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. ;-)

[PatrickHenry]

Any news on the long-awaited "Ignore this person" feature? It's less important now, because some seriously disruptive people have been banned, but I think a lot of us would still appreciate being able to screen out the posts from certain people.

Hmmmm ... I see the spell-check is attacking my tagline. I guess there's no way to avoid that.

[js1138]

New Posts TO you should only light up for posts TO you, not FROM you.

The spell checker might save me from myself. Next step, headlines. Fortunately it won't prevent hugh and series errors.

[steveegg]

A novel idea! Colorless, thank you, is now an option.

Outstanding. 'Tis MUCH better than that magenta :-)

I see you got the buttons moved when using IE (haven't tried old Netscape or Mozilla).

[Cultural Jihad]

Whoa. A spell checker just appeared. That certainly threw me.

Hey, your right! This is getting series in a hugh way!

[Grampa Dave]

So far I like everything but the colors. Too many sites have all shades of color in their columns. There is nothing wrong with a white background and black letters. It is easier to read/see for many of us.

[John Robinson]

This is definitely a matter of personal preference. Some people say it helps, others say it hinders. I'm personally undecided, I grew accustomed to the clean look. You can change your sidebars to the original colorless setting here.

[steveegg]

Check again; "colorless" is now one of the options for the sidebar (mash here to change them back to the old ways).

[steveegg]

You beat me :-)

[honeygrl]

Thanks muchly! :)Just one more tiny idea and I'll leave you alone. :-p On the location boards when you post a message to it, if you hit refresh after that to see the latest posts, it reposts your message. Any chance of a refresh button there or having it not repost your message when you hit refresh? (and that could have already been done, but i haven't looked at my location boards in a while)

BTW You are *quick* (and appreciated!). :)

[smith288]

Check again; "colorless" is now one of the options for the sidebar (mash here to change them back to the old ways).

Spell check misses your lack of ability in spelling "Subscriptions"

[honeygrl]

I wanna know how much I've posted. (don't care if anyone else sees it, everyone knows I'm an addict)

[smith288]

Hey, you changed my Red breaking new to a gay Magenta.... whats up with that?

[John Robinson]

Ignore Poster, the "New Posts to You (from you)" annoyance, and the ability to delete replies from My Comments are all very closely related internally. When one falls, the rest shouldn't be far behind. I don't think this will be too far in the future... I've done most of the brain work necessary to kick it off, I need to commit the hours now.

[Lead Moderator]

58 articles, 6731 replies

(And this helps keep the thread bumped)

[Grampa Dave]

Thanks, John, I'm back to a colorless society on my pages!

[John Robinson]

At least it's not pink! :-)

[Grampa Dave]

Thanks, steveegg. John beat you a little.

[steveegg]

Oops; you got me. I don't trust spell check (probably because I could spell out "serious" when I mean "series" :-)

[steveegg]

At least it's not pink! :-)

A rose by any other name is still as prickly :-)

[smith288]

We didn't pay all the big bucks (John: snicker) for the spell check not to get used... ;)