Testing again <b>bold<b> and <i>itals<i> and <u>underscore<u> just made up the underscore code dont really expect it to work. now lets see...

Pfft okay, clearly that doesnt work for me. No dramas, I can speak plain, I spoze...if I have to...sounds a bit boring...

hang on. MORE TESTING...

how important is that slash. lets see </b>bold</b>

okay, enough. the end. i speak plain hereforth. you'll not hear a bold or italicised peep outta me. I am FULL MONOTONE. (so desperate to not be monotone, to be heard, that she resorts to caps-screaming...? hmmmm).

Rex... you've almost got it, but there's no slash in the first code sequence. Should be set up <b>bold</b>; same for italics <i>italics</i>.

I was just tinkering above without doing the edit step. bold. This little follow up with an edit and submit.

dluthinbloom, thanks thanks. I 'get' it. Let's try it here again. Testing for boldicalia-oceana-so-fancy and italicalia-oceana-welcome-to-the-jungle... and ... hey presto...?

oh bum. okay, what about if i re-edit that. let's try.

Yes! the re-edit works, but goodness what a lot of fuss, but at least I'll never sound boring again. If i can be bothered with the code and the double submit!

Thanks duluthinbloom!

Ok. I call foul! All this ado about not being able to follow the site anb you guys are modifying the code???!!! I feel like I was hustled. Hmmph! Tsk, tsk,

WHynottryit, I was thinking something similar earlier: why don't Houzz just employ all the people here who obviously are closet IT experts to sort out the mess!? hehe.

Amen! I'm on to them now!

I'm on I pad most of the time here, and a greater contrast in the graphics would be of great help.

..this might not suit everybody and I can understand that, but I'm quite proud of my gender, and one thing that I'm not keen on with modern forums is that it seems the requirement is to be genderless, to not have the option of declaring it.... now we can always use our names to impose our gender so that the reader is usually clear about it, but I sometimes get confused when I read posts where it isn't clear,...and not for any reasons of impropriety... but I just think it's nice to know how to read a post... and for me that isn't always clear without knowing a person's gender....I suppose, the voice or tone of the writer is what I'm looking for...

...so I've chosen to use the usual symbol as part of my screen name... and I'm happy about that... I hope you don't mind...

I don't seem to be getting options to italicize etc. when I highlight text. What am I doing wrong?

Marlorena, you read a post differently based on someone's gender?

Not Marlorena here, but re: gender: I don't read posts differently based on known gender, but darn it I still don't know the gender some some long-time posters, and I'd hate to refer to the person as the wrong gender during the course of posting (e.g. "I disagree with his comments"). Usually having a first name in the profile section will clarify, but not everyone has his/her name listed there.

asm198....

...yes I do really, that is I try to read a post with a voice that would be appropriate for their sex identity and not my own necessarily... I'm trying to hear the individual as well as read what they have to say... I might even interpret the post a little differently based on their known gender...

..I also agree with comments by mxk3 above... only the other day I was reading a post by someone I had always assumed to be male, but they referred to their 'DH'... so then I assume she's female, but of course these days that might not always be the case either...with gay marriage.... a man could be referring to his husband... so potentially it can become a little confusing and I wouldn't like to use the wrong pronouns with people...

...no big deal... but hope I've explained it a little better....

How do I know if I have a new message? It would be nice to have a "new message" indicator on every page's top navigation next to our avatar, without having to go to our profile page or check our personal email account.

I got an email announcement of a message delivered to me. I did go into my profile and enabled the the ability for people to email me.

Hurray - I have got the type face options. Strange that they only appeared today.

Well, I gotta hand it to you guys. You've managed to get changes that we "old" houzzers have been wanting and requesting for ages!j Way to go!

Let's see. Yes, now we can all do it. Bold and italics plus a combo of both together.

Please bring back HTML Support in the text box. Some of us love to play with colors, fonts, sizes, images, and be VERY, VERY dramatic in our posts!

All these black and white remind me of Pleasantville.

I see the bold and italics icons in the post window too. Nice.

As for 'new message' indicators, I think I saw one on my Houzz page, on the R side. I also selected getting an email notification when someone sends me a message. That works fine.

While I'm happy with these small changes in the comment window, two problems that seem more of a priority right now, are the gray and white interface, that the majority of members are complaining about, and a new issue that has come to my attention, the truncation of old posts.

Houzz seems to have saved all the old content, but right now, it is not really available in useable form. For instance, in the Kitchen forum, where they have content that is not available any where else on the internet, Kitchen Reveals, they have found out that the older Kitchen Reveal threads were truncated and most of the photos were removed. That would be a shame to lose that content. If any of you have ever faced the task of renovating a kitchen, then you would understand what a prize it is to find members who have completed a kitchen remodel and documented it in text and photos. The amount of detail and expertise that were in these threads was amazing.

That is one example of older content that we don't want to lose. Perhaps some of you can remember other threads from the Perennials forum or any other forum, that is of value that we don't want to lose? We could check to make sure they are here and have not been altered in some way to make them useless. I know there have been many long time members with a lot of expertise that have shared that with the rest of us. Or maybe you are an expert who remembers posting a thread with information that was appreciated by the forum and could check your own threads to make sure they are complete.

HI there, There was an initial issue with the transition where some comments were truncated, however that has been fixed for current posts and old posts should now have been updated with their full text. If you are seeing posts that are still truncated, please shoot us a message at gardenweb(at)houzz.com with a link and we're happy to check it out. Thanks!

Hi Emily, thanks for responding. I would LOVE to let you know if I find any of my older posts that were truncated, but with the problem we now have with accessing our older posts, that seems pretty difficult to do. I do seem to have all 8,000+ comments in the Comments section of my Houzz page, but they are only viewable by clicking on 'Show more comments' to get 10 more. At that rate it would take me 800 clicks to get to the oldest post to view it. You can see how little sense that makes to retain the content and make it unreasonably difficult to access it?

If Houzz could fix that one issue, of making our older comments accessible by 'pages' instead of scrolling, it would be a much more attainable goal to sort through old comments to make sure they are intact.

The site looks and feels diminished. I hadn't visited in months and I'm very surprised how small gardenweb seems in the huge scheme of houzz. I can't wrap my head around it being a tiny subset that exists in an ¨advice category¨ in 6 or 8 font, which itself is inside a big white houzz with challenging visual design and eye straining reability.

To stretch a weak metaphor, it seems like a livable house was replaced with a huge impersonal McMasion. Or maybe a McGarden.

Also, the forum layout feels oddly isolated. I suppose it is all the white space. It is lonely.

We've found a workaround to make our browsing experience more pleasant by applying a browser extension to change background colors, or using a stylish theme made by the GardenWeb geeks.

Changing HOUZZ page appearance

Sticky Notes in forums. Certain forums such as seed trading, plant trading, round robins and raterev are often joined by newbies who need help to set up their profile, trade list, and learn about general rules, guidelines and trading etiquette, etc.

The regulars are pitching in to help but often repeating themselves on the same information, or having to keep bumping up old posts with instructions.

It would be great if you can grant a power user the ability to post sticky notes that always stay on top among the forum posts. User Chemocurl would be the perfect monitor for these forums for she has been doing that for years on GardenWeb, helping out newbies and regulars.

my edit button disappeared on the adopt-a-newbie-ongoing-list-5 post, the one with the big list.
there must be some kind of time limit on editing.

thats too bad, it
would be good to be able to edit post longer.....and we could keep the
same list going ( hint * request *)....cause it would be nice to just have one changing list, near the beginning of the thread.

especially opening posts, need a longer time frame for being edited.

a while after the opening post is made, the original poster may want to retract their offer, change their seeking or have lists, as time changes and their available seeds/plants are gone..

There is a time limit on editing. If you have created the thread, it is a very short window to edit. I don't remember the exact amount. If you are commenting on a thread, I believe it is a week that you have to edit your comment.

RE: Timeframe on Editing Posts / Comments

It is too restricted. We prefer to have the "last update date" shown on all edited posts than not having the ability to edit an original post - as some trades / roundrobin swaps / activities are ongoing affairs.

It's easier for the participants to read the updates from the organizer in the top post than having to read through all the posts in the thread.

Can houzz please bring back the option of wanting to receive notifications for each thread and opting out rather than everything as it is now? My email box is always full of notifications even with those I no longer wish to get and I cannot turn them off.

There is the ability to opt out of notifications. On your Houzz page/Advanced Settings, it lists when you want to receive email notifications and you just uncheck the box. Any thread that you post to has a link at the end of it, in green type that you click on to stop notifications from that thread.

Thank you, prairiemoon2. I found the option to stop the notifications from the threads that I no longer wish to receive.

Hello to prairiemoon!

Hi Wendy :-) Glad to see you are still here!

Private messaging and a possibility to quote posts should be a part of every forum, also the search gives weird results, hard to navigate here.

darmokandjalad, Private messaging is now an option and has been for a couple of years - see your member page to set it up.

To narrow results from searching, type in your search term and then pause and move down to click on the forum search rather than just hitting enter which does the search for all of Houzz. So in this forum, you would click on "search in perennials" rather than advice or photos or . . . if you want only results from this forum.

Thanks for help! I'll try to figure it out.

Feel free to message me (click on my name and then on the message button in the upper right corner) if you have specific questions. One thing you might want to do if you will be posting much in the GardenWeb side of Houzz is to add your growing zone and general location to your profile so that it posts by your name each time you post. That will help folks share advice appropriate to your area. Here's how:

Go to Your Houzz in the upper right of every page, click Edit Profile, and on the left side click advanced settings. Well down the advanced settings page is a blank labeled Climate Zone for Garden Forums along with a link to find your zone.

If you add info on your state or the nearest large city either here or on the profile page under the name posted, you will get even better information since zone only relates to average coldest winter temperatures.

Then return to the top of the page and click Done Editing.

i do think private messaging should be ENABLED by default when someone signs up.

anyone who doesnt want it on can then seek out their profile settings page to turn it off.

and then we wouldnt have to keep repeating how to turn it on to newbies...

It's been my experience on these forums that those who do not want direct messaging far outnumber those that do, so I see no reason to change that option. And opting for that feature is still part of the orginal profile creation anyway.

And it has always been possible to quote parts or all of a previous post........you just have to do a little cutting and pasting but then that is pretty much SOP for any online forum or message board.

I agree with Babs that it would be far more beneficial to have some sort of locational or zonal input a sign-up requirement for any new GW'ers. This is a critical bit of information that is too frequently overlooked.

Welcome darmokandjalad! I hope you stay around. We are a friendly group and the more the merrier.

I've been on some forums which give the option "reply with quote" - but too much of that begins to look messy. So while it is a nice feature, what we have here forces us to do the ole cut and paste if we really need to refer back to the previous discussion.

They have made the print on theft out of this thread in real small print for old eyes. I can only imagine what it is like on an iPhone. Take my word, it is the barely recognizable "click to switch off notifications about new comment". To me it looks more like a broken green line.

wantonamara Z8 CenTex --- You probably know this already, but you
can plug almost any still functioning desktop or laptop into almost any
functioning TV with a $4.99 cable and see the print big as you wish. I
too don't understand how persons use phones.

(ETA, with just a few clicks I made this reply fill a 42 inch screen.)

On a keyboard you can also press the ctrl key then the + key. This is a keyboard shortcut that will make everything on the screen appear larger. Works for all websites. I have rotten vision so use it all the time.

You have to do it again on any new website you visit, it's not permanent. Only while you are on the one you are using. But easy to do.

I have a pc. On Macs it is a different command but I know there is one.