FLCN V 2.0 Suggestions & Ideas
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Hi!
Although I’ve now finally added the FLCN-Bar to our main site, I’m not really happy with it.
1st thing is that it’s based on JavaScript but I’m following the doctrine that every page must be browseable without JS. It’s also a problem when updating templates automatically, because hardcoded text may be eradicated.
2nd place goes to, as mentioned before by Huor, XHTML-Validity, which is very important to us - simply disregarding the now nearly eight years old IE 6. We don’t support Opera 7 or Firefox 1 either (which should do fine), so why should we care for IE 6?
3rd and last but not even close to least important: The, due to the JS-Implementation, very poor SEO-effect.But I’m not only a critic, I hereby offer to write a pendant in PHP, fully XHTML 1.1 and CSS 2.1 valid, including (with time) plugins for Wordpress and Woltlab Community Framework / Woltlab Burning Board 3 since I hate to mess around with templates although I know what I’m doing - at least most of the time. ^^ If possible (it is) I won’t be using JS, only CSS. Links will be added at server side, so search engines will be fully aware of them. I may add other SEOs if applicable.
Why did I not simply implement and present it here?
This implementation should be up-to-date at any time just like the original and that’s only possible if I draw the information directly from the source - a database, e.g. Or if I get to know a usable interfaces.Interested?
Nevertheless, the current FLCN-bar is great work - it just doesn’t meet my needs.
PS: I’m not adding the FLCN-bar to our board 'cause to style and template issues - but to be “able” to discuss with you in the meanwhile, I added it via include() into the WP-templates. Application pending.
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As my modded version of the FLCN-Bar is neither working with Gecko (Firefox Engine) nor Trident (Internet Explorer Engine) but Presto (Opera-Engine) and Webkit (Safari, Chrom, Konqueror Engine) I dug deeper into the JS code (which is appareantly for the malfunction) and noticed that the sources are simple JS arrays in seperate files. I now began to write the Wordpress plugin, which is already parsing and presenting the main links (those visible on the bar without any interaction). I’ll add the routines for the other parts tomorrow and with the permission (which I don’t have yet) of w0dk4 I’ll release a first version of the WP plugin.
Currently I’m parsing the JS source files with regex, which is a real performance killer which is why I would prefer another source, simple text files with an easy pattern to be split by “explode()”. I would provide a script for maintenance of these txt-files to automatically produce the necessary JS source code, making adding and removing members a lot easier and more comfortable as well.
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What disturbs me a bit about the bar; when you hover over it, it shows up 12 links for servers, but only 6 for communities and only 3 for clans. The free space is already there, so why don’t increase the clan and community links to 12 as well?
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@Bas: This is because we want to put the emphasis on servers. They’re the ones which should benefit the most from the FLCN; if servers die, clans and community sites don’t have much of a purpose anymore, so by doing this we’re effectively drawing people’s attention toward the more important server links.
@black_caeser: Just ask w0dk4 about it, if he doesn’t mind I guess it should be doable.
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I just thought to let you know of a problem with the NB that i experienced today.
Unfortunate the server was not available the script could not be loaded. Unfortunate this is happening often and loading times for my forum are delaying until the timeout occurs.
But what i experienced today the first time, was the following:
The entire site was hidden in the script for the drop down of the link collection. My site was not displayed as long as i havent hovered the link. I am not sure how this can happen. I had to remove the bar as i could not browse or login to my forum. Do you have any idea how the entire site can be put into the script?
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Major update:
The FLCN can now be found on Google Code at the following address:
http://flcnb.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/
That is, you can change all references to
http://www.the-starport.net/community_network/
or
http://the-starport.net/community_network/
to
http://flcnb.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/
Otherwise, just get the code from the FLCN main topic.
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Just wanted to note that here.
The recent shutdown of the-starport.net made all websites that inluded the community bar unreachable. (pages couldn’t finish loading because of the communitybar and stayed blank)We have to find a way that ensures that a failure of the starport doesn’t take down all other sites too
(caching, timeout in javascript that aborts loading the bar, … i don’t know
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Read the news, the forums, anywhere. I’ve already addressed this concern, it’s now just a matter of people updating the bar. I can’t do that for them.
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Nos#Fi wrote:
The recent shutdown of the-starport.net made all websites that inluded the community bar unreachable. (pages couldn’t finish loading because of the communitybar and stayed blank)
Well i use the bar on my website, and the site wasn’t unable to reach.
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The new code worked fine for me all the time TSP was down, it was the last thing i grabbed from here before the last lot of attacks. My forum loaded ok without issues during the downtime. I suggest people upgrade to the new code,
old code = NO
new code = YES
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I’m really glad to hear the Google Code version works, it’s an interesting experiment.
