As many of you may have already noticed the Official Trade Wars 2002 Support Forums have gone through a somewhat major upgrade, a long list of bugs has been fixed that I have been collected, the biggest being the cookie problem that some IE users and a lot of Netscape were having and the "Data field is too small ..." error on long subject named topics. The cookie system has been re worked and the data field has been hardcoded at a set max so hopefully these problems are corrected. There were also a lot of smaller cosmetic bugs, those for the most part are fixed.
The important thing though is some new features were added, here is a list of some of the features that are active now:
Printer Friendly Option:
This was added in order to give subscribers the option of opening a topic in a new window in a standard text format without graphics in order to fit nicely on standard sized paper and be readable without a magnifying glass
Send topic to a Friend:
Parish the thought that not everyone that plays Trade Wars or runs a server is not subscribed to this forum, but I suppose someone may have slipped through the cracks so if you see a topic that you think someone should see you can simply send it to him or her now.
Improved Navigation:
All the topic pages are now in a drop down box, as well as each area of the forum. It is no longer necessary to return to the main page to navigate to a different forum area. The members page is now completely searchable, by user name, first name and last name as well as alphabetically . The search feature of the forum has also been improved by the change of the way file names are displayed.
Profile Page:
Is currently being re worked with some new fields that will be used in the new “My Home Page” section that will be added shortly. See more on this below.
Avatars:
The Avatar feature now actually works as it was intended, an avatar can now be reserved for specific members and resized automatically. A “add your own avatar” feature has been added you can now add your own avatar (that will not be able to be used by any other member) “on the fly”. 161 new avatars were added as well.
Trade Wars Community Events:
A calendar of upcoming events has been added. Any member of the forums may add a Trade Wars related event into the calendar using the events link and then “add an event” anyone who has posted a normal topic will see that the interface to add an event is just like the one to post to the board with only the fields events starts and event ends added (use standard date format for these entries) Its my intention to also tie this feature in with JumpGate (yes I just mentioned JumpGate)
Email Subscriptions:
This is the biggie. The email subscribe feature has been added and it is now possible to subscribe to the forums. basically you can subscribe to as much, as little or nothing, from the entire board to a single topic, its up to you. Basically anything on the forum that can be updated by a member is capable of being subscribed too. Right now the feature simply sends you an email notification, but I intend to make it send the entire topic or topics in a digested form to your email (if you have used the yahoo groups digested email features it will be similar to that). It will also, in the future, be upgraded to allow members to post from their email a-la yahoogroups. So soon there will be no need if you choose to even log onto the web forum to take advantage of the forum, parish the thought.
On the fly Formatting:
You can now choose to show or hide any category on the forum main page. So if you don’t want to display, for example, General Discussions on your main page simply click on the ( - ) icon next to it and presto, its minimized. To redisplay it simply click on the ( + ). I know, I know another M$ reminder hehe when a linux guy comes up with a better way to show minimize and maximize then - and + let me know, i’ll be happy to use them
What’s coming in the near future (next few weeks):
Built in Post editor:
OK I have gotten quite a few emails from members that they love being able to customize the look of their posts with different fonts, colors, graphics, ect., ect by means of the forum code, but that it was a lot of work typing in all those [tags] before and after... or as one put it “If I wanted to write webpages i’d... blah blah blah
anyway I hear you and feel your pain. I am putting in a built in post editor that will be WYSIWYG, so no one will have to learn a single forum code tag, you can all be mindless drones churning out posts with a familiar MS Word style editor
It was actually going to go in with the email feature but I had a small setback with the spell check feature, so instead of putting it up without that I decided to try and get it completely working before posting it to the production forum. But don’t be surprised if it comes out without the spell check
This feature will also only be available for users of IE 5.5 or better (sorry Netscape people)
Topic Ratings:
Simple system of member voting on topics (whatever criteria the member wants to use i.e. usefulness, informative, good smack, cool layout or whatever) this feature really has no use, but its cool fluff and I get to add neat new graphics, which is always a plus in my book.
Trade Wars Community Links:
New and improved version of the links system that is already on the forum. This will in theory be tied into the JumpGate feature coming. (yes i just said JumpGate... again) Anyway when this comes out basically everyone that chooses to have their server or website displayed will have a centralized place to have their link displayed, ranked and commented on by any player of Trade Wars. I think this is the start to world domination... kind of neat eh?
What’s coming in the not-so-near future (next few months):
a “My Home Page Area”
If you have seen or used a “start page” from like Micro$oft or Yahoo then you get the idea. basically it will be a page that you decide the content of (links, features stuff like that) and it becomes your browser’s default “home page”. I don’t think anyone except AOL type people actually use these types of things but I figure lets put it out there anyway.
Coming in the distant future (someday)
Total EMAIL Integration
After all this flair and flash has been added we will make it so you don’t even have to open the website to take part in discussions... business 101 I think the 1st rule: put up a website with lots of features you spend a lot of time on then add a feature that makes it unnecessary for people to come
Rick Mead
Project Manager teamEIS
