Three weeks ago we released the
first public alpha of SMF 2.1 which has been met with some interesting and positive feedback. Issues are now being logged on our
bug reports board. Since SMF 2.1 is an open source project, constant feedback from the community (that means you) is crucial to the team's ability to meet our high standards for SMF 2.1.
The
first in our series of blog posts focussing on SMF 2.1 looked at security enhancements.
This week we're taking a look at improvements to one of our key features; Posting.
We have learned from these forums at simplemachines.org that posting is important to every SMF install. So we identified several posting related features that seemed important to a large number of users. We feel that these posting enhancements really take SMF up a notch, and we are truly proud of these features.
WYSIWYG EditorSMF led the way among free forum software with a built in WYSIWYG editor in version 2.0. Because WYSIWIG editors are complex and must support so many browsers, we have been evaluating third party WYSIWIG editors. It was a recent mod from Nibogo that showed off the beauty of Sam Clarke's SCEditor. After investigating the editor further, we decided it was a perfect fit for SMF 2.1. It is lean, sharp, and stable. After 2.1 install, this editor will be a profile option for every user. We won't be surprised if other open source projects begin using this excellent WYSIWIG editor, too. Thank you, Sam Clarke!
DraftsA new, but powerful feature to SMF 2.1 is the ability to save a draft version of a forum post. This means that, if your browser crashes, you experience an internet interruption, or you are called to dinner, you won't entirely lose your long, well thought out post. The most recent saved version of your draft will be available when things settle down. Just turn this on through Core Features and give it a test drive.
AttachmentsSMF has had attachments support from its very first release. It has improved over the years to meet the growing demands of faster internet connections and more social interaction. In SMF 2.1, we have improved performance without changing the way members interact with the board by introducing new functionality to manage the number files in a given directory, automatically manage folders locations/creation and maintenance options for administrators to work with. Imagemagick support has also been added. In addition, when SMF 2.1 is forced to reject a file for an attachment (unsupported file format, file to large, file seems to be infected), SMF will tell the user exactly what was wrong so they can fix it and resubmit it, SMF will also check it has enough memory available to resize images. Finally, we have added to the number of supported file formats, and improved our file checks so SMF can protect your members from infection while rejecting far fewer files.
SMF has always been a polished, streamlined, and efficient forum system, and we are sure you will agree that this new release represents a solid step forward for SMF.
Do you want to watch our progress?SMF is Open Source software released under the BSD license. You can view our current progress and see the work on these and other features. You are welcome to view the latest code, and also to submit your own suggested changes or fixes. Just check out our code base at github --
http://github.com/SimpleMachines/SMF2.1