A few small changes.

[Gumboots]

I've decided I'm in desperate need of an Arop template.

Any of his briefings are nightmare to format as HTML, for the new way of doing briefings. I figured out why it is, too. He mustn't have known that you can do line breaks in the RT3 editor with Ctrl+Enter, or if he did know he didn't care. So instead he just kept hitting the space bar, for as many spaces as it took to shunt things around on screen when he was in the game. The result is that when you copy/paste the briefing from the .gmp to an HTML file, you get one line of text 25 miles long that is mostly blank spaces.

This is not the most convenient arrangement. So I'll make an Arop temlate, and then I can just pick put the relevant numbers from the .gmp without actually copying or pasting anything. This has to got rock.

On the flip side, whenever someone does a German translation of one of his briefings it's usually perfect straight from a copy/paste. I'm developing a real liking for Germans.

(Edit: I'm feeling naughty now. I'm tempted to just run the German translations of Arop's briefings through Google Translate, and use that. )

[Hawk]

And Arop wasn't even German. I'm pretty sure he was from up in Scandinavia somewhere; maybe Denmark?

[Gumboots]

Yes, he was Danish.

Another thing I'm finding is that quite a lot of the English briefings* don't bother to list either win conditions or special conditions. So you'd look at the English briefing and think it was basically a sandbox. Then when you look at the German translation (usually by Sugus) suddenly all these win conditions and special conditions are neatly listed in the briefing.

Presumably they are hiding in the English versions too, but the author just didn't bother to mention them. At some point I may get around to translating them into English so they can be added to the English briefings on the archives pages (I can't be bothered opening all the .gmp's in the game and fixing briefings there).

* Not Arop, in these cases. He was always very thorough with his briefings.

[Gumboots]

Just noting that although the revamped North America and Base Maps pages are up now, I haven't yet added all the briefing and readme texts to them. The rest will be added over the next few days. In the meantime the thumbnails all work (briefing links will still expand those) and the downloads all work.

All the other map archive regions (Africa, Asia, Australasia, Europe, Other Lands, and South America) already have everything working.

And it's called Australasia now because there are quite a few New Zealand maps in that section, and I know the Kiwis are adamant that they aren't Australian (just ask them). Australasia is a geographical region that includes both countries.

[Gumboots]

Ok, nobody make any more maps for a few weeks.
I've just finished doing the map archives, and I don't want to look at them again.

[Hawk]

I'll bet you're glad that's done.

Which section ya' gonna tackle next? I think there's only two left, isn't there; maps and photos?

[Gumboots]

Re-skins. There are some nifty new diesel re-skins waiting to go, so that page is next. Basically I still have to do all the RT3 extras, and the Trainmaster page, but those aren't a big deal.

The RT2 archives can stay much as they are for now (I'll just convert the page type to .php for consistency). I'm not going to bother converting the RT2 archives to text briefings. At some point I'll swap the images there for .jpg's to cut bandwidth and speed up loading, but that can be done anytime.

Oh here's a handy trick. I was thinking of keeping the old Lightbox script on the Extras/RT2/maps/photos pages for the moment, just because it works even though Google grumbles about it being obsolete javascript. Eventually I'll probably change them to use something based on jQuery, since phpBB requires jQuery anyway, so it's already being loaded if anyone visits the forum pages. I only went with a pure CSS solution for the RT3 maps because Lightbox wouldn't handle text content, and I was over trying to figure out implementation "instructions" for other "handy" scripts.

Anyway, with an HTML5 doctype it's valid to put a style tag anywhere you like. If the Lightbox CSS and scripts are put just before the closing body tag everything still works perfectly, but the initial page load is much faster because all the basic HTML and CSS doesn't have to wait for the Lightbox stuff to be processed. The total load time until all javascript is functional doesn't change much, but for someone looking at their screen they appear to get a recognisable page faster.

Combine that trick with the minified CSS and javascript, and suddenly page speed ratings increase to the mid to high 90's. This also helps search rankings, and is easy to do, so might as well have the extras kudos for free.

[Hawk]

Ah!

For some reason when you said the map archives were done I didn't even think about the rest of game stuff.

[Gumboots]

I just moved the "Unread posts" link out of the "Quick links" dropdown, and into the top level where FAQ used to be. It has always annoyed me that phpBB thought it was clever to make use of unread posts slower by putting it in "Quick links". It's the most heavily used link in that whole menu bar. It should be a top level link. OTOH hardly anyone ever looks at FAQ.

(Note that this only applies to Prosilver and Prosilver Dark. I haven't bothered with Aero's template.)

[RulerofRails]

Was it intentional that Unread Posts now requires you to be logged in? This is on Prosilver.

[Gumboots]

Well yeah. How are you going to know if you've read them or not if you aren't logged in? It relies on tracking activity on your account.

[RulerofRails]

I don't know how things were "tracked" before without logging on. Maybe cookies? I'm not familiar with such things. For me this worked quite well to check for new posts but that doesn't mean I can't get used to something else. I could always use Aero theme or just login a lot more often. Was just checking if it was intentional.

[Gumboots]

Oh ok. Can change it then. No problem. I've never used it when not logged in. I'll look up the permissions code again.

[Gumboots]

Changed it. Try that.

[RulerofRails]

Thanks. Just a thought, would it make sense to have Register button in the same line as login?

[Gumboots]

Yeah I thought of that. I think it's probably better where it is. Looks pretty clear to me. But I'll move it if anyone says they had trouble finding it.

[Hawk]

(...I haven't bothered with Aero's template.)

Are you going to bother with it at sometime?

Just curious. Not trying to influence you or anything.

[Gumboots]

Sure, I can do that if you'd prefer that layout. I think you're about the only one who uses Aero, so it might as well be done to suit you.

Come to think of it, I'm fairly sure a lot of the specific Aero templates aren't necessary, and that the same styling could be done with a bit of CSS trickery on top of Prosilver templates, but I'm not sure I want to mess with that.

Edit: Have done Aero now. See if you like it better.

[Hawk]

Yep! Works fine. Thanks!

Hope it wasn't too much trouble.

[Gumboots]

Ok, I've updated the javascript that does the variant changing on Prosilver Dark, and it seems to be a lot faster and smoother now.

If you were using Prosilver Dark and were not using the default grey variant, you'll have to reset your colour preference to whatever you want to use. After that it should be better.

Also (minor point but might as well mention it) I've changed some admin settings. Bots are now visible down the bottom of the forum main page, in the Who's Online section. This is mainly to make it easier for me to keep track of them when I'm just taking a quick look without logging in. It also means one less extension needed, so less hassle for maintenance.

Any names in Who's Online that aren't in bold are either known bots or guests (slightly different colours). Any bots you see there will be harmless ones (Google indexing, etc) so don't worry. If I spot any nasty ones, I'll wallop them with something large and heavy.

Edit: Spotted a nasty one. It got walloped.