Laurent, you are too modest, your English is great. It's great to see you here.

Hi Crenda, yes I've done it (hopefully!), Thanks :) I would have thought to add something to the end of your username, you would just add it on to the end of it, but apparently not! Lol, Technology!

thanks.....Gill UK

Tamara-- will the word/character limit on posts be lifted? i tried to check some longer posts i had bookmarked today and they were cut off in the middle :ccc

My apple OS has a Top sites category under History in the Safari toolbar, and slowly the houzzzzzz site seems to be replacing the GW site on it so it is now a click away. I can't remember if the Safari tool bar came that way or if that is how my husband set it up. It has been awhile.. I guess I should change my GW bookmark to Houzzz under the garden forums that I like category in my bookmark toolbar.

I find the resistance to this change interesting. I am resentful to this natural state of constant change. Change itself is not unnatural but the dizzying speed of it everywhere is. It is not just here it is everywhere and it is all about the incidentals of life. We can never settle down with a system in place that then lets us focus on the important. As gardeners we are constantly changing our world in a world that constantly changes in a usually dependable repeating system with variations. I no longer twirl platters on a spindle and my phone changes every other year and I have to RTFM AGAIN. My camera, car, stove,toaster change. my computer changes with every update. I think many of us old doggies remember a simpler time. Cr@p, I remember a time not so long ago when I I wrote fogeys (sp?) it was not automatically changed to doggies. That just piss*d me off. So residual resentment permeates everything and when something that we hold important and possibly DEAR, changes so profoundly, this resentment pores out.

The gardening community is filled with older folks and they struggle with the computer changes that the young are able to absorb because they were born into a quickening chaos. This is a progressive situation. We just de-computered my 94 YR mother in-law who's very existence was both enriched and driven crazy by her computer. It was worse than taking her car keys away. She was the only person in her old folks home with a computer. Now her phone drives her crazy. A delightful and extremely knowledgable curmudgeon (who will remain nameless) who worked for years at the Huntington Gardens will most likely not be able to jump through these hoops. She is well into her 80's. I love her cranky advice . It is growing rarer that I hear from her.

Alright, this is not bad. They seem pretty responsive. Already we have gone from no comment totals to having coment totals listed. There is a color change on viewed topics where there wasn't any before. And people have already figured out you can enter whatever info into your name fields under the profile to list the info we used to have. Not too shabby for the first week.

You're right, Nil13. They are listening and I compliment them on that. Still a few things to tweak, but they are headed in the right direction. My direction, of course! LOL

K8 - The longer posts were truncated during the transition when they ported them over. But they are still intact in the logs and they can be restored.

Did you notice the type darkened so it is easier on the eyes? They are listening.

Does anyone know how to get my picture of my face off here? I've tried and tried and can't seem to figure it out. I'm using my iPhone. And I find it VERY hard to click on some things. I had to unfortunate sign in through Facebook because it wouldn't let me through my old account. So I'm sure that's why my face is plastered on ANYTHING I post. any help to get it off of here would be GREAT!! :)

wantonmara - I DID notice that! Thanks for confirming it for me. I had eye surgery a couple of weeks ago and thought maybe it was my vision since I could see much better today. I thought uh-oh, what was wrong with my eyes yesterday!

Lilbit, it is a nice face.

Christopher, you have a very good point. Yesterday I was in full gripe and moan mode. As the day went on, I could laugh at myself. I had to, since my husband was ROFL at me all day. Today, as many have mentioned, we see that they are trying to meet us halfway. (or my way, as I jokingly said earlier) That's great and I'm sure we all appreciate it.

Heck - I figured out how to post my Freda Falcon icon yesterday all by myself. My son the IT dude would be so proud. (LOL, again. He thinks I am a dinosaur!) We'll get there and as I originally said, possibly enjoy it! After all, I've survived all those Windows updates!

I'm not yet 30 and I'm having a hard time w/ all these changes. I guess I thought it would still be Gardenweb, just under the Houzz name. I liked Houzz and Gardenweb, separately, before this merge. I just started using the new site less than an hour ago and there are definitely things that could improve.

What happened to the listing of our favorite forums in our profile and the way we could save threads for reference?

Reading these responses helped me figured out how to find the forums though! I kept ending up at the Houzz side of things, instead of where I want to be.

I still haven't tried out the search feature yet. I liked gw where you could either search within the individual forum or all the gw forums.

*sigh* ok, figured out some of the answers to my questions. My problem was that both my Houzz and Gardenweb usernames were the same, but under different email addresses. I was somehow in my Houzz one when I posted so I couldn't see any of those features.

I'm posting to check the link colors. Excellent update, my friends! Now I can tell if I have visited a link AND if there has been a new post on a previously visited thread. You have also fine-tuned the layout of the table showing the threads. I am very happy about this! Thank you!

Thank you wantonamara. You're right kaktuskris, I can figure out how to change it. :)

I'm over here to see what on this new system y'all figured out. So while here I pass along what I found out about the search feature:

"When you use the search bar, the default is set to search the forum you are on
first. If you start typing your query, you'll see several choices show up in a
pull down menu. If you choose the first one, that will pull up all the results
in your forum. "

I appreciate kaktuskris remarks above. Thank you.

Thanks. After all, this is still the best garden forum on the web by far....

Hi folks, I'm pretty new to the GW & have been hanging out in the bonsai & container gardening forums. I've just read all of these comments & you seem like a fun group. I had barely figured out the old format & now this.

My main dislikes are the brightness & the contrast (I'm getting a lot of eye strain). The old format had a pleasant blue color that was easy on the eyes.

Anyway I love cacti & succulents (got bunch's). Can anyone ID this one for me?

Thank you, Rob.

Looks like an etiolated Echeveria to me...Needs more sun.

Christopher

Sun, my friend Christopher, is not what it needs, to be exacting for a moment. What it craves is bright light.

Thanks for the input. do you both agree on the I.D.?

secondly why do you both suggest more light in one way or another?

Rob

P.s. when you come across small pics like this you can put your cursor on them to enlarge.

Rob
It may be E. black prince (not 100% sure) - it would have much darker leaves if enough sun.

Agreed, much more light will grow tighter rosettes and bring out the color. Black Knight has more stellate leaves while Black Prince has broader leaves.

In the spring you may want to behead your several stems and plant the heads on their own. This way you should get some nice tight rosettes and you may get the old stems to produce offsets.

Yes exactly, Black prince now that you say it that's what the tag said when I got it,Thankyou. it had been so long ago i'd forgotten. how would you go about making a cutting off of this?

Thanx you guys, Rob.

Rob, just cut off top/rosette, they root very easily.

And any healthy leave will root too, I must have now close to 20 of them from just one original plant and I already gave away many. Let callus just like any succulent cutting, then pot up. But if there isn't enough sun/light, it will keep stretching so maybe wait bit longer.

1st: kak & cac, I had never heard the term "etiolated". after some kwik investigation you are absolutely right which seems odd since my cacti & succulent table sets in front of an east facing window w/ supplemental lighting. in the winter time however only a sliver of direct sun light comes through it. Thanks for the interesting info.

2nd: biker & rina, Thank you for your input. I have rooted leaves before by letting them set on top of the "soil" & begin to root before positioning them to TAKE root (sometimes a few weeks). when taking a stem cutting I will either place directly into perlite or let them callous 3 or 4 days then put in Black gold cac/suc mix then water.

I'll wait until the sun moves further north in the sky before I do anything.

Thank you all for your help, Rob.

I will post a pic of my growing setup tomorrow.

Sorry everyone, I inadvertently took you off topic so I will get the ball rolling again. I only just became a GW member in Jan. so I was barely used to the old format when this happened. I'm also no computer expert so for the first several days on houzz I really wanted to scream, I hated it. now however I've settled in a bit & started just clicking on everything to see what it might do. I must admit now, there are some pretty cool upgrades I've come across... all in all I think if we keep helping one another out we will all catch on. However I DON'T & WON'T like the social media aspect of it like the " following" the "Likes,Badges & pins" & similar things. :(

Rob

P.S. I started another thread "Pachyphytum Compactum cutting?" pertaining to the previous 9 comments.

I really appreciate that words in messages are not showing up as green links. The format is essentially perfect in my eyes. Things look clean, not like some cheap, ad-filled site-- it makes me feel appreciated, somehow, that we share a much better space now. You can kind of just ignore the social media aspect if you don't care for it-- it doesn't hurt us. Granted, words coming from a younger person. There are a lot of nice things going on here. In a month I may be completely content with this, and I should be. But yes, unfortunate that this change will be the final blow for those who are older and have stuck with GW until this point.

Italics and other options are needed. I will get over the apparent need to now upload to Houzz (embedding now difficult? Only thing I need to read up on, and it is the younger generation's duty to teach the elders who are approaching ripping out their hair). I have great hope that Houzz photo uploading will not ruin photo quality in any way (perhaps my greatest gripe about any site). Lots of hoping coming from me.

While it is nice that newer comments move to the top, I have noticed that posts with no replies are being jumped and moving down. These may not be seen on active days and the poster - especially a newbie - may get discouraged with the forum.

It would be nice if unanswered posts stayed at the top for several days at least. It may take a few days for a person with expertise to answer it for the poster. While weekends are generally slower on the forum, and we are slowly getting some members back on board, I'd hate to see some threads get lost in the shuffle.

Halocline - I had to look for your Pachyphytum cutting thread.

I would still like to see a greater contrast in colours/shades between the grey and green of the read and un-read threads. In some situations i.e. lighting it is not always immediately obvious.

Maybe that's just me though as I have too much worry and sadness in my head at the moment : (

Gill UK

I think some of us are being a bit too picky here, but maybe that is just me. I am just happy that this forum is still here for us to use.

Does anyone know how to get the red light to stop blinking on the vcr.

Richard

color/contrast definitely needs improvement.

Rob

oldstumpy1 - I figured out yesterday that I can just unplug it. I'm quick like that. LOL

kaktuskris - I have to agree with you. Overall, most of the issues I loudly complained about at the beginning of this thread have been resolved. Sure, there are a few suggestions to make and in time Houzz may agree with us. But I do have to commend the techs for addressing the biggest problems rather quickly. New stuff always has bugs to work out.

I should have mentioned above that you may need to bump a thread to keep it from being lost in the activity so you can get your answer. We've all done that before. Didn't mean for it to simply be a complaint without offering a way to avoid that problem!

Yes, overall I am very grateful that the GW continues to be.

Rob

Hear, hear !

I would like to see the photos larger.

wantonamara, if you put your cursor on the picture, it will automatically enlarge.

Rob

I do not get enlarged pictures when hovering with the cursor on the threads, but I do have this on my profile page, where the snippets are smaller. Odd. I am using Firefox - and frankly having a lot of problems lately. (Have called in my IT kid to come fix mama's computer - again! I'm his best client.)

Oddly enough sometimes for me the photos are large and then I go back to the same thread later and they are small. Hovering enlarges them. Then it's back the other way later. Must be my computer, huh? Not complaining though. I think it's a pretty neat site overall. I'm glad we can post 10 photos, but wish there was an easy way to use Photobucket.

roselee, that is exactly what happens to me, so I don't think its your computer. when I post pics they're big but when I go back they're small. ?

Halocine, I know that about the hovering. It is still not large enough for my taste.Many forums have a much larger format. Just saying'.

Sorry folks if I came over as a moaner, I didn't mean to be. I have much to contend with at home as my d/h of 40 years last Sunday has gone from 'appearing to be quite OK' to a terminal illness within 2 months. GW is my escape from nursing him and the changes have baffled me.

A sad Gill UK

Oh, Gill, I feel for you. I would have e-mailed you but can't find how to do it. If you ever want a chat I'm at nospamelder@iol.ie Just get rid of the nospam.

No reason to apologize. I for one know what it is like . I would have e-mailed you but can't find how to do it. My grand children call me a fossil.

rrembrat@outlook.com

Richard

Hugs and prayers for you and the family, Gill. Yes, this place is a great relief valve, even when discussing certain soil mixes

Gill, I am very sorry to hear about your husbands illness. Hope you'll keep us posted.

Thinking of you...Rina

I appreciate everyone's kind words. We have a good family and a wide circle of friends around us so we are not alone at this time despite our 'children' not living near to us, so in that respect we are very, very fortunate.

The 2 forums I frequent (C&S and Adeniums) have given me some fantastic folks to interact with and I consider you also as my friends, so a big thanks to each and every one of you :)

Gill UK