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Work in Progress...

Posted: Wed Dec 08, 2004 12:41 am
by pennymachines
The site is now fully accessible to browsers without Flash - (except for the Arcade, of course). They'll just see plainer pages.

Now I can start work on the content...

Following feedback from several visitors, I've made some other changes.
Thanks to Melvyn Wright in particular for much constructive criticism.
I'll offer you some criticism when I get the chance Melvyn!

1. The Flash Player update handling when you first visit this site should be smoother and less obtrusive now.

2. The Flash home page buttons easier to find?

3. Melvyn pointed out that the slide out navigation bars got in the way of the other links when they obscured them. Now these only come out if you mouse-over the little cross symbol. Better or worse?

4. All Flash content including the site navigation will be automatically replaced with plain text links etc. when the site is viewed without the Macromedia Flash Player (or too old a version). This will be completed shortly.

Posted: Fri Feb 18, 2005 12:09 am
by pennymachines
In deference to members still reluctant to swap their Babbage Difference Engines for a modern PC, I've added a Flash Off button (see bottom of navigator bar). This should speed things up a bit on a slow connection too.

Also just finished - Automatic Updates recording the most recent dates of Forum, Market and Auction postings on the homepage and Latest window.

Posted: Sun Sep 25, 2005 7:47 pm
by pennymachines
Some minor refinements to the Latest links on the homepage:-

They now all go directly to the updated page (eg. the Forum link takes you to the most recent Forum post, etc.).

The Latest date and time title is also a link now to the most recently updated page on the site.

These links update in realtime (without the need to page refresh).

If you bookmarked the Latest Pop-up window, please note its address has now changed to: www.pennymachines.co.uk/latest/latest.php.

Posted: Thu Jan 26, 2006 12:04 pm
by pennymachines
For anyone who may be interested - recent behind the scenes improvements to the site:

Added sidebar navigation and homepage Calendar and News buttons, plus subcategory links from the homepage (in the central text area).

Non-Flash cascading sidebar navigation with subcategory links.

Non-JavaScript cascading navigation with subcategory links.

Further compliance with browsers not supporting JavaScript in page links etc. (More work to do on this).

Homepage dynamically loaded Latest links now display meaningful topic titles - rather than dates.

Homepage Latest Forum topic now updates correctly and links directly to relevant topic (this proved a hard nut to crack). Latest News topic now also updates automatically when items are added to PennyMachines Post (as do Latest Auction and Market links).

Revamped Latest links into dynamically loading feeds to display last few topics on each line via rolling links.

Fixed anchor tag frameset problem. (Page position anchors were lost when a page was loaded from outside the frameset).

Fixed issue with Firefox browser not loading the Flash homepage, and some other cosmetic Firefox browser issues.

RSS Feeds are now available for the Forum and News areas of the site. Syndicated content through FeedBurner.

Homepage text dissolves "improved".

Text input focus now works in searchbox.

spellchecker

Posted: Tue Sep 26, 2006 8:06 am
by badpenny
Grate that wood bee a soup er eye deer

Posted: Mon Nov 13, 2006 9:37 pm
by pennymachines
A question relating to slot machines now has to be answered in order to register with the forum or post messages as a guest. This is to prevent bots automatically joining the members' list (I've deleted a bunch already) and posting Spam etc. It may also foil some attempts at manually posting Spam not stopped by the filters etc..

Re: Work in Progress...

Posted: Sun Jan 06, 2008 1:22 am
by pennymachines
Yes - the forum looks all different today. That's because it's been upgraded to the new "Olympus" version of the software. So far so good. It went amazingly well. But rather than disable it for ages while I customize it, I decided to keep the ball rolling and will reinstate various functional and visual aspects as we go along.
If you encounter any useability problems, please let me know via the Feedback forum.

Re: Work in Progress...

Posted: Sun Jan 13, 2008 6:19 pm
by pennymachines
A fault with the registration process was identified and fixed today. Apologies to anyone who tried to join the forum recently only to find they couldn't answer the invisible question! Please try again...