Forum Update Feedback, version 4.7

[Asashosakari]

11 minutes ago, sumojoann said:

Hi, How do I select desktop view mode in my browser?  (Sorry, I’m an aging boomer who is not technologically sophisticated).  

It shouldn't be necessary now, as per Exil's message above some layout adjustments have been done, and you should be seeing the notification and messaging buttons again in the mobile browser mode.

Edited December 8, 2025 by Asashosakari

[Asashosakari]

Oh, [i]BBCode[/i] support is now gone entirely. I forget, was that something that we needed to specifically install in the previous version already, or was it still supported natively by 4.3 and it's now no longer there?

Although, am I the only one who still even bothers to type formatting tags? I could do without that if I have to, although my bigger concern is that I'm also using BBCode to mass-style posts sometimes, especially those that include a lot of URLs...

Edit: Oof, right, no BBCode would also mean no more fixed-width text for me via [font] unless I want to go back to using CODE boxes (which don't support the inclusion of URLs or any other custom formatting like colours), or resort to generating HTML for every simple thing.

Edited December 8, 2025 by Asashosakari

[sumojoann]

11 minutes ago, Asashosakari said:

It shouldn't be necessary now, as per Exil's message above some layout adjustments have been done, and you should be seeing the notification and messaging buttons again in the mobile browser mode.

Yes, they just now popped up.  Thanks for notifying me.  And thanks, Exil, for fixing the problem.  

[Akinomaki]

16 minutes ago, Asashosakari said:

Oh, [i]BBCode[/i] support is now gone entirely.

Ah, my spirited rikishi posts relied on that

[Akinomaki]

I see that the calendar is gone now from the main page, replaced by events, the calendar has to selected from there.

Peculiar display on the page, upcoming events till the end of the year and then a few for next year, including birthdays of this year https://www.sumoforum.net/forums/events/

[Asashosakari]

One other thing: Is it possible to style links differently? It's rather confusing that they are in simple black (okay, actually dark grey) text now and look indistinguishable from text that's underlined.

Link?

Link?

[Godango]

No bugs, but a huge thank you from me for the work you have put in. I'm also a dev (mostly back end but I've dabbled in full stack) if you ever need an extra pair of hands.

[Jakusotsu]

While checking all the moderation tools after the upgrade, I realized that the most recent warning we had to issue is four years old.

I want to say thanks to this great community and how it evolved over initially more troublesome times! 

Can't imagine any other moderator's job being that easy. 

[I am the Yokozuna]

Very happy with the new layout and design: thank you for your work, Exil! I also hope that the other points raised by the community will be considered for future improvements. I would love too a dark theme, if available. 

[RabidJohn]

8 hours ago, I am the Yokozuna said:

I would love too a dark theme, if available. 

I came here to ask if this was possible. I have dark themes on most of my regular sites, and sometimes feel like I need shades when I come here.

[sumojoann]

Exil, Thank you for adding back in the Mail & Notifications icons.  They work great now on my iPhone 13.

I would like to mention another couple of issues on my iPhone 13.  

1) The “Remember Me” feature on the Login screen is not working.  When I log in, there’s already a Check Mark on “Remember Me”.  After I log in, if I leave SF & then come back, I am no longer logged in.  In the past, I never had to keep logging in.  I tried unchecking the Check Mark & Rechecking it while logging in but that didn’t work.  
2) When I started typing this message, a long narrow hotdog-shaped box outlined in white appeared on the screen.  It got in the way of my typing so I ended up typing in the box.  A message inside the box said, “Add files.”  So I back-spaced, thus deleting the words I had typed inside the box.  (I think my typing inside the box was my error).  But the box won’t go away unless I touch the screen with my finger!!!!  But when I resume typing, the box reappears!  So strange.  
3) When I typed the above sentences, the color of the letters is a VERY PALE GRAY.  It’s hard to read.  If I tap what I typed once, the letters change to black, but if I tap again, they again become a VERY PALE GRAY.  I can barely read what I typed.  (The box outlined in white is still there).  Beneath it is a larger hotdog-shaped box that has symbols resembling >< except they are pointing up and down.  Off to the right is a large check mark ✔️.  If I click on the check mark, the check mark goes away and the boxes disappear and the letters change from VERY PALE GRAY to black!  I’m going to try to send this message now.  

 

[sumojoann]

(See previous message).  As you can see, I was able to send it.  First, I tapped the screen once so the color of the letters would be black.  Then I hit Send.  
EDIT to add — The message won’t send when the letters are VERY PALE GRAY.  I HAD to tap the screen once prior hitting the Send button.  (Keep in mind that this is on my iPhone 13).  I no longer have a desktop or laptop so I have to rely on my iPhone 13 to enjoy SF.  

Edited December 10, 2025 by sumojoann
Add additional info

[Jakusotsu]

It seems to me that the space around the actual content has grown bigger while the text itself has grown smaller. Modern design, I presume.

But all swell as long as it's working.

[Exil]

On 08/12/2025 at 23:18, Asashosakari said:

Is content embedding supported entirely out of the box or are there plug-ins to make additional options possible? I see Youtube, X/Twitter and Reddit are working (same as before the issues of the last half year), but e.g. Instagram and Facebook aren't. Then again, any Meta-related embedding seems to be notoriously flaky on other platforms as well, so maybe it's not worth bothering with even if it's possible, I dunno.

BTW, I agree with Akinomaki that finding the Edit link hidden inside the Report/Delete dropdown is quite annoying (even if that placement is logical to some degree), but I suppose there's no way around that now.

There is a single setting for content embedding and it lists both Facebook and Instagram as embeddable, I don't know whether they require a certain format of link to embed or if it is just bugged. And I'm afraid taking the time to learn the Invision theme markup to move buttons around the layout is beyond the scope of "getting the forum back online".

On 09/12/2025 at 00:00, Asashosakari said:

Oh, [i]BBCode[/i] support is now gone entirely. I forget, was that something that we needed to specifically install in the previous version already, or was it still supported natively by 4.3 and it's now no longer there?

Although, am I the only one who still even bothers to type formatting tags? I could do without that if I have to, although my bigger concern is that I'm also using BBCode to mass-style posts sometimes, especially those that include a lot of URLs...

Edit: Oof, right, no BBCode would also mean no more fixed-width text for me via [font] unless I want to go back to using CODE boxes (which don't support the inclusion of URLs or any other custom formatting like colours), or resort to generating HTML for every simple thing.

IIRC, BBCode was deprecated back in 4.3 times, maybe even before that. There might be a way to enable fixed-width content, though.

On 09/12/2025 at 00:29, Akinomaki said:

I see that the calendar is gone now from the main page, replaced by events, the calendar has to selected from there.

Peculiar display on the page, upcoming events till the end of the year and then a few for next year, including birthdays of this year https://www.sumoforum.net/forums/events/

The calendar (or rather the upcoming events list) is now configured to show five events or seven days of events.

On 09/12/2025 at 03:00, Asashosakari said:

One other thing: Is it possible to style links differently? It's rather confusing that they are in simple black (okay, actually dark grey) text now and look indistinguishable from text that's underlined.

Link?

Link?

There is a slight color difference, but maybe switching the link and hover colors would be an improvement?

On 09/12/2025 at 09:03, Jakusotsu said:

While checking all the moderation tools after the upgrade, I realized that the most recent warning we had to issue is four years old.

I want to say thanks to this great community and how it evolved over initially more troublesome times! 

Can't imagine any other moderator's job being that easy. 

I agree, a thank you is in order. 

[Asashosakari]

1 hour ago, Exil said:

IIRC, BBCode was deprecated back in 4.3 times, maybe even before that. There might be a way to enable fixed-width content, though.

Yeah, I vaguely seem to recall that you had to install a plugin for it at one point, but that might have been even before the 4.3 update back in 2018, so I'm not actually sure how it still worked these last few years.

I see your (successful?) post in the test forum, was that copy-pasted with formatting already in source or through some other magic? I've stayed away from doing outside formatting since [font][/font] was just more convenient (I've got an AutoHotkey macro...), but that wouldn't be a difficult switch to make. [url][/url] would be a bigger loss for me personally, but I suppose I should stop being lazy and start to format all URL-heavy content properly in HTML anyway, after all I'm already doing it with some of it.

In general I've always been a bit confused that Invision removed the ability to change fonts from the editor entirely...my preferred choice Lucida Console wasn't on there either way IIRC, but at least there was the option to use Courier for fixed-width text back when it still existed. There isn't some backend setting to re-enable that which we just haven't been using, right? Or perhaps there is but it's been consciously left disabled? Fair enough if so.

(Another tag I I do use and haven't been talking about yet is [spoiler][/spoiler], but that's such a rare use case that it won't be hard to switch to using the editor's spoiler button. Speaking of which, I should check if the "using paragraph breaks in spoiler text corrupts the post" bug was finally fixed by Invision...)
 

1 hour ago, Exil said:

There is a slight color difference, but maybe switching the link and hover colors would be an improvement?

Right, I did notice the tiny difference when I realized that neither text colour is actually full black.  I wouldn't mind trying to flip the link and hover colours...looks still darker than it used to be, but that's not really material as long as it stands out from regular text at all.
 

1 hour ago, Exil said:

I agree, a thank you is in order. 

I'm quoting you out of context, but a big general thank you is in order to you, as well! 

[sahaven111]

What does the rocket symbol next to everyone's Profile picture mean?

[Asashosakari]

12 minutes ago, sahaven111 said:

What does the rocket symbol next to everyone's Profile picture mean?

On mouseover it shows the user's forum rank (based on post count). The image itself seems to be named default_rank.png, so I guess it can theoretically be customized for each rank? We didn't have that previously, the ranks were just shown as text.

Speaking of which, I guess the option to replace that rank display with custom text has been removed by Invision as there's now no space to display that anyway? I can't find the field in my user profile options now.

Edited December 10, 2025 by Asashosakari

[sahaven111]

40 minutes ago, Asashosakari said:

On mouseover it shows the user's forum rank (based on post count). The image itself seems to be named default_rank.png, so I guess it can theoretically be customized for each rank? We didn't have that previously, the ranks were just shown as text.

Speaking of which, I guess the option to replace that rank display with custom text has been removed by Invision as there's now no space to display that anyway? I can't find the field in my user profile options now.

Thanks, It was random, Out of place and sometimes distracting but not now, Now that I know what and why it is

[Jakusotsu]

And welcome to @PersistentPufferfish being the first new member since end of July! 

[Exil]

19 hours ago, Asashosakari said:

I see your (successful?) post in the test forum, was that copy-pasted with formatting already in source or through some other magic? I've stayed away from doing outside formatting since [font][/font] was just more convenient (I've got an AutoHotkey macro...), but that wouldn't be a difficult switch to make. [url][/url] would be a bigger loss for me personally, but I suppose I should stop being lazy and start to format all URL-heavy content properly in HTML anyway, after all I'm already doing it with some of it.

In general I've always been a bit confused that Invision removed the ability to change fonts from the editor entirely...my preferred choice Lucida Console wasn't on there either way IIRC, but at least there was the option to use Courier for fixed-width text back when it still existed. There isn't some backend setting to re-enable that which we just haven't been using, right? Or perhaps there is but it's been consciously left disabled? Fair enough if so.

I finally figured out how to enable fonts in the editor, so now we have two options: either use a monospace font or a CSS class based solution. The former is officially supported (i.e. less likely to break between versions and CSS changes), so that would be my preferred option. Could you and @Akinomaki (and anyone else in the habit of posting such content, of course) give it a whirl to see whether the font-based solution would suffice?

19 hours ago, Asashosakari said:

Right, I did notice the tiny difference when I realized that neither text colour is actually full black.  I wouldn't mind trying to flip the link and hover colours...looks still darker than it used to be, but that's not really material as long as it stands out from regular text at all.

This turned out not to be a good solution as the link color is shared between most of the links in the layout. Needs more investigating.

19 hours ago, Asashosakari said:

I'm quoting you out of context, but a big general thank you is in order to you, as well! 

You are, generally speaking, welcome.

18 hours ago, Asashosakari said:

On mouseover it shows the user's forum rank (based on post count). The image itself seems to be named default_rank.png, so I guess it can theoretically be customized for each rank? We didn't have that previously, the ranks were just shown as text.

Speaking of which, I guess the option to replace that rank display with custom text has been removed by Invision as there's now no space to display that anyway? I can't find the field in my user profile options now.

Custom titles are gone, it seems. Status updates are also slated to be removed in version 5, so I disabled them to ease the migration. It is, however, possible to customize those rank icons, maybe we'll look into that (and before you ask, no, they can't be disabled).

[Exil]

Oh, and about that dark mode, did you know you can just take colors and invert them with something called math?
Scroll down to see what I mean.

[Asashosakari]

6 hours ago, Exil said:

I finally figured out how to enable fonts in the editor, so now we have two options: either use a monospace font or a CSS class based solution. The former is officially supported (i.e. less likely to break between versions and CSS changes), so that would be my preferred option. Could you and @Akinomaki (and anyone else in the habit of posting such content, of course) give it a whirl to see whether the font-based solution would suffice?

My honest opinion: I like the .fixedWidth{font-family:monospace;} CSS solution better (and perhaps that's also more reader-friendly, making the display customizable browser-side?), but I'd be okay with using the default Courier New from the editor menu.

  

6 hours ago, Exil said:

Oh, and about that dark mode, did you know you can just take colors and invert them with something called math?
Scroll down to see what I mean.

Very nice!

Edited December 12, 2025 by Asashosakari

[shimodahito]

On 08/12/2025 at 16:00, Asashosakari said:

Oh, [i]BBCode[/i] support is now gone entirely. I forget, was that something that we needed to specifically install in the previous version already, or was it still supported natively by 4.3 and it's now no longer there?

Although, am I the only one who still even bothers to type formatting tags? I could do without that if I have to, although my bigger concern is that I'm also using BBCode to mass-style posts sometimes, especially those that include a lot of URLs...

Edit: Oof, right, no BBCode would also mean no more fixed-width text for me via [font] unless I want to go back to using CODE boxes (which don't support the inclusion of URLs or any other custom formatting like colours), or resort to generating HTML for every simple thing.

I use this feature to line up columns... love courier font for some presentations.

[Yamanashi]

It's mostly a great thing to have functionality back, and to know most of the problems are fixable and are being fixed -- it's especially good to know we can have new members.

As for the look 'n' feel -- I'm only warming to it very slowly.  The overall mix of font, darkness, and color make me think we're still operating in SumoForum Safe Mode, and will get the cool new background picture of some crashing wave in a day or two.

[Jakusotsu]

11 hours ago, Exil said:

I finally figured out how to enable fonts in the editor, so now we have two options: either use a monospace font or a CSS class based solution. The former is officially supported (i.e. less likely to break between versions and CSS changes), so that would be my preferred option. Could you and @Akinomaki (and anyone else in the habit of posting such content, of course) give it a whirl to see whether the font-based solution would suffice?

If it's guaranteed that future updates won't mess with old posts using the Courier font, then I'll gladly do away with my usual code boxes.