February 2014 Update

Started by Arantor, February 02, 2014, 06:10:32 PM

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Arantor

Another month, another update :) A certain amount of January's time was taken up with 2.0.7 related stuff from the devs, but a healthy amount of things happened for 2.1 in the last few weeks.

* Bug fixes - I know I keep mentioning this, but it's important :P 2.1 represents a major release for us, but not enough to warrant a bump to 3.0; there's no significant architectural changes, but there are some serious focus changes, some changes to convention but more importantly: we've really been trying to focus on bug fixes, cleaning house in terms of bug reporting going back, trying to make 2.1 the very best release it can be, dealing with as many legacy bugs as possible. In particular, paid subscriptions has had a number of fixes applied to it.

* The conversion to HTML5 goes slowly, but it is progressing.

* One of the confusing aspects about permissions was manage boards - the problem of people being able to manage boards and change permissions but without that group potentially being able to see all boards. To that end, because of all the strange issues that can manifest, if a group has manage boards permission, that is effectively now a carte-blanche access to groups (since they could have given themselves that permission anyway).

* The debugging functionality has been improved: it now lists memory usage as well as the other stuff, makes some of the logging stuff work when it never used to properly.

* Calendar got some changes - creating new events will send alerts, the 'week x' thing has been removed (due to it causing a great many problems that can't properly be fixed)

* 2.1 features an extended version of what 2.0 had for installings mods. Whereas in 2.0 you could enter a version of SMF for mods to 'emulate', 2.1 now has an auto-complete list of versions which is updated from our servers like the notifications about doing updates in general.

* In 1.1 and 2.0, when uploading an avatar, they would be stored in the attachments folder. As of 2.1, they are stored in their own folder which allows for them to be called directly, which has a major performance increase (so much so that doing it manually was the number 1 performance recommendation for years, now we've just made it automatic)

* Outgoing email has been tweaked so that it should be slightly more reliable by always issuing a message id (as opposed to the relay doing it) and this should also allow for better diagnosis of issues.

* Several 'configurable' options have been removed; if they are on by default and unlikely to ever be disabled, there's really no point them being optional. Specifically: 'simple search', the 'mark as read' button, the 'go up/down' buttons' and 'display items on the link tree as links', though there are also some options that the code was aware of but never used which have also been cleaned up.

* More of the images are now made part of the sprite we use, enables improvements in  performance and RTL support.

* If you use paid subscriptions now, when you leave the forum to go to PayPal, it will hopefully use the right language for you. Also, AUD and CAD are now currencies listed as standard.

* When examining the files in a theme, the theme's name is displayed. Not a major change, but a useful one.

* When using the reports function to get a report of all the boards in your forum, the report will also inform you about redirect boards.

* Because of all the issues around non-UTF-8 and conversions, all new installs will be UTF-8 only. Upgrades will not force conversion to UTF-8, so your existing database will work as expected during an upgrade, but new installs will be UTF-8 only to keep everything that much simpler in the long term.

* Send this topic (as in by email) has been removed; people use copy/paste these days or various social services. We have not yet decided whether we are going to add social sharing functions in the default (and it's not like there aren't a number of choices out there already)

* The function to email users from the forum is being phased out. That's what PMs are for ;)

* When uploading an avatar (or downloading an external one, if configured), the maximum size is shown.

* Web Slice support, what there was of it, has been removed.

* Polls added to topics, edited, locked, unlocked, reset or removed are all now logged in the moderation log.

* Users that are hidden do not reveal their last online time (unless the viewing user could see them anyway, e.g. by being an administrator)

* The footer has been rejigged a little; there's no longer a link to the credits page (that's now in the help area), the footer now also has the link to the help page (no longer in the main menu!) and the terms & rules / reg agreement are also linked from the footer.

* When moving items into and out of the recycle board, the 'recycle icon' is no longer changed permanently.

* When merging two topics, the secondary topic(s) will no longer be deleted, but will now be a redirection to the newly merged topic.


As you can see, there's a lot of little changes in addition to the big stuff - that's something that we're looking at: even the little details are important. With that in mind, there is going to be a complete top-to-bottom look at everything in SMF to polish it all up :)

As ever, you can see how it's going on our Github - http://github.com/SimpleMachines/SMF2.1 - but we're still officially in alpha, and things are likely to change on a daily basis; you should not be running it on a production site unless you are prepared to keep things up to date and understand the consequences of it; we cannot provide our usual level of support for people running alpha code.

Kindred

And let me just add the praises of the Project Manager to to work of everyone who is contributing to the GitHub repository and those who are testing the nightly updates
Слaва
Украинi

Please do not PM, IM or Email me with support questions.  You will get better and faster responses in the support boards.  Thank you.

"Loki is not evil, although he is certainly not a force for good. Loki is... complicated."

margarett

QuoteWhen moving items into and out of the recycle board, the 'recycle icon' is no longer changed permanently.
Soft-delete did manage to see the light of day? Nicely, nicely done ;D

Of course, same for every other point. Kudos to you guys ;)
Se forem conduzir, não bebam. Se forem beber... CHAMEM-ME!!!! :D

QuoteOver 90% of all computer problems can be traced back to the interface between the keyboard and the chair

Arantor

No... the recycle bin is and always has been a kind of soft delete. It was just the behaviour that moving things into the recycle bin would also change their icon to recycled, and not change it back after. We just changed it so it didn't touch the icon and only displayed it as recycled inside the recycle bin.

ApplianceJunk

I like everything I have read about the updates, thanks!

This one stuck out for me.

Quote* The function to email users from the forum is being phased out. That's what PMs are for ;)

I agree so much with that. Don't know if you remember, but you helped me set my forum up so members could not email each other.

If members want to email each other then one member can PM the other member for their address. This way they both have to agree to it before emails are ever exchanged.

Thanks for all your hard work.

CountryLady

What an incredible job everyone is doing. :D

Frankly, I'm really anxious to start using 2.1 in an active environment. My board has been online for 14 years, and with SMF since 2005, HOWEVER, having it polished and all of it's parts working smoothly is worth waiting for.
                       Way to GO, Team~!

"Thanks!" to each one of you who supports SMF and helps members like me on the support forums. You ALL make SMF the fabulous software that it is.

These updates are especially helpful. :D

Arantor

@ApplianceJunk: that's exactly why we're trying to get rid of it.

@CountryLady: thanks!


Also, sneak peek of what I'm working on right now. Hardly that sneaky, though, I guess ;D

TomW

Quote from: Sir Cumber-Patcher on February 02, 2014, 10:45:51 PM
Also, sneak peek of what I'm working on right now. Hardly that sneaky, though, I guess ;D

Excellent !  I've been using this mod for a while now; it has been very useful for my members who aren't very computer-literate.

BTW I love the improvements;  there isn't a single change that I can disagree with.  Great job everyone !

Arantor

I assure you this is nothing like the mod you are using, it's built from scratch to work within the functionality of 2.1 ;)

ApplianceJunk

Quote from: Sir Cumber-Patcher on February 02, 2014, 10:45:51 PM
Also, sneak peek of what I'm working on right now. Hardly that sneaky, though, I guess ;D

Glad to see that, very nice!

The mod we currently use for that works ok, but i can just image how it being a built in function of 2.1 will be so much better.


Arantor

Well, it's linked in the footer next to the help and terms & rules links, I'm experimenting with making it behave as a popup like the screenshot (which is... interesting), but yeah, being built in should make maintenance of it easier in the long term.

ApplianceJunk

What happens if someone has popups blocked in their browser settings?

Arantor

That's the thing, as per my screenshot it's not a real popup. It's something that comes into the page and acts like a popup without actually BEING a popup. Several other things work the same way in 2.1, most notably the help popups.


Arantor

So do I :) it's one of the very nice things that the previous devs left me to play with, and I intend to make good use of it :D

Deprecated

Quote from: Sir Cumber-Patcher on February 02, 2014, 06:10:32 PM* When merging two topics, the secondary topic(s) will no longer be deleted, but will now be a redirection to the newly merged topic.

Everything on the list sounds fantastic! (I specially like the avatar part.)

Will there be a moderator option to not leave the secondary topic redirection, or will it be necessary to delete the redirection topic after the merge if the redirection is not desired?

Arantor

There is no moderator option, nor is there any plan to introduce one. The nearest I'm inclined to go is to have the redirection delete itself after x days (probably 5-7, unlikely to be configurable) because there are all sorts of edge cases about having this there, which is why I went through the hoops to implement it in the first place (took an entire evening to do that).

For private boards, granted, the impact is less, but for anything public, the benefit vastly outweighs the 'hassle' of having it.

Deprecated

Quote from: Sir Cumber-Patcher on February 02, 2014, 11:25:54 PM
That's the thing, as per my screenshot it's not a real popup. It's something that comes into the page and acts like a popup without actually BEING a popup. Several other things work the same way in 2.1, most notably the help popups.

With DHTML and particularly AJAX I'm not sure there is any technology left that can reliably block pop-ups. Or things that look like pop-ups but aren't.

Deprecated

Quote from: Sir Cumber-Patcher on February 02, 2014, 11:46:09 PM
There is no moderator option, nor is there any plan to introduce one. The nearest I'm inclined to go...

Will there be any attribution to which mod/admin caused the merge? I'm a stealth admin on one forum and want to preserve my cover as an ordinary member. (My only duty is to keep the forum running and organized.) I'll delete the forward if necessary.

Might as well pick 7 days -- a week -- as the default. It fits nicely into the calendar and into our day/week/month/year time precepts.

Oh, I forgot to ask, is this the roadmap to 2.1 or are you speaking of a future 2.0.7->2.0.8 update?

By the way, I appreciate the well organized and detailed OP. Good job!

Arantor

QuoteWith DHTML and particularly AJAX I'm not sure there is any technology left that can reliably block pop-ups. Or things that look like pop-ups but aren't.

Considering what AJAX is, if you're doing AJAXive techniques, you shouldn't be using real pop-ups anyway. The entire point of asynchronous requests is that you fetch parts of data and inject that into the current page context.

QuoteWill there be any attribution to which mod/admin caused the merge? I'm a stealth admin on one forum and want to preserve my cover as an ordinary member. (My only duty is to keep the forum running and organized.) I'll delete the forward if necessary.

There is, exactly as moves do. I would strongly encourage you not to delete the topic though, because it's done for multiple reasons - not least SEO. (Yes, that thing I despite and detest because most people don't understand what it means, the entire point of keeping the redirection is so that you retain the link - if you have two popular topics that get merged, you don't screw up any linkjuice to it)

QuoteOh, I forgot to ask, is this the roadmap to 2.1 or are you speaking of a future 2.0.7->2.0.8 update?

When have we ever done anything other than fixes in x.y.z to x.y.z+1 updates? Why would I be showing off a picture that specifically outlines 2.1's current theme? I don't reiterate it every month I do one of these because I figure most people that care enough by now know that we are doing maintenance only on 2.0 (and have been since 2011) and that as much developmental effort as possible is being spent on 2.1, just as it was in 2006 in the aftermath of 1.1.

We have enough to do without trying to actively develop two branches of SMF.

Also, no, this isn't a roadmap. A roadmap would tell you where we are going, not where we are right now and what has just been completed.

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