Free Republic Software Update for November 25th, 2003 (Update #4)

[John Robinson]

Terse report for now:

• NEW By popular demand Browse All Forums (Search is on the todo list.)
• FIXED The pager now alerts on new comments to you in any forum (it used to only alert for the News/Activism forum.)
• CHANGED General Interest now General Interest (Chat).
• I added color to the sidebar, tell me (politely!) what you think.
• Lots of misc. things under the hood.

There are a bunch of add'l changes/additions I'd like to make, and this is probably not the last update today. I'll update this thread if so.

Update #1

• You can choose your own color for each topic subscribed in your sidebar. See the subscriptions gadget (All but blue is probably dog ugly. Feel free to suggest new color schemes in standard web hexadecimal (one color for the background of the title the other for the background of the links)

Update #2

• A few trivial changes, mostly cosmetic.
• You can now search by time or relevance from the latest posts. And it remembers what your last search was and defaults to that. So NOW order by time can be your default search setting.
• Oh yeah, almost forgot, SPELL CHECK! (replies for now, articles will come later.)

Update #3

• New Posts to You from You has been vanquished. New posts will only alert when other people ping you.
• Playing with the position of the Spell check button. Sorry.
• Your personal menu has a new small treat inside.
• Fixed a couple bugs dealing with the spell check code.
• I'm not done yet.

Update #4:

• Okay, I have stopped dorking with the link colors. Back to the defaults they go. Thanks for baring my experiment, I figure it's the least you owe for All Forum posts. ;-)

[Willie Green]

Winners of this contest get an all-expense-paid trip to my bed where they will be ravaged for days.

Good grief. Am I ever thankful that I never entered THAT contest!!!

[CedarDave]

Thanks for the long-awaited spell checker. Already found a glitch in it: It doesn't like quotation marks in a post that DOES NOT use HTML tags. Example:

Published in a Bay area paper where it will be seen by the anti-Bush, anti-US multitudes and used as an example of how oposition to the war is "widespread" in the military community.

When the misspelling of "opposition" is corrected, the preview version shows up as:

Published in a Bay area paper where it will be seen by the anti-Bush, anti-US multitudes and used as an example of how opposition to the war is "widespread" in the military community.

[Spunky]

Regarding Pager: This is the message I get.

"If you have JavaScript enabled, a small browser window should have opened. If you do not have a JavaScript-enabled browser, or do not wish to use JavaScript, click here."

I don't know if I have a JavaScript-enabled browser or not.

HELP!

[prairiebreeze]

And I remember hearing his mother drove a milk truck too...

Prairie

[octobersky]

Nice! I like the update!

[null and void]

I thought that was she gave milk...

[smith288]

I don't know if I have a JavaScript-enabled browser or not.

Well, when you go to the tool, does a window popup?

[John Robinson]

FYI, JavaScript enables websites to run little programs (called scripts) on your computer.

Your JavaScript has probably been disabled, wisely, for reasons of security (by its very nature, running just anybody's program is dangerous.) I recommend turning on JavaScript, et al., ONLY when you trust the CONTENT of the website, otherwise leave it off at all times.

Fortunately, you don't need JavaScript to use the FreeRepublic pager. The pager uses JavaScript only to popup an initial window when invoked in "detach" mode, which is the URL commonly given here on the forum (you can tell it is a detach URL because it ends with detach=1.) The pager functions perfectly fine without JavaScript, just open this link in a new window (same as the the "click here" from the javaScript page.)

[John Robinson]

I mean THIS LINK (Sheesh--next up, edit posts)

[smith288]

Is there a querystring option to change the refresh rate?

[John Robinson]

No. I don't want that poor little thing to get hammered too hard. ;-)

[smith288]

Stickler... How about a querystring option that can refer to a local sound file when notification is triggered?

[smith288]

actually...not so much a local file but a file anywhere off the web.

[Timesink]

Swanky upgrade, JohnRob! You've managed to throw in all at once most of what I've been hoping for all along! Congratulations, and thanks!

[finnman69]

Wow, now I know how much time I have wasted at FR.

You've posted a total of 306 threads and 10,237 replies.

[John Robinson]

The new param is bell. Takes a URL to a .wav, etc.

[mrsmith]

Don't like sidebar colors. I want to see words not colors.

Don't like spell-check, it hides some of the character of the poster.
Spell-check took all the joy out of Michael Rivero's posts.

Like: the search and "my comments" fix! Way to go!

[William Terrell]

Oh yeah, almost forgot, SPELL CHECK!

Thank you, thank you!

New Posts to You from You has been vanquished. New posts will only alert when other people ping you.

Thank youThank youThank youThank youThank youThank youThank youThank youThank youThank youThank youThank youThank youThank youThank youThank youThank youThank youThank you.

[steveegg]

I'm glad I guessed WAY high then.

[smith288]

u didn't have to do that, i was just thinking out loud. Thanks for your effort!