I've updated all the backend templates to a more standards compliant version. Virtually every page is effected by this and I didn't test every one, so I'm sure stuff is messed up. Some of the pages will actually validate against the W3 validator now, but the real goal is to clean up stray tags. At some point the whole site will validate, but I don't really care all that much about it...

In the process, new code has been uploaded for:

• Send to Top. The rules have changed to allow the originator or last poster to bump the thread if no replies have been made in 24 hours. At this point there are no other restrictions, but all data is logged for future use - which most likely will include limits.

  
  

• Recent Threads. The board name is listed next to the topic. This feature is incomplete and will most likely change, so don't get too used to it.

Typo?

Also, certain tags aren't working...

Marcello

Doubtful.

There's a problem with Recent Threads. I would attach a picture, but I can't; see below.

Many submit-type things time out in Opera, such as General Settings, sending private messages, or attaching a file.

Some of these happen with other browsers as well.

Maybe they can, maybe they cannot? Typo fixed.

Regarding those tags, they are obviously working as intended.

I intend bold to be bold and italics to be italics, so obviously they are not working as intended.

Marcello

It renders fine in Opera 7.1 for Windows.

There is no reason that I'm aware of that would be causing those problems.

http://olympus.olf.sgsnet.se:8000/recentthreads.png

Opera 7.21 under Windows.

Wow, I just got in and noticed the new feature. Very nice, thanks!

That's great

(I supose that if a thread is locked, it's not possible to bump it... that wouldn't be good:))

Oh, one thing that's been nagging me ... if you click the lightbulb in a thread that just cross page boundaries (i.e. your next unread post is the first post on a new page), you get taken to the page before the new post and have to click the next thread number at the bottom before you get to the post you actually want. Could this be remedied?

It's by design, in that, you are taken to the previous post so you can get the context of the thread. If its not too much hastle, I may send you to the next page automatically, but include the previous post at the top.

PS: I'm unable to connect to the server that you posted the image on.

http://www.monkeyblah.com/recentthreads.png

Better?

Get a better browser.

j/k. But does it sound familar?

I made a few tweaks ... is it any different now? It is an Opera browser bug that must have been recently introduced.

Basically, it's just a table:

<table width="100%"><tr><td width="16">X</td><td>Title</td><td>Board</td></tr></table>

There's no reason for it to be doing that...

It works fine now.

It would make more sense if the board name had its own column.

Or, make the text size smaller.

Is there a place where we can submit ideas for a.cc? I have a bunch load of purty ideas that can improve the forums/site.

Hmm... I seem to remember a forum section called "Allegro.cc Comments"

Submitting ideas doesnt' do anything anyway - our Benevolent Leader is too busy to implement anything anyway, and when he does, it's always what he wants anyway.

The problem with that, though, is that it messes up the color scheme. I did it that way originally, but it was very disorienting.

There's an alternate style here that I'm working on.

Well said!

Apart from the fact that the alternate style has the Opera 7.21 bug mentioned above, I like it.

Hmm... the tiny text gets so hard to read on my screen in the alternate style, so I'll have to vote for the classic style

I lieks too. Are you going to link the forum names?

I vote for recent-2.php

I vote for the current one, but with the forum names in the grey used in v2.

I'd say v2 is the better version. Everything looks more uniformed. With the current version, the row heights are all over the place. Most member names are also 2 liners in the version, as well as the longer thread titles.

(1280x960, with my task bar on the left. So more like 1024 width )

Matthew, have you ever viewed your site under Mozilla/Linux? The text on Allegro.cc under Linux for me is very small compared to Windows, while text on all other sites such as Slashdot are a lot larger. I've seen this over various installs of Linux, and I believe I saw it with MSIE for Mac as well, and Mozilla/Solaris. I'm not sure why it can be an issue...

Same reasons as Derezo. I have the same res, but I don't like to browse fullscreen.

[edit]
gillius: Ctrl++ maybe (hold control, hit plus)?

Same here. My task bar is bottem, but I have a bunch of things going on at once, so my windows are never full screen.

...but I like this feature. Its cool!

Like post graphs?

Well, text under Linux is horrible, and I'm not going to be able to fix that. Just increase the font size in your browser until you can read it...

I think those got broke when I moved up to the latest PHP4 RC a few days ago.

I keep getting a cyclic link found error from clicking on the recent posts page...

edit3: uh.. attached a more relavant image...

Have you just changed something now Matthew?

The recent threads section seems different..

Isn't that (partially) what this thread was about? Matthew said he was working on a new stylesheet/etc. I guess he is just using it as the main one now.

he sure is, matthew, can you put the same format on 'threads by poster'?

and fix my tags?

Marcello

I muchly like the new recent threads. And now that the old one is gone, theres no more error as I pointed out in my last message!

From what I heard, you were abusing tags at one point, so you got your priviliges revoked. Quit bugging him about it. While it might not have any bering on how much longer they'll be disabled, you never know.

Tag abuse!

How could you?

I never abused the tags that are disabled. =P

Marcello

You abuse one, they all get taken away

I think quote still works.

I did notice that doesn't seem to work for me...

And the

pre tag seems faulty

seems to ignore all whitespace.

edit: not just newlines. all white space I think.

doesn't work for anyone ...

PRE does though.

Although there seems to be a problem with linebreaks around pre and tt ...

Matthew, not sure if this has been implemented yet, but I can't seem to use it in a thread I posted last to one day ago.

Yes, I hadn't updated my local files with the new pre/tt code, so it got overwritten when I uploaded. I'll have to merge that back in.

It should work, what's the thread?

May I ask what you have to do to update the files? Are you doing it manually? Are there hundreds of files? (etc)

I just use Homesite or Vi to edit the PHP files, if that's what you're asking... There's about 230 PHP code files.

Actually, I ment what do you need to do to upload them. Manually, some sort of version controlled helper program, etc.

with 2draw [gloat]currently running 246 php files, 5.67MB, 29327 lines[/unnecessary bragging], I use easyphp to test all the stuff on my computer, then use winscp to copy files over when I feel they are working sufficiently well.

So yea, manually. I will use windows search to get the latest files I've modified (since they're scattered throughout a significantly large directory structure (~40 folders)), then just pull em over in winscp.

Marcello

I just use WinSCP.

Sorry, missed this thread.

It's the one on 'screen tearing' created by AJ. I saw no other buttons in the reply screen and 'post reply' wouldn't let me post because I was the last person who posted. oh, it did say the last post was one day ago in the recent threads list.

I only wanted to bump it to test your new system.

Well, if the button isn't there, then that does pose a problem... Are you sure you were logged on?

Although, there's nothing preventing you to just backdoor using the link from another page, as long as the rules are met.

I clicked on 'Send to top' and it now seems to be bumped.

Can you check? I thought send to top just altered my view, not the actual data.

No, it's up there. damn you. Usually when checking the forums I look at all the threads above the first dim lightbulb, assuming I skipped the other lit ones on purpose. Now that won't work.

It alters the timestamp on the last post to be the current time.

Hehehehehehehe....

You should put a limit on it Matthew so it can only be done once or twice for each thread.

Doh, and double DOH!

But in my defence this thread has grown large and I forgot the wording of your original post.

Well theoretically you could only do it 7 times right?

Or is the 24 hours since the last real post not the last post timestamp you're updating? Perhaps have it do a 12 hour minimum since the last bump? That should solve any abuse problems... and not worry people about exceeding any kind of bump limit.

Marcello

Is that style sheet definitely definite now? Is there no chance of making the 'XX mins ago' and forum names just a teeny bit bigger? Some one else posted that it doesn't look good on Linux, and it is at the very limits of legibility on Mac, too (attached)

Pete

Is that using the Konqueror-based browser?

No, it's Camino, which is Mozilla-based.
The site looks fine on Mozilla/windows. Maybe it's just my small laptop screen that means 6.5pt is very small? I really don't know how these things work.

Pete

How about on mozilla-mac?

Marcello

Marcello: I haven't installed it. ATM I'm very happy with Camino, and I can't be bothered to install another browser. I'll try the infamous IE for Mac though (later)
I wonder whether specifying the small fonts in pixels might be better than points, just for the very small ones?

Pete

Don't points equal pixels on the Mac, but some other stuff depending on some arbitrary dpi value on Windows?

Mars,

I read that, too. However, it doesn't seem to be true (see attachment) It's interesting to see the three browsers (from the left: safari, IE, Camino) interpret the font sizes differently.

Pete

Problem is they aren't using antialiased fonts, which is stupid.

pt and px should not be the same, however, px from computer to computer should be pixel-perfect the same. And pt should print the same on any computer (I think?).

Marcelo

Does [url http://www.allegro.cc/forums/recent2.php] look any different in those browsers? The Forum Name is using xx-small and the Last Posted Time is using x-small.

It sure looks different in Win32 Mozilla anyway... the text in the recent2 version is way easier to read than the old (new) one
Small text is the curse of 1600x1200...

I use 1600x1200 and have no problems (125dpi). I can always hit ctrl+.

Marcello

Recent2 definitely looked better for me. There's a new Camino due in April - maybe they will have fixed whatever is wrong by then???

Pete

Both look fine in Konqueror. (KHTML)

What about making the forum names linkable as well?

That would disrupt the color scheme... Too many links!

Not sure what's causing it, but lately I can see the individual table rows appear on the recent threads page - like rendering a single line will take pretty long (Using firebird on winXP).

It's not a real problem, I was just wondering... did you change anything lately? I didn't have the effect before today.

That is most likely because the table columns all have fixed widths now, and the browser is more confident to display them as it reads them.

matthew: do you use any kind of output buffering? I've found that makes pages load faster sometimes...

Marcello

Everything is buffered, because I use it to do some templating magic. (Which, I never ended up using like I planned on, so it's just a waste of CPU as it is...)

But, the real buffering happens because I use the gzip compression handler to minimize page size.

Actually, gzip handler doesn't necessarily mean the page will be buffered, if there are any flushes (dunno about implicit flushes), it will encode/compress everything it has and spit it out then, rather than waiting for everything and spitting it out after.

This is what I've found, anyway...

Though now I just use mod_deflate or whatever it is called on apache 2.

Marcello

Well, it basically goes like this:

• start buffer

• template_add(POLL); // etc

• echo "html content";

• end buffer

• process template, inserting "html content" into the proper place in the template

(At this point the browser has received nothing.)

• echo $buffer; // the results of the processed template all sent to gzip with one statement

So basically, the content is all sent through the gzip handler with one final echo. Whether or not that's sent in xK sized chunks, I don't know.

Matthew, not sure if you are aware of this, but when ever I now go to any forum page it's drawn twice. Once in a different font then normal with none of the outline boxs around each post, and then in the normal view.

It looks like the first view is almost a text based view as I can see blue highlighted links for each post for a split second before it changes to the normal view.

That can happen if your browser doesn't apply the CSS till its already downloaded and rendered the page (which I've seen... probably IE.)

I'm using IE 6.0. But this didn't happen before, only now...

Um... how do I get the forum to look like yesterday again?
I guess you changed the css again... which is ok, I guess... but I liked it better the way it was before... the blue, large "posted on ..." link now interrupts the page.

If you could upload that old css somewhere I could use it as my personal css file.

its not blue, nor is it large at least for me...

That's how it looks here (firebird, XP)
And it wasn't blue and large yesterday...

That large blue text is still small and grey here..

It also seems like the left column (Name, Memeber, etc) Looks different than a) yesterday and b) the other text.

almost like a progranism is loose in the system?

This is what it looks like for me...

Yep.. that was how it looked yesterday for me aswell.

Hit CTRL-F5. The CSS is now cached on a 24-hour period, so your browser doesn't even attempt to redownload it (10K) on every page view. Nothing has changed drastically from yesterday, in the terms of final appearence.

As far as rendering goes, I've tested it on Opera, MSIE, and Firefox on my slow modem link, and it renders no differently for me than it did before the CSS tweaks...

http://www.bluerobot.com/web/css/fouc.asp

Also includes a 'fix' to the problem.

This one much nicer. Half without css, the other half with css

(Note for the blue color: I was using my stylesheet).

Hmmm. I guess now pages don't automatically reload when I go back and forward in my history anymore, eh?

No, I finally found some cache settings that seem to work across the major browsers. When a link is clicked, a new page will be generated - but back/forward is now usable. That should be the expected functionality - it makes browsing on slow links a lot nicer...

I've missed something. The "Posted On" text is.. too small for my likeing. It's not as shown in the last attachement by Thomas. I liked it the older way. Is the older CSS file for that somewhere, so I can set my settings?

Just create your own CSS, and import the a.cc one above it.

matthew: care to share code?

Marcello

What code?

I thought you always specifically wanted the pages to reload when moving forward and back. Granted, I liked the old (current?) setup when I had my 56K, but now I've gotten used to the constantly automatically-updating pages.

No, that was never the intended design. I want back/forward to be cached (helps prevents dupe requests and browser warnings, etc) - I just want each page click to generate a new page.

the code for your caching system...

Right now I just use 'private' on that php sessions thingy, I think. Whatever it is, it reloads pages when you go back/forward.

Marcello

Weird error; sometimes I refresh the Recent Threads page and I get booted to the front page. Only now and then, and only once. As in, going back takes me to the Recent Threads page again, and then refreshing works normally for a while.

EDIT: Bah; just did it again.