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]

It should be fairly easy to make this version look anyway we want... a user choice, set in My Preferences... with dozens of options.

[HairOfTheDog]

It should be fairly easy to make this version look anyway we want... a user choice, set in My Preferences... with dozens of options.

OK - I think that answers the question that was floating around in my head. I am not "in the know" on style sheets... If I just don't worry about it right now, these are options that will be available in preferences later?

I would love the blue sidebar to be a (style sheet?) preference we could set, because I think that Beta, with the flag, was the best looking version yet. It was beautiful. And I agree with Texaggie that it should be the default, and let the old set-in-their ways types choose the old style in their preferences!

The dark blue/dark red colors were better for me than the electric colors... but I am neutral on the font style.

[John Robinson]

I *really* liked my blue borders, etc. I was surprised by the reaction. Anyway, they will come back (as a user preference), you betchya.

[nopardons]

Many thanks, for everything that you have done, thus far ! yes, the loading time is much improved ; however , no where near as fast as it used to be. I have changed my prefferences , and that helped too. : - )

The top most part of the screen is halved; the letters siced off.It's no big deal ; just thought that you might want to know about it. This was never the case prior to the new format.

Oh, nobody can unsubscribe to forums ? Thanks for the info ! I kept following the posted instructions, and then suggestions , from several helpful people . I assumed that because there was a problem with the top of the screen, I wasn't seeing the " subscribe " / " unsubscribe " posting. Now, I know better.

Thank you, again, for all of the tweakings ( especially the fix of the FREEPmail ! ) , and all of the info , on this thread. It is very much appreciated by me , and the rest of the " webbie " contingent !

[nunya bidness]

When I set up my threads per page on latest posts and comments per thread to different numbers the number on both is set to the comments per page.

Any ideas?

[John Robinson]

Buggy. I fixed it in the development branch. Will have that installed into the beta probably later tonight, and with any luck I'll have back-ported that and half a dozen other bug fixes into the live version.

[nunya bidness]

Thanks.

[Tennessee_Bob]

YATTA BUMP!!! ;

[nunya bidness]

I'm trying to backtrack and find some older threads in the last day or two that I read and when I click on "Show more threads..." at the bottom of the page I get "Listing older posts; click here to list newest" but there are no more threads listed.

Any ideas?

[lewislynn]

Someone flagged "My comments" page with a couple of photo's. I'm sympathetic to the military but the photo's take forever to load. Is there any way to get rid of them?

[altair]

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

Wow. Nice job. I'll keep using the beta for that reason alone.

[Sandy]

All you can really do is click to view in "brief" format, ask to be removed from the poster's bump list, and/or disable images in your browser.

[potlatch]

I had a harder time reading white text against a light blue background, and my eyes aren't bad!

[lewislynn]

All you can really do is click to view in "brief" format

Great! It worked.....Thank you sooo much.

[Lady Jag]

Thanks so much for all your work. These changes have been fascinating to watch and experience. Sometimes it feels like I'm on a rollercoaster; I can't imagine how you feel.

[nutmeg]

Bumping for later

[RonDog]

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.)

Kewl!

Although I guess that it would be important to note that this MARVELOUS ability to permanently FIX the position of "topics" in your right-hand sidebar - so that...

Breaking News is ALWAYS at the top - Yeah!!!
and
the NUMBER of articles per topic can be as large as FIFTY!!!

... only exists (for now) in the ALTERNATE universe of BETA-Free Republic, so that you have to go to:

http://beta.freerepublic.com/focus/my/subscriptions

...to experience these new features in all of their glory.

And, John, the mega-REVIEW page, at:

http://beta.freerepublic.com/focus/my/review

...is the COOLEST feature of them all!!!!

(Hard-core FReepers: You must go there. Now!)

[DoughtyOne]

Thanks.

[ppaul]

whew!