I’ll use this topic to list and explain things regarding the forum software updates over time, as sometimes they get shipped with changes or new features.
These software updates are made by the forum software’s developers at discourse.org and have nothing to do with me.
I’ll also post here when I add new features, whether they are official or not.
2 months ago, the image upload was improved. Basically, very large images are now resized and recompressed before they are sent to the server.
That means that if you sometimes encountered a message like “image too big” when trying to post pictures from your smartphone or a digital camera, it’s likely you won’t encounter it anymore and you’ll be able to upload pictures without hassle.
Today’s update adds a fast edit feature. You can now edit parts of your own posts directly from a thread without having to open your entire message:
Useful when you just want to change a few words or fix a typo.
A new forum software update has shipped with minor changes.
The real-time search that showed results at the same time as you were typing keywords is gone forever, for performance reasons. It stills displays results among usernames, tags, and category names in real-time though.
However, to display posts results, you must now press Enter or click the line below the search input:
The search bar now remembers your last searches for quick access:
Searching with Ctrl-F while being on a long topic in which all posts aren’t loaded still opens the Discourse search, but it mentions more clearly than before that you’ll be searching inside the current topic:
If you don’t like how it behaves, you can still use the key F3 on many browsers to open the native browser search (but it will then search only in the loaded posts, not in the entire topic).
When reading a long post, the author’s avatar will now scroll down along the post:
As you can see, they are small changes. There are other numerous changes or addition, but nothing worth being mentioned here as they won’t change your forum browsing experience in any way.
Depending on your browser, it could open the browser native search interface or the Discourse search interface, while F3 should always open your browser native search interface.
You may have missed the “twice” part? On Chrome, pressing twice Ctrl-F indeed switches from the Discourse search to the browser search. You can try on a long thread, such as this one.
I didn’t know this double shortcut trick, thanks @lightbulbjim.
You can now embed Instagram posts. It will show a preview. Clicking the media will redirect you to Instagram, which means that you can’t play the video directly on the forum post, but that’s better than nothing
Video:
(there’s a tall white space at the bottom , but I can’t fix this)
Picture:
Gallery:
(very minor feature)
Also, you can now edit your pictures upload titles directly in the post editor preview:
Images titles are used in place of the pictures when they are not shown, for example in an excerpt.
Example with pictures of which titles weren’t set (it uses the file name by default):
Example with a picture of which the title was manually set (A beautiful magpie):
Obviously, only a few people will take the time to rename their pictures, but since the feature is here, it’s worth mentioning it.
Check you haven’t enabled “strict mode” (which may now be the default behavior on Firefox). It disables any external content from social networks. And prevents them from tracking you.
Creating tables with the formatting syntax on this forum is tedious (unless you really like pipes and dashes, I won’t judge).
I’ve added a tool that adds two features.
You can now create a table with a visual editor:
You can edit existing tables directly from the posts (however, you can’t edit them with the visual editor from the message composer, it remains the realm of pipes and dashes):
Use right-click to display the builder actions like adding or removing rows and columns.
The table builder is a brand-new feature. There are a few bugs, and the builder will be improved over time.
Unrelated, you can now delete a picture directly from the message preview when using the post composer:
Yeah, because the table now have a large top padding because of the button, I changed the table titles so the readibility (is that a proper word?) is a bit better. I did a few tests…
I’ve temporarily disabled the table builder. As a brand new feature, there are a few bugs that can break tables, so I’ll wait for them to be fixed before re-enabling the feature.
If you don’t like how it behaves, you can still use the key F3 on many browsers to open the native browser search (but it will then search only in the loaded posts, not in the entire topic).
, but I can’t fix this)
The table builder is a 
