Legacy New user remarks/issues

[Gladius]

This is probably going to be part issue/usability/how-do-I thread so bear with me.

• First thing I noticed is that the version number is 1.3.4 instead of .6 for my vB version, probably wrong?
• Secondly, is there actually no documentation at all?
• Thirdly, first thing I'm blinded by in the settings is the unreadable bright red warnings in all the warnings in Manage Settings and elsewhere... argh, this might look OK for the colourblind, but it's unreadable for me on the regular blue ACP background. PLEASE change this...

Next:

Path To Downloads - there's no explanation what the path should be, relative to or not, why is it not a "valid value"... the error popup "There are errors in the settings on this page." is really quite useless.

For instance, I've set my path to ./vb_dl which is the same format that I use with the attachment storage, but it's telling me it's not "valid". What the heck?

Edit: Nevermind, figured out I need to manually create the dir and chmod it 777. On top of that, the path must be FULL and not relative. All of this REALLY needs to be in the help...

Edit:

Extensions - [Add New Extension] [Add Extension Group] links are white text on bright grey background - unreadable. I spent quite some time looking around for them before I spotted them. Same thing with Categories.

Feature request: please add an enable/disable option for each extension... right now during testing I don't want all of them to be available but the only way to disable them seems to be to delete them. That's really not ideal as I'd have to redo all of them and reset all their settings if I wanted to enable them again.

Edit: Modules... I'm guessing what I'm doing here as there's no description on... anything. I also have no idea what each of these modules does exactly so I've got no idea what I'm enabling or disabling. Sure, I can do a good guess based on the names but, uh...?

What does the "Global" module do exactly and what does granting one usergroup access to it do?

 

[Dylan]

I fixed the categories/extension button problem on your site. I also verified it's a mod_security issue. I disabled mod_security and turned the flash uploader on and it worked. The easiest work around is how I have it set now on there. I modified the htaccess and added

<Files "vbdownloads.php">
SecFilterEngine Off
SecFilterScanPOST Off
</Files>

The flash uploader is on now and working. Let me know if that's ok. I don't know of another way to fix it.

 

[Gladius]

Ah yes, I remember we did that with a few other apps on other sites too, so that works.

As for the Flash uploader, well, I tried editing an existing entry and uploading another file and still only got the "Pending..." loop. It did end up uploading eventually, but there was no real progress indicator until it showed the entire bar full at the end. That's not really much of an indicator, is it supposed to behave like that? What I'd expect is to see gradual progress, the line slowly extending until the upload was finished.

Edit: I tried a new, larger upload, a bit under 10MB, but got nowhere with it... no real indicator and it never seems to have uploaded.
Edit2: Huh, I tried again and the indicator worked this time...but I uploaded an exe file. It didn't check that it was not an allowed extension again and carried the upload to completion, but after that the file did not appear on the download's page, only the title and description. I'd just rip this uploader out and replace it with a better version because this one's got way too many issues. It doesn't even fail consistently, some times it works, others it doesn't.

 

[Gladius]

Also, another issue: can't use HTML in the category descriptions... really need this to work. Since only admins will have access to this it makes sense to allow HTML.

Another big issue with permissions is the View/Upload/Download permissions that need to be set with every new category... this is needlessly tedious as it needs to be redone and everything manually rechecked for every single category I want to add... if there was an option to set defaults for every new category and to mass edit it across all the categories this would be infinitely faster and more user-friendly.

The same thing that bugged me about the permissions that I mentioned before is present here as well... if I enable Unregistered and Registered Users to have access to View for instance, why doesn't this include everyone, including mods, admins, super mods, etc. considering that they all have Registered users as the primary user group? Basically, if a user belongs to more than one user group, if any of those user groups is allowed, the user should have permissions to view, download or upload. This does not seem to be the case right now.

 

[Dylan]

What browser are you using? I tried it out and it's working fine for me.

I uploaded a 7 MB file and I could see the progress on the bar, the exe gave a popup saying it's not allowed before redirecting and the zip worked.

EDIT:
I edited your files to allow HTML, not sure why it's not set to work since only the admins setup the categories

 

[Gladius]

FF 14.0.1. You can see my last uploaded file without the file attached again - this was the result of uploading that exe. But as I said, it's not consistent. Sometimes it works properly, other times it completely ignores the file extension and uploads anyway (just doesn't add the file to the download entry in the end).

I can easily reproduce it too, I've done it again just now. I'll send you a screenshot.

Btw, why does it even say "Pending..." as soon as you add a file to the queue? It doesn't start uploading on its own until you hit the Upload button, so that "Pending..." text is completely misleading as it suggests that something is already happening, when it is not.

 

[Dylan]

It will always upload the file. It needs to upload it so php can check the extension to see if it's allowed or not. If it's not allowed it pops up a warning message that the extension isn't allowed.

Pending is just the term used to say, the file is in the queue waiting for you to hit the upload button

 

[Fillip H.]

Pending is not misleading in the slightest - there is nothing in the dictionary definition of the word "Pending" that shows that something is happening as you suggest: Pending | Define Pending at Dictionary.com

 

[Gladius]

It will always upload the file. It needs to upload it so php can check the extension to see if it's allowed or not. If it's not allowed it pops up a warning message that the extension isn't allowed.

Pending is just the term used to say, the file is in the queue waiting for you to hit the upload button

Ouch, that's quite inconvenient... is there no way to have it just read the file name and deny that BEFORE checking the header after the upload?

But still, I don't get any warnings that the extension isn't allowed. I just get dumped on the download page after the upload finishes. This is the confusing bit.

Pending is not misleading in the slightest - there is nothing in the dictionary definition of the word "Pending" that shows that something is happening as you suggest: Pending | Define Pending at Dictionary.com

You're right, it's the "..." in combination with Pending that's misleading because to me that suggests that something is happening, because "..." is often used with various upload indicators in one (animated) form or another to indicate progress. Considering that nothing whatsoever is happening until you hit the Upload button, it'd be better if that "Pending..." wording was not there at all, or at least replaced with something helpful like "Press the Upload button below to transfer queue."

Just to illustrate why I bring this up - when I added a file to the queue, I assumed it will start uploading it right away, like Gmail does for instance. And so I've been waiting, looking at that Pending... text to start showing me how much has uploaded... and waited... and waited... until I realized nothing is happening. Only then did I try pressing the Upload button.

And frankly, it this was not obvious to me at a glance, it's not going to be obvious to 99% of regular users who don't even know what a Flash uploader is. Just saying... things need to be obvious enough that you don't need to figure them out first before you can use them properly. This is why feedback from first-time users is invaluable - because it shows you the biggest usability issues that accustomed users learn to get by later or work around.

 

[Dylan]

This is what I get on your site when I try and upload an incorrect file type.


The problem is that PHP is a server side script. It needs to upload the file to check if the extension is allowed. You might be able to work out some kind of javascript to run on the client side to check the extension but it would be messy and I'm not sure if it would work or not.

If you want to change the Pending... text it's in the dbtech/downloads/clientscript/handlers.js file on line 17

 

[Gladius]

I tried uploading a new file and didn't get it there... tried editing an uploading and adding it that way - same thing. The file is a self-executable ZIP but I assume that shouldn't make any difference. It should either upload and let it through or deny with a warning and reject. What it does is upload and reject, but provides no warning that the file type is incorrect.

And yes, I meant add an additional layer before the file is uploaded to the server to just check the file name... server checks would be just for security. Makes much more sense than wasting bandwidth for uploads that are going to be rejected, not to mention that it's very user-unfriendly to have them go through the whole upload just to reject it. Counter-intuitive.

I'd rather not have to change this with every upgrade but yea, I'll edit it. Can you also tell me where the font colour for this is set? That text is already practically unreadable, but once it starts uploading it gets obscured even further by a green overlay in that window.

 

[Dylan]

maybe you have popups blocked? I'm not sure what would be causing it. It works as expected for me with the same browser on your site.

I looked at the script and I think those colors are internal to the swf unfortunately. I couldn't find any settings to change them.

 

[Gladius]

Nope, not blocking popups... even if I was, I'd get a notice about it on top of the window. I get nothing at all. Though I tried uploading a different exe and did get one there. So...?

As for the colours, I'm not sure but I think it might be just using the same colour as the default text specified, which would make it look off as it is on any site with a dark background because it uses a white background in the queue field. There must be some way to change it to match say the black that it's using for the names of the queued files...

 

[Dylan]

Nope, not blocking popups... even if I was, I'd get a notice about it on top of the window. I get nothing at all. Though I tried uploading a different exe and did get one there. So...?

As for the colours, I'm not sure but I think it might be just using the same colour as the default text specified, which would make it look off as it is on any site with a dark background because it uses a white background in the queue field. There must be some way to change it to match say the black that it's using for the names of the queued files...

I think the matching color is just coincidence. When I upload a file on different styles the flash upload box looks the same. Grey background with black text, green color when uploading with a blue upload progress bar. I couldn't find any settings to change the color.

EDIT:
How big is the exe file you aren't getting a warning on? Maybe if you ftp it up to a location on your server and let me get it and try to upload it? I've tried with a few different exe files and they all worked as expected.

 

[Gladius]

Well, I assume you can figure it out? The colour obviously isn't OK as it is as it's practically unreadable and if it isn't taking the board text colour, then it certainly is specified somewhere.

The exe is about 10MB: Download epson324595eu.exe - Free Download from download.epson-europe.com

 

[Dylan]

The problem is I believe the colors are hard coded inside of the swf file. I don't think they're changable.
I just looked at your ACP and the max upload size is set to 5MB. Although it uses the swf to upload, it doesn't bypass the post size limit, not sure why it's not giving that error though. I'll check that out. But if you want files larger then 5MB on there you'll need to increase the limit.

 

[Gladius]

You don't have the source of the uploader to change it in and redo the swf? That's odd... but even so, there are a number of swf decompilers available.

Doh regarding the max upload size... still, should pop up an error about that too, right? You want me to leave it as it is for you to figure out why it's not giving the error?

 

[Gladius]

Bump...

 

[Dylan]

Even if I could decompile it, I doubt that would adhere with their copyright.
I tried putting an error in there. The problem is if the file is too large, it wont get uploaded to the server by the flash and my php wont have a record of it. I'll keep trying but I'm not sure if it's something I'll be able to get around.

 

[Gladius]

Now you've lost me... SWFUpload is open source. And they go as far as to specify this on their home page:

Unlike other Flash upload tools, SWFUpload leaves the UI in the developer's hands. Using a set of event handlers developers can display upload progress and status to the user in their own HTML/CSS UI.

Which is exactly what we're trying to change here, right? Am I missing something?

If for some reason what I wrote above doesn't apply (why?), why don't you replace it with something that you can actually edit? If even the most simple things about it that spoil the integration due to near-unreadable status text and for instance buttons that don't match the rest of the layout and a few other issues can't be fixed (though that sounds incredibly unlikely to me), it's obviously not something that you can work with in the future as it's going to be a constant obstruction to development. Don't you agree?

As for not displaying the error, sounds to me like another instance where it'd be very beneficial to have another layer of checking the file BEFORE it actually gets to the server, like already discussed previously. Both for file name (extension) and for file size. I'm not a coder but this makes much more sense to me than the current situation, which doesn't really work well.

 

[Dylan]

You were talking about decompiling their files. I know they state that on the front page of the uploader about being able to style with your own CSS but I can't find it in the docs and their forum doesn't exist anymore.

Like Cosmic said before, I got handed the product how it is. I wouldn't have put a flash uploader in there and will probably be looking at a way to replace it in the next version.

There is really no way to check the file size before it's uploaded. It can be done but it's clunky, only works on certain browsers and for certain HTML versions. Part of the problem is how you have your extensions setup. You have your server upload limit set to 5MB and your zip files set to 20MB. If you either up your file size limit to 20MB or reduce the zip allowed size to 5MB the script should be able to handle files outside the range.