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. ;-)

[honeygrl]

You should just name the magenta option "I'm Gay" and have it change the entire page to pink and purple. hehe

[steveegg]

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

True, but I don't use half the stuff in Microshaft Office either :-)

[smith288]

You should just name the magenta option "I'm Gay" and have it change the entire page to pink and purple. hehe

And another, "Im Metro" and sets the background to a fixed image of Howard Dean.

[Quix]

THAT'S WEIRD!

I have my font settings in Explorer 6.X set at next to largest so I can view it from my rocker about 3-4 feet away easily.

When someone else posts in larger font--it SEEMS TO ALWAYS SHOW UP as the bmp screen shot did. LARGER!

When my posts show up, they seem to remain at the usual size--whatever that is.

I don't know how to explain it but I'm now willing to concede that it must be my system's problem.

I just couldn't understand how the html code entered as code on FR would do something different for me than it did for anyone else.

SORRY TO BOTHER. THANKS FOR THE HELP.

Blessings,

[steveegg]

Thanks, steveegg. John beat you a little.

The beatings will continue until the yolk is separated from the white :-)

[GraniteStateConservative]

Can you add multi-search (search using multiple criteria) and add search by word in threads and search by name of poster? So, if I posted some calculations a few months ago on some election thread, I could search by a word or two in the reply and by my name to pull it up so I could post it again on a new thread.

[glock rocks]

John said in #1 You can choose your own color for each topic subscribed in your sidebar.

in my subscription thingy, there is only News/Activism...

how do you subscribe to General interest to change the color?

[John Robinson]

It does look a bit queer doesn't it?

[GraniteStateConservative]

Oh, and can we optionally set it so Browse only looks at News the way it was just recently-- customizable for those who want it?

[Lazamataz]

I REALLY wanna know how many articles and replies I've posted.

Then I can slit my wrists in peace.

[Lazamataz]

I REALLY wanna know how many articles and replies I've posted.

Then I can slit my wrists in peace.

[smith288]

To: Lead Moderator

I REALLY wanna know how many articles and replies I've posted.

Then I can slit my wrists in peace.

230 posted on 11/25/2003 2:32 PM EST by Lazamataz ("People that quote themselves in their taglines bother me." - Lazamataz)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 214 | View Replies | Report Abuse ]

---

To: Lead Moderator

I REALLY wanna know how many articles and replies I've posted.

Then I can slit my wrists in peace.

231 posted on 11/25/2003 2:32 PM EST by Lazamataz ("People that quote themselves in their taglines bother me." - Lazamataz)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 214 | View Replies | Report Abuse ]

As long as we don't have to watch you slit them twice, go ahead.

[Lead Moderator]

This is only since the spring of 2000.

432 articles, 46889 replies

[Lazamataz]

Let me know when I reach 100,000.

Yes, I scare myself.

[Grampa Dave]

As long as the Yolk is on you not me! :)

[steveegg]

how do you subscribe to General interest to change the color?

Let me see if I can find that...

The way I found is a bit complicated (if there's a faster way, John, let us know)...

1. Click on the Topics link at the top-right corner of the forum it's in.
2. Click on the topic you want to subscribe/unsubscribe.
3. At the top of the page that comes up (a listing of all articles that have that topic, there's a link to change your subscription status. Click it.

[steveegg]

No; don't do it!!!!!

[Lazamataz]

Too late. Oops, I'm bleeding into the keyyyyjfdjjakjhkjkkkkkkmmmmmmmmml..a......alllllllllll

[Stultis]

"You have added keywords A, B, and C. Previous articles with keywords A, B, and C often include keyword D. Would you like to add keyword D to this article?" Something like that?

Yeah, something like that. How much overhead would it require? Have no idea. I'm not a programmer. (Which, as you note, makes it easy to think up stuff for others to code!) I would guess, though, that you'd have your keywords in a separate database to which the keyword field in the database of articles (or article headers?) would have a one-to-many relationship. Then I suppose you could have some kind of optimized index describing the relationship of keywords to each other (maybe only tracking some subset of more commonly used keywords). You'd then update this index a couple times a day, at off peak hours.

'Course for all I know the keywords might just be a variable sized text-field within the article record, which would make all this more difficult I presume.

[Stultis]

This is only since the spring of 2000.

432 articles, 46889 replies

And how many were opus(es?)