As you can see a new version of the 8052.com Website has been installed. I've been working on this new version, off and on, since February of this year. At this point I think it's good enough for an initial public release.

I suspect there will be quite a few problem reports as, so far, the site has only been tested by a handful of beta-testers (thanks, guys!). With thousands of people now using this new version of the site I'm sure many additional issues will be discovered. If you find a problem, please report it in this thread. Hopefully we can get the quirks out of the system quickly.

If any serious problems arise I may switch back to the old system temporarily until I have time to fix the problems. Hopefully that won't be necessary.

Notable changes:

1. Clean Appearance. I think the new website itself looks and feels much cleaner. This was the original intent of the rewrite, along with starting with essentially new code and cleaning things up. In order to maintain compatibility with the old code I didn't rewrite all the code, but most of the code is new and better organized.
   
   
2. Non-Scrolling Sections. The top and left sidebar should now be non-scrolling. That means even though you scroll the content, the top and left sidebar should always be visible. This should make navigating easier as all functions will always be on-screen.
   
   
3. Users Online. You must be logged in to see the users online. To see the users online when you're logged in, move your mouse over the number of "visitors online" displayed in the upper left of the screen.
   
   
4. CSS/Stylesheets. The website now uses CSS/stylesheets extensively. The upside to this is that most pages should load faster because more of the formatting only needs to be loaded once from the CSS file. The downside is that CSS is implemented rather inconsistently across browsers. That means what may work on one browser might not work on another. To-date the system has been tested with Firefox 2, Firefox 3, IE6, IE7, Opera 9.5x, and the latest version of Safari for Windows. The site works best with Firefox 3 but should work adequately on all of the others in thist list. According to website logs, those browsers represent the vast majority of those used by visitors to the site. If you detect any problems--especially any that render the site unusable--please be sure to describe the problem and let me know your browser version and operating system.
   
   
5. My Account/My Home Page Enhancements. The "My Account" and "My Home Page" functions have been enhanced by implementing a tabbed interface.
   
   
6. Message Links. The message links for messages have changed from http://www.8052.com/forum/thread.phtml?thread=159552 to http://newbeta.8052.com/forum/thread/159552. Links to messages in existing messages should automatically be translated to the new format when they are clicked on so we shouldn't end up breaking any links. In fact, most of the site has been updated to use a directory-based linking system rather than using specific filenames and HTML parameters.
   
   
7. Expandability. The old site was an 11-year old mass of code that had been patched and modified over time. This patchwork of code made it very hard to expand or modify the system in anything approaching "clean" but rather demanded "hacks" and "workarounds" that just got messier and messier. The new site obviously addresses that so that, in theory, things I want to do going forward will be easier to do... and do right.
   
   
8. Other Features. There are other features that are implemented in the new version but which are not yet being utilized. I will mention them if/when they are used.

Something that hasn't been implemented yet is the 8052.com-centric search function that was removed some time ago. That will be implemented soon. Without going into technical details, it was pretty much necessary to implement this new system before implementing the more efficient site search. For now the 8052.com search in the top area of the screen will continue to access Google. But once this new system seems to be essentially stable, I'll go ahead and develop the code for the site-specific search.

Again, if you run into any problems please let me know.

Regards,
Craig Steiner
8052.com Webmaster