I just completed a site update, and I thought I'd pass along a few of the changes.
Actually, it's been a while since I posted about a site update in the forums; I have made a few updates recently and only posted info to the Change Log, so that would be a good place for additional detail.
The most visible change made today is the official break-out of Canada multi-province games from USA multi-state games.
In fact, Canada national games now get an official designation of "multi-province", rather than their former technically-incorrect labeling of "multi-state". I'm sure our Canadian members will be pleased with that one.
There also still exists "multi-country" games -- which is actually just a single game: Euro Millions.
Collectively, all three types of games -- multi-state, multi-province, and multi-country -- are referred to as "multi-jurisdiction", which is a term frequently used in the lottery industry.
So, with that being said, you will now find new menu choices in both the Results menu and the Predictions menu for viewing multi-jurisdiction games, and that menu gives you the option of seeing the multi-state, multi-province, or multi-country page. (I'm tired of typing "multi-"!) If this doesn't make sense, just look at the menus, and it will be clear.
Also, there are a couple other changes to the same menus: Instead of a "United Kingdom" sub-menu that offers choices of Ireland and UK National, the sub-menu is now called "Europe"; and the Predictions menu now has separate sub-menus for going straight to USA, Canada, and Europe predictions.
All of these organizational things have been necessary for some time, but just recently came together. The new multi-province designation had some very wide-ranging impacts throughout the system, since the grouping of games is a very fundamental part of the system, and you will find the new terminology, as well as new choices available through the predictions system and results pages.
Some other things updated today included fixing a bug that caused jackpot change amounts to appear only in US dollars; I added a new sound for member active/inactive in the Monitor Site Activity page and added an option to turn off the sound; fixed some glitches in the new Sudoku sounds (particularly in the Chrome browser); fixed some content issues in the Browser Compatibility Test; and made some improvements to the post-editor processing for any text input into the rich text editor, as well as some text input into the simple codes editor.
Sound effects are something that some people love and others hate, which is why I'm experimenting with them in a couple of pages (Sudoku and Monitor Site Activity). I added an "OFF" option in the site activity page for people who don't like the sounds.
But for those who like the sounds, I'm interested to hear your feedback. I added a second sound today so that you can easily distinguish the multitude of member activity items from more "substantial" events such as new posts. The thought is that for those who like to keep the member activity items turned on, but want to be drawn to the page when something interesting happens, the audio cue accomplishes this.
Also, I'm interested in adding effects where they make sense in the site -- but it only tends to be in areas with real-time activity. Sounds are highly subjective, so everyone will have a different opinion on what's good and what's not, so anything I put in there is an experiment at this point, and subject to change. So if there is something you like in particular, please let me know.
If you don't like sound -- and I know there are some of you out there -- frankly I'd rather just keep the discussion positive, so there's no need to remind me that you don't sound. I will always try to have an "off" setting -- except maybe in games like Sudoku.