Feature Requests and Suggestions Thread

I`d like a spell/grammar checker to drop over Brad`s messages so I can correct them before reading. But, then again, some of the words are so original, the spell check might have a breakdown trying to decipher.

The color scheme will remain unchanged. The most noticeable changes are the heading layout and the buttons. For the most part things remain the same, the biggest changes are in the underlying software.One improvement I'll mention now is that the "Show last n topics" dropdown menu goes away. Through your user preferences you will select how many topics or messages you want to list per page (if you don't set them in your preferences you'll pick up the board defaults, which I think are 40 topics and 15 messages). At the top and bottom of each page are links to all the other pages. The page links are already present on the message pages, but now they'll be present on all pages.Another enhancement I'll mention is that you'll be able to choose, again through your preferences, your own timezone, date format and time format. Those outside the Eastern US and Canada will no longer be a slave to US Eastern Time. Europeans and others who don't adhere to the US format will be able to have dates displayed with the days and months in the correct order, or can choose one of the unambiguous formats (e.g., December 12, 2004). I'm curious to see if this feature will cause any confusion, e.g., "I posted the message at 11:15 PM on 8-12-2004", which may be correct for the eastern US, but to someone in Germany who has set their preferences to the European style the message would display as 5:15 AM on 12-9-2004. Board administrators have have control over whether users can set these preferences.One of the enhancements on my list is to allow members to choose their own appearance, including colors, fonts, font sizes, etc.--Percy

Yes, it's very easy and will be done. All names currently link to their message list.--Percy

Add IM is a priority, but the complexity of the task is unknown at this time, so it has no schedule.--Percy

I feel this is an important and desirable feature, and it's been on my list for quite some time. I spent some time researching implementation in Javascript earlier this year. The only difficult issue is figuring out where the cursor was in the message box after you've gone off and selected text in the box for the message you're replying to. I didn't figure out the answer to this one, but I came away feeling a solution must exist. In fact, maybe I'll get lucky and someone reading this has already solved this problem! --Percy

Grammar checking, probably not. Spell checking, definitely, but I'm not sure when. The board used to have a spell checker, but then the company providing the service decided to start charging for it. When I reimplement spell checking it will be as an inherent feature of the board and not a service from another site.--Percy

Sure.Thanks for being so responsive in even responding to suggestions. I appreciate that.Ben

This is a ... weird one.I changed my avatar the other day. Now, in all of my old posts, my avatar appears to be my new one. That's weird.Instead of keeping a single (calculated?) link per member on their avatar picture, could you do something like this?On update of an avatatar,
- increase the count of 'avatar changes'
- upload the new photo to [username]-[avatar-changes].[extension]
- use THIS URL for generating the avatar for each new post.So that assumes a lot about your system (especially the HTML generation part), but .. that way the avatar wouldn't change for all posts. It's not usually important, but I think it's cooler when reading old posts and learning about the people on the board.And it especially sucks for the threads EXPLICTLY about avatars, when pretty much all of them have changed since then!!Ben

sowhat do you do in your spare time?you are going to be one busy dude.thanks also for the feedback.

---

we are limited in our ability to understand
by our ability to understand RebelAAmerican.Zen[Deist
{{{Buddha walks off laughing with joy}}}

I think you are looking for the preservation of old avatars. This would require using server storage space to store the old avatars. I don't see that it's worth it.On a vaguely related note: Signatures.Currently the old signatures persist - They are part of the page HTML files. I like the preservation of the old signatures.I also like the current system, where one has to specifically turn on your signature. I prefer not to have it show automaticly. And I find those members who have long signatures to be annoying when they always post the signature.I only post my admin mode signature when I think the info (links) are relivent to my message. I only post my non-admin mode signature occassionally, as it is rather lengthy.Cheers,
Moose

---

Professor, geology, Whatsamatta U
Evolution - Changes in the environment, caused by the interactions of the components of the environment.
"Do not meddle in the affairs of cats, for they are subtle and will piss on your computer." - Bruce Graham

I do agree that it's pretty unnecessary, just a suggestion. I would suggest that, if you're worried about space, you can reduce the allowed avatar size by a lot. 167K or whatever for like a 150X150 picture is pretty unnecessary, unless lots of people like the ability to 'blow up' the avatar picture. I personally would rather have an avatar history.And I agree with the comments on signatures. I did make a signature when I came, but I've never used it--until now. I've been waiting for just the right moment

---

keep the change

Creating tables of information in messages has always been difficult. You can use HTML, but you had better not include any line breaks or your table's appearance will be very strange. But without linebreaks it's easy to become lost while composing your table. So many just give up and present their table like this: This Christmas holiday I will be releasing the world's first (as far as I know) [table] code for bulletin boards!You'll use the new [table] code as shown in this example. It's freeform, so formatting is unimportant, the result will be the same. The "table=80%" portion means the table is 80% the width of the message itself: This will be rendered in your message like this: [indent]

[b]Sample	[b]Size	[b]Color	[b]Weight
Bogwan Dam	24	Red	126
York	13	Orange	132
South Orange Center	21	Raw Umber	159