January 2014 Update

[Arantor]

It's a new dawn, it's a new day, it's a new year foooooooooor me... (sorry, I'll turn off the karaoke machine)

Well, it's been a few weeks since I last pontificated on where things are going, and thought it would be nice to get on with this again Since then it's been busy, but mostly lots of little improvements rather than huge things...

* Bug fixes, lots of squishes.

* Various things we're not using any more but that are still lurking in the code got cleaned out.

* Copyright year - we know this is a problem with people wanting the footer to be updated every year even when the software doesn't update, and then when we do do an update it doesn't always get pushed out to the footer because of languages. So finally we fixed that nonsense

* Closing/unignoring/reopening reported posts now gets logged in the moderation log.

* The memberlist now says 'name' instead of 'username'. It's the little touches.

* When viewing the list of topics in a board, let's use that board's description for a meta description.

* When adding/removing people on your buddy list or ignore list, show a nice message to indicate changes have been saved.

* The board index code got overhauled; it's now easier for mods to add things to the info centre.

* When making thumbnails, SMF now uses a slightly higher quality than before - not significantly larger files but visibly improved.

* Integration functions have stronger support for classes.

* Group requests are now logged; before, closing a request (either by accepting or refusing) would delete the request, now all the request history is logged, including who approved/refused a request and if it was refused, for what reason.

* After posting from quick reply, the default is now to go back to the topic instead of to the board listing. (This will be applicable for new installs; upgrades will not touch the settings applied)

* For folks still using WAP2/imode, the unread/unread replies links are now up top rather than at the bottom on the board listing.

* When deleting an account, the option for deleting an account or deleting all the user's posts are made clearer.

* Quick reply is no longer configurable as an option, it's just always on. Keep it simple

* The default theme now uses HTML5 rather than XHTML. This will require us to go through and do a thorough review of the theme, but this isn't a bad thing.

* We don't have the 'hot topics' functionality any more - we did experiment with making it more visible but in the end it just worked out better just to remove it entirely.

* The default date format is now shorter - for English, for example, instead of 'January 10, 2014, 02:30:00 AM', it now uses 'Jan 10, 2014, 02:30 AM'

* The 'resize avatars with JavaScript' and 'resize avatars with HTML' option is gone. If you don't allow external avatars, or that you set it to download and resize external avatars, nothing has changed. But if you previously told it to use HTML or JavaScript, the option is now replaced with a 'resize in the user's browser', i.e. CSS. A simple tweak but worth doing.

[PhuriousGeorge]

Awesome list & progress, thanks for the updates!

[gevv]

Thanks to all the Developers.

[Motahhari]

What about more social tools? more social profiles with text status instead of signature and profile comment. Also like/dislike option for posts ...

[Irisado]

Take a look at some of the other update threads for mention of things such as likes, one example is this update.

Great work Developers.  Thank you for all your efforts and ongoing updates.

[Arantor]

What about more social tools? more social profiles with text status instead of signature and profile comment. Also like/dislike option for posts ...

Likes for posts is already a core feature, the other stuff we're not actually that interested in (and judging by conversations in the past, it's not actually something that too many other people are in, so it would be a lot of effort for fairly low return)

[TwitchisMental]

I am a bit excited to see whats to come from the move to HTML5 .

[Arantor]

Honestly, not so much. It's more about having compatibility in the base theme for themers and the like, though some of the more minor HTML5 features are usable. I don't, for example, particularly want to enforce the use of a shim for IE8 (which 2.1 is supporting as the minimum base IE version)

The push was almost more of a kick up the backside for me to make me review all the templates, in a bug hunting/consistency kind of way.

[TwitchisMental]

Honestly, not so much. It's more about having compatibility in the base theme for themers and the like, though some of the more minor HTML5 features are usable. I don't, for example, particularly want to enforce the use of a shim for IE8 (which 2.1 is supporting as the minimum base IE version)

The push was almost more of a kick up the backside for me to make me review all the templates, in a bug hunting/consistency kind of way.

*sigh* Curse you IE... 

Is IE8 really used by that many people today? I would suspect since Windows XP is losing support this year, that would drop its usuage even more.

[Arantor]

IE8 is the highest version XP will support, and XP is far from dead at this point. (Technically, XP Home and XP Premium are losing official support in April, while XP Embedded which, as I understand it is basically XP Premium with some tweaks, will continue until 2016)

Depending on who you listen to, IE8 still has a surprising market share. Certainly enough that we still have to consider it right now, put it that way. But once April comes and goes and XP support drops off - hopefully so too will the demand for IE < 9, and maybe we can sneak some tweaks in during the late beta stage, but we have to see how it goes. Realistically at this point I'm expecting 2.1 to support IE8 because I don't expect the drop-off to be as huge as people hope.

3.0 on the other hand... HTML5 thoroughly good and proper.

[Alpay]

Awesome ^^
Thank.. looking forward very closely^^

[Lexi P]

I use chrome more than anything. Is it safe to assume that smf 2.1 will function properly with the chrome browser?

[NanoSector]

I use chrome more than anything. Is it safe to assume that smf 2.1 will function properly with the chrome browser?

Of course it will

Thanks to the devvers!

[Arantor]

I use chrome more than anything. Is it safe to assume that smf 2.1 will function properly with the chrome browser?

I use Chrome myself

[GravuTrad]

I don't like few updates that are more removes than progressions.

Changes on the copyright date: Are they ok with the bsd licence?  (nb: http://www.simplemachines.org/about/smf/license.php, this page is not up to date)

No longer quick reply as an option, thanks for those who don't like quick reply system....not a progress, only a remove...(and disliked for me)

hot topics, it's a little damage (but i don't use it)

and small dates, i hope we can switch back too normal dates in the admin lol...(sure we can lol), and it will be funny for foreign languages to translate it.

[Arantor]

Changes with the copyright date are fine with BSD. The BSD doesn't care about anything other than those in the source.

Changes on quick reply, you must not use any other forum software. Also, fewer options usually works out better for the user.

Hot topics have long since been mostly useless, being just a change of icon that most people never notice and for months that icon wasn't even shown anyway meaning that people really don't care.

Small dates, sure you can change it in the admin or profile. Translation should be easy, you drop the %S and switch from %B to %b, every language I looked at on LE could be translated by these changes.

[AllanD]

I like the quick reply always on, now to have it with the editor so you add smileys and configure posts with bbc it would be awesome.
Once again great update team.

[Arantor]

You mean that thing you can already do if you want to because it's already an option in 2.1?

[Illori]

profile -> look and layout Use full editor in quick reply

[AllanD]

Yes that, lol. I knew it was a option in 2.1, but having in 2.0 would be nice. Since 2.1 isn't too far away it would make sense having it in 2.0 right now.