Tag Archives: style

tsn.7 Style in progress

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I’ve started work on the tsn.7 style and theme for the new forums, and I must say, it’s lookin’ pretty sweet. Once I get a working set going, I’ll redo the splash page to give a bit of a preview and then load it up to the forum index.

Let’s just say it’s very…shiny.

I’m still using the same blues, and there is no new logo this time (although there were attempts at creating a new one). But it combines the look and feel of tsnV with the 2 years of design experience I’ve gained since then.

No screen shots yet; I don’t have it set up with any forum information yet to show what it would look like. But if you would like to join the testers that will be using the tsn.7 theme while it gets built, then you can change it in your User Control Panel, under Board Preferences.

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twitter & tsn.7

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With a new My Spot page comes new possibilities. This time around, I’m going to make a concerted effort to actually write in new code and attach a new database backend that pulls from the phpbb database and the users’ accounts on the-spot.net.With this new plan, there will be increased ability to add features and remove features on the user-level…that is to say, you can choose what you want to see on the page.

There will also be some integration to popular social sites right on the My Spot page, like twitter and flickr – community based sites with an API that doesn’t require you to visit their site in order to view content.

Last night, I worked with the twitter.com API and with the RSS reader that I’ve hacked up in PHP, and turned out the twitter stream for the-spot.net’s twitter friends. That will go on the front page of the My Spot page so that everyone on tsn can know what all the other tsn members are twittering about.

The next thing I’m going to be doing with that is working on a way to allow the users to update their twitter status directly from tsn. That’s going to take a bit more work than displaying the feed, but it will be a good challenge.

On the previous version of the site, there was a flickr flash app that showed the new photos from the tsn flickr group. That will be coming back as well.

I’m also going to try to make the User Control Panel more accessible and integrate the Buddy List into the My Spot page so you can see when your favorite posters are online (since the information box at the bottom displays the last X minutes, and not “Currently” online).

I’m still trying to gather new ideas from everyone about what they’d like to see on the page…and I hope to make it modular like that previous My Spot page was so they can just be plugged in to the template based on information in the new database determining whether or not they wish to see that.

if you have any ideas – leave comments, or message me directly.

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Google Apps + Mozilla Apps + Interw3bs = Productivity

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I was on the Office 12/2007 beta testing team, and got to use their product. And I admit that I became a fan of the new office layout and features. I’d recommend them over the previous Office versions, as long as there is the availability for some time due to the learning curve.

It took a couple weeks of using the apps on my laptop, desktop and even at work in some cases to get a feel for where certain features were located on the ribbon and even in the different window/menu structure. Also some new features were added that were helpful for being productive, but required some fooling with to figure out how to use them effectively.

But, as with all other things, it came to an end. The TR Beta 2 ran out at the end of March 2007. That meant I had to either pony up for the new version of Office, or sit there and hit the “you must uninstall this software” message every time I wanted to load the program. OR, I could do one more thing, that I tried to do a couple months ago – and move to OpenSource.

That is what I decided to do. I can’t afford the $250-ish price tag for legit Office 2007, and I’m not real interested in getting a cracked version of the software for a couple reasons – I don’t want to deal with the WGA hassle, and I’ve already used the software. So I moved to Open Office, Mozilla Thunderbird, and Mozilla Sunbird/Lightening.

My main tiff I had with Office was that it didn’t synchronize with anything. Sure, you could export your Outlook calendar to a web calendar with Office Online – but Office Online is gay – it requires you to use IE for things. It’s not necessarily that I don’t like IE, but that I have much more settings configuration invested in FireFox. But the calendars didn’t sync up or down automatically…and you can’t write to them and make changes in one place, and get it to sync to the other automatically.

Enter: Mozilla Thunderbird, Mozilla Sunbird, Mozilla Lightening, and the Provider plugin for Google Calendars.

I installed Thunderbird, Sunbird, and Lightening, and then realized I had the same predicament with them as I did with Outlook. So I went searching and found GCAL Daemon which worked great, but was a separate application. Today I found the Provider for Google Calendar plugin. This makes it much easier to manage your calendar and configure the settings. And it lets you read AND write to the Google Calendars.

So far, this has proved to be useful. I use google.com/ig as my start page at work, and I have the calendar add-on on that page – as well as my gmail account, and some other things. All this stuff is also sync’d to my laptop through Thunder/Sunbird/Lightening and the plugin, and the same with my desktop. It’s the connectivity I’ve been looking for.

I’m still trying to find a working way to sync my Google Calendar to my Windows Mobil 5 phone…I found FinchSync, but it gave java error until I configured it…now the two don’t connect. And it’s looking for a .ics calendar file to sync, but I don’t have one of those, since I’m syncing over the internet. So I’ll keep looking.

Anyway, that’s what I’m using right now to keep my communication channels in place in a world without MS Outlook.

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Update: tsnX.3 @ 26%; Progress Page

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Well, the tsnX.3. updates are now at 26% complete. I’ve created a progress page that you can check which updates are installed, which ones are left, and how far along things are coming. It also shows what’s new in tsnX that wasn’t in tsnV – whether it’s user features, or hidden admin capabilities. You can check all this out by clicking here. It is also designed in a preliminary tsnX style. The images may take a bit to load initially, because they’re .png images and have transparancy which allows for the roundness to work with the gradient background. But after their initial load, they shouldn’t have to load again.

To view the transparency of the .png files, you should get Firefox, or Internet Explorer 7 Beta. You can get Firefox (which is recommended, and will earn the-spot.net $1 for every download/install on a computer that doesn’t have it) by clicking on the graphic at right. Or you can get IE 7 Beta 2 from Microsoft for free (as long as you have a legit version of Windows XP with Service Pack 2) by going to microsoft.com.

All of tsnX will be designed to be compatible with Firefox, and most likely, in turn, IE 7. But mainly it will be designed to be FireFox complient…so go ahead and grab Firefox and experience a safer, better, more customized internet browsing experience.

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Update: tsnX – (Mod CP, FAQ Editor, Extreme Styles) @ 100%

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I managed, during lunch, to finish all three things: Moderator Control Panel, FAQ Editor, and eXtreme Styles modifications…and they were relatively easy to do. REALLY easy. So all the beta testers, go break what you can…so far, no one has broken anything…I need people to break stuff.

The only issue that I see, is not really an issue – but the extreme styles mod does not do what I thought it did. I thought it gave the user an easier way to change the style they’re using. However, instead it gives the admin an easier, or at least more control over, way to add/edit/delete themes to the site. I don’t know how much I’ll be using that, but I’ll give it a shot.

The Moderator CP shows a link at the bottom of the page for the Moderators to edit smilies, manage users, and some other things. If you’re a mod, reading this, go check it out. If you have not registered for the forums, go ahead and do that – it only takes a couple seconds, and you don’t even have to put in all your information.

And the FAQ editor is going to be nice. But getting people to read the FAQ instead of asking questions is going to be the next biggest marketing task, with the first being to get people back to the site.

Since I’ve finished all three of these, I’ll probably pick a couple things to do tonight. The Nerd Night at Neo’s though has moved to a tentative event…more details are needed.

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