No attachment options at all.

Started by Antechinus, May 30, 2024, 06:41:11 AM

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Antechinus

I seem to have lost any ability to use attachments on this site, regardless of which board I try. Permissions issue? Or something else?

Kindred

Are you looking at the full edit/post screen?
Attachments are not available on quick reply or quick edit
Слaва
Украинi

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"Loki is not evil, although he is certainly not a force for good. Loki is... complicated."

Aleksi "Lex" Kilpinen

#2
As far as I know, there have been no permission changes like that in some time. I can check this later though.

EDIT:
Later being now,

General - Post attachments    Given by: SMF Friend, Support Member of Previous Months, SMF Master
Support boards - Post attachments    Given by: SMF Friend, Support Member of Previous Months, SMF Master

Some other boards I should check?

EDIT2, this is how it's supposed to look. See the info text below the form.
Slava
Ukraini!
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Antechinus

#3
Ahhh. You have completely changed the interface since earlier versions of 2.1 (and I hadn't used it for yonks).

Ok. Makes sense now. :D It is frankly a lot better now than the earlier versions. It actually functions like something normal humans would expect.

ETA: Although the insert process is still not exactly intuitive, as this topic shows: https://www.simplemachines.org/community/index.php?topic=589020.0

It was that topic that got me here. I was about to reply with "Easy, you just do it like..." and then was "Eh wot? Where haz the attachments stuff gone?" :D

Also, you still have the old clickable header which says "Attachments and other options" and above that you have the "Click this for attachments stuffs" link, so the obvious thing to do (for an average human who is used to SMF) is to click the header bar that has always existed and has always contained, y'know, the attachments options like it says.

Which, of course, now shows nothing useful when clicked, and in particular shows nothing at all to do with attachments despite what the header bar text says. A bit of thinking about normal human perceptions would be a good thing. My 2c.

Honestly, this is one thing I still think phpBB does better than SMF.

Antechinus

This would make much more sense. It's just as easy to do, too. A bit easier, even, because the current CSS is more convoluted than it really needs to be.

You cannot view this attachment.

Diego Andrés

Quote from: Antechinus on May 30, 2024, 05:21:41 PMWhich, of course, now shows nothing useful when clicked, and in particular shows nothing at all to do with attachments despite what the header bar text says. A bit of thinking about normal human perceptions would be a good thing. My 2c.
Dunno but this might be your language being outdated, are you using default US?


Quote from: Antechinus on May 30, 2024, 06:19:10 PMThis would make much more sense. It's just as easy to do, too. A bit easier, even, because the current CSS is more convoluted than it really needs to be.
I can assume 'only icons' option was chosen due to translations having longer strings.

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Antechinus

Yeah, that was it. I usually use UK English (IOW, actual English) or Română, neither of which appear to have been updated. The Yankglish version is saying sensible things (amazingly enough).

And I'm sure translations could be done in that space, if they were done sensibly. IOW, phrased for clarity and brevity, not giving a complete user language in one string. :)

Aleksi "Lex" Kilpinen

Valid feedback, not going to argue. I think it's quite easy to understand as is, but evidently it's not so for everyone.
I guess the decision was made simply to make it space efficient.
Slava
Ukraini!
"Before you allow people access to your forum, especially in an administrative position, you must be aware that that person can seriously damage your forum. Therefore, you should only allow people that you trust, implicitly, to have such access." -Douglas

How you can help SMF

Antechinus

Oh one other detail: the insert and delete icons do have a title attribute, and it actually says sensible things too. But, although this is fine for sighted users who are using a device that supports hover, if they think to actually try them out on hover (and some obviously don't) it's not so good for non-hover devices (which there are a lot of these days) and it's no good for screen readers either (because screen readers generally ignore the title attribute and have done for years).

So, all up, it's not a great move for a11y. For screen readers, the best way of doing it would be to have actual link text. If it's there, they will read it. If you really think you need to hide the link text from sighted users that is not at all difficult. You could just set the pseudo holding the icon to display: block; and put hidden overflow on the anchor. That will kick the text out of sight and just leave the icon visible, but screen readers will still pick up the text.

But I do think having visible text should be possible if it is done sensibly, and that it would be an advantage overall. If it doesn't fit well with all languages in the current presentation, change the presentation to something more functional. This is admittedly an easy job for custom themes, but it would be good to have it that way by default. :)

And, while I'm looking at the attachments interface anyway, I really do not understand why it is still showing people how many available kB they have used, when what they will really want to know if they are in a situation where the limit is relevant is how much space they have left.

This was mentioned back when the 2.1 attachments stuff was first grumbled about by many people. I remember looking in the javascript and noticing that the figure for "kB remaining" was calculated by the js, but had then been deliberately converted for display into "kB used so far".

All this does is force average people to do mental arithmetic, for absolutely no benefit, and I know from years of experience that average people are not good at mental arithmetic. They find it bothersome, so why inflict it on them when there's no advantage in doing so, and when the figure they will actually want is already (hidden) in the code?

Be nice to them. Just tell them how much space they have left. :)

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