Beta Release - Thu Apr 4, 2002

[John Robinson]

ARGGH! Such a lengthy post... completely lost. (I lost my post! Grrrr Microsoft!) Let's try this again. Excuse the brevity, I'm tired of typing this message.

Installed a new beta.

Today's installment of Freeping Creaturism:

• MANAGE SUBSCRIPTIONS (Topics, your sidebar) -- order them any way you please. You must be logged in, find the "My Subscriptions" link in your nearest Personal menu (click on your name in the upper right corner.)

• REVIEW SUBSCRIPTIONS -- View all your subscribed topics in a multi-column page. Great for catching up with the day.

• STYLE SHEETS -- Now using style sheets. Those in the know can define their own style sheet to use with Free Republic. Later there will be predefined (and perhaps customizable.) See "My Preferences / Layout"

• Cut out a lot of fat. Pages are 50% lighter!

• DEFAULT BROWSER FONT / DEFAULT BROWSER COLORS. Just the default style sheet not getting in the way.

• Stylish UNDER CONSTRUCTION banner (just 6k!) and friendly message for those who wander by mistake.

• Added more links in more menus.

• Etc

BUGS and KNOWN ISSUES

• I destroyed most of the Window Target code. If you're using blank windows or a slave window, it may no longer work in the beta. THIS IS TEMPORARY and will be fixed.

• NAVIGATION is just terrible. I'm kinda lost on what to do right now. I'll hear suggestions. (I had big plans for that extra sidebar y'hear!)

• There are probably a lot more that I simply failed to list. I have a list somewhere!

COMING ATTRACTIONS

• More searching! Search by To, Source, Author, etc. Maybe even article searches. (Comment searches are a long way off... too much data!)

• Real time chat room... of some sort.

• Spell Checker... I have leads! It just may be possible. But I want a raise! LOL!

• NAVIGATION -- it's both a bug and an upcoming attraction. It really does suck, and we'll figure something out.

• Subscribe to the world. Will have the ability to subscribe to topics, keywords, forums, etc. ALSO, I have plans to implement portal boxes. Ie, have content from your favorite website delivered to your sidebar.

• ENHANCED MAIL including multiple recipients, folders, mass delete and move operations, attachments, HTML, preview, you got it. (And spell checking.)

• PHOTO ALBUM / Image Hosting -- posting program will automatically recognize when you're posting an image and allow you to upload it to FR.

• Freeper address book / contact list.

• etc... (THIS list is ENDLESS.)

[John Robinson]

Come, look...

[Ward Smythe]

Gee John, what do you do in your spare time? I have to admit I'm happier nearing this weekend than I was last weekend. Good work.

[John Robinson]

I mean...

Big Beta Link

[Dales]

I like.

But then I am the kind of person who periodically rearranges the furniture just for a change. (My family hates that).

[farmfriend]

Cool.

[EggsAckley]

Wow! I like the photo album/hosting idea. As for Navigation, it DOES seem more time-consuming. I seem to just be jumping around, seeing some new posts, trying to find my way back to where I saw something, but can't remember which "topic" it was under. A few times I've seen a headline in the right column, and then went back to read it, and found it was gone.

All in all, great job John! You really DO deserve a raise!

[Sir Gawain]

Can we have a style sheet that takes us back to the old looking FR? :-D

[BADJOE]

Now that I am accostomed to what I have, if I leave it alone will it stay the same?

[Sir Gawain]

:-D

[smith288]

Just installed my CSS. Thanks John.

Perhaps you could put all the navs into drop downs on the top? And they could be dynamically filled depending on your sidebar preferences and what not.

[Texaggie79]

(I had big plans for that extra sidebar y'hear!)

Go with it. SURELY there is a way to make a navigational sidebar that everyone can deal with. EVERY large website has this.

Look back at my Blue Border thread. People are lost without a navigation bar. Without it it still looks like a center frame page missing the menu frame.

[Sir Gawain]

Most freepers I talked to like the new functionality, but don't want to sacrifice the old look. Any ideas?

[Texaggie79]

I'm over in the BETA now. The font is pretty bad. I think most all FReepers are pretty used to Arial. Might as well stick with that.

[Texaggie79]

I like the functionality and don't want to sacrifice the ORIGINAL Beta look. Blue Border rocked.

[Victoria Delsoul]

Thanks Gawain.

[Sir Gawain]

You're about the only one. Everyone I know wants the old style back.

[Dales]

Question: are you going to have a place where we might be able to upload our stylesheets? They generally are pretty small, and that would help users not get screwed if they are using a different machine (if they have the css on their local drive) or if the site they are hosting it on goes down but FR doesn't.