We're back!
May 28, '06 02:50:00PM
Contributed by: robg
[May 28] Comments warning: There is an issue with the existing comments we imported to the new site. Specifically, those that were posted in plain text, but included code snippets with quotes or double-quotes. Those snippets of code have issues with backslashes -- they may not have some they require, and they may have some they don't require! If the code snippet is in an orange-ish monospace font, however, it should be fine as is. We have a plan to fix the problem, but won't be able to do so until Monday, May 29th.
[May 27] Safari users tip: If you use Safari, and you're having trouble seeing the site properly, please delete Safari's cookies. You may even have to remove your Keychain entry for your macosxhints account to login properly. This seems to be a weird glitch that's only affecting some Safari users.
After a complex, but well-planned (and thoroughly backed up!) upgrade process, macosxhints is back online. As noted in the pre-upgrade notice, we presently have but one theme, though I plan to add others in the relatively near future. We're still powered by Geeklog, but instead of running a, um, er, somewhat older version, we're now up on the latest release. From a reader's perspective, this means you have access to a few new or updated features. The following are available to everyone, regardless of whether you login here or not:
- We now have many more topics, devoted to the hints we get here about hardware. We're not changing our focus, but if a hint is clearly hardware-related, it will be nice to have a place to correctly place those hints.
- Search is different. I'm not necessarily going to say it's better or worse than it was, but it is different. You will see matches grouped by hints, comments, and links, which is nice. Unfortunately, it's still not a full-text search with boolean support, so the same "how to search" info is provided on the search page to help you out. We know search is important, and that it's far from ideal, and we'll be working on making it better.
- The Links section is much nicer, with paging of results making it easier to browse.
- Headline hints are now more nicely formatted.
- I know some (many?) will disagree, but I think the new layout is cleaner and easier to read than the old.
- Trackbacks will now show up in the footer to hints.
- A built-in spam filter should (hopefully) catch those rare comment spams we see on occasion.
For those who have registered for free accounts and browse as a logged-in user, the following features are new or improved:
- A simpler account management process. Instead of three screens (Profile, Comment, and Display), there are now just two -- Display (which includes the comment prefs) and Profile.
- Upload an image or "avatar" (128x128, 64KB or less) which will appear on their profile page.
- Control whether they'll allow email from users, email from admin, or appear on a who's online list. Note that your email address is *never* visible to others (and wasn't under the old system, either).
- A Location field, to let others know where you are, if you wish.
I'm sure I'm missing a few things, but those are most of the visible changes. Behind the scenes, lots of changes should make the site easier for us to maintain/upgrade, more secure, and add more features in the future...
Thanks for bearing with us through the downtime -- and please, if you find something that's broken, or looks completely wrong, or whatever, let us know. Use the Contact Us link at the bottom of each page, and just make sure you include the URL and/or a description of what you found.
-rob.
Comments (57)
Mac OS X Hints
http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=20060526174137864