I was here!

It’s such a pity I have absolutely no use for a forum any more - this all looks so lovely, I’m tempted to buy a license just to play with it on my localhost server…

Matt, does the new components system and API mean that in some future release it won’t be needed anymore to edit IPB’s core files in order to add features yourself? (by uploading XML components in the ACP which contain the modifications)

Other projects…Whats them?

Also this new version is looking fine, looking forward to using it. Hope I dont loose all my mods - the arcade is a must if nothing else.

Loose all your mods? That will definitely occur but it is more than worth it. This is such a large upgrade that I’m sure you will need to delete all your files besides uploads/ style_* and conf_global.php. Even though I do that regardless it will be required this release I think since there is a whole new kernel.

Therefore meaning all mods that work with 2.0.3 will need to be upgraded to 2.1.0. But Matt said it isn’t difficult, “the arcade is a must”? Yeah right! Have you not been active in the customer forums where Matt told us about all the security issues within the arcade?

Anyways, I have said it more than once, IPB 2.1.0 is looking great. I really can’t wait.

“Have you not been active in the customer forums where Matt told us about all the security issues within the arcade?”

This just confirms what I already knew to be true… that staff from IPS use the “Customer Forums” as a way to deliver important information to “customers only”, yet they ban paying customers from accessing those forums just for posting negative feedback. That’s just palin wrong.

The reason I put active in there is because because the topic was really active so it would be hard for anyone to miss it. And I said the customer forums specifically because well that is where they are, and Matt just casually mentioned it.

And “important information” to customers only? No, the arcade and other modifications are not supported by IPS in any way. And so what if he did only mention it in the IPS Customer Forums? Why would he make some big announcement about it when he has nothing to do with the arcade?

Greggish,

A customer had his board hacked and I discovered that a third party hack, the “Arcade” was how the attacker got in. Nothing more, nothing less.

There was no big customer only announcement about it. If there was a need to shout about it, I’d do so in the news forum where everyone can see it.

WoW, I’m loving that main ACP panel, I’m not to sure on the gray for the tabs though, it jsut doesn’t “fit in” with the IPB colour scheme IMO. What does it matter though? Only admins go in ther :D.

Good Work Matt =D I’ll be waiting for the release ;).

I know it’s still an in-progress shot, but I’m not so sure about the manage forum/moderator interface. It seems to be cramming too much into too small a space. There are definitely some relatively confusing elements in there. For instance, the checkbox that is to the side does not give any indiciation as to it’s purpose until you scroll all the way to the bottom (which if you have a lot of forums, would be a long way away).

With all the subforums and moderators shown at once, the visual space taken up per forum puts too much out of view and makes the user exert more effort in scrolling up and down the screen. This means they have to keep more in memory about what they just saw. An example of a good method of compensation for this happens on the forums when you select multiple posts in a topic as a mod and the button at the bottom left of the topic shows the number selected. However, I don’t know if you can get away with such a technique in this format. Instead, you might see about reducing the vertical space taken up by making the list of moderators hidden until a “show moderators” link or button is clicked. The same could go for the subforums list. Perhaps use something like the List view in the Finder for the display of subforums so you don’t have to load a separate page to edit them.

Have you done a full usability study (heuristic analysis, expert review, use case surveys, etc) on the application? Doing so could definitely give you a major boost on the competition, because I don’t think vB or phpBB has been doing them
One other thing is the use of Apple’s images in the application. I don’t think Apple likes that very much :X

Arcade is a must at the minute - its what got my board so popular with the students.

Maybe ill sneak it out. Ill see. It shouldnt need much updating though.

I fully agree with Tim’s comment on that part.

I agree with Tim and Logan too. It does not look inviting at all, rather confusing.

I hope that while you’re busy on the html of the ACP, you also have a look at how it displays in IE Untill now it has always looked a bit like a “beta” version
I like the idea of the tabs a lot…

Wow, Matt… very nice work. I love the new admin cp.

I had already done that, Tim.
http://www.invisiondynamic.com/screenshots/acp-forums2.gif

I’ve also changed the color of the tabs to a blue hue to tonally match the rest of the ACP.

Not relying too heavily on JavaScript/DHTML, are we Matt? I administrate two IPB forums myself, and I prefer surfing without JavaScript turned on… It would be a bit stupid if it was impossible to use the system without JavaScript.

You’ll need to have javascript enabled to use the IPB ACP.

It’s impossible to create a feature rich UI without using DHTML. I might at some point created another ACP skin that doesn’t require javascript but it will be very basic.

It’s looking much better now indeed!

It may be rather difficult to create a feature rich UI without DHTML but it is not impossible, and anyone who says so is ignorant. Not everything pretty and useful and clever needs to be dynamic on the client side, the page refresh and server side scripting is equally powerful, but perhaps more difficult and hence it’s apparent why you’ve opted for the “easy” DHTML way out.

People have long since created powerful administration interfaces without JavaScript — why is it just because the one you’ve created is particularly useful that you think those of the past are just that — only of the past?

It would be great to have somewhere a link to some forum wide permissions, like josh is adding to the Gallery: http://forums.invisionpower.com/index.php?automodule=blog&cmd=attach&id=55

It would really save time and reloads…

“..hence it’s apparent why you’ve opted for the “easy” DHTML way out.”

I don’t know of another method that allows you to hide and/or show divs without javascript. By all means, educate me.

I second mikee’s suggestion. Forum wide permission masks would be really nice, instead of editing them for each individual group :).

With the API thing being avialable to everyone.
Does this includes non-customers creating add-ons?

Chad

Its nice to see the Intergration with IPD, which is what I Assume the 4 tabs at the top are for. Will this mean that thier will be one AdminCP For a whole site; becuase if you can achive that, Invision Products will easily beat all open-source alternatives & vB.

The Great thing about all the Features being introduced to IPB is that the board doesn’t Feel Bloated, while the 2.1 Release will easily bring IPB (Usefull) Functionality up to par with vB.

After Reading the Comments about Javascript/DHTML, i have to say that some of the Opinions don’t Really make Sense to me. Recently I was looking into what Javascript Powered Technologies such as HTML DOM and DHTML can Exactly do, and while it can be hard to implement and not compatible with Every Browser, it is simply the most effective ways of doing some things. It is True Server Side Scripting is Powerfull, but it lacks the Flexibilty needed for Some Tasks. The best thing about IPB is that it uses (usually) the most Appropriate Technology for the Task at hand. My Suggestion is to Upgrade your Browser. Having said that, a non-Javascript version wouldn’t be bad, especially for basic administative tasks, as on some public machines Javascript isn’t Enabled.

I do like the idea of having forums and moderator controls in one.

P.S.
I Love the idea of the AdminCP IPS Newsfeed.

“I don’t know of another method that allows you to hide and/or show divs without javascript. By all means, educate me. :)”

Page refresh css alteration with variable tracking. It’s tedious and sometimes cumbersome, but not impossible to make a useful interface.

Perhaps you should think less of just using ‘div’s there are other methods of presenting data than hiding and showing layers on a page.

^^

I’m sure your 56K users would really love a page that is constantly refreshing… JavaScript adds a layer of logic to HTML that can be used to improve reponsiveness of interfaces, thereby improving usability.

Denying the use of new technology for the few remaining individuals that don’t want to accept it ruins things for the majority. We have highly usable and responsive interfacet as a result of these technologies, but for some reason some individuals still want to live in the past. Do you want us to all be still using Gopher and Newsgroups? Just because it’s new doesn’t mean it has to be feared. (But hey, it’s not even that new anymore!)

It’s just a lot of programmers are still stuck in the HTML 4.01 mindset and need to look towards XHTML/CSS/DHTML interfaces. There are still a lot of new usability challenges introduced, but if you’re not stupid about it, they should not present a challenge. A lot of desktop application principles apply back to dynamic website interfaces.

“I don’t know of another method that allows you to hide and/or show divs without javascript. By all means, educate me. :)”

Well, I usually use CSS, but I see why for a big application like this you need to think of the IE users.

Well written light _HTML_ will load fairly quickly on a 56k user’s computer, no slower than any other page. Loading a page with graphics doesn’t help those people either, and downloading a page and all its related javascript has some initial cost.

All this is of course besides my main point, it is _not_ impossible to develop highly useable interfaces using past technologies.

I don’t disagree that it’s easier and in some ways more beneficial to use “new” (are these things really new, or just new to you, new to Matt?) technology. You should use tools suited to the job - but in some cases that means using tools that don’t take away from people who refused to run additional components on their computer (should I not be able to use Windows Explorer if I choose not to use Internet Explorer?).

It’s becoming more evident that the problem is that with a system that is apparently “skinned” so well a lot of processing is taking place in the skin - this is hardly desirable. What should really be happening is that someone is writing a skin that improves the functionality by javascript of the all ready basic refreshed-css/html light-weight and image un-rich pages.

That might be your vision for Mercury Board, Mark - but it’s not mine
I fully intend to take advantage of all the tools a modern day browser offers to create a feature rich UI which sits over the traditional static PHP generated offerings.

If you don’t agree, then that’s fine too.

“Well, I usually use CSS, but I see why for a big application like this you need to think of the IE users.”

The point is that javascript manipulates CSS on-the-fly without invoking a httpd / php process. There is no way to manipulate CSS without either re-loading the page or using scripting.

I think it’s great that Matt is taking advantage of modern technology. I mean it’s javascript, anyone who is intelligent enough to run their own licensed board is usually going to be using a modern browser which supports javascript.

Who wants to stay in the past anyway? Not me.

I am not an excellent web programmer. I don’t clain to be at all but I have written programs for Windows / *nix. It seems like “Anonymous’s” would like to support older technology or users. At some point there has o be a lline drawn to make programs more current on todays technologies. Writing a page in HTML 4.01 is great but there are other tools to make life easier to write, manage, and use. Every computer program that is continually developed has to say “You need this to run the program at its basic level and you should have this for best performance.” I am not saying to start tagging web sites like this but people need to move on eventualy. Would we have IE / FireFox today if we still tried to run programs on Windows 3.1, or 95? I dont mean to stir the fire anymore but I see “Anonymous’s” comments as a reason to complain about something that purchased users of IPB WANT in the software.

On another note Matt. GREAT WORK. I am very hppy to see what you are doing and each time you tell us about it I am on the edge of my seat wondering when I can get my hands on the copy of it. You got my hanging by the skin of my teeth for IPB and ID. Give us a litle taste even if its not final PLEASE!!!!

Louis

The idea was perhaps less to push some vision I had on you. I’m merely bringing to light the fact that some stuff shouldn’t be built in. Matt, you talk so much of utilizing plugins and having so much feature customizability, but you dismiss so quickly techniques that clearly add goals that you have in the past defined.

I posted anonymously (as it matters now?) to avoid flack from your other visitors for disagreeing with something you said, and it’s just that you said something was impossible where clearly it is not.

I know that you do not forget many people look to you for style and form in how to code, and in the past year or two I’ve seen some things you do that just shouldn’t be done, it’s important that you don’t use words like ‘impossible’ so that your style forces that of others - whether you intend it or not what you say has great effect on a large community, and as I said, I was correcting an error.

Clearly that which you originally stated as impossible isn’t really impossible, just tedious and perhaps not as “cool”, and in some ways not as clever or as practical, but nevertheless, other ways are not impossible.

I digress in a side discussion in comments. Happy coding.

(PS - XMLRequest is a really neat tool to use, but my server-oriented buddy noticed something rather interesting, an enormous amount of temp files being generated in the server’s temp directory when you run the software. A little scheduling app I wrote [http://www.gravityworks.us/mark/ccs/] seems to have generated ‘100s’ of such files. Not sure if you’ve run into similar issues.)

“It’s just a lot of programmers are still stuck in the HTML 4.01 mindset and need to look towards XHTML/CSS/DHTML interfaces.”
—

I believe this is the entire point, right here. If we expect to ever move quickly into the new standards, we have to have powerful software vendors like Invision Power Services developing software that uses these standards. One thing I would like to see in IPS’s Products is some type of “Bulletproof XHTML” as mentioned on Cow’s Blog (http://cow.neondragon.net) for Blog Software. If Matt can write such a parser, and slide it into the ips_kernel system, it will ride with all of IPS’s Products, making them all infinitely more reliable, with regards to Web Standards.

Extremely encouraged by all of the new things you’ve been working on, Matt. Now that IPB is on sale, it’s within my price range. You’ll be seeing another new customer, really soon. Keep up the excellent work.

Any more screenshot(s)? And like/unlike Jeremy Privett above I can’t afford even the year license. Maybe like or unlike Privett above I am a student and still live with my parents, and I don’t think they would like even paying 5 dollars for something. And my dad would think ‘o they are going to give the computer a virus” (He thinks that for like EVERYTHING SINGLE STUPID THING I do on the computer.

A question regarding IP.Dynamic:

Does the application actually create the folders/files or are they dynamic (hince the name) using .htaccess?

Lovin 2.1 Alpha Matt.
Not many complaints, and from the looks, I will be in Beta, and Final in no time.

Any news on the forum downtime?
I got in for about a minute around 8PM EDT, and around 10:15 got a “No SQL connection”

Not many complaints at all (apart from the bugs which is all part of the fun).

We were luckly to suffer a DDoS attack last night. Took a few hours to sort it out and block the offending addresses from the company firewall.

2.1 Alpha is looking pretty good, aside from the bugs. Hopefully the majority will be found and fixed before the final. That’s the only thing I hate about new major releases, they bring in a whole new boat load of bugs.

I think since you ‘upgradded’ the forum to 2.1 Alpaha I think I’ve noticed a few bugs or so that the customers havent’ but since I am not one I can’t post in the bugs forum. I can’t even remeber what they are, right now.