What happened to vBulletin 4?

The announcements alone kinda contradict this. You mentioned a Sitemap... new feature. There's a video embed code in the editor... new feature. There's a new style, which is possibly a new feature but certainly a massive addition people are after. For the suite, there's the CMS, which is a lot of new features. Whole style manager is being overhauled and template syntax. Asset Manager or whatever:

vBulletin Asset (or Attachment) Management Demo - vBulletin Community Forum

vB 4.0: Template Merging and 3-Way Comparison - vBulletin Community Forum

vB 4.0 SEO Features - vBulletin Community Forum

How can those not count as new, major additions?

 

Like I said, you expect mediocrity you will get it. I was referring to the latest alpha. Anyway, i'm sure i have said enough on the subject. I gave you a straight forward response what you do with that is entirely upto you.

 

Whilst I fully understand why the team have decided to go for a "hardly any new features" approach to 4.0, I think the problem this presents can be seen by looking at recent releases:

3.5 - no new features for the end user who posts in the forums
3.6 - no new features for the end user who posts in the forums
3.7 - no new features for the end user who posts in the forums
3.8 - no new features for the end user who posts in the forums
4.0 - no new features for the end user who posts in the forums

This takes us back more than four years, and with the exception of the very badly implemented multiquote that nobody knows how to use, there has been NOTHING for the end user who just wants to make forum posts, the person that matters most to our communities.

In the meantime we've had pointless fluff like Social Groups and Blogs - and even these are badly implemented - and it got to the point where I gave up announcing release upgrades on my forum because people thought the "no new features for the end user" caveat in every announcement was starting to take the urine.

Meanwhile Invision (or whatever it's called this week) has come on in leaps and bounds and even has a full suite of properly integrated products available.

Quite why vB fell asleep in 2006 I have no idea. But I'm not convinced vB4 is the remedy to that, and it sounds like the team don't think it is either.

 

Hello again mark.

 

Wow, we have new bbcode, yay!!
SO, we're down to SEO and Sitemap features, and a new look. The new "look" is not a 'feature' by any means.

Hardly a "massive" addition that people are after. It's been out for years. Just because vBulletin is billing it as a "masssive" addon doesn't mean it is . It isn't as massive as they make it out to be, and this one thing will stop me (among other things) from upgrading to suite. vBulletin has let it's users down massively when it came to CMS requests. The only reason they took it on now? Because they could charge customers more for it.

Not "new", major additions by any means. These are rewrites, there is a difference.

 

Hello again Shelley. As you can see, my incessant whiney rants pop up everywhere!

 

Depends. That new style gives me an easy excuse to upgrade my forum's style. I decided not to do so yet because I feel it's pointless having the style overhauled when the next version of the software coming out means I'll have to change it again.

As for the person who mentioned the multi quote... hey, diss the features not being added all you like, but the multi quote I find pretty useful for quoting multiple people's posts.

Edit: And I don't see Mark.B's comments as whining. Some of the things he said on vBulletin.com recently were pretty valid concerns.

 

LOL That's quite okay. I remember the days of whiny rants and distant chants.

Wow, Awesome, the bbcode media feature i forgot about that. As far as I am concerned more bloat that I won't use.

Time will tell if jellyfish (Jellyfish is actually jelsoft I couldn't be bothered correcting it and used the spelling corrector which didn't actually correct it) have what it takes to cut the mustard. I believe the features and improvements will be noticed in releases after 4.0 the real features everyone wants.

Let's expect all that in a year and a half.

 

LOL it was me who mentioned multi quote. I didn't say it wasn't useful, just poorly implemented. How it works is not user friendly. It's ok when you get to know it, but it shouldn't be like that.

 

I'm not sure I get you there. I'm no fan of vB right now, but it's the same in both the major players. Click a "multi quote" button, reply, the quote gets added.

Not sure how much more simple it can be?

 

I always thought the multi quote worked nicely. No complaints with that at all or the way it was implemented.

 

The fault lies in the "Reply" bit.

The function of the Reply button has always been to reply without a quote. People work out to click each multiquote button, but then nothing happens and it isn't obvious what to do next.

 

I have to disagree. The first time I used the multi quote after quoting each reply the first thing I did was hit the reply button. I can't see how much easier the developers could have made such a feature.

 

I think it probably should auto-populate the QR box with each reply.

This does pose problems if you switch QR off, but does anybody do that?

It should actually be integrated with the "quickquote" button so that you can either press just one button to quote one message, or multiple buttons to quote multiple messages. This would also remove one button from the postbit. But you'd have to make it autopoulate the QR with the text.

People who switch the quick reply box off are luddites and probably don't need multiquote at all!

 

Hello Mark!

I wouldn't call it incessant ranting; it's almost purely factual, and I happen to agree with your standpoint.

 

I think this would be a preference driven implementation. I can see where your going but I prefer the way the multi-quote works in it's current state. Maybe this is down to myself being familiar with this way. who knows, I don't think the multi quote will be revisited by the developers.

Had you mentioned social groups, smiley manager albums and other excessive bloat from 3.7 then that would have been another story. As for the multi quote i think i like the way it performs.

 

I certainly wouldn't think it worth messing about with multiquote now, that would cause even more confusion. I think it should have been done differently in the first place that's all.

I have often thought of producing another button, which is just the same link as the reply button and sits next to it, but that says "Multiquote" or something. But that would mean making 20 odd buttons for all my styles. Plus, it'd ideally need a way for it not to be active unless a multiquote has been activated, something I'd not have the skill to do.

 

The only thing I think is needed to improve multi quote is it directly working with the quick reply box.

 

I definitely agree.

 

Absolutely! vB was the first one (IIRC) to create this and set the standard with this, and changing it right now would be a bit confusing, except for

which shouldn't actually be too confusing . I say shouldn't, but who knows, right?