Wedge
Public area => The Pub => Features => Topic started by: Arantor on January 15th, 2013, 11:16 PM
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So, the news feature has bugged me for a while. So I'm fixing it up.
Firstly, reordering it. While the one-line display is randomised, the newsfader is not randomised, it follows through the order given. So you can reorder it.
Secondly, permissions. Right now news is 'everyone'. I've wanted it to separate out permissions for a while, but I don't think the whole gamut of permissions/groups is needed, so we have everyone, signed-in members, people who can moderate, people who are admins.
Thirdly, changing the UI generally. I don't know why I dislike the UI as much as I do, but it seems like a cop-out to me to have it as a series of textboxes like that, so a simple list of items, with modify buttons - plus a shiny modify button. Which will all go to a nice edit window with the editor component in it too.
I also haven't ruled out having it draw instead from a board or boards yet. Not sure how that's going to work exactly. But in the meantime here's a sneak peek.
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I always thought the news fader was pretty useless the way it was implemented in SMF. In most cases that was the first thing I disabled on new installations. Adding permissions will make it a lot more useful.
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I agree 100% with Aaron. It's the one feature I've never used on SMF up till today because it wasn't flexible enough for me.
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Are the new features enough to make it usable or does it need more?
/meis likely to add the pull-from-board for example.
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Love the idea of pull from board on top of other new features, the permissions is also pretty exciting.
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Having some way to link the item to a forum post for discussion of the news topic would be kind of cool. Not sure if that turns it into something more that it needs to be. Just an idea.
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Um,,, how does using bbcode for doing that sound? (It's possible, has been even in SMF 1.1, probably even 1.0)
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If you fix the jumping board index caused by the newsfader (when long and short news rotate) that will be nice. When we discussed SMF 2.1 I was surprised that that is not seen as a problem. Not giant, but still a problem, IMO.
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If the items are different sizes, there's nothing you can do short of making it big enough to handle the largest item (which will typically be oversized), or you make it so it's scrollable to handle larger items without making it bigger.
If you have a solution, I'd love to hear it.
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Here is where we discussed it:
http://test2.turtleshellprod.com/index.php?topic=63.0
It was long time ago and when I read it now I laugh at myself (some wrong examples).
Do you think it will be a bad think if fader block has fixed size equal to the longest news and stay that way all the time? Thinking about it now I see a way how the fader block automatically can be set to the size of the longest text using only css. IMO this will be better than the current situation. The only problem is if there are multiple short news and one very long, that way most of the time the space will be used inefficiently, but after all this is up to the admin. As you said there are not many solutions. At least this will prevent the jumping layout.