[xrotaryguy]

Can we start a suggestions section? I don't mean to be too presumptuous. I know I just got on this board today, but it would be nice to have a suggestions section.

 

[rbgrn]

You got it! I made this the official thread. All site suggestions should go here.

 

[Mannyman]

Avatars?

How come no Avatars?

 

[TexomaEV]

Some topic suggestions

EV Formulas

Battery Education

PWM Controllers

Contactor Controllers

Rectactor Controllers

Motors

Chargers

Battery Balancers

Instrumentation

Open Source Projects

Video's of EV's, Projects in progress, DIY Videos, etc.

Schematics/Drawings

 

[rbgrn]

Avatars are on now. As for the topics, I'm hesitant to create a bunch of detail forums until there's a need. How about let's say that when there is over 15 threads for a given topic, we'll create a new forum and move them over.

 

[Mr. Sharkey]

This is my first experience using a vBulletin forum, and I have to say, it's very functional. I like the rich text options, although I seldom use much more than the occasional <italics> and a very rare <bold> formatting.

Wondering if there is a Spell Checker plugin? I sincerely dislike posting spelling errors, and copy-pasting into Word is an extra step in the process. Since vBulletin tags each editied post with a time-stamp, it's less desireable to go back and edit ~after~ you read your flubs on the forum.

 

[rbgrn]

I know there are some good spellchecker addons for this software and I'll look into that soon. For now, consider using Firefox 2, it has an excellent live spellchecker. It checks as you type.

 

[Mannyman]

Thanks for the Avatars. Seeing Mr. Sharkey's shark was worth it.
Anyone know if Opera has a spell checker? FireFox is my favorite but has a memory leak on my machine...

 

[Mr. Sharkey]

Seems like I've seen some Spell Check plugins for Opera, I'll do some research on that. As a dedicated, ain't-gonna-change-fer-nobody Opera user for the last seven or eight years, this might be handy in many other situations.

I've always wondered: If spell checking is so accurate, why can't it correct my password?

 

[xrotaryguy]

You can also download the Google Tool Bar and use it to spell check. I don't know what I would do with out the google tool bar. It makes surfing so fast.

If you use Firefox as your browser, it will spell check for you too.

 

[Mannyman]

Yeah I have it for IE and FF but Google hates/does not support Opera for some reason (probably their ties to yahoo).

 

[Mr. Sharkey]

Here's what Opera recommends for spell checking on their browser: Aspell for Windows. A Google search turned up many other spell check programs (search string ="opera spell check"). The Aspell looks like it will affect all installed programs on the computer, so it may have other uses as well as Opera. I dunno, I did this once before with another similar program and ended up deleting it because it interfered with either Word or Eudora's native spell check feature. I've downloaded the program, but will probably have to wait until I take a trip into town to download the dictionary. It's 2.3Mb, and that will take a while on my slow dial-up connection. Id rather brush my teeth and go to bed now rather than in 45 minutes...

 

[Mannyman]

I downloaded and installed Aspell, and misspelled installed with three "l"s and it corrected it. I had to right click and check spelling, but that's ok.

Thanks.

 

[xrotaryguy]

What is the difference?

What's the difference between the "All About EV Conversions" board, and the "Technical Discussion" board?

 

[Mr. Sharkey]

In "Technical Discussion" you'll get dirty!

Forum Suggestion:

I notice that signature pictures are allowed if they are uploaded to the DIYEC server, but [ IMG ] tags are not allowed in signatures, allowing images to be displayed from a remote server. Assuming that our so-far small group didn't abuse this ability, I wonder if it's possible to turn the image tags on for signatures?

 

[Mannyman]

In "Technical Discussion" you'll get dirty!

Sharkey,
Is that the "Technical" answer?

 

[xrotaryguy]

haha So, if I have a question about how to uh... lets say, wire up a speed controller, I should post in Technical Discussion?

Is the "All About EV Conversions" board more just for posting interesting sites and articles or something?



As for the img tags... I would guess that using img tags requires less from the diyec server. Am I wrong on this? If that is the case, then shouldn't img tags be the preferred method?

 

[Mr. Sharkey]

shouldn't img tags be the preferred method?

Yes, but it's more of a formatting issue, which is why it's included in the forum setup. Some users don't understand that posting an 800x600 1.4Mb file of their cat coughing up a hairball isn't going to be considered tasteful by some of the other users (particularly those of us on dialup ISP). Very large images can also cause the page apperance to get messed up pretty fast. Having the image posted on the DIYEC server allows the software to regulate the size of the image, both in pixels and file size.

I'd like to think that we could have the [ img ] tags in sigs open and that user's would use the capability responsibly. Once this forum has 10,000 members, it might be a different matter altogether.

 

[xrotaryguy]

Aah, I can see how dial-up users would have a problem with large images. The guys on the EVDL have been complaining about it quite a bit since talk of this forum started. Email list guys You could be right about content being a problem, but I would be surprised if this were a problem in signatures. It's more of a problem with people posting up pics from sites like steakandcheese.com (if that awful site still exists ) isnt it? I guess I have seen people have weird things in their signatures. Who knows were some of those images came from... For the most part though, the signatures I have seen have been banners that people put together with photoshop and then hosted on photobucket or some other image hosting service.

Oh well... As long as we are allowed to have img tags in the message body, I'm happy.

 

[rbgrn]

I'm pretty sure you have to use bbcode to post images as html is disabled (or it should be!)

I think there may be an option to not display images as well so dial-up users can have fast browsing.