by facebook clearly states your copyright in the share message shown on Facebook too.

15th Jan 2015 12:20 UTCJolyon Ralph Founder

> Why can't you drag and drop the photo's onto your desktop anymore? Instead it just zooms in & out on the photo

On any image that has been marked as 'Public Domain' or 'Creative Commons' licence then there is a button in the image info box to download the image.

If the image is copyrighted then you will need to contact the copyright owner to ask their permission to receive a copy of the image.

Too many people have been taking images off of mindat and sharing them around without permission and often without crediting the photographer, so we have deliberately made is harder for people to do this.

Jolyon

15th Jan 2015 13:27 UTCUwe Kolitsch Manager

"So it needs to change from

Lechnerberg (slag locality)

to

Lechnerberg slag locality

Parentheses are for alternative names and shouldn't really be used for descriptors like this."

You're right - this would be more logical. I noticed we already had some cases (Lavrion) where the parentheses had been omitted.

Will make a global replace.

15th Jan 2015 20:59 UTCGiovanni Scapin

Good evening, congratulations for the new site and for graphics and sharpness of photos.

I have a question: there are delays in the approval and load photo?

I have uploaded more than 180 photos in the last four weeks, from Italian site ( Bergamo province - Lecco province- Novara province-Aosta province) , at today are pending, there are problems with the new relase?

or there are delays from the manager ?

Thank for a response.

Giovanni

15th Jan 2015 21:46 UTCMartin Rich Expert

Thanks all for clarification!

16th Jan 2015 01:25 UTCcascaillou

I might not yet be used to the new site, but I've been searching everywhere and I can't find the mindat members articles directory, I can only see a recent articles directory, but not the older ones?

16th Jan 2015 07:13 UTCBruce Cairncross Expert

When I search for chrysocolla from the Mindat home page search option, I get the chrysocolla photographs (1004 of them) landing page, instead of the usual species page that lists derivation of name, chemistry, crystallography etc ...?

Bruce

16th Jan 2015 09:55 UTCHarjo Neutkens Manager

Bruce, if you scroll down the page you should get all the mineral data. The mineral pages have a different lay-out, with three head-photos in stead of one.

I just tried and it displayed fine (using Firefox), if it doesn't work you might try to clear the browser cache.

Cheers,

Harjo

16th Jan 2015 10:12 UTCDebbie Woolf Manager

I cleared the cache a while ago, sorry didn't have time to post.

16th Jan 2015 13:15 UTCHarjo Neutkens Manager

I meant that Bruce can try clearing his browser's cache.

16th Jan 2015 13:58 UTCJohn R. Montgomery 🌟 Expert

There used to be choice to view "personally collected" specimens...is that now gone or am I missing it

Thanks

John

16th Jan 2015 16:54 UTCGeorge Creighton

Steve Stuart Wrote:

-------------------------------------------------------

> There is a lot to like about the new Mindat. But,

> I'd like to see the number of hits shown for

> images without having to open them up and adding

> to the total. For me, seeing how many hits my

> images get helps gauge what is effective regarding

> species, locality and composition of the image.

> Thanks!

Ditto

Y you have to open the image first, seems like a bad option.

nb. if you want to see hit total opening that image increases the hit score.

Please correct if wrong:

Regards

16th Jan 2015 22:43 UTCKeven Semple

I guess I'm being a real nark about the changes - but I really do miss a number of the old features and in particular the New Specimen Names and Locations which were on the home page, and the ability to search by mineral name or location on every page.

The first two could be addressed relatively easily I believe - if the acknowledgements and endorsements were removed. I appreciate the need for acknowledgements - but I'm not sure that I, or anyone else for that matter, actually need to see them every time we log on to the site.

Just a couple of little gripes about the new format from a non tech-savvy old codger.

17th Jan 2015 15:03 UTCDavid Von Bargen Manager

"and the ability to search by mineral name or location on every page." - If you look at the bottom of the page, now you can.

17th Jan 2015 15:07 UTCNorman King 🌟 Expert

I agree with Steve Stuart and subsequent comments. I don't want to know the picture size for everything, but I'd like to see number of hits, at least for my own photos. The number of hits is a useful form of feedback.

17th Jan 2015 15:15 UTCNorman King 🌟 Expert

I noticed that for 17 January, 2015 the thumbnail POTD photo on the Mindat home page is cropped. It doesn't show the termination. For any particular crystal, seeing that it is terminated might make me want to click on it to study the crystal more closely. I don't think those photos were cropped previously, and, I would say that it is better, in general, to not crop the home page POTD thumbnail photos.

17th Jan 2015 15:22 UTCNorman King 🌟 Expert

I'm Ba-a-a-ck!

I just noticed that there is an irritating gray bar across the enlarged photos. For the 17 January POTD (again!), that gray bar goes across the termination I was trying to study, and is a real downer. It seems to be on all full-sized photos. Can we do something about that? I realize that most photos will not fill their space completely, but some do, and that gray bar can be a real nuisance for those.

17th Jan 2015 15:26 UTCRui Nunes 🌟 Expert

Does anybody know, what search I have to do to see my complete locality list? Thks

17th Jan 2015 15:37 UTCPaul De Bondt Manager

Norman,

The " annoying " bar is probably due to the lay-out of the initial image.

I am sure there will be looked at.

But if you want to see the terminations of the crystal, you must open the image.

When it is open, you can drag the image to the center and, this is a very good enhancement to Mindat, you can zoom in and look more closely the termination.

I hope this helps.

Take care and best regards.

Paul.

17th Jan 2015 16:56 UTCJohn R. Montgomery 🌟 Expert

NORM KING wrote: "I agree with Steve Stuart and subsequent comments. I don't want to know the picture size for everything, but I'd like to see number of hits, at least for my own photos. The number of hits is a useful form of feedback."

I too think it would be much more desirous to have "hit count" than size of pic.

Love the new site

John

17th Jan 2015 16:59 UTCNorman King 🌟 Expert

Paul, The gray bar seems to be associated with the (generally) two lines of print at the top of the enlarged page. OK, zoom and drag are great. But no, the cropping of thumbnails is not good. Why can't we fix the latter? After all, thumbnails are not what you zoom or drag. And I don't click on them to see if anything might be present but not shown in that view.

17th Jan 2015 17:25 UTCJolyon Ralph Founder

Photo stats will be added back in asap

17th Jan 2015 18:08 UTCA. M.

Will there be any more changes to the options on home pages to view photos?

I would like to see an option to view photos that are "not in gallery", just those that are posted on my page only - right now I can only select "gallery" or "all". I don't see a link to view "unapproved photos" either.

Also, I liked that before I could pick from a list of specific localities - now it's just sorted by countries. When I have a lot of photos from a country that's a lot to go through. I can add a mineral to the search, but that will exclude all the others I may have posted from that same locality.

A.

17th Jan 2015 18:27 UTCStephanie Martin

Nice new look and feel, less is more. My only comment would be to swap the columns for Mindat News and New Discussions, because Mindat News is not always daily and may not look fresh, while and the discussions are current, it would make more sense to me to have that front and centre, Just my thoughts.

Great work everyone!

thanks,

stephanie :-)

17th Jan 2015 18:29 UTCTony Peterson Expert

Of course, I'm happy to have PotD today, and happier still that the mineral is that which was named after the GSC's first director.

But in future, could tall images such as this be squeezed into the square space allotted, rather than cropped? Makes the picture look silly.

Tony

18th Jan 2015 14:55 UTCStephan Wolfsried Expert

Well done, Jolyon!

The display of Photos is better now, but if You look at HR photos e.g. with an Ipad air You must enlarge the Photo slightly, then it loads the higher resolution.

Otherwise You can't see the details in the best possible manner.

Stephan

18th Jan 2015 16:47 UTCKevin M Lippson (lippo57@juno.com Lippson)

I love the new site, but I really miss the New Localities section.

18th Jan 2015 17:32 UTCcascaillou

Just noticed a problem on the forum:

all brackets like those [ ] (as often used in chemical formulas for instance) have been replaced by < > (which sometimes even caused deletion of everything that was written between the brackets)

I also checked recent members articles, but in articles that problem didn't show up, apparently that is only on the forum.

18th Jan 2015 17:32 UTCJolyon Ralph Founder

> The display of Photos is better now, but if You look at HR photos e.g. with an Ipad air You must enlarge the Photo slightly

This was actually quite tricky do to because of the way the scaling works - but I will look and see if a solution can be found in the future other than loading in the 1x image and then immediately replacing it with the retina version. We also don't want to make it too slow to use on the ipad.

Jolyon

18th Jan 2015 19:38 UTCSteve Pegler

I see that the location icons are back on the "map" pages for the locations. I love this site for looking for new (to me anyway) places to collect. Checking out seldom visited old abandoned mine sites is great fun for me. What may have been a mineral with no value to an 1800's miner might be a great specimen to us mineral collectors today. Thank you Jolyon for all your hard work in making this an even better resource for mineral collecting "diggers" like me.

Steve

Steve Pegler Wrote:

-------------------------------------------------------

> When I click on "maps" at a location, there is no

> location icon on the map display like there used

> to be. When I click on "nearest locations" I do

> get location icons on the map display. I'm using

> Google Chrome on an Apple computer. Am I doing

> something wrong?

>

> I love the professional look of the new website.

> Thank you for all your hard work.

>

> Steve

19th Jan 2015 05:51 UTCcascaillou

here's an example of what I was saying previously: http://www.mindat.org/mesg-66-138948.html

chemical formula are completely messed up (bracquets replaced by arrows, and several terms between brackets deleted)

19th Jan 2015 05:56 UTCTimothy Blackwood

Hi,

While trying to view photos in Rob Lavinsky's gallery, I get a message that a connection is being made and that's as far as I get. At least until the connection get's timed out and I receive an Error 524 message. In addition, I get information saying that my browser and CloudFlare are working, while the Mindat host is not working. Also, the occasional Fatal Error - Unable to connect to database appears. Yet, I am able to view my own photo gallery. Strange... What's causing the problem viewing Rob's gallery? Thanks in advance.

Best wishes,

Tim

19th Jan 2015 08:29 UTCOlav Revheim Manager

Thank you Cascaillou, fixed for the arfvedsonite article. There might be others that needs to be corrected. Please let me know if you see any.

Olav

19th Jan 2015 08:48 UTCDebbie Woolf Manager

Tim, I've replied to your email, all sorted now.

19th Jan 2015 09:00 UTCcascaillou

Unfortunately it is not only one article, it's everywhere on the forum!

EVERY post of the mindat forum that contained brackets [ ] had these replaced by arrows < >, and the content between the brackets was often deleted in the process (however, you can still view the deleted content when editing the message, meaning that this content is not lost forever but it simply doesn't display on the forum).

19th Jan 2015 09:41 UTCJolyon Ralph Founder

We changed the way the forum code is written so that it uses the same markup codes as in the rest of the site, using < rather than [

To make this work we had to use a global replace to switch < to [ in forum posts. Those in formulae will need to be manually edited back.

Jolyon

19th Jan 2015 09:58 UTCcascaillou

thanks for these explanations Jolyon.

I also pointed to a few other problems in page 3 and page 6 of this thread, if that can help.

19th Jan 2015 13:27 UTCFlavio Giuseppe Taricco

When viewing "Site Photos" of a locality, are exposed only 10 photographs, even if the locality contains more. (IE 11 - W 8)

If possible it would be useful to have:

1 - A sorting by photo_id (in other words, sorted by entry into the system Mindat)

2 - Viewing photo not yet approved

3 - Viewing photo approved but not in gallery

4 - When you click on Contact Me feature when you're not logged it would be nice to specify a sentence like "This function is only allowed when you are logged on"

Many thanks for your work!

19th Jan 2015 21:15 UTCBill Cordua 🌟 Manager

Hi,

I'm working on upgrades and additions to various locality pages (Wisconsin, Maryland and Virginia mostly). I'm getting a lot of timed out, error messages and server unavailable messages on many pages. Other pages are loading with glacial slowness. It's taking me way longer than it should to get things done. Is this just me, or are there bugs still to work out?

20th Jan 2015 10:46 UTCUwe Kolitsch Manager

It's a problem of Google indexing the Mindat pages. Jolyon is working on it.

20th Jan 2015 13:24 UTCLarry Maltby Expert

Bill,

Some time ago I had so much trouble writing articles while using Google Chrome that I switched to Internet Explorer. The problem eventually also started there. I now use Internet Explorer but I always refresh the edit page prior to writing code for an article. This seems to work most of the time.

Larry,

20th Jan 2015 14:46 UTCBob Harman

For the most part, I continue to applaud the new site with its improvements.

I agree with STEPHANIE's suggestion of swapping Mindat News with New Discussions.

I also have one continuing complaint as several folks have personally called me saying they cannot causally peruse the threads mostly having pictures with accompanying short descriptions such as The Nature Thread, Gail's Favorites of the Day, Favorite Self-Collected Specimens, and the Midwest Geode Thread etc etc. Most of the photos on these threads now have to be individually brought up requiring extra steps for most every posting. One parent said her 10 year old has lost interest in the site and pictures of rocks due to these extra steps and cumbersome nature of casually looking thru the pictures of each collector's specimens. If true, this is not the way to generate the continuing interest of young collectors. CHEERS…….BOB

20th Jan 2015 17:15 UTCKelly Nash 🌟 Expert

Bravo, Jolyon! The improvements are great and I am learning about valuable new features all the time.

If I had one (not major) complaint right now (other than the server issues, which I gather are temporary) it would be that the head photos for some of my favorite localities are not really representative. I don't know what the algorithm is for picking these. Apparently locality photos are the preference, but sometimes this results in (for example) three pictures of people digging in one hole in a corner of the property. The mineral pictures are often not the best either, I hope there is a way to start replacing some of the "duds". My hope is that some of the area experts can just do it, rather than my having to write out my concerns, like this:

To give one example, Madawaska (Faraday) Mine is famous for it's coated and included calcite crystals. But the photos shown are two somewhat blurry aerial views and an ilmenite crystal, even though the text says that the ilmenite specimens that are labeled as being from there are actually from another, nearby locality (Bentley Road).

Again though, liking the changes overall.

20th Jan 2015 18:00 UTCJolyon Ralph Founder

Kelly.

a) We need to get those ilmenite photos moved ! (can our canadian experts deal with this please?)

b) managers and regional editors do have the power to edit a page to select specific photos. One way that you can help is to go through the galleries for your favourite localities and choose the photos that you think best represent the site. It can accept three photos, or four if they are all portrait format.

Post on the forum somewhere with your suggestions!

Jolyon

20th Jan 2015 18:37 UTCRob Woodside 🌟 Manager

Messages sent

20th Jan 2015 21:36 UTCHarold Moritz 🌟 Expert

Overall, loving the new site format! Great work.

Noticed that for locality photo gallery, only 10 thumbnails display with no links for additional pages at the bottom of the gallery page when I know there are more than ten pix posted. Doesn't change no matter how I filter. I'm hoping it's a bug cuz I cant find some pix I posted because I don't know what keyword to search for and can't browse them all via additional page links.

The only thing I don't like overall about the new format is that the picture order of the mineral gallery defaults to "rating", which doesn't seem to mean anything, rather than mineral A-Z, which I would prefer as the default.

20th Jan 2015 23:21 UTCAlexander Ringel

Im not a friend of so massive changes in one run. I was not very happy, when i found out, that i have to search simply for everything. Image descriptions are gone to somewhere else. Some elements don't work properly (i can only see first image of every set) and the new image list is just like a shopping site. A systematic search in the photos is much harder now. I would prefer to have the old mindat back. Even if im alone with my opinion, i think that it was way better before the changes.

21st Jan 2015 10:42 UTCDebbie Woolf Manager

Alexander the site had to update, with modern technology devices it needs to be available to all, we move with the times :-)

You just need to acquaint yourself with the new features.

To see the description you can do this in two ways click the up arrow at the bottom of the photo or regardless of the position of your cursor use the up arrow on the keyboard/keypad, this pulls up the description, to remove these details press the down arrow on the keyboard or down arrow at the top of the photo. To remove the locality details shown at the top press space, to bring those details back press space again. To view child photos press the right arrow key and then if you want to go back press the left arrow key, either clicks on the arrows top, bottom and sides of the photo or the arrows on a keyboard work.

Not sure what you mean "new image list is just like a shopping site"

21st Jan 2015 21:55 UTCAlexander Ringel

Now i found out, why the images and so many stuff didn't work on my machine and some things had been weird.

Mindat uses scripts on external sources (jquery.com). I usually block scripts from third parties, especially java. The reason is, that hackers attempt to crack those third parties frequently and sometimes they are successful and install malware. In this case, they can make lot of websites to malware spreaders. Jquery was already targeted and hacked successful.

http://www.itnews.com.au/News/396164,jquerycom-website-suffers-second-attack-in-a-month.aspx

http://www.riskiq.com/resources/blog/jquerycom-malware-attack-puts-privileged-enterprise-it-accounts-risk#.VCF33EtRmns

http://securencrypt.com/jquerys-website-served-malware-for-a-day/

Some detailled information about hte risks and disadvantages of 3rd party scripts and why i dont like those.

http://blog.sucuri.net/2014/11/the-dangers-of-hosted-scripts-hacked-jquery-timers.html

I thought, mindat would never use third party scripts but i guess i have to live with the modern times.

22nd Jan 2015 19:13 UTCPeter Van Hout

I understand that with changing modern technology devices that for a growing part of the people Mindat needed some changes. But I have to agree with Alexander to that if i could vote, that i would vote to get the old version of Mindat back.

22nd Jan 2015 21:00 UTCCarles Millan Expert

Great update! I really like it!

But I miss being able to order the photos by Most viewed first.

This feature had been available for many years but has vanished now.

Hard to understand. A step backward?

23rd Jan 2015 02:51 UTCKelly Nash 🌟 Expert

Jolyon, with reference to my comment about many localities needing better "header" photos on the locality page, now that I have begun making a concerted effort to go through my favorite localities, the vast majority are really pretty good. I will make a list in a few days and post it, but it won't be as long as I initially thought based on just looking at a few, on my first pass through. What does stand out is the oft-repeated comment that we need more site photos in general.

23rd Jan 2015 20:11 UTCJolyon Ralph Founder

Alexander

There wasn't any really major reason for us to use jquery.com's hosting - so I've switched back to using our own local copy. WIth cloudflare there shouldn't really be any significant difference in performance doing this

Jolyon

24th Jan 2015 01:16 UTCJolyon Ralph Founder

'Most Viewed First' has returned as a search option :)

24th Jan 2015 11:57 UTCCarles Millan Expert

Thank you!

I am sure it will be useful for many users.

24th Jan 2015 13:22 UTCPeter Nancarrow 🌟 Expert

On first impression, I rather like the "Mindat new look" (especially the three-photo banner at the top of the each of the mineral species and locality pages, and also the zoom facility for the photos.

However, without wishing to be over-critical, rather than filling this post with a list of all the things I DO like about the "Mindat new look", I will point out a few oddiites which have come to my attention.

Regarding first impressions for newcomers, I feel that the site homepage looks a bit like a newspaper front page with its headline missing. Perhaps the "Welcome to Mindat.org" box should be highlighted/coloured in some way (or simply enlargerd in font?) and made into a more eyecatching banner object? Also of course that prompts a question which I have been considering for some time, and one which I thought might have been changed with the site update; why is it that we are seeing everytthing on a narrow "page" which looks like an A4 print preview? I know it may be suitable for tablets, smartphones etc, but on a large desktop monitor there is a lot of wasted space on either side. (Of course that does mean that if my flat screen monitor fails and I have to go and dig out my old 14" CRT monitor from the attic, it will still fit!)

With such a major update, of course there are bound to be a few bugs to be squashed, and some of these have already been mentioned above (e.g. the statistics link on the personal catalogue leading to a blank page) , but I have also noticed that the "My Blogs" tab has disappeared from the personal homepage. Is this just another bug to be dealt with, or has there been a change in policy to discontinue personal blogs here at Mindat? (And if that is the case, why is there an RSS feed link for blogs on the personal homepage?)

Overall a good feel to the site though, and I know it's a major "work in progress" (But do try to get some sleep Jolyon!)

Pete N.

24th Jan 2015 15:17 UTCLarry Maltby Expert

The new format is very friendly to the visually impaired. My vision cannot be corrected better than 20/40. This is not a major handicap and I can see everything on the new site quite well, but I tend to read slower than I did when I had 20/20 vision. If I use the tools to enlarge the site it changes the view on the screen to provide larger text but the entire site remains in line. I can read everything simply by scrolling down. I don't need to use a slider bar at the bottom of the page to read across a line of text. Very nice!

25th Jan 2015 05:23 UTCJamie Cheshire

A few complaints:

1. The mineral and locality search boxes are at the bottom of the main page, even below the ad banners! They would be more useful if they were nearer the top.

2. The title bar on mineral pages is formatted the same as the rest of the page, and therefore isn't very prominent. Perhaps an increased font size with a colored background, like the old site?

3. I strongly dislike the pop-up/drop-down descriptions on mineral photos. It's so much more useful to keep photos and descriptions together. Also, white text on a black/dark background is murder on the eyes.

Overall, I think the new site is fine.

James

25th Jan 2015 10:30 UTCDavid Von Bargen Manager

"The mineral and locality search boxes are at the bottom of the main page, even below the ad banners! They would be more useful if they were nearer the top." - you can use the search box in the menu at the top. The individual mineral and locality searches are for those of us who grew very used to them being at the bottom of every page.

"Also, white text on a black/dark background is murder on the eyes." - you can change the background color of the photos (more- device settings)

25th Jan 2015 10:32 UTCJolyon Ralph Founder

Hi James

> 1. The mineral and locality search boxes are at the bottom of the main page, even below the ad banners! They would be more useful if they were nearer the top.

There is a unified search box at the top. The boxes were returned to the bottom, where they have always been, because thats what people here prefered. Don't forget you can always press the HOME and END keys to jump to the top/bottom of your web page.

> 2. The title bar on mineral pages is formatted the same as the rest of the page, and therefore isn't very prominent. Perhaps an increased font size with a colored background, like the old site?

It's possible we can increase it slightly. It was reduced to make things more legible on mobile devices.

>3. I strongly dislike the pop-up/drop-down descriptions on mineral photos. It's so much more useful to keep photos and descriptions together.

This isn't something we can change now. The photo viewer is not a scrolling page any more (as you have found), it simply would not be possible to add scroilling back into the viewer, and I do not want to have to maintain two totally different sets of image viewer code. I believe the advantages of the new system outweigh the disadvantages.

> Also, white text on a black/dark background is murder on the eyes.

Actually, I find it's much easier on the eyes in general. When I'm working all day long on the mindat code I always use a black background with light writing. Now, while I write this message in black on a white background I find THIS is much harder on the eyes. It's all down to what you're used to I guess.

However, you can change this. Go to the 'More' menu and select 'Device Options', there is an option to put the descriptions on a light background.

Jolyon

27th Jan 2015 13:47 UTCJamison K. Brizendine 🌟 Expert

I want to thank Jolyon for all his hard work! The web page to me is a vast improvement and the front page layout looks great.

These are the features I like:

A. The default font on the front page and forums. The text is now easier to read and a bit bigger.

B. The pop-up text for photos took some getting used to, but since I work with a double monitor, I can just create two separate windows, one for the text and one for the picture.

C. I like how each mineral page has more than one photo of that mineral.

D. I agree with Chris Stefano, the new events feature is nice as well.

Jolyon, the only thing I would suggest at the moment is one of two options:

A. Create a “Bug Hunter” thread and on the first post create a list of known issues. That way all the reported bugs are confined to one page, and if new bugs are found they can be reported there, rather than having a bunch of threads floating around.

Or…

B. List the known bugs on your first post of this thread.

Again, thank you for the update…Rock on!

29th Jan 2015 20:21 UTCRay Hill Expert

I was in shock for a minute searching around for my familiar messageboard etc but it looks much more interesting.

Thanks for all the good work.

See you guys in Tucson!

1st Feb 2015 11:20 UTCFlavio Giuseppe Taricco

Restriction examples viewing "Site Photos"

- Brosso Mine - http://www.mindat.org/loc-2078.html - Site Photos (70) - Visualization: Page 1 of 1 (1 to 10 of 10 total) - http://www.mindat.org/gallery.php?pco=2&loc=2078

- Torino Province - http://www.mindat.org/loc-130804.html - Site Photos (273) - Visualization: Page 1 of 1 (1 to 10 of 10 total) - http://www.mindat.org/gallery.php?pco=2&loc=130804

- Piedmont - http://www.mindat.org/loc-2100.html - Site Photos (669) - Visualization: Page 1 of 3 (1 to 10 of 21 total) - http://www.mindat.org/gallery.php?pco=2&loc=2100

- Italy - http://www.mindat.org/loc-14553.html - Site Photos (3817) - Visualization: Page 1 of 3 (1 to 10 of 21 total) - http://www.mindat.org/gallery.php?pco=2&loc=14553

- UK - http://www.mindat.org/loc-14281.html - Site Photos (2118) - Visualization: Page 1 of 1 (1 to 10 of 10 total) - http://www.mindat.org/gallery.php?pco=2&loc=14281

In addition to this problem, if it were possible, it would be nice to see again in your personal gallery, all photos posted, with the ability to sort them in order of discharge.

Thanks so much for your attention and for your work.

11th Feb 2015 12:57 UTCFlavio Giuseppe Taricco

Today a pleasant surprise!

The problem of displaying only 10 photos ..

Has been Solved!

Thank you and congratulations!

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