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.)

[AppyPappy]

Can we have the style that everyone hated in beta? I liked that one the best (with the left frame and the flags and such). Maybe that could be a switch that could be turned on.

[B Knotts]

No...I liked the blue border, too. It was much better than the old style.

[B Knotts]

Yeah, me, too. I wish we could have that as an option (perhaps it would be off by default, to placate the objectors).

[Dales]

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

I liked it too. Maybe someday it can be resurrected as an option for those of us who liked it (although I love this stylesheet implementation), IF all the "under the hood" stuff was the same?

[Texaggie79]

Go to that Blue Border thread. Many thought the original beta version was the most professional looking and efficient.

[Sir Gawain]

It took forever to load. Maybe he could make it an option as well as the old style an option.

[Slip18]

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

My sentiments exactly.

Although, John, I'm liking this format more and more every day. You've done a heck of a job. I keep finding new areas, kind of like a grandma's attic.

[John Robinson]

I don't know if this still works: http://www.freerepublic.com/perl/edit-style

[Texaggie79]

eh? How can a background color of a table lengthen the DL time. It was just slow because of all the changes that day.

[John Robinson]

It's possible to bring back (in a way) the layout of the old beta.

And depending on what people wanted from the old design, it might be possible to bring back some of those too.

[Sir Gawain]

The page was loading like the background was a freaking bitmap. Plus I don't like change, so there.

[Dales]

It seemed like it uploaded it. But what url do I give in the settings to get it to work now? :-)

[Sir Gawain]

Maybe a link to point back to the old FR? Like we're switching between beta and normal, have an "Old School" or "Default".

[Texaggie79]

It was because the entire site was slow from all the activity. If it was back up it would be fast. And I think eventually a choice of either style would be good. I just hope the newcomers see the blue border one. I was getting messages from some of my Web design buddies asking when a professional design firm took over FR and how professional it looked.

[B Knotts]

From what people were saying, it sounded like maybe certain versions of Internet Explorer were using 100% CPU trying to render parts of the page.

It loaded quickly for me, but I use Konqueror on Linux.

[Dales]

In other words- what url points to the file that I just uploaded? It never told me, so I don't know where to go to put it in.

[AppyPappy]

You'll kill yourself trying to make everyone happy. You are better off coming up with a really professional style that comes off a Forum link on the front page (used mostly by newbies). The old links (perl\latest, etc) point to the old style.

The new people (and anyone who wants to use it) can use the 2002 style while the old timers use the 1999 style. If you use PHP, it wouldn't be that hard to maintain because the HTML stays the same.

[Texaggie79]

It couldn't be the blue background. it's just a color. Especially the original color of it, since it was a web safe color. The font changes would use more space, however still very little.

[AppyPappy]

I use IE over a 33.6 modem and it loaded fine.

[Dales]

Argh, English is your friend, Gerry.

I know which page to go to in order to put the url to the stylesheet I want to use. I just don't know what the path is to where that page uploaded it into so that I can put the url in the stylesheet setting preference page.