| Posted: March 27, 2008, 12:17 pm - IP Logged |
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This is a heads-up that a site update will on its way soon. Hopefully today sometime.
The reason for the heads-up is that like all site updates, it may mean an interruption of a couple minutes, although sometimes I am able to do it without any interruption.
Notice that for the past few updates (and into the future) I do not require than anyone clear their web cache anymore. I have come up with a method of doing site updates that no longer requires clearing your cache.
In this update, I am implementing the latest version of the text editor, and I have finally been able to convert all instances of the editor to the latest version.
For the longest time, the blog editor and signature editor (and up until recently the private message editor) have been stuck at a much earlier version of the editor because I would have to completely rewrite the pages in order to upgrade it.
Well, I did finally rewrite the pages, so when the site update is installed, any page that includes the text editor will be using the latest, greatest version. That will be especially welcome in the blogs. It also means that compatibility with alternative browsers such as Safari and Opera will be much better across the board.
All the popup windows used by the text editor will now be "DHTML" windows. For non-technical folks, that means they will not be blocked by your popup blocker, they will be much faster to open and use, and they will "live" within the bounds of your browser, rather than being free-floating windows that can get lost behind your browser window.
An example of a DHTML window is the popup window that opens when you click a star rating to see who rated it, or when you click the "Link" button on a thread to see the URL of the topic (the "permalink").
There are a ton of other changes, but I'm not sure how many of them people will notice. A lot of the changes are performance tweaks, so I won't get a chance to see what kind of impact they'll make until the site update has been completed.
Included in the update is getting rid of the annoying warning message that sometimes happens when you click Login. (Warning about non-secure content being displayed on a secure page.)
There is also a new feature that points out anything in your post that was changed by the automated word censor. For example, if you posted a curse in your message, the system now puts a marker in the post where the word was taken out, and also adds a message at the bottom that tells you that the content was changed. In the current and previous versions of the editor, censored words would be removed, and often there would be no indication that the system changed your post. In private messages, it can be disconcerting when the system changes your message, so I think this feature is particularly helpful in private messages.
Signatures, which have been a pain in the neck for me to police, will now be automatically scrutinized by the system before they are saved. So that lovely person who kept registering new accounts and posting signatures with huge images will no longer be able to do that.
Again, there will be lots and lots of other changes here and there, and you may notice them here and there as you navigate to different pages.
Because it's a very large update, the possibility exists that you'll run across a bug (something that doesn't work properly). If that happens, just send me a note using the Report a Problem form and I'll check it out.
I'll post another message once the site update is complete.
