Navigating The CR4 Site

What was the question again...?

It had something to do with the color purple I think.

Sorry, all out of purple.....can I interest you in something approaching reddish-brown...?

Sure! I'll take a #7 please!

are you sure?,........ I thought is was something about being a test tube baby........

The question is finding the original question, hehe, I know this sounds crazy but bear with me. I go to my e-mails and find a CR4 mail. I start reading the questions others have posted. I find one that I think I can answer. But to answer I have to click on the REGISTER box since I haven´t signed in yet. Once I do that and sign in correctly I cannot go back to the question I wanted to answer. This may be due to my stupidity or a possible unfriendly aspect of the CR4 site but whatever the reason it is frustrating and a real turn off.

Old Fart with Alzheimers

When that happens to me (not often, since I stay signed in, usually), after I re-sign-in I click on the 'see all forum threads' link. What I'm looking for is usually there, and I just scroll down the list to find it.

If the 'see all forum threads' link isn't visible, I click on the Home link, and find the 'see all forum threads' link there.

My only suggestion is for you to sign in before browsing.

Since nobody acts as a librarian at CR4 and steers the questions and replies into any form of an order, the task of finding a specific reply is almost impossible. Most people do try to put the initial question into a plausible forum directory but the tangents we take after that make finding a reply difficult.

Hi Redfred

I may be confusing everybody here and apologize in advance. Let me try once again and it would make me feel better if anybody else has had my problem. When I open my e-mails every day I almost always find one from CR4. I open the CR4 mail and read whats new. If I find a question which I think I may be able to answer I click on it and before being able to answer I am asked to sign in which I do. After signing in instead of being directed back to the question I wanted to reply to I am directed to a CR4 page where I cannot find the question I was trying to answer.

It would seem to me that after signing in I should be redirected back to the question I wanted to answer. Is this an incorrect assumption? Must I sign in to CR4 everyday even before reading my e-mails? This seems strange and I don´t think it should be necessary.

John

John,

If you're getting emails because you have subscribed to a discussion, you can go to your profile and view your subscribed discussion. Then you should be able to find the thread you were interested in.

I always stay logged in. When I get emails saying a subscribed discussiion has been updated I just delete all of those emails.

I open up CR4 and click on the updated discussion link.

I look at the thread that has been updated and read all of the new replies.

John,

I will echo your cry....mostly (like now) I am able to respond directly. On other occasions I am requested to log in...that's when I exit the discussion...as you've discovered it's not worth the trouble...there is definitely something amiss, but I can't tell you what.

I echo your echo echo echo, it's definitely a glitch infestment....

I found the easiest way is to exit cr4 and go back to the email where I started and log back into cr4. Since I signed in minutes earlier, either the browser or cr4 remembers the sign in and the email takes me back to where I was going to answer. The frustrating thing is typing in a couple of paragraphs and hitting the 15 minute time limit and having the post locked out.

That post from the daily digest was from yesterday. It has been pushed down the list to far to show on the home page. About mid way down the list of new posts is a link to all posts. You can scroll down them to find it or here http://cr4.globalspec.com/thread/86852/Need-Help-in-Finding-Azimuth-Sensor-for-Solar-Dish

Try doing things in this order:

1. Read Daily Digest email
2. Visit cr4.globalspec.com and sign in
3. Click link from email
4. Reply

Thank You SavvyExacta

I will write this down and try it. Us folks who want to help others should be given the easiest possible route to do so don´t you think? This seems like not such an easy route. I also discovered the other day after spending a lot of time doing a long and complicated question that all the things I wrote were erased by some time out device.

There are a lot of very intelligent people on this site. I am an older person involved in engineering for many years so maybe the newer and younger guys have displaced me. By making itreally hard to answer questions, adding a time limit on the answer and then by having such a lot of super smart people on the site I feel like I have been squeezed out and am no longer welcome.

Adios Amigos

John Van Allen

There is a way...

but it is a bit complicated.

The answer is to state your solution, let it time out if it wants to.

Go to preview comment.

When you go to "submit", it disappears.

But if you go "back", it comes back.

Then you can go to "edit". Right click to get a dialogue box which says "bypass custom menue".

...just select "copy".

Then get out of it by hitting back, back, and maybe even back again.

Now find the post you wanted to reply to.

Select reply

hit "bypass custom menu hit paste

hit preview

hit submit.

Don't think I missed a step. I'll test it right now...

Yup... don't think I missed a step.

No doubt a commentator will let me know though.

For reasons I do not understand, you can copy to notepad, but you can't copy from notepad to "edit". So at least you won't lose your work.

nice dance . . . but quite realistic such

Mr.Jhon, I am 74 years old much older than you. I retired from my engineering job 15 years back. I was not born with tubes but normal child. I am associated with CR4 since many years and I do not have any problem with asking questions and reading replies, rather I have learned many things from this Forum. I hope you will also same fate. Wish you happy and healthy old age living.

For "tubes" in the OP, try reading "thermionic valves".

Hi John,

I am your age but I don't have alzheimers (unless I have forgotten that I have). I am always logged in on this computer (but I never chose to be), so am not much help. You will always be welcome. There are lots of us old farts here.

-S

I can't log in on my phart smone, no matter what I try, since I had a password issue with it.

I consider it a blessing.

we're not hard on folk.. are we?

we just follow the teachings of Uncle Mark!!

If you are like me you get an email that outlines the topics of discussion and then you click on one of them that you are interested in. This puts you on CR4 but doesn't log you in.

I then read the article and if I want to contribute to the arguments I then have to sign in. So sign in then go back to my email and click on the topic i want to argue about.

If you want to keep up with the topic after you've stuck you hand in the hornets nest you still have to subscribe to the topic. Just replying to the topic does not automatically subscribe you to it.

"Just replying to the topic does not automatically subscribe you to it."

A bit off topic, but, not so, in my experience. In fact, since I replied here, I'm "auto-magically" subscribed.

I'm only 59, and every time I think I might be approaching the stage where the Nigerian culture would consider me a wise-man (because of a white head), I hear from more of you who have WAY more time in life, and experience in "what we do" than I, and I just get happier. You men and women have SOOO much to teach us youngsters.

And I love learning it.

John, don't ever go away frustrated! Please?

You asked in closing your message that we forgive the 67 year old engineer who was raised on tubes.

I send forgiveness from an 88 year old engineer raised on crystal sets. They worked amazingly well when you got the "whisker" on just the right spot of the crystal.

Lou Bindner

Something changed recently. I am having this problem, too. When I sign in, it goes to a new page in a different format with the current questions, but after looking down the left column, I find the thread I was wanting to respond to. Once I logged in, it used to keep me logged in, now it signs me out each time I close my email. Still works, just have to look for the thread differently. Don't know it is CR4 or the 29 updates my computer did a week or so ago. -- JHF

John:

Try this. It works every time, for me.

I click on the link for the question I wish to read/answer, then go to the browser page (Internet Explorer, Chrome, Firefox, whatever) that pops up in response, and sign in.

Then I hit back TWICE to get back to the page I signed in on, then hit refresh, and I'm off and running in the original post stream.

Thank You, it worked perfectly!!! Problem resolved but now we are having so much fun I hate to end the theme!!!!