Dear readers, fellow moderators,
the time is ripe to launch a new version of our site, and (unless there are major problems) on
so that I have time to fine-tune it during the Christmas holidays.
The new version has been in the works for about ten months of development and testing and brings several more or less major changes.
The main one is the switch from formatting in the editor using BB code to pure HTML. The editor is now more like Word and one can write fully in it without having to know (higher) dozens of different formatting tags as before.
At the same time we have completely abandoned jQuery in a process that was quite painful, but I think was also needed. Along with that came a revision of many of the scripts and libraries we used or still use here, and updating or replacing them with ones that don't need JQuery to run.
The third change, which has a lot in common with the first, is the move to Web elements / custom components technology, an extension of existing HTML tags to include some custom tags that allow various "more complex" content to be displayed using a single tag. For example, the new valka-gallery tag handles displaying thumbnails of photos from an embedded photo gallery, along with the ability to expand them in a larger view, browse one by one, etc. This wrapping of functionality into a single tag or component was needed precisely to leave the BB code, where I've added a number of specific tags over the 17 years we've been using it, so that we don't have to do such reports, tables, and the like manually over and over again, and so that it has the same look and feel, i.e. a certain staff culture. Times have moved on, but I didn't want to go directly into libraries like React, Angular or Vue, because I still stick to PHP on the backend and now pure javascript on the frontend, without extra ballast. We are still mainly a site for readers, editors, embedding and moderation is necessary, but only a fraction of users use it.
The readers and probably new visitors are targeted by changing the visual appearance of our site, getting closer to, or maybe returning to, the standard layout of elements such as navigation and drop-down menu on the left, login and notifications in the top bar, switching between the primary Czech and Slovak version of valka.cz and the English version of armedconflicts.com. Information about the possibility to participate in the creation of these pages should be published more clearly, as well as the possibility to enjoy browsing the pages completely without ads in the form of a Premium account. Eventually, even the help will be in the footer of the site I think still in plain sight. The dark mode has also been tweaked and the display on mobile devices has been adjusted.
So there are a lot of changes and you will be able to see them directly from Friday the 22nd.
The deployment will be done in several steps, due to the need to migrate the original post and private message data to the new format, the ability to POST, EDIT and INLINE EDIT posts will be temporarily DISABLED. Once the migration is complete, the editors will be back up and running and everything will be in its new guise from then on.
There are a few minor things left that we've only used in maybe one or two topics, I plan to finish those during the holidays, depending on time. And if anyone runs into any problems or confusion, please post, in this topic www.valka.cz
the time is ripe to launch a new version of our site, and (unless there are major problems) on
Friday 22.12.2023
so that I have time to fine-tune it during the Christmas holidays.
The new version has been in the works for about ten months of development and testing and brings several more or less major changes.
The main one is the switch from formatting in the editor using BB code to pure HTML. The editor is now more like Word and one can write fully in it without having to know (higher) dozens of different formatting tags as before.
At the same time we have completely abandoned jQuery in a process that was quite painful, but I think was also needed. Along with that came a revision of many of the scripts and libraries we used or still use here, and updating or replacing them with ones that don't need JQuery to run.
The third change, which has a lot in common with the first, is the move to Web elements / custom components technology, an extension of existing HTML tags to include some custom tags that allow various "more complex" content to be displayed using a single tag. For example, the new valka-gallery tag handles displaying thumbnails of photos from an embedded photo gallery, along with the ability to expand them in a larger view, browse one by one, etc. This wrapping of functionality into a single tag or component was needed precisely to leave the BB code, where I've added a number of specific tags over the 17 years we've been using it, so that we don't have to do such reports, tables, and the like manually over and over again, and so that it has the same look and feel, i.e. a certain staff culture. Times have moved on, but I didn't want to go directly into libraries like React, Angular or Vue, because I still stick to PHP on the backend and now pure javascript on the frontend, without extra ballast. We are still mainly a site for readers, editors, embedding and moderation is necessary, but only a fraction of users use it.
The readers and probably new visitors are targeted by changing the visual appearance of our site, getting closer to, or maybe returning to, the standard layout of elements such as navigation and drop-down menu on the left, login and notifications in the top bar, switching between the primary Czech and Slovak version of valka.cz and the English version of armedconflicts.com. Information about the possibility to participate in the creation of these pages should be published more clearly, as well as the possibility to enjoy browsing the pages completely without ads in the form of a Premium account. Eventually, even the help will be in the footer of the site I think still in plain sight. The dark mode has also been tweaked and the display on mobile devices has been adjusted.
So there are a lot of changes and you will be able to see them directly from Friday the 22nd.
The deployment will be done in several steps, due to the need to migrate the original post and private message data to the new format, the ability to POST, EDIT and INLINE EDIT posts will be temporarily DISABLED. Once the migration is complete, the editors will be back up and running and everything will be in its new guise from then on.
There are a few minor things left that we've only used in maybe one or two topics, I plan to finish those during the holidays, depending on time. And if anyone runs into any problems or confusion, please post, in this topic www.valka.cz
