Moving to feature request forum.

+1

This is one of our most commonly asked questions: I uploaded my picture, but it isn't working.

Then we have to tell them to Ctrl-F5 to refresh it.

There are a couple issues with the upload profile picture functionality that we are well aware of. It will be updated in a future release.

I have found an effective workaround in the meantime is to modify the language file to indicate that users should do a CTRL-F5 to reload the page.

It would be great if this would be incorporated in the resx file by the hand of AM so that on an upgrade this persists. Or will this persist anyway?

Since this is the first thing a typical user does (profile pic), and since this taints their impression of things because of the confusion, I would GLADLY accept temp bits with this core functionality quickly updated. A true command button, updated test, and a forced refresh, and we are good to go. I don't mind dogfooding for an important bit like this.

To Modify a resx (language) entry

In DNN 5 Login as Admin and go to:
1. Admin > Languages
2. You will be on the Language Editor Page. Select "Edit" under "Static Resource Site" for your language you want to edit.
3. Select "Local Resources" on the left side
4. Goto DesktopModules > ActiveSocial > App_LocalResources > SharedResources
5. Locate [RESX:EditProfilePicture:Tip].Text
6. Enter your own text in the right side textbox and save.

Example:
Click the browse button below to select a new profile picture then click upload. If do not see your image after upload, please refresh your browser. This is usually done by pressing "alt + f5" or right mouse click and select "reload" or "refresh".

Your changes will be saved on any and all upgrades to AS and DNN. You can modify any of these files as an admin and a new file gets created that is portal specific that does not get overwritten on upgrades. If you modify the files as Host, then you change that resource file for all portals.

Hope that helps!

Thanks Jeff - that's very helpful and probably much better than what I'd have written :-)

Drew - totally understand your point of view, and it's not the first time this particular issue has been raised. However with the level of substantial improvement to AS and overall great support I've had, I've been willing to make do on things like this.

That said, I have observed Active Modules adopting a much more robust issue tracking and testing regime of late that I think is terrific.

Speaking as someone who's put together quite a complex site overall, the occasional non-refreshing avatar seems to be a minor thing in the minds of our users, but that's totally context dependent

Thank Matt & Jeff! @Jeff: i will check this out in the morning. @Matt: i absolutely hear you and thank you for seeing my perspective. Being completely new to AS and only modestly familiar with AF, i have no ability to see all the improvements, thus my efforts to make my views known, hoping to make it even better. I clearly feel it a valuable package to spend $400 on it AND more importantly, trusting AS to render to life a business that i personal am staking much on plus hoping to change the world in my own small way.

While *we* know how great it is, i bring to the table the perspective of my soon-to-be average user, who is used to facebook, amazon, ebay, gmail and the like and they simply *expect* a certain level of ease.. thus the thoughts, and hoping to make positive impacts on all. As i mentioned to Will privately, i am on the Advisory Board for DevExpress and as such have been involved in the shaping of software that is impacting thousands of developers and indirectly many many clients.. so my feedback is something that naturally comes out as i encounter things... Hope everyone can deal with that drew..

I think you'll find that Will et al have no major problem with open and honest feedback and opinions with good rationales.

If there is a real issue with uploading avatar, I sure would like to know since if is true, it is one event a user is likely to do and something this simple not working...

But, I cannot find any issue with it.  Edit profile page has a browse button, you browse and find your image and click update and you are directed to profile page where new avatar is displayed, so what am I missing?

It does work, it just could be more user friendly.

I use Mandeeps LiveToolTips for this. I set the tooltip to open 1 second after the update (page) loads with step-by-step instructions. We also have the profile picture uploading during registration, which also helps, since they aren't expecting 'everything perfect' while registering. The image usually shows during registration though.

I still have no idea what the issue is, maybe someone could explain it for me   If I agree it is an issue and there is any possible fix I will share it here.  Thanks

ok I see now, before I was using a user that already had an avatar to test it and it worked fine, this time I used a user without an avatar and it failed to update the avatar. Semantics aside, I am not sure how much closer you can get to 'not working'...correctly at least. Should be an easy fix, I will try to post a fix tomorrow or Monday. Fix will only be for a user editing their profile from edit profile page (as that's all we use.)

We already have a fix for the image refresh, but if you want to provide a fix that doesn't require a code change then I'm sure others here would appreciate it.

More than happy to wait for the official fix :-)

yeah I would prefer the code fix too, sloppier fix from client side   I didn't realize you had it already.

The image is updating it just isn't clearing the client cache for the image. Which is why a simple page refresh causes the image to appear. We are also updating the UI.

thanks everyone, for your interest. If there is anyone who can toss over a quick fix, i will test this. Waiting for the next update will be not the best approach for me. I will update that page according to the instructions above, but i know from years of experience that most people simply do not read, especially when the action is common (and setting an avatar is common).

Thanks for bringing this to my attention.  To fix the problem add the code below to the top of your ProfileView.ascx template:


<script type="text/javascript"> $(document).ready(function () { $("img.asprofileimage").each(function () { $(this).attr("src", $(this).attr("src") + "&guid=" + GetGuid()); }); }); </script>

While this will work once the function GetGuid() is available, but it will cause another roundtrip to the server. Also, not sure if this will take into account the images that appear in the journal activity.

GetGuid() function is below.  Since it will only affect images with a class of 'asprofileimage' it will not affect journal posts, unless you add the 'asprofileimage' class to the journal images...just depends on what you want to do.  To avoid confusion, yes it will make another trip to the server but the difference is negligible as it is only to retrieve the image, not the entire page.  Obviously the preferred fix is for the server code/module to work correctly but the workaround is better than stale avatars or text instructing users to hard refresh.

function GetGuid() { var guid = ""; for (var i = 0; i < 32; i++) { guid += parseInt(Math.random() * 16).toString(16); } return guid; }

Hey Jason, i added the code and seem to have no effect. I have reset the cache, refreshed, the usual suspects, but nothing. Is there something you might have left out that most html/script folks would know that i might not yet know?

Maybe a few things that could have gone wrong. 

1. make sure you are using the function GetGuid(), if you don't want to put in sep. js file just put the entire code below into your ProfileView.ascx

   <script type="text/javascript"> function GetGuid() { var guid = ""; for (var i = 0; i < 32; i++) { guid += parseInt(Math.random() * 16).toString(16); } return guid; } $(document).ready(function () { $("img.asprofileimage").each(function () { $(this).attr("src", $(this).attr("src") + "&guid=" + GetGuid()); }); }); </script>

2. make sure you are inserting code into correct ProfileView.ascx file (i.e. the one in the themes folder that you have configured in settings of AS
3. make sure the active social profile image has a class of 'asprofileimage', I think it should have this class by default but not positive.

hey Jason, i think the issue is that we are not talking about the same page perhaps? I am concerned with the page where you are actually uploading the image. I am thinking this should be the ProfilePictureEdit.ascx control to edit? Let me know if you think i am way off base .. and thank you so kindly for taking the time to help! drew..

LOL yeah we are not on the same page, I was addressing the issue that once you update the avatar, it redirects you to the profile page but does not update the avatar (avatar is updated on server but browser is displaying cached copy of old image.)  As far as edit profile page, I can see how that could be a little more user friendly because it does not update the image display once you select an image, on the other hand you typically have to click an upload button or something and there is only one button to click, the 'save' button, so that one was crystal clear to me and I would think to most users, however I could be completely wrong as I don't have our site live yet, so no chance to hear such complaints.

...now that I think about it, we modified that template so that there is a left menu that separates out the different sections of profile properties, and avatar is the last item in the first section (about me), so there is a big red save button right below the avatar, and that may make things a bit clearer than if the avatar property is in the middle of a big list of items and save button is way below out of sight.  How about moving the avatar to the bottom so the save button is immediately below it?

This is an interesting workaround. It should work with just a random number also right?

I wonder if it would be a simple thing to implement on Will's side. Maybe each time the avatar is updated a timestamp is added to the url: &ts=123456.7890 so that it will cache until it's changed again.