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Really been on a programming tear today. Some stuff I'd been working on for a while finally got finished and some new stuff fell right into place more quickly than I deserve. <g>
I'll be listing some changes, bug-fixes, and additions in the next few messages.
Semi-major new feature:
I guess collectively, these last 3 would make for a major new feature.
The My Settings screen has gained a new field: "Mark Messages 'Read' in Next10 View".
If you set this to "On", when you read messages in 10-at-a-time view, any messages you encounter that are to you are marked as read and subtracted from your MailBox.
If you set it to "Off", messages to you aren't marked as read until you read them in one-at-a-time view.
The default setting is "Off".
Semi-major new feature:
Keep/UnKeep functionality added to 10-at-a-time view.
Semi-major new feature:
I've added the ability to save public messages written to you so you can have them for future reference or so you can reply to them later.
This feature is currently only available when reading messages one at a time, but it will soon be available in 10-at-a-time view.
When you read messages, any message to you will include a link that says "Keep" right after the "Respond" link.
If you click this link, it'll save the message separately then the link will change to "UnKeep".
If you go to your MailBox, the "Public Replies" section is now called "Unread Public Replies", and a new section has been added: "Read/Kept Public Replies".
Any post on which you hit the "Keep" link shows up in this section.
A few minor changes:
The Reset Counter link on the MailBox page should be unnecessary now and will be deleted later. I tweaked it for speed (it's many times faster) and now when you reply to a private message, it doesn't subtract one from the message you have waiting. Instead it does the Reset Counter calculation.
This should get rid of a minor glitch whereby it was possible to end up with an inaccurate or even negative number showing for your MailBox counter.
Also, some minor changes to the listing of chairmail subscribers:
1. Sorted in ascending order on email address.
2. The remove link just removes the one record now; not all records for that particular user. The problem was that if you had dupes (there are lots of them), deleting one of the dupes would delete all of the entries for that user. No longer the case.
3. After doing a deletion from the list, you're taken back to the same page.
There was some other minor change I did recently, but I don't remember what it was.
The next thing to get rolled out should be different choices for dealing with public messages addressed to you, especially being able to "Keep" ones you don't want to reply to yet, and having them marked as "Read" when you read them in the 10-at-a-time mode.
Minor "Undocumented Feature" Fix:
Now when you post a reply to a PM using Submit/Arc, the MailBox count shown on the "Your message was sent" confirmation screen reflects the subtraction of the post that got moved to your archive.
Bug Fix:
I did up a new version of the routine that handles conversion of [ chart ] tags to get more reliable handling of suppressed graphics (settable by going to Tools, then My Config, then Display Embedded Graphics).
So far, it seems to be working well. If it proves to be a complete bug fix, then I'll apply the same changes to [ sound ] tags, then to all the tag conversions on the site, as the new routine does it many times faster than the old one.
The difference is that the old routine processes the message one character at a time, looking for tags, while the new one does it one paragraph at a time. I *think* a chart or multiple charts within a paragraph (including other text) will still work correctly, but let me know in the MATT board if it doesn't.
Much as I hate to, guess I'd better document this one, too.
The site experienced it's first major outage since my coming aboard. The problems started last night (actually, they started to a very small extent shortly after installing the machines), and got worse, to the point that I would reboot the webserver and things would start out alright, but within minutes, the site would report errors every time it had to contact the database, and it'd get worse until nothing would work at all.
The cause was a hard drive failing rapidly. We had been up there fixing a similar problem a few weeks ago and CHKDSK had reported some bad sectors (keep in mind this was a machine I bought new in December). Today it reported so many errors they were scrolling off the screen.
The drive was a 100-gig Western Digital Caviar. There's still one of those in the SQL box, but we're already planning to replace that one soon. It's not reporting any errors, but we don't want to take a chance. There's already a Maxtor drive in that machine that's just used for the nightly backups.
In the WD's place now is an IBM 80-gig, and another identical drive is in there just being a mirrored drive. Basically twice the cost for the same space, and incurring some software overhead, but if one drive fails in part or completely, everthing should run from the other drive just fine with no intervention on my part. It's not RAID, but it's the closest we'll get on our budget.
Everything seems to be running now and aside from some manual effort required to reconnect the webserver to the database on reboots, it's looking pretty solid.
I went into the computer store, spread my arms wide to indicate size, and said "I need a pair o' BIG IBM hard drives, 7200 RPM, ATA100.
Got the 80-gigs. I've got a couple of them in home machines and they're among the fastest, most reliable drives I've ever had.
So what are the specs on these new drives?
If you or anybody you know has been having trouble logging in to the site since Sunday morning, it's a known problem I'm trying to address, but unfortunately I can't make it happen to me.
There are two people I know of who were having this problem and one was using Internet Explorer 5.0 and the other Internet Explorer 5.5.
I'm aware of the problem, but the fix could be a very long time coming.
I don't think this effects many people, as I only found out about two of them, and traffic today has been on a normal pace, if not slightly above normal.
Anyone who is having this problem can either wait until I've finally figured out what the problem is, or use Internet Explorer 6.x or any version of Netscape or Opera. Personally, I really like Netscape6. I've found that in situations where IE6 encounters an error and just basically says "I can't display this page", Netscape6 reports the error, the type of error, the module in which it occurred, and the line number. Exactly what I need to debug.
Plus it's faster than IE6 anyway. <g>
Bug Fix:
When replying to a message privately, the reply chain would break if you submitted your message from the Preview screen. As a result, when the recipient read the message, they wouldn't see the message to which it was replying.
I believe it's fixed now. However, it's not possible for me to restore previously broken chains.
Bug Fix:
The routine that checks to see if you have a config unique to your account (and steers you to the system default if you don't) was looking in the development directory; not the production one.
The net result was that you could make changes until you were blue in the face and while they were probably updating just fine while you were on the My Interface screen, they'd just disappear when you go went to any other screen.
It's fixed. Now I need to go smack myself around for a bit over this one.
Bug Fix:
Often when going to My Interface, the screen would suddenly look like some old setting you used to have, even if it was an interim setup you never saved. Looked like the correct setup everywhere else, but would look different on that page.
That bug is fixed.
Technical perspective: In addition to creating a stylesheet named specifically for your account (6748.css, in my case), I generate a random number between 0 and 99, and use the convention [account_num].1[randomnum] to generate a new stylesheet (ie. 6748.183, in my case) and call it when the page reloads. That's how I prevent browsers (which is most of them) from insisting on using a cached version of the CSS file, even if the server's copy has changed, I've told the server to automatically expire those pages, and I include browser directives in the HTML to force expiration. The other (normal) methods seem to work for nearly everything but CSS files.
Anyway, the random number is generated when you hit a button, and called when the page loads. So the first time you go there after logging in, the random number wouldn't exist, and the page would create/use a CSS file with "1" for the extension (6748.1 in my case).
And as you hit more buttons, you'd get more randomly-named files. Since the numbers extensions are only 100-199, the more you hit buttons, the more randomly-named files you'd have. And the greater the chances your browser would encounter a number it's already seen, and use the cached copy of that one.
I "thought" I was telling the system to delete the randomly-named files every time you hit a button, so you'd only have the one the button created, but it wasn't working.
The cause? While the fso.deletefile method accepts wildcards, apparently fso.fileexists doesn't. Weird, eh? fso.fileexists("*.1*"), for example, always returns false.
The solution was to put it in a For loop, checking for the existence of each possible filename, then deleting it if it exists. Lots of overhead doing that, but it seems to work quickly enough.
I was going to keep a tighter lid on how I'm making this User-Config thing work, but have decided not to. Especially the cache-busting part. Cache-busting is a problem as old as browsers, and no 100% reliable solution seems to be known, but I'm going to work on this to refine/simplify it, and we'll see if it's the 100% reliable solution we've been looking for, then publish it.
Three things regarding My Interface:
1. I mis-spoke earlier when I told someone it's not necessary to hit the Save Changes button on that page if you used one of the other buttons to make a change.
You do have to hit Save Changes. As soon as you hit one of the other buttons, My Interface reloads and reflects any changes you made, but unless you hit Save Changes, other pages won't see the changes.
2. With some browsers (IE5.0, for example), a change in your Interface settings might not take affect until the next time you hit Reload on any page but the My Interface page.
For example, if you change your interface, save the changes, then go to Favorites and it reverts back to your previous settings, hit Reload.
This is being caused by the insistence of some browsers to cache Cascading Style Sheets, no matter what I do on this end regarding expiration of those pages. I devised a workaround, but it's only being used on the My Interface page, and I suspect it wouldn't be practical to use it everywhere else because of the amount of work the cache-busting process is having to do.
3. If your display settings are set for 256 colors, or any other number of colors smaller than 16,777,216 colors, some #RGB codes won't come out as expected. Where this will become most apparent is if you're not color-blind but don't see any difference in either subtle or something large adjusting to either the Red, Green, or Blue of a color.
If your system isn't set up for maximum color depth, it'll "translate" incoming colors to what it thinks is a near match in whatever palette you're using.
My Interface Explained
Below is an explanation of each field of the new My Interface screen and what it does.
But, first, a general discussion of what this feature is.
My Interface is a way for you to change certain elements of your Investors Hub interface (eventually, all elements) so that the site will have whatever look and feel you want. If there's something about the default look that you don't particularly care for, use My Interface to change it.
Personally, I find the stark white background combined with the darkness of the menu too wearing on my eyes since I spend a lot of time looking at it. And since I'm colorblind, there are certain color-combinations the site uses that require a little more effort for me to read.
Or maybe your monitor is situated in such a way that glare is a problem for you with the default colors (it is for me certain times of day).
Or you just like "different" or "fancier" or "prettier" or "simpler".
My Interface makes it possible for all of us to personalize the site to look however we want it to look. While still letting everyone keep the default settings if they want.
Let me repeat and rephrase that last part: If you like the defaults, you can keep the defaults by doing nothing, or going to My Interface and hitting the "Restore Defaults" button. I know people don't like changes forced on them, so a lot of effort went into making this something you can have if you want, or not have if you don't want it.
Currently, My Interface is mostly aimed at the appearance of the menu at the top (and bottom if you've used My Config to put it there) of your screen.
There are 4 columns in the screen called "Configuration Item" (the name of the item), "Default Value" (the values used for the site's default layout), "Current Value" (what you have it set to now), and "New Value" (where you make changes). Each time you hit the "Save Settings" button below the grid, the screen should reload and the changes you made should take effect.
Here're the explanations of the fields:
Menu Font
This controls what typeface is used for the text in the menu. Just select the value you want to use from the dropdown.
Menu Font Size
How large the text in the menu is. Select a value from the dropdown. As with all options, experiment with different values to see what looks best to you.
Menu Font Emphasis
The emphasis or "thickness" of the menu font. Select what you want from the dropdown. Note that not all browsers correctly support all possible values.
Menu Text Color (see note 1 below)
The color of the text in the menu. Type in the name of the color you want, or if the color you want isn't one of the 16 allowable names, use the #RGB code to specify the color.
Menu Background Color (Named)
The color to use for the menu background color if you prefer to use a name intead of #RGB. Select the color you want from the dropdown. If you'd rather use an RGB (in the next field), select "Use RGB" here.
Menu Background Color (RGB) (see note 1 below)
If you selected "Use RGB" in the previous field, you can use this field to specify the background color of the menu. This field is ignored if you selected anything other than "Use RGB" in the previous field.
Menu Cell Width
The space given to each menu item. The default is "Empty", which will cause most browsers to space each item evenly, depending on their width. For example, "Hot!" gets a smaller amount of space than "Favorites", but they each get a similar amount of space around them.
If you want each menu item to use exactly the same amount of space (for example, if you're using a "button" look for the menu), try selecting specific values from the dropdown. The larger the number, the wider each option appears to be.
Important Note For Opera Users This option was added because of you. <g> Your menu will look hideous unless you specify something other than "Empty" in this field. The width that looks best will depend quite a bit on the menu font size, border type/size, and font emphasis, so try different values. I use 12% when I'm using Opera.
Underline Menu Links
Determines whether each menu item will have an underline. Valid values (from the dropdown) are "Yes" and "No". Personally, I'd set it to Yes if I'm using a flat menu appearance (see next field) and No if I'm using a "button" look.
Menu Item Border Type
One of my favorite items. Using this field, you can control what the "box" surrounding each menu item looks like. "None" will (on most browsers) give no border of any kind around each menu item. "Raised" makes each item look like a button that's raised from the page, and "Sunken" makes each item look like a button that's sunk into the page.
Ignored if the next field is set to zero.
Menu Item Border Size
Only meaningful if you set the previous field to anything other than "None". Select a value from the dropdown to determine how thick the border around each menu item should be.
Menu Item Padding
This determines how much space above and below each menu element should be shown. If it's set to zero, the menu is only thick enough for the menu text to barely fit in it. The larger the number, the more space is given around the menu text. Personally, I think the "button" look is more effective if you set this to about 1 or 2.
Page Background Color (see note 1 below)
The color to use for the background of all pages on the site that currently support this feature. All or most do. This color is also used as a background color for most tables (a number of them don't support this yet) to emphasize odd-numbered rows.
You can type in a valid color name or the #RGB color you want to use.
Note to geeks: If I remember correctly, I made it possible to use this field to specify a graphic file to use as "wallpaper", but I don't remember how, won't help you figure out how, and would expect very undesirable results on pages that contain rows of data.
Message Box Color (see note 1 below)
The valid named color or #RGB to use for the background of any box that displays messages ("Next 10", "Board", "Message Reply", "Message Read", etc)
This color is also used to emphasize even-numbered rows on pages that support it. Most do, but some don't. Most notably "MailBox".
Below the grid you'll see (currently) 7 buttons. "Save Changes" and "Restore Defaults".
The first one updates your config with any changes you entered. In most browsers, hitting your Enter key after making a change does the same thing. The second one sets everything back to the site's default settings.
The remaining buttons (and there will be more like them) set your interface to one of the 5 existing "presets" I've made. Using these, you can change your interface to something else without having to go through a bunch of confusing fields.
In the case of "Bob's Fave" and "Matt's Fave", it'll change all of your settings to whatever I or Matt have our interface set to at the time you hit that button. If we later change our interface, those changes won't affect your interface unless you go to this screen and hit that button again.
Note 1: Valid named colors are Black, Silver, Gray, White, Maroon, Red, Purple, Fuchsia, Green, Lime, Olive, Yellow, Navy, Blue, Teal,and Aqua.
Valid #RGB colors are expressed in hexadecimal (base16 numbering system with the numbers 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, A, B, C, D, E, F) and start with "#" and are followed by the hex value for each of the 3 primary color elements (Red, Green, and Blue, hence "RGB") from 00 through FF. 00 basically means "turn this color element all the way off" and FF means "turn this color element all the way on" and anything between 00 and FF means "turn this color element on this much".
So, turning all 3 color elements all the way off (#000000) gives black and turning them all on (#FFFFFF) gives white. Giving them all the same but lower intensity (#EEEEEE for example) gives a kind of light gray, which gets darker with lower numbers.
You make colors by adjusting the intensity of each color element. So if you want the brightest blue, you turn off Red and Green and crank up Blue like so: #0000FF.
Or you can come up with custom colors by setting each element to anything you want. For example, #E6E8FA gives the light blue used by default for message boxes.
The best way to figure it out is by experimenting. And it's fun, too, if you're into that kind of thing. All told, there are nearly 17 million different colors possible.
Confused? Don't feel bad. It's a confusing topic. The beauty of it is that if #RGB is too much, you can just leave it alone. I suspect most people will.
You can go to http://www.hypersolutions.org/pages/rgbhex.html to see a nice grid of popular colors and their #RGB codes. The same link is given on the My Interface screen.
Known issues related to the My Interface option.
1. If you were helping me beta-test this while it was still in development, your settings might not be compatible with the production version. To fix this, go to the My Interface menu under Tools and click the "Restore Defaults" button. A symptom of this is a menu that's barely readable because of the text color.
2. There are some screens on the site that have not gone through the CSS conversion, so some of your changes aren't reflected on those screens. Most notable is the MailBox screen. Specifically, on that screen, the odd-numbered rows have a white background rather than what you specified as your Page Background Color and the even numbered rows have a gray background rather than what you specified for Message Box Color.
3. The first time you go to My Settings or My Interface, the fontface is sometimes a Serif rather than the default Sans-Serif. I'm aware of this bug and will address it.
I'd originally planned to hold off on My Interface until all of the pages had been converted to a compatible format, but a lot of people wanted the bottom menu put back in, and that wasn't possible until I made My Interface available because the CSS version of the menu behaves horribly with some browsers (especially Opera) without the ability to user-config some aspects of it. In Opera's case, the menu is hideous unless you set the Menu Cell Width to something other than "Empty".
This version of My Interface was intended to address *only* the menus, but I added in a couple of non-menu items so we could make sure they perform well in the instances in which they'll work.
Page Background Color and Message Box Color are added a bit too early in the process, but they're in there. They're just not supported on all the pages yet.
Major stop-the-presses kind of feature:
Under the Tools menu, you now have a new item called "My Interface".
Using this, you can change many aspects of how Investors Hub looks for you.
Most of it currently has to do with how the menu at the top and bottom of the screen looks, and everything I could think of to make adjustable in the menu (besides which options are in the menu -- that's a future project) is adjustable. This includes font face, font size, text emphasis, text color, background color, cell width, link underlining, and whether or not the menu appears as a continuous bar (the default) or appears as raised or lowered buttons, and the dimensions of the buttons.
Many of those items will later be applied to everything else on the site.
The non-menu items on the My Interface screen are the Page Background Color and Message Box Color. The non-menu aspect of My Interface will expand later. For now, I want the current version in production for a while so we can find all the inevitable bugs before expanding it.
My next post on this board will be a full explanation of each of the items on the My Interface screen.
I'll get that written later. For now, try it out and enjoy.
When you find bugs, please don't report them here. Instead use http://www.investorshub.com/boards/board.asp?board_id=1025 or http://www.investorshub.com/boards/board.asp?board_id=504
Medium new feature:
The "bottom menu" is back. A trimmed-down version of the top menu used to appear at the bottom of the "Next 10" screen, but I took it out when I was making an earlier CSS change.
Now the bottom menu is an exact copy of the top menu and if you go to the Tools screen, you can control which pages use it.
Should be able to add "loop=true" inside a [ sound ] tag now.
I'm not sure why you're getting part of the [ sound ] command at the end of your message, but you might want to double-check your signature field in your profile. It seems that when I convert sounds back to the [ sound ] convention (which would happen when editing your profile or message), " autostart=true height=0 width=0>" is slipping back through.
I suspect that that's happened in your profile during an edit and you didn't notice/delete the extra verbage. Try it and let me know (in the Q&A board -- this board's for me and Matt only so it'll be purely "What's New").
The last part of the [ sound ] tag slipping back through the conversion is definitely what I'd call a bug, and I spent some time trying to figure out why it's happening, but am going to have to wait until I have a bigger chunk of time I can throw at it.
It uses a function that was written by Gary (probably copied from a snippet elsewhere, since it doesn't look like his style) and since the style is so foreign to me, I really can't make heads or tails of it. I'll leave it alone and write a separate, similar function for dealing with sound tags.
Looks like trying to make it loop won't work because I put quotes around everything inside the [ sound ] tag. I'll see what I can do later.
Medium-level New Feature:
If you go to the Settings screen now ( http://www.investorshub.com/boards/my_settings.asp ), you'll see two new options at the bottom.
Play Embedded Sounds Select On (default) to enable the playing of sound files when people include them in messages. If you select Off, the sounds won't play and are instead replaced by a hyperlink named "[Suppressed Sound Link]" that, when clicked, will play the sound.
Display Embedded Graphics Select On (default) to enable the display of graphics that people have included in messages. If you select Off, the graphic isn't displayed and is instead replaced by a hyperlink named "[Suppressed Chart Link]" that, when clicked, will display the picture.
I've tested this in all of the message-reading routines, and it appears that the sounds and graphics are being correctly suppressed in messages and signatures.
I've already moved on to the next thing, so I don't really know whether this change has any impact on Profiles.
Watch for any unexpected message-display weirdness. This includes missing text, [Suppressed] links that don't work, or, especially, graphics that still display even though you have them turned off. If this happens, send me a PM with a link to the post that's doing it.
Minor new feature:
Don't even ask why I'm up at this hour putting in some new code...<g>
We've gained a new tag. [ sound ] and [ /sound ] (without the spaces). Use this to insert a sound of any kind (music, noise, whatever) into a post.
The syntax works the same as the [ chart ] tag: use a link straight to the sound file (not to a page that includes the sound) and strip off the http:// part.
For technical folks, it's making use of the <embed src> tag, and already has "autostart=true height=0 width=0" added to it so it'll start playing automatically and won't display the player. If you want to put a loop directive or anything like that in it, it should comply with it. Handy for putting music in a profile.
Look at my next message on this board from the screen that shows you the subject lines and you'll see the exact syntax.
[Suppressed Sound Link]
Minor change:
Top Boards had a couple of temporary changes made that might become permanent. We'll see.
First, the formula was changed to give a lot less weighting to the total number of posts on a board. This helps flatten the curve out quite a bit.
Second, I've extended the size of the list to include more boards so people can see where some of the other action is.
We'll see how it works out for a couple of weeks.
Minor change:
If you're grandfathered, your subscription expiration date was null because that field didn't exist on my arrival. That was causing some confusion, so I just set every grandfather's subscription expiration date to 21.12.2112 at 21:12 EST
Minor change:
Well, major change if you're just now joining the site. Insignificant if you're already a member.
I've tweaked the new-user experience a bit because I just wasn't real warm and fuzzy about the flow of it. I had my daughter and her friends get on the site and try to navigate it, and anything that left them wondering what to do next got a minor change. In most cases, the layout worked real well for them. All I ended up doing was adding some verbage here and there (like a reminder after registering that you need to log in before you can really use the site) or changing some existing wording (like changing "No Boards!" to something like "You haven't added any BoardMarks yet." on the Favorites page). On the latter one, my daughter said "No boards? I thought you said this was a busy site!"
Those were the minor/easy changes.
The one that kept me indoors longer than I should've been on such a beautiful day (I'm rectifying that as soon as I submit this post) was setting the system up to send new members a Welcome PM the first time they log in. It gives some of the more commonly-used links on the site.
That's all for now.
I'm still fighting a menu problem with Opera and older versions of Netscape, so I haven't implemented the new-format top menu or the feature that lets you specify on which pages you want a bottom menu to appear. I could talk myself into just implementing it and letting the Netscape 4.old folks get by with a workaround I've got for their CSS issues, but I just can't put this change in while it's not looking right in Opera.
Minor change:
Free members (those who aren't Grandfathered or Subscribers) can now send Private Messages to myself or Matt. Free members still can't PM anyone else.
Minor change:
A search on "Subjects" will return not only the names of boards that contain the search string, but also board tickers containing the search string.
I did this to make it easier for external search engines to find boards here relevant to the tickers they're looking for.
Something small I've noticed (at least I think I noticed...) was that it use to be when I was viewing with Next10, when done with all the viewing there was a link to favorites at the bottom so I could just hit it when I was done. Now I have to scroll all the way back up to the top of the page to get to the menu again.
I'm working on that. Should have something in place by this afternoon or this evening.
A whole slew of pages went into production today and this evening that I've converted to using Cascading Style Sheets instead of fonts, etc being hard-coded in them. The main payoff for this will be apparent in about another 4 weeks or so. In the meantime, a benefit is that of the 31 pages modified so far, I've trimmed a total of 18.5% of their bandwidth utilization out of them.
Look for any really odd or ugly changes to colors, fonts, and table-handling. There will be at least subtle changes in many places, but they should be negligible or if they're much different they *should* be for the better.
Let me know in the Q&A thread if you find anything unusual.
And when you do, please be specific. Tell me exactly what it is that looks unusual and which browser you're using.
BTW, along the way I've thrown in tiny little extras when they occurred to me. They're too numerous and largely too insignificant to list, but if you notice, for example, that the 10-at-a-time view shows the name of the board both at the top and the bottom of the screen, it's not a bug.
Edit: Also, if the unusualness you see is a slightly larger or smaller font that either you just don't like or it bugs you just because it's not the same as it's always been, don't sweat those. The end result of this whole exercise will be that you can make those fonts, etc anything you want.
Minor change that fixes what was a major problem for some folks:
When sending Chairmail, the routine was blowing off in certain instances with a totally meaningless error message.
It turns out the problem was that it was sending email to an address our system knew immediately to be an invalid one. For example, and @investorshub.com address that doesn't match up with the few valid ones.
Now that routine lists all email addresses as it's sending the emails.
If you get an error in sending Chairmail, look at the last email address sent. It's probably either an incorrect address going to a domain hosted by our IIS box (investorshub.com being just one of about 30) or there's some other kind of problem with the address, like invalid characters in it.
If you get an error, note the last address shown, go to the screen where you see all subscriber email addresses, and hit the Remove link for the one you noted.
Minor changes:
I'm currently putting a lot of CSS-converted pages into production without submitting them for beta-testing. For the most part, I'm doing that only with pages that're relatively simple. The beta-testing process is slow and on a lot of these pages it'll be of dubious value, so I'm just cranking some of them out to get this project done more quickly.
If you see anything really weird in the way some pages appear or if any of them don't respond, let me know.
Bug Fix:
According to John (so I can blame him), the bug where the SpellCheck/Preview would bomb out sometimes on really large messages is now fixed.
I should note that since I'd changed some pages a while ago to use CSS in specific places, you might see weird fonts/sizes in some of those pages because of the new CSS fonts.
If you run across any, let me know in the Q&A board.
Cool new feature:
The Favorites page can now display rows in the order of your choosing.
For Favorite Boards, you can sort by Board Name, Number of New Posts, or Last Post Date.
For Favorite People, you can sort by Alias, Number of New Posts, or Last Post Date.
All of these settings are available on the My Settings screen.
By default, these tables display in the same order they always have (Board Name or Alias).
Major change:
8 of the site's modules have been changed to take advantage of CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) to give a more uniform appearance throughout the site, reduce the amount of data sent over the wires (24% average reduction in the revised pages), and to make it possible to later implement user-specific configuration for setting things like fonts, colors, table borders, etc.
The changed pages include Favorites, everything in the "Hot!" menu, everything in the "Tools" menu, and the module for browsing the messages in a board.
As always, let me know in the Q&A thread ( http://www.investorshub.com/boards/board.asp?board_id=504 ) if you encounter anything odd or just plain broken. There were quite a few changes, so I expect there'll be some kind of weirdness to report somewhere.
New Feature:
At the top right corner of any Board screen, right above the iBox, is a new search box.
Use it to search for messages within that specific board.
This completes the "full-text search" suite, and once it's been in use for a few days, I'm finally making all full-text searches Premium features.
Major bug fix/medium change:
I just put a new version of Preview into production.
With the previous version, it was possible (and not uncommon) to Preview a message, click Edit, and the post would be gone.
This is the main bug this version addresses.
Another bug was that if quotes were included in your post, everything after the quotes was appearing separately outside the Preview box. This should also be fixed.
It's also now possible to Submit a post from the Preview screen.
This was a large-scale rewrite of substantial portions of about 7 or 8 different modules, so be on the lookout for anything strange when posting any kinds of messages.
A few folks helped me test it more thoroughly this morning than I could've done on my own, so this version should be in pretty good shape. But let me know if we missed something.
Thank you to "Poet", "PMS Witch", and "The Original dpb5!" for helping test this thing.
Bob
Bug fix:
While working on something else, I ended up revising the Profile updating routine so that most of the failures to update (caused by quotes and apostrophes) shouldn't happen anymore.
Minor new addition:
Favorites page now displays the date and time of the last time you loaded it.
This can be turned on or off from the My Settings screen.
Did this one just out of curiosity. I'd set things up so these kinds of user-configurable things could be added pretty easily, and wanted to see just how well it'd worked out. Worked out real well. Took about 5 minutes to add this one.
New Feature:
Investors Hub is now able to accept Mastercard and Visa (through Verisign) for subscriptions, and will be adding more cards and online checks.
Subscriptions done through PayPal still require Matt or me to process them before the account upgrade takes affect, but this is not the case with Verisign. I've got it set up so that as soon as you complete the transaction, you have access to all of the Premium Features on the site.
Nobody but me and Matt are supposed to be posting on that thread.
What answer are you (sarcastically?) thanking me for?
New Feature:
Under the Tools menu is a new item called "My Settings".
This is where all user-configurable items will go. Currently, there are only two:
1. Favorites Auto-Refresh -- Whether or not Favorites should reload on its own at set intervals.
2. Favorites Refresh Rate -- The interval (in seconds) at which Favorites should refresh itself if Auto-Refresh is set to True.
It just occurred to me that "On/Off" would be better for item 1. I'll change that later.
Anyway, this screen will include all of the things I later make user-configurable. Please don't hit me ideas for things to add yet because I've already got a huge list of my own and I'm nowhere near ready to add them yet. They'll be added when it's possible to add them.
A lot of changes have to be made before I can make much more on the site user-configurable. It's no accident that the two items added so far are ones dealing with a recent change to the site.
Minor change:
I've changed Top Boards a small amount to try to speed it up, with only minor success. Got the total reads cut down by 25% but duration only came down about 10%, so it's still a relatively expensive process.
The scores have all changed a very small amount because one of the changes involved counting only public posts in a board rather than every post in the message database that is considered to belong to that board. Doing it the old way, deleted messages and private replies to public messages were getting counted. Now only non-deleted public messages are counted.
This'll get revisited later, as the duration only came down from about 1600 milliseconds to about 1400. It's a toughie because of all the calculations that take place.
It looks like some opposition to the longer editing window is appearing on another thread.
I supported your decision to remove some of the 'time pressure' on posting because I believed it would make it easier for people to review their contributions and make improvements. I felt that better written posts would have more value to both the reader, who could concentrate on the issue under discussion and not waste effort deciphering what was meant from what was written, and the writer, who, once seeing her words on the screen, may also see the areas where she could've expressed herself clearer.
However, I overlooked the all too human tendency to exploit whatever advantages present themselves, even if it brings an overall deterioration to the quality of the site. I viewed the longer editing window as an opportunity to improve my posts. I failed to see it would also present an opportunity for unscrupulous posters to weasel away from their words and excape accountability for what they post.
I still support your decision for a longer editing window. I-Hub management will need to decide who will be best served: those who try to create quality posts, or those who are attempting to scam fellow members or inflate their self image as some all-knowing savant.
I take some comfort in observing that you haven't been pushed around by bullies in the past. Whatever you decide in this matter, you have my support.
Cheers, PW.
P.S. I'm seldom pleased with my first attempt at most things. Internet posts are no different.
Yeah, it takes me 10 minutes just to READ some of my posts, let alone fix typos when I see them.
I think the extra five minutes of edit time is a good idea. When one has a dial-up brain in a broadband world, they need all the help they can get.
Cheers, PW.
Bug fix:
We should have no more problems with the sporadic "Edit Window". I'm referring to the site sometimes letting you edit a post anytime within 10 minutes of posting it, and sometimes not giving you the Edit option at all, or only making it available for a short time.
While I was at it, I bumped up the window size to 15 minutes.
This will also improve the performance of the message-reading procedure, but likely not to an extent that'll be noticeable.
The first eight words become my post's introduction, so I must be careful how I begin...
The Spell Checker
Eye halve a spelling chequer
It came with my pea sea.
It plainly marques for my revue
Miss steaks eye kin knot sea.
Eye strike a key and type a word
And weight four it to say
Weather eye am wrong oar write
It shows me strait a way.
As soon as a Mist ache is maid,
It nose be four too long
And eye can put the err or rite
Its rare lea ever wrong.
Eye have run this poem threw it,
I am shore your pleased to no,
Its letter perfect awl the weigh,
My chequer tolled me sew!
It passed!
Cheers, PW.
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