AUTISTIC PEOPLE ON THE (N.A.S.) INTERNET, And "How-To" Use It...#2.

Hi Disallowed Cynosure,

Thank you for sharing your views about the online community.

If you would like to share anymore feedback in regards to the online community page, you may be interested in commenting on the following post: http://community.autism.org.uk/f/miscellaneous-and-chat/9444/online-community---comments-improvements-and-feedback

I hope this helps.

Ayshe Mod

アリガトウゴザイマス... That is another very different method of using Capital Letters... If not "Gobbledegook" to any devices, then it is ME, saying a "Thank You Very Much", in my own manner, to you, Mr/Mrs "WebPM"...!
I was beginning to think that everyone had left this Thread, and/or that it was a deliberate avoidance... yet after five-or-so unanswered Posts from 'me-to-me'... The NAS WebPM Posts something, Huzzah!! Thank you for finally answering that which I asked.

...My Post here, is merely a (long-winded) "Thank You", and so time will tell of all subjects which are thusly addressed. Thank You again. (...Yet I myself do not much like chocolate, and I cannot always access "Blogs" outside of this NAS Website...)

A general catch-up reply, covering some of the points raised recently.

We have been testing an update that is designed to achieve two main aims:

• Fix the problem that some sign-ins via the Reply button left the user on the wrong page, with a consequence of the loss of any message so far typed
• Improve the "activity stream" for a user (found by going to someone's profile via a link on that person's forum name). The intended improvement is that the stream should contain that user's posts. It has tended also to include posts by other people, in threads in which that user has also posted - this second alternative produces a list of messages with rather tenuous connections to the user whose stream you are viewing.

The second of these was dependent on an update to the Telligent software that we are using. It was not something that we could sensibly develop ourselves therefore (because changing the system now, in a different way from Telligent's update, could lead to future problems).

Our first round of testing identified a different issue that had occurred in the upgrade, so we stopped, fixed that, and now have tested again. Sorry that all that has taken time. I'm hopeful of being ready to deploy the upgrade in the next week or so. I'll let you know when I have a definite date.

To cover a few other points:

• Once you have rejected a friend request, I don't believe that there is a way to recover it, sorry.
• A blog (short for "Weblog") is indeed a bit like a discussion. The difference is that blogs consist of a series of main postings, a bit like a daily diary (or weekly, monthly, occasional, or whatever). Others read the posts and comment on them. So, a blog might be written by an expert on a subject, or as a travelogue, for example, with others giving feedback. This is different from a standard discussion, such as this, where anyone can start a topic. The regular posts can be as short as a paragraph, or as long as several "pages". You could probably Google to find a blog on any topic, but here's one on chocolate that seems to have some comments coming back in response to the (quite long) posts. By contrast, chat is a rather imprecise term, referring to any system that allows users to have conversations.
• It's true that there is no dictionary of abbreviations on the site. We may consider this for the future. However, those that you mention come from various different fields, and many are not specific to autism. On our Web pages, we try to explain abbreviations before using them, so searching the main site for something, for example ADHD, may help, as the pages returned in search may give you the explanation that you need. Looking at other people's sites, the Acronym Finder may also be of some use, especially as it has categories for IT, science & medicine, and so on; for example, it covers DWP.

Yet another new -and unexpected - question from me. Is there any way to get back "Friendship Requests", when I accidentally press "IGNORE", because I do not know how to send/receive such things, and I only today noticed a request from "NPAA" and in trying to type a reply I accidentally deleted someone else... AGAIN.

If anyone reads this, please also have a go at answering some of what else is written upon this Thread, thanks.

おやすみなさい,みんあ. 

I posted about Touching-Words-Activating-The-Reply-Box... And then I posted my after-post, concerning not typing directly into that Reply-BOX at all...

I suppose that one week is not long... yet that after "WebPM" said that they were dealing with the Reply+Sign-In business, please also note that (it may take a long time, and) they ALSO said:

WebPM said:

Keep the ideas coming!

...And I, for one, AM still an 'Autistic Person Learning How To Use The (NAS) Internet.' Thus, whether the "Reply/Sign-In" trouble is ever resolved or not... In any meantime, I still have many questions. I attempt two as follows.

1- Is there still no ONE place, upon NAS, which explains abbreviations such as ADD, PMs, PIP, UC, DWP, PTSD... like a dictionary all in one place? (on NAS.) Also again including terms such as ASD, AS, Post, Thread... which I myself (now) understand yet took years in learning the meanings of.

2- Can someone tell me what or where -upon THIS NAS INTERNET - there are any "Blogs"; And/or the difference between these and "Chat" or "Chat" or "Chat"...?

Thank You to All.

(Yes, this is posted twice, if anyone noticed that.)

This is a Note, as if to myself, yet relevant to the topic. In posting more than one post to the same Thread, then only the last post shows up...

(...Still no advice about blogs or Twitter or "Dictionaries", anyone?)

The Sign-In page with the "pile of people" is gone, now. Maybe it is just me, but I sort of preferred that one, rather than a photograph of people who I do not know. Yet this post, here, I suppose, is a rather "Autistic" comment....

Good fortune to you anyway.

Excuse me, please... yet can anyone else apart from me *please* reply to this? I find it hard to believe that, of all persons upon this NAS Internet, that not a one of them is not also upon "Twitter"... (Including NAS themselves)... Thank you.

Robert124

That problem - that when you sign in via the Reply button you can end up in the wrong place - is the one I mentioned earlier that I discovered in testing the wider issues raised in this thread. I'm not sure how it was missed previously, sorry. We'll address it.

Concerning the "Post"/"Reply" BOX.
A random tip for anyone, which I use, which aught to apply regardless of device used.

...I do not use the reply box to reply into (this is why I cannot "chat", perhaps.). I write my replies in another separate program, a word processor, notepad, jotter, etc. And only then do I paste them back into that dreadfully tiny reply box in order to post them.

Concerning the Internet, the POST box is a necessity, but not as much a necessity to me as the SEARCH box, I say. ふっ.

It is I, the starter... but wait! One and all step back; for NAS THEMSELVES has come amongst us...?

*ahem*. Concerning this "log on + reply button" business. Excuse my capital letters, yet please heed them very much (I can't use pictures, bold, or itallics)...

Firstly, consider a TOUCH-SCREEN device. I am uncertain of proper terms, so bear with me, please. (For this and maybe future posts, concerning similar technicallities.) There is: soft-touch, hard-touch, swift-touch, "swipe", "tap", and touch-and-hold... sort of.

Next - regardless of it being Touch-Screen or not... do you see a SCROLLBAR?

Finally: ...Sometimes you will be able to use the SCROLLBAR in order to move the whole page/screen/words, up or down or left or right, etc. Many Touch-Screen devices display only ONE thing at a time, such as a page...with NO Scrollbar. (This means no FIXED-on-Screen Scrollbar.)

This is the deal: Please try the following:
1 -Do NOT "log on/sign in" yet. Or Manually Log-off/Sign-out.
Now browse the site as if you are NOT a member of it.
2- Try to find, and then select any page, which has a "REPLY" button immediately visible (e.g. not this page on a small device!)
--- & then view it - WITHOUT TOUCHING/SELECTING ANYTHING ELSE ON-SCREEN YET.
3- The "REPLY" button *should* appear as grey or as "ghosted". (It is Unselected/Inactive.)
4 - This next, is different across devices. Now move your CURSOR, or just "TAP" (soft tap) upon any post...
5- NOW the "REPLY" button is selected! (Pink?)
6- We are still NOT signed in, remember?
That this "Reply" button now claims to offer chance to reply... is where the very many errors begin! (I may try to continue that on another post, for this one is long.)

7- ...Have a care! According to different devices, including those with a CURSOR, in order to simply SCROLL the screen, it may activate the "Reply" button, as you select a post or even an area near to any text. The protocol should be that, in order to scroll, yet NOT SELECT, that you touch no WORDS (i.e. touch a blank area or some graphic such as a border, or fast-touch, or swipe.). This is different across devices, and for your own device(s), the difference must be taken into account.

........

NOTE - This is a matter about which I am less sure. Yet I have seen it and so I note it here.
If you are NOT "signed in", then the "Reply" button is all on its own, or maybe with showing number of LIKES or DISLIKES, or miscellaneous information.
Yet if you ARE "signed in" - UPON THAT TAB/PAGE/BROWSER (!)... then somewhere around the "Reply" button or its level, it may offer you the opportunity to DO any "like/dislike". (it shows extra arrows or more buttons, such as "more" or "edit".)
The problem here, is in multiple TABS, PAGES, or BROWSERS... or just signing in or out manually. If you are not signed in on one page/tab/browser, then when offered opportunity to sign in somewhere else, it does not apply to what was opened before. Even if you "refresh" all of the page(s).(...!)

End so far. Please and thank you anyone, if you understand this post, and/or then the steps which I listed there. Just to let you know, it did take about a week before I myself noticed this highly unruly business. I cannot emphasise enough about the REPLY button being "Unselected" and then "Selected" (Inactive and then Active) --- ACCIDENTALLY. 'Bye for now.

Wow, just reading this made my head spin...

Turns out it's all comparably easy on a laptop.

Just to add more confusion. I spent over half an hour typing in a pm reply. It disappeared completely,while on private messages the screen constantly jumps up and down,(the previous comments)

When clicking on reply the keypad layout comes up at bottom of screen, so to see the words your typing you have to drag the new reply box upwards, it then drops back down out of site, keeps doing it even if you drag and hold, then suddenly it will just sit there?

Constant logging out and back in again is happening all the time too, not my physical choice, it does it all by itself.

thanks for coming on and explaining what you are trying to do, a nice human touch.

oh yes I use an iPad,

I meant switching off the laptop (I tend to do that overnight, maybe it's oldfashioned, but using mobile broadband I can't leave the internet on all the time anyway). If I only close the site and open it again after not too long a time I'm still logged in, not sure what happens if I close the browser, think I'm logged off then.

The Reply button is certainly active when I'm not signed in, it does take me to the Sign In page (feeling privileged now that I get a step further there than Robert ;-)

Weird how it can do so many things on different browsers...

This particular problem is on an android phone running version 4.4.4

When I close all windows it usually signs me out.   Or when I switch the phone on. I am not signed in.  But the phone itself and the website behaviour is not always consistent. 

Hi oktanol

That's what I'm trying to reproduce. The intention is that it does work as you describe; if you aren't signed in, there's no Reply box, so you can't lose what you've typed. That's certainly my experience.

I've been trying to work out exactly what sequence you are following. What do you mean by "switch the Internet off"? Do you mean that you turn off wi-fi on a phone for example, or imply go into an area where there is no 3G/4G coverage? Or is this about closing a laptop and leaving it suspended until you open the lid again? For how long do you leave it "off"? And do you leave your browser open during this time? (Not so relevant if this is a mobile, where you just tend to have the app in the background, of course.)

What are you using to access the forum? (Windows PC or laptop, or what phone, especially Android version or iOS version?)

Are there others reading this thread who have had the same experience?

Thanks for the help in diagnosing this.

Tried the replay without signing in first.  It went straight to the sign in page and then gave me this message when I tried to sign in.. 

Then I went back into the website and I was signed in afterall. 

WebPM said:

Regarding oktanol's comment above about sign ins, I've been trying to reproduce that problem. I have not been able to do so. The principle is that you shouldn't be able to post a message until you are signed in - so you shouldn't lose the message during the sign-in process. Please let me know what I've missed if that is what is happening to you. To be able to reproduce it, I really need to know the exact sequence of steps (e.g. where you start your message, which button you use to sign in, what you see, and so on).

Well, that's what I mean, the assumption is that everybody is always signed in when trying to post something, but the reality is that (also because unlike on many other websites you don't stay logged in when you switch the internet off but, also unlike some other websites, you can read everything without being registered or signed in) you may start reading without having signed in. Then there's something that catches your attention and you totally forget about signing in, you would really like to comment on it so you type some half an A4 page long comment, done, click Reply - bamm, all gone. Because when you click Reply and you aren't signed in it takes you the Sign In page, then you sign in and instead of going back to the thread where you had just typed your comment it takes you either to a page asking for donations or to one telling you that there are currently no vaccant jobs with the NAS (which on top of being annoying because of losing your comment can both be a bit of a trigger for some). It kicks you completely out of the community area, so to get back you have to click several links and of course when you are back to the thread of interest there is no sign of your comment anymore.

A presumably relatively easy solution to this (not my idea, it's used on many other websites) would be to inactivate the comment field unless you are signed in because then you can't start typing without having signed in and the whole (presumably more complicated thing) to take you to another page while keeping your comment and then taking you back there would simply not be needed anymore.

I think the first thing is to say that we're still here and listening

Apart from what's referred to here as the previous thread, we're still working through comments in threads such as this. In particular, that raised problems in identifying the authors of posts, and conversely finding authors' other posts, and so on. When we investigated, we found that the software we're using had gone through quite a major rebuild and upgrade. Unfortunately, that did introduce one or two issues in this area (of authors and their posts). So, rather than try to change things ourselves, we concluded that the right thing to do was to install the latest (minor) upgrade, and check what that resolved. I'm about to test that now (on our test system).

I'm sorry that these things take time, and we have to fit them in alongside other, unrelated, work on our family of sites.

Regarding oktanol's comment above about sign ins, I've been trying to reproduce that problem. I have not been able to do so. The principle is that you shouldn't be able to post a message until you are signed in - so you shouldn't lose the message during the sign-in process. Please let me know what I've missed if that is what is happening to you. To be able to reproduce it, I really need to know the exact sequence of steps (e.g. where you start your message, which button you use to sign in, what you see, and so on).

The sign-in process is not specifically part of the Community. We have a single sign-on system covering this Community, the main WWW site and (for professionals who work with autism) Network Autism. The idea is that you can sign in once and use all the sites. We know it's not perfect - for example, sign-ins last longer on the Community than on the WWW site - and that's something else we've got on the list to look at. Hopefully, though, it's less confusing than remembering separate sign-ins for each site.

What I did find in testing for oktanol's issue is a possibly-related one affecting sign-ins via the Reply button. We're working on that too. Hopefully the fix for that one won't be long.

Keep the ideas coming!

I'm wondering if the NAS website designers are autistic perhaps? That would be a good thing, I guess. Maybe the person who made the Sign In thing always changes from their walking shoes into the office shoes while signing in, which takes 11.5 seconds and therefore signing in has to take that long, otherwise no work can be done in the wrong shoes.

And signing in when prompted - well, someone suggested there should be such an option, so that's how that button came about, they didn't specifically say it should work, let alone that it should take you back to where you were before without deleting what you have written. The Sign In designer never understood what the reason for this would be because they sign in the moment they go online, always.

Somehow I believe to remember that the new website was supposed to be optimised for use on phones (maybe I'm wrong?), but those that designed it do perhaps not agree with everyone walking around with their head down, bumping into other phone users or lamp posts or, worse yet, into cars, so this is meant to act as a gentle reminder that smartphones come with some pitfalls and risks. 

Joking a bit, but not entirely...