| Post 761 | New | Posted September 17th, 2005 |
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| Cerbera Ben 'Cerbera' Millard 
| If I use a mutli-select list, I could just provide "Select All" and "Deselect All" buttons so that was obvious that feature was supported. Much more elegant than ticked lists, good idea.  That GNU license makes a lot of sense. I can see why so many people use it! ------------------ (Grand Theft Auto Handling Editor | GTA Tutorials) |
| Post 762 | New | Posted October 9th, 2005 |
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| Icey the pirate. arrr 
| Idea List I'm currently putting together a list of ideas for the board. My aim is to post them as a topic and get everyone who's interested to say if they like or dislike each idea. My current list of ideas is a bit like this: 1. Member post counts are displayed in the author info next to messages. Should they be removed? - Advantage: Less to download. Pages are generated slightly quicker. Less tempting to spam to increase post count. - Disadvantage: ? - Notes: Post count can be viewed from the profile pages. Join date is probably a more reliable indicator of how reputable someone is. 2. Should user numbers be positioned next to names? - Advantage: Posts take up less vertical space. - Disadvantage: May look a little cluttered. - Notes: Perhaps member numbers shouldn't be shown at all in the author info next to posts? 3. Should member titles only be editable after you've been registered for N amount of days? - Advantage: It's kind of a reward for being a long-term member. - Disadvantage: You can't change your member title straight away. - Notes: Possibly we could make them only editable by mods/admins. Then we can give people 'hilarious' titles ;) 4. Would you like an option to disable images? - Advantage: "Safer" browsing at work or school. Faster page loading. - Disadvantage: Should be handled by the browser. It's yet another option that slows things down slightly. - Notes: This would replaces images with the string "[image]" like disabling images in signatures. Possibly that option could be combined. 5. Should custom fields in profiles be allowed? - Advantage: Less restrictive. More control to users. Allows for more detailed and relevant information. - Disadvantage: Might be more complicated to use. - Notes: This means profiles can store any information. Like, you could add fields for all the instant messengers you use. A field for your pets, for the name of your alien spaceship, for an alternative e-mail address. Anything is allowed. The board would list these things on your profile page. The board would have a preset list of information that it can enhance in some way. So if you entered a field with the name "ICQ" the board could show if you were offline/online and perhaps provide a link to your ICQ homepage. 6. Should header graphics be removed? - Advantage: Less vertical space taken up. Nicer header. Faster downloading. - Disadvantage: Decreased branding?! - Notes: I have no interest in graphics, so the header graphics are boring and fairly pointless. It would be nice to get rid of them and have a more asthetically pleasing layout for the header. 7. Should we have mini board games? - Advantage: It's fun and something to keep us amused. Brings together the community a bit more. - Disadvantages: Beyond entertainment, it's pointless. - Notes: This would involve little word/number/post/etc based games that you can play. For example, maybe you would be shown a post and have to guess who created it. Or perhaps whoever can post the largest number of consecutive times in a specially created topic would win after X amount of hours have passed. Every time you win you get points and stuff like that. 8. Should we allow for mini reward icons? - Advantage: It's something to aim for. Bragging rights! - Disadvantage: Would slow down the board slightly. May annoy mods/admins if people keep requesting them. - Notes: This means moderators and administrators could place between 1 to 5 icons below your name. If you did something good, these icons could be something like monkeys or spoons or bananas. If you did something bad, they could represent stages towards being banned. That kind of thing. 9. Should members be able to lock their own topics? - Advantage: When a problem is sorted, the topic could be locked. - Disadvantage: There may be more to add to a topic, so information may be lost. 10. Should the online members bit be removed from the main page? - Advantage: Quicker downloading. Less clutter. Faster page rendering. - Disadvantages: You can't see who's online straight away. - Notes: The "Online Members" page shows who is online and what they are browsing. Is a cut down version on the main page necessary? 11. Should we remove avatars and use gravatars instead? - Advantage: No need to find an image host. Less dead avatar links. No chance of ridicolously big avatars. One avatar for all sites. - Disadvantages: More restrictive (has to be a certain size, prolly 60*60). 12. Should major announcements be shown at the top of every page? - Advantage: People wont miss important news. Most people seem to miss the announcements and complain before checking the announcements forum. - Disadvantage: More code, slower pages, more clutter. It's annoying to be reminded of something on every page. - Notes: Perhaps just on the main page? 13. In the forum view, should icons be removed and text added before topic titles? - Advantage: More consistent with "Sticky: " text. Less images to load. Easier to make themes. - Disadvantage: ? - Notes: Locked topics could use a line-through effect. 14. Should we keep the capital letters filter? - Advantage: No messages with excessive capital letter use. - Disadvantage: It can interfere with legitimate posts. It doesn't take into account code tags. - Notes: The caps filter only runs for new members. 15. Should we keep the descriptive titles filter? - Advantage: Cuts down on topic titles like "help please" "gta" and so on. - Disadvantage: Could be a bit annoying. - Notes: This filter only runs for new members. 16. Should topics use threading? - Advantage: Keeps different parts of a topic together. Less quoting needed. Easier to navigate. - Disadvantage: Possibly more confusing to navigate. - Notes: Threading is used on a lot of sites. Some examples: b3ta, Slashdot and plebian. 17. Should page titles start with the topic title? - Advantage: Easier to see what a page is about when viewing abbreviated titles in the taskbar/tab/window title. - Disadvantage: The site name gets knocked off, but the site icon can be used to identify the site easily - Notes: So instead of all the tabs being like "GOURANGA! Forums > ...", "GOURANGA! Forums > ...", "GOURANGA! Forums > ...", "GOURANGA! Forums > ..." they would be like "Forum Updates - GOUR...", "Vice City - Observati...", "Americans Choose Next Targ..." and so on. There's no need to answer any of these now. I'll be posting them when I've finalised the list. The Future I've been thinking quite a lot about how I'll move to IceyBoard 2.0. My ideal list of things would be: - A new name that doesn't have "icey" in it. It should use initials that aren't taken. For example: IkonBoard = IB, IceyBoard = IB, InvisionBoard = IB. I don't want to follow the trend of having 'php' in the name either. I just want it to be a single word then 'board'. That way it has a unique name and people know what it is. - A complete rewrite of all the code. Most of the original code has gone or been significantly improved, but I've learnt so much about PHP and MySQL that I'd just prefer to start over again. This is already the third major rewrite. - Open source. I'll use a SourceForge account for managing everything. - Removal of useless features. I want to make the board a lot simpler rather than more complicated. - Improved security. Essential if it's to be open source. - More reliance on page templates. - Caching to speed up page rendering. - Threading. Topics for better understanding of subjects through topics and less quoting needs to be done. - No annoying e-mail activation system. You just provide a name+password and your done. - All the usual things. Like no java, no flash, heavy reliance on CSS, no clutter, fast page generating, fast downloading, xhtml, easy to use, multiple themes, better accessibility, minimal use of images and so on. Is there any point making a new board system though? There are so many around already and creating a board system is something I've already done. As much as I enjoy working on the board and enjoy seeing people use it, it might be best to work on new things. ------------------  |
| Post 763 | New | Posted October 12th, 2005 |
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| Cerbera Ben 'Cerbera' Millard
| If you are going to post them as a new topic (presumably in this area) then should we reply to them now? Why didn't you use proper lists for your post? Is the syntax too strange? (Sorry, that was unecessarily snide.) I don't think you should rebuild the entire forum system. It would be a collosal amount of work and it already runs far faster and creates much slimer pages with better code than any other forum system I know of. Hmm, perhaps SlimBoard could be the new name? Or maybe SurfBoard?!  OpenBoard?I don't think Gravatars should be used because it means signing up at yet another site. People use avatars on other forums and they should be able to use their avatar from there. If members could choose either system then it might be alright, but it seems like "yet another thing to slow the board down" to have optional avatar systems. And the images would be bigger, so more downloading for visitors. Oh, erm, are we actually supposed to be replying to it here? ------------------ (Grand Theft Auto Handling Editor | GTA Tutorials) |
| Post 764 | New | Posted October 12th, 2005 |
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| Icey the pirate. arrr
| Aye, I'll post it as a new topic when I've finalised the list. I've been making a few changes to it over the past few days. I'm just posting it now to give other people a chance to add questions, let me know if a question doesn't make sense or just give feedback on the idea. The list doesn't use tags because it's copied in from a simple text file on my computer. I'm not too sure on SlimBoard... sounds like some weight watchers meeting place! Even if you suggested SurfBoard as a joke, I rather like that! It goes nicely with the whole surfing the web thing. I'll leave OpenBoard for someone who is making a truly "open board". Please add your gravatars reply when I post the official list ;) If you have a sudden urge to complain about something... why not check out my new site design?! ------------------ |
| Post 765 | New | Posted October 13th, 2005 |
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| Fragdieb2 just öne löuder 
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| Post 766 | New | Posted October 13th, 2005. Updated October 13th, 2005 |
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| Cerbera Ben 'Cerbera' Millard
| Haha, I was only half-joking about SurfBoard for exactly that reason.  Unfortunately, all the decent URLs with "SurfBoard" in them are take or are unavailable. If it's on SourceForge then you'll get a folder or a subdomain anyway.Changing the title of question 1 to "Post counts next to member names in topics" or something like that might be easier to understand, since you see your post count in topic view pages and not in posting pages. Might pay to use the same sort of wording in question 1 and 2, whatever you settle on. The How about asking if you should change all the themes to use percentage font sizes instead of pixel sizes so that old browsers (which are still very common) can resize the text more easily? The font size used by the theme would be set as a percentage relative from a 16 pixel font size, since that is what most graphical browsers default to. Add a question about making all text inputs resize to fill the available space rather than 90% of it or a fixed width? Please?  I see a lot of people still trying to type out the old smilie format and havn't seen any instances where it would cause a conflict recently. Preventing things like "GTA:Destruction" from becoming "GTA  estruction" or "(like a V8)" from becoming "(like a V " and stuff like that. If a smilie code is found when a post is previewed or submitted, checking for whitespace before and after (and maybe certain punctuation characters) could work. I think it would be worth creating a question about bringing the old format back, however you decide to process them.(EDIT) Oh, how about removing the "iceyboard" folder from the URL completely? That would shorten them by nine characters, which is a big reduction for a URL, as well as simplifying them. Would also mean no need to redirect forums.gouranga.com/ to forums.gouranga.com/iceyboard/ any more (but you'd need a redirection for external links that include the "/iceyboard/" folder). (EDIT2) I think that the href attribute of an anchor has to have a value, you can't leave it blank. The local validator extension for Firefox based on HTML Tidy brings up warnings for them, anyway. ------------------ (Grand Theft Auto Handling Editor | GTA Tutorials) |
| Post 767 | New | Posted October 16th, 2005 |
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| Icey the pirate. arrr
| Cerbera wrote: Unfortunately, all the decent URLs with "SurfBoard" in them are take or are unavailable. I'm not bothered about a fancy domain name, so that's not a problem. Any other name suggestions? Cerbera wrote: Changing the title of question 1 to "Post counts next to member names in topics" or something like that might be easier to understand Aye, I'll see if I can make it a bit clearer. Cerbera wrote: How about asking if you should change all the themes to use percentage font sizes instead of pixel sizes so that old browsers (which are still very common) can resize the text more easily? The master theme and all my themes already do. It's only other people's themes that don't. I tend to keep them as close to how the author originally made them as possible. If people are using old browsers they shouldn't expect everything to work perfectly. I wouldn't buy a 15 year old car and expect it to be as safe and fully equipped as a new car. Why would people be using old browsers anyway? There are new browsers that will run on any computer and provide a much better browsing experience. Cerbera wrote: Add a question about making all text inputs resize to fill the available space rather than 90% of it or a fixed width? Please? Textareas already do. Do you mean the single line text inputs? Usually those are intentionally small to keep the number of words down. For example, we want people to use short and descriptive topic titles. Anything long would have to be chopped to fit on the page, therefore it's not as clear. Cerbera wrote: I see a lot of people still trying to type out the old smilie format and havn't seen any instances where it would cause a conflict recently. We went through that whole discussion before and came to a good conclusion! People wanted the :word: format, so that's what the board uses. If people post and then realise they're smilie didn't get converted they can just edit the post. I don't want to change the system again because it means people have to relearn how it works. Cerbera wrote: Oh, how about removing the "iceyboard" folder from the URL completely? Aye, that's a good suggestion. It was originally placed at /iceyboard/ in case we decided not to keep it. I can setup a redirect so any links wont be broken. Cerbera wrote: I think that the href attribute of an anchor has to have a value, you can't leave it blank. The local validator extension for Firefox based on HTML Tidy brings up warnings for them, anyway. It validates on the real validator and that's what I go by. ------------------ |
| Post 768 | New | Posted October 17th, 2005 |
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| Cerbera Ben 'Cerbera' Millard
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| Post 769 | New | Posted October 17th, 2005 |
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| Icey the pirate. arrr
| Cerbera wrote: it's bad practise to leave an href attribute empty because the user agent has to guess what the intended destination is. Using href="/" would direct to the root of the forum domain, meaning the value was explicit rather than assumed. No. Like I said before: If it's validates it's fine. I only care about the official W3 Validator. Cerbera wrote: Will you add a question about a topic-like PM system? No. It's already on my to-do list. Cerbera wrote: Btw, Textboxes don't fill the available space, they only fill about 90% of it. Like I said previously, that's so it works in all major browsers. You can fix the situation by typing 10% less. Cerbera wrote: It would neaten the interface for other text controls to fill the available [space] and would make them more consistant with each other. Already answered in my last post. Cerbera wrote: You can use the maxlength property in text controls to place a limit on the number of characters which can be typed. I already do. Why didn't you just look and save us both some time? Cerbera wrote: The fixed width text controls cause horizontal scrolling at viewport widths of around 730 pixels when in the Edit Profile page, and a little less in the New Post form. This means people on 800 x 600 screens would not be able to use those pages easily when they had a sidebar open. Here an incredible idea: Close the sidebar! The edit profile window can resize down to 607 pixels on my screen. I can have the sidebar open and it doesn't have a horizontal scrollbar. The new post form can resize all the way down to 491 pixels on my screen. So again, I can comfortably have the sidebar open even at 800*600. Please stop with all these repetitive and useless suggestions. It's a waste of my time and a waste of yours. ------------------ |
| Post 770 | New | Posted November 23rd, 2005 |
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| Cerbera Ben 'Cerbera' Millard
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| Post 771 | New | Posted January 14th, 2007 |
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| Icey the pirate. arrr
| Hi Cerbera, I've changed the filter, so that acronyms are only converted if they contain a space or > before them and a space, comma, ., <, !, s or ? after them. That should fix the situation, because URL's shouldn't contain spaces (in raw form) or >. I also removed the PHP and HTML acronyms, because they would cause the most problems with URLs. ------------------ |