Upcoming changes to the forum

[Anthem]

To be perfectly honest, I construe this as a feature. I abhor puke-inducing cutesy smilies, avatars, and other images that add nothing to the discussion. That's just my personal opinion, however.

Used to feel the same way. Then I got used to them on other forums and found that they can actually help to clarify some types of comments.

PS Pay no attention to the fellow on the left, he is not an avatar, he's a 'superhero' on a dedicated mission.

[WasDougsLamb]

Thank you, Mr. Robinson.

[maica]

A word of thanks and praise for your work! My computer is fighting with my internet program and gradually all links fail, except for FreeRepublic. Whatever you do, you are the best!

[Focault's Pendulum]

You did. Go back to sleep now. Nighty-night! ;)

Thanks. Every once in awhile, I disrupt my sleep to check in.

It's been so long...that my decoder ring works as well as a WWII Enigma machine.

I'm busy taking down Corzine propaganda along the roadside.

[taillightchaser]

Mr. Robinson, you have the best site on the web--none come close.
Whatever you do to make it better, we're with you!!!!

[John Robinson]

There's Java, a slow-loading resource hogging beast, and there's JavaScript, which is fairly light and enabled by default. They're different creatures. I'm talking about using the light and nimble JavaScript.

Yes, there are very good reasons to disable JavaScript. JavaScript is not itself dangerous, but bugs in JavaScript can be exceptionally dangerous if leveraged by a malicious website. Additionally, certain types of bugs in websites can become dangerous when JavaScript is enabled and exploited by malicious visitors. These are all good reasons to disable JavaScript. But, for the most part, JavaScript is enabled in the majority of browser installations.

Any use of JavaScript on this site will have a non-JavaScript fallback for those with it disabled, such as defaulting to the US/Eastern time zone. The sole point of JavaScript being to enhance functionality, not replace it. The benefit of shifting this enhanced functionality to client-side JavaScript far outweighs any negative implications.

[rdb3]

Funny tagline. Thanks for the laugh.

You're welcome. Glad you like it. But answer the question! Does it? ;-)

If you want a Google GMail account, FReepmail me.

[185JHP]

Thanks. The best gets better...

[perfect stranger]

Show me a pic. I can hardly judge without evidence.

[bobbyd]

How about a simple

To: John Robinson
By: bobbyd

[antaresequity]

I Have a program that is basically a browser that only opens pages from your domain.

Once a thread is loaded into the browser, it will surf through all of the posts and extract out all of the individual posters, how many times they posted and to which posts they were replying to.

With this data set, I can do all sorts of neat stuff. I can create ping lists for the thread, I can save and name ping lists, I can sniff out trolls by looking at the tool tip etc etc etc...

Its a pet project written in C# .NET...I want to make it an IE tool bar add in for FR users.

I can get the info now by looking at the number of posts listed at the top of the page, so its no big deal.

An example would be a regular FR user who has posted a thread and it now has oh say 225 posts. He wants to update all of those who posted on his thread with an update of information via a new message post.

Instead of tediously going through the thread and cutting and pasting names, he would simply invoke the tool from any page of the post, and the device then gets each page internally, parses the source strings, and extracts a single instance of each user who posted to the thread. The info is copied to the clip board properly formatted to do a ping post.

The user might also only want to ping the regulars of a lengthy thread. He would then set a filter threshhold for users who have posted >X posts...

It would really be great to be able to pull a stream of all of the posts for a thread...then it wouldn't have to open multiple pages virtually speaking...Stuff like that...

Cheers

[antaresequity]

The tool might also have all of the common html tags as macros...and allow for a context sensative menu on web images that allow right clicking and being able to copy the image location appended with the html tags for quick posting of the image...

Just ideas...

[Incorrigible]

Okay, now youse guys have me paranoid.

MuHaHaHa!

I like Chris's anime avatar as well and Saber-tooth's tiger (he's gone now right?) too.

The theory is that if we all had avatar/logos, they would become too noisy in the replies.  I'd like to test that theory out though.  The only places I've seen it implemented is in the sites that use standard Bulletin Board software and it's just not pretty.

It would be a quick way to filter some of the random comments out and look for the replies with substance.  Not that I'm trying to pay you a compliment or anything rdb!

[hosepipe]

Spell check in freep mail would be nice..

[WildTurkey]

Used to feel the same way. Then I got used to them on other forums and found that they can actually help to clarify some types of comments.

They also help to clarify to the boss when he walks by what you are up to ...

[Krodg]

Now if someone could change it so it's easier to post pics and smiles and stuff. It takes me too long so I don't do it. But I do love to play around with such things when I have the time.

PLEASE NO!!! Sadly, I've seen a couple of decent sites taken over by smilies, not to mention the DUmp with rows of puke and green, slimy bouncing things. Please, not here.

[getmeouttaPalmBeachCounty_FL]

[WVNan]

Almost any of the URLs that end in "browse" have an alternate "browse.rss" for the feed. I'd like to do this for threads too, but I don't know if it is kosher to dump raw HTML into an RSS feed, and if not, I'll have a bit more work to do. My comments would be great as well but is a bit more work, having to implement some type of authentication scheme beyond the cookie (unless RSS aggregators can now borrow the MSIE cookie, etc.) One of the things really holding back my involvement with RSS is the lack of a decent aggregator. I haven't really looked, but my cursory attempts to find something decent leave me wanting. I definately want to implement an API for the site. It will primarily be used for Ajax-style client-side programming, but could be used for external access as well.

Good grief John, have mercy on us poor ignoramouses who don't speak the language. I break out in hives every time you start talking about (gasp) changing something. It takes me six months to figure out how to work the new system. We've been through this a dozen times during my tenure here. Do we "old-timers" get some sort of medal for perseverence in the face of ignorance?

[Krodg]

Ignore feature ignore feature....

Scroll bar scroll bar...

[TXBSAFH]

Sounds good, thanks.