Brief Update - site update coming soonPrevious TopicNext Topic

I have been very hard at work in finishing some necessary changes to certain pages on the site, which would account for my sporadic participation on the site.  Because of the difficulty of the changes, I have been forced to "lock myself in a closet" to get the harder parts finished.

The most noticeable changes will be on the news pages, which will have a completely updated format, much more "news-like", and less "forum-like".

There are also a ton of little things that I've been tweaking here and there.  People who have stumbled across small site changes in the past will know what to expect.

Because of the sheer enormity of the site, it is just impossible for me to tackle entire sections of the site at one time, so my approach has been to "nibble" on smaller chunks, and gradually migrate the site to where I want it to go.  That's the reality of having to run a big site like this on a budget of one developer (me).

I am also trying to get the site ready for IE8, which is due to me out in March.  When the site update occurs -- maybe as early as tomorrow -- all of the pages except anything using the text editor will run in native IE8 mode (rather than the compatibility mode).  I have to wait for the Moxiecode folks to finish tweaking the editor for IE8 before I can go 100% native mode.

I'll try to put together a detailed change log entry sometime after installing the site update.  I just wanted to give everyone a heads-up that the update is coming, and to explain my near absence as of late.

thanks Todd.

By the way I just want to let you know that this site has my attention everyday. I literally come to this site everyday. I even check it on my PDA phone throughout the day for new news stories. Thank you for all the work that you do.

Thank you Todd! You're so good! Question. . .. when this site goes to IE8 will I have to switch over soon? Because I'm running some screenwriting software right now and until these scripts are finished I'll be afraid to switch over to IE8.

Yah thanks  Todd.  I love this site alot too.  I check it everyday and I am on it like 2 hours a day...reading past stories too.  Thanks and keep up with the good job.

Yeah the MM rolled again...No Jackpot winner....I wonder how much its going to be maybe $170M...wow  Thats my money and I want it now.

@chasingadream, @TigerAngel, @Halle99:  Thanks!

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@TigerAngel:

No need to switch -- you can do that whenever you're ready.  It's really just work I need to do on my end, to be sure that the site works fine in both IE7 and IE8.

One important thing to note is that I'm going to have to drop IE6 compatibility testing sometime this year, as trying to keep the site compatible with that ancient browser is going to be too difficult.  Keeping it compatible and tested with two versions of IE is reasonable, but three is crazy.

One thing the site update will have this week is a sort of "reminder" message to IE6 users to get moving and upgrade to IE7 (if not IE8) right now.  There really is no reason to still be on IE6, especially given the tremendous security risks every IE6 user faces.  It is a very unsecure web browser.

If you're on IE7, I will continue to support that browser fo a long time. 

With IE8, I can report that it is a very good browser, and I have been running it as my primary web browser for several months now.  It is very safe for any IE7 user to upgrade to IE8, because there is a compatibility button built in:  if a site is not compatible with IE8 for some reason, just click the little button, and the site will operate as if you are using IE7.  It works extremely well, and I have never had it fail a single time.

IE8 is still in it's Release Candidate stage, so I don't necessarily recommend upgrading yet.  The release is most likely only a couple weeks away, so I would recommend just hanging in there and upgrading when it is officially released.

Thanks for the heads-up Todd. As always, your hard work and dedication to this site are very much appreciated by all of us here. Keep us updated on IE8 as I am very interested in switching as it had been released officially.

Thank you Shawn.  I will definitely post updates on IE8, normally in my blog.

I've seen some of the changes like on the blog and those new avatars for people who don't have their own. It's all very nice Todd! Thank you for keeping us updated!

Todd Your the MAN!!!

Thanks for the updates

@ThatScaryChick, tnlottodreamer:  Thanks!

@All: I have posted details about the update (which was completed last night) here: http://www.lotterypost.com/thread/189738. 

I'll go ahead and close this thread — please post any feedback on that post, so it's together with the detail.  Thanks!