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Author Topic:   dBoard 4.0 Release
Admin
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Posts: 12998
From: EvC Forum
Joined: 06-14-2002
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Message 270 of 533 (631935)
09-04-2011 5:30 PM
Reply to: Message 265 by fearandloathing
09-04-2011 12:44 PM


Re: Member notification
On the todo list is the ability to send an instant message to another member. A popup or some such would appear the next time he clicked on an EvC Forum link or refreshed a page. I don't see this as something that could happen in the near term.
But the PM system works pretty well. Every message has a PM link for the member who posted it, and a PM link is on everyone's thread list page. The "Messaging" link in the menu bar blinks when you have unread messages, which given the complaints when I initially released the Private Messaging feature must be pretty noticeable.

--Percy
EvC Forum Director

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Message 273 of 533 (633070)
09-12-2011 9:53 AM
Reply to: Message 272 by nwr
09-12-2011 12:27 AM


Fixed - thanks for letting me know!

--Percy
EvC Forum Director

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Message 276 of 533 (633093)
09-12-2011 11:39 AM
Reply to: Message 275 by nwr
09-12-2011 11:17 AM


nwr writes:
However, forum software needs to be robust enough to handle user error.
That's a bit challenging in this case. Are there any boards out there that allow HTML in messages and also detect missing close tags?
The easy solution is to disallow HTML in messages, but I think there's at least a few people here who do take advantage of HTML.
EvC Forum does have the [table] dBCode, it's covered in the dBCode Doc Page. Screwups with dBCodes have no effect on displaying message threads.

--Percy
EvC Forum Director

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Message 278 of 533 (633233)
09-13-2011 9:08 AM
Reply to: Message 277 by nwr
09-12-2011 12:28 PM


nwr writes:
Are there any boards out there that allow HTML in messages and also detect missing close tags?
Possibly dslreports. What I think they do, is treat html as a kind of dbcode. That is, they munge the code that users give, and create their own internal html to achieve what the user presumably wanted.
It does seem like something that few boards would tackle. It's challenging to implement. I do have an HTML parser that removes disallowed HTML tags and attributes from messages, which is relatively straightforward, but detecting just certain forms of bad HTML and determining the proper correction is more difficult. I could do it, but I'm not sure it's the best investment of my time right now. I'll put this on the todo list.
--Percy

--Percy
EvC Forum Director

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Message 280 of 533 (633264)
09-13-2011 11:13 AM
Reply to: Message 279 by RAZD
09-13-2011 10:52 AM


RAZD writes:
I'll try the db table codes next time.
The table dBCodes have the additional advantage that extraneous line breaks are ignored. The problem with the <table> tags is that if in a message you say something like this:
<table>
<tr>
<td>
Column 1
<td>
Column 2
</table>
All the line breaks become real line breaks, and browsers put all these line breaks in a single spot at the beginning of the table. In a long table that results in a large vertical blank space just above your table, like this:




Column 1

Column 2
If you do the same thing with table dBCodes like this:
[table]
[row]
[col]
Column 1
[col]
Column 2
[/table]
Then it will not have all that extra vertical space:
Column 1 Column 2
You can include HTML code in your message by using the [html] dBCode. Click on Peek to see how the above HTML was included in this message.
Edited by Admin, : Rerender for row dBCode bug fix.

--Percy
EvC Forum Director

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Message 282 of 533 (633287)
09-13-2011 1:06 PM
Reply to: Message 281 by RAZD
09-13-2011 12:30 PM


RAZD writes:
Not all of them -- there is still one extra line there.
That's a bug, I just fixed it.
You want a job testing?

--Percy
EvC Forum Director

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(1)
Message 284 of 533 (633368)
09-13-2011 6:45 PM
Reply to: Message 283 by RAZD
09-13-2011 5:51 PM


RAZD writes:
Sure, at double my current rate?
I'd be happy to help.
Make it triple - you're hired!
Seriously, I do need help testing, sometimes quite a bit, and any help I get would be greatly appreciated. If you're okay with it I'll let you know when I release/change features needing testing (naturally they'll have been tested to some extent before release, but the coder often isn't the best tester of his own code), and you can let me know if you have the time/interest at the moment.

--Percy
EvC Forum Director

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 Message 285 by fearandloathing, posted 09-13-2011 6:53 PM Admin has replied

  
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Message 286 of 533 (633399)
09-13-2011 9:45 PM
Reply to: Message 285 by fearandloathing
09-13-2011 6:53 PM


fearandloathing writes:
I would also be happy to help, way too much time on my hands.
Hired!
Thanks for volunteering. I'll let you and RAZD know when testing is needed.

--Percy
EvC Forum Director

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Message 291 of 533 (634387)
09-21-2011 8:00 AM
Reply to: Message 290 by Panda
09-21-2011 5:44 AM


Re: Another bug
Thanks for the report, will look at it tonight!

--Percy
EvC Forum Director

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Message 293 of 533 (634457)
09-21-2011 8:33 PM
Reply to: Message 290 by Panda
09-21-2011 5:44 AM


Re: Another bug
This is fixed. Thanks again for the bug report!

--Percy
EvC Forum Director

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Message 294 of 533 (634458)
09-21-2011 8:44 PM
Reply to: Message 292 by RAZD
09-21-2011 5:08 PM


Re: Another bug
The reply-to and replies message links are URL's for messages not on the current page, and are invocations of a Javascript page positioning routine for messages on the same page. The URL for messages on the same page is "javascript:void(0)", which does nothing when used with Right Click => Open Link in New Window. This annoys me, too, and it is on my todo list.

--Percy
EvC Forum Director

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 Message 295 by RAZD, posted 09-23-2011 6:26 PM Admin has replied

  
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Message 297 of 533 (634839)
09-24-2011 10:15 AM
Reply to: Message 295 by RAZD
09-23-2011 6:26 PM


Re: Another bug
Mod has it right, but there's some interesting history. This is the URL you were wondering about:
This is an old style URL from before the forum moved into a MySQL database, but it's actually a sort of hybrid. The discussion board software used to be written in Perl, which in web applications has a .cgi extension, so the original URL was this:
Try it, it should still work.
But the .cgi files do not exist anymore, so how can this be? The answer lies in Apache's rewrite engine, which is invoked form a .htaccess file in the website's old cgi-bin directory. This causes every reference to a .cgi file in the cgi-bin directory to become mapped to a .php file in the website's home directory:
RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule dBoard\.cgi Forums\.cgi
RewriteRule ([a-zA-Z0-9_]+).cgi http://www.evcforum\.net/$1.php [R]
But how does the software know that the 1923rd thread in the Proposed New Topics forum is the thread with ID number 11794? The answer is a map table created when I originally moved the website into the database.
All this allows URL's from as long as 10 years ago to still work. Much of how well this works was made possible by member reports of problems accessing old messages and threads, so thanks to all!

--Percy
EvC Forum Director

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Posts: 12998
From: EvC Forum
Joined: 06-14-2002
Member Rating: 2.3


Message 298 of 533 (634843)
09-24-2011 10:34 AM


Automated POTM Feature
I'm beginning implementation of automating the "Posts of the Month" process, and I'm going to try an experiment. Instead of implementing on my home development system I'm going to write the code on the website's server and make it publicly available. You can access the webpage as I write it. I don't have a name yet, so use this link:
Naturally WatchThisSpace will not be the file's final name, and I'm open to suggestions.
Sometimes the file will be in a non-working state, in which case you might see a message like this in your browser window:
Parse error: syntax error, unexpected T_STRING in /var/www/vhosts/evcforum.net/httpdocs/WatchThisSpace.php on line 16
Occasionally the file might be so screwed up (at least from the perspective of the parser) that nothing will display at all. But right now it says this:
Under construction.
At some point I'll have written enough code that it will begin doing something useful, and comments and suggestions are very welcome.
AbE: For those who would like to follow along with the coding, the current state of the code will always be here:
Edited by Admin, : AbE

--Percy
EvC Forum Director

  
Admin
Director
Posts: 12998
From: EvC Forum
Joined: 06-14-2002
Member Rating: 2.3


Message 300 of 533 (634902)
09-24-2011 4:37 PM
Reply to: Message 299 by AZPaul3
09-24-2011 4:25 PM


Re: Spell Check
Internet Explorer is the only major browser without builtin spell checking. There are add-on's available, like ieSpell.

--Percy
EvC Forum Director

This message is a reply to:
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Admin
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Posts: 12998
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Joined: 06-14-2002
Member Rating: 2.3


Message 303 of 533 (635779)
10-01-2011 12:56 PM
Reply to: Message 302 by hooah212002
09-29-2011 8:15 PM


Sorry, no poll function. It's on the todo list.

--Percy
EvC Forum Director

This message is a reply to:
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