>So it's intentional that some functions that are only used by a smaller number of people are somewhat hidden rather than put into the top level command UI.

Keeping things simple sounds great.

Still too many things cannot be scripted or scripting gets tedious fast (->factories). A command line with autocomplete would be great as well.

> In the future I do want to make scripts and extensions more easily browsable...

Recently you wrote that you are checking things out...

The latest versions of QtNetwork e.g. have typed arrays and you can easily use already existing code to unzip files. Using Git you can download whole repositories as zip files and when every file has a comment on the first line you could then just copy all scripts and the describing comment to the options window.

That could be done without a lot of work on your side.

Michael not sure if it could be customised that way, sorry not my area of expertise.

I love this forum like it is. It is just a forum, and in it´s simplicity it is perfect.

I think forum must has categories, like, News, finished Models, Wip, Discussions, Scripts, Help, e.t.c In the rest forum is ok.

Il like the forum, one of my favorite forum layout.

Moi3d is hands down the most rewarding experience I had in my whole 2d/3d computing life.
Don't care much for fireworks when a real work of art shows up, it's so rare.

Marc

Michael (amazingly) runs a one-man shop. He is one of the most responsive software developers going. I can't think of a single application that has a programming team that is more responsive to customer questions or desires that Michael manages to be all by himself.

I find the MoI discussion site very usable. I like how easy it is to find things and to control how it displays topics. Yes, it is bare-bones; but I wouldn't want to divert too much of Michael's valuable time into polishing it. Put me in the "ain't broke, don't fix it" camp.

Thanks everyone for the kind words!


@Marco:

> it might be sufficient to upgrade the forum software, beehive, to
> a more recent version( 0.8.2. -> 1.4.4.). they did introduce
> responsiveness some versions ago, so no need to change horses.

I occasionally check out new versions and haven't really seen enough stuff to really justify upgrading. It will be a fair amount of work to upgrade because I will have to reapply all the customizations that I've done.

How does the responsiveness come into play, is it only on mobile? I tried to look at their current version and resized the browser window and did not see any layout changes... ?


@Strube:
> That could be done without a lot of work on your side.

I wish that were so! But I expect the full feature set of a plug-in browser to be a very considerable amount of work, probably the back end would run on my own web server since it can be unwise to rely on servers that are out of your own control, and the most time consuming part would be all the new UI design needed for the plugin browser in MoI. So there's a whole lot more involved than just an unzip...


@Andrei:

> I think forum must has categories, like, News, finished Models, Wip,
> Discussions, Scripts, Help, e.t.c In the rest forum is ok.

Maybe... But what do you really think would be gained by having these different categories? One good way to analyze it, is look at the current top 50 topics and see what categories they would go in - is it some kind of even split or is it more like 90% of them would go into the general "discussions" category? If the great majority of messages would already be going into just one category, then there is not a whole lot to be gained by having different categories really. I think maybe in the future when there is more scripting going on a separate "developer" or "scripts" category could probably be good though.

- Michael

Hi Michael..

I think your right, they just seem to check for User Agents to trigger the mobile version. I first thought, i saw a media-query lurking somewhere...well, better than nothing..

Hi Marco, is the mobile version you're seeing there the same as using this link here ? :

http://moi3d.com/forum/index.php?webtag=MOI&noframes


If you like you can use that link above (it just has &noframes added to the address), and that will show only a one page topics list here rather than the regular split view.

- Michael

> In the future I do want to make scripts and extensions more easily browsable ... hasn't been a high priority quite as of yet.

> But I expect the full feature set of a plug-in browser to be a very considerable amount of work, probably the back end would
> run on my own web server since it can be unwise to rely on servers that are out of your own control...

Okay, this thread is about the forum. But for me trusting GitHub doesn't sound too unwise and having MoI3D load a repository and unzip it to the script form sounds like some full feature thing to me. (Considering that now people are searching the internet to find code snippets to get simple things like pan and nudge.)

But, well, I guess you already have a roadmap for V4 and don't need someone to explain time management to you...

Everything considered, I am reasonably happy with the flatness of the the current forum's structure.

There are two or three features I would definitely use if they were implemented:

- Giving kudos to a post: means a discussion needn't become bloated with 'thank you' messages - nice, and welcome as they are. For example, I like to give thanks for a useful post, but equally understand that I might be causing someone frustration when they open discussions with apparent new posts, only to find 'just another thank you note'.

- Favouriting a discussion: would make re-finding those discussions that much easier, without resorting to bookmarking. BTW, what do other people currently do in this respect?

The third isn't so much a forum feature request but general suggestion: that valuable discussions, (such as Max's scripts) are edited and added to the Resource page more frequently - they are most definitely AWESOME marketing material otherwise buried 'off-piste' in this forum to anyone who's new to MoI and trying to assess its capabilities within the 30 day trial period.

Beyond being enthralled by MoI's beautiful simplicity, delightful interface and power for all my needs, I am in complete awe of Michael's responsiveness on this forum, all-the-while simultaneously and single-handedly continuing to develop a product as complex as MoI. If that's the price of a forum without the fancy extras, or it takes time to consider them fully, so be it. Thank you Michael.

- Hamish

Hi Hamish,

> - Favouriting a discussion: would make re-finding those discussions that much easier,
> without resorting to bookmarking. BTW, what do other people currently do in this respect?

For this one, try going to "Edit thread options" which is at the bottom of the message view:




Or also a shortcut to get there is to click on the little icon area on the left of the thread list:




Once inside the thread options, set it to "subscribed":



After you click "subscribed" scroll down and push the "Save" button at the bottom to apply the change.


Later on when you want to view all these particular marked threads, change the "View" option at the top of the threads list to view subscribed threads only:




Is that the kind of thing you are thinking of?

One thing to note is that you may receive e-mail notifications of posts to subscribed threads, you can turn it off in options somewhere if you don't want that.

You can also use the "Interested" state instead of "subscribed" - but also I think by default any thread you post in will be set to "interested" - there is a setting under the forum options to not do that as well if you want to control it manually.


- Michael

Hi Michael,

That's perfect, thank you.

Cheers,
Hamish