Site Updates/New Features

[Loren]

Personal Profile Portal

RennTech.org has a totally redesigned personal portal page with the following features:

• Friends list - manage your friends for easier PMing, to see if your friends are currently online and display your friends on your profile
  
• Profile comments - allow visitors to leave comments on your profile. You can set to moderate all new comments before they're shown.
  
• Recent visitors - recent visitors are shown on your profile.
  
• Your content - show your recent posts / blog entries / gallery uploads on your profile
  
• Personal statement - add a short bio for others to read
  
• Member rating - rate other members
  
• Set your gender
  
• Easy access to edit your location, age and IM details
  
• Friends List: Reciprocal Adding. When approving friends you can choose between "Approve & Add to my list" and "Approve Only".
  
• Friends List: Mutual Friends List: View who you've added and who's added you.
  
• Profile: Profile View Counter
  
• Profile: Ability to set the number of last visitors, comments and friends in the sidebar
  
• Profile: Ability to use basic BBCode for formatting the personal statement
  
• Member List: Ability to sort member list by profile views.
  
• Tool to convert previous versions contacts into new versions non-mutual friends
  
• Tool to convert previous versions photos to new versions Profile Photos
  

New Text Editor

New Style

The text editors, both standard and rich text (WYSIWYG) have been completely rewritten to make them more intuitive and faster to load. Clutter has been reduced with the new dynamic menus.

Switch

You can now switch between the rich text editor and the standard editor without the need to reload the page or visit your User Control Panel.

New Attachment System

Upload without the reload

RennTech.org has a new attachment system that enables one to upload attachments without having to reload the post screen. The new attachment area is directly below the text editor.

New Style

The attachment system has had a complete overhaul and is now styled along side the new text editor

New Spoiler and Acronym tags

There are new Spoiler and Acronym tags that you can use in posts.

A Spoiler tag hides text until someone highlights it with their mouse.

For example: You see this

but not this!

Acronyms are great for explaining a term or phase. Just position your mouse over the dotted unlined word to see it's meaning.

For example: If disable your ABS you will have trouble stopping the car in an emergency.

New Thumbnail Design

Attached image thumbnail previews now have information above and below the thumbnail offering original file size and original dimensions.

Inline message system

RennTech.org has an on-the-fly message system to confirm actions taken place. This is an important new part to the user interface especially when using ajax when it's not always apparent that an action has taken place.

Auto resizing of large linked images

Posted images are automatically resized on-the-fly if they are larger than the available screen width of the browser. Clicking the image displays it full size in a pop-up window. Each reduced image has information above stating how much reduction has taken place and the dimensions of the original image.

Ability to reset password by email or username

If the login type is 'username' a second field on the reset password screen will display to allow a user to reset their password by their email address. That is, they can enter their email address (i.e. if they forget their username) and the process will proceed as normal.

Reviews Section

The Reviews section will be re-done to a new/better/more compatible system that interfaces with the forums better. I hope to convert all the existing product reviews to the new system when it is ready. Edit - The Reviews section will require you to login (at the Reviews page) in order to reset the cookie for that application. You should only need to do this once (for each computer that you use).

I likely missed a few new features so I will try and update this posting as time goes on. Please let me know if you see any errors or mistakes.

Thanks!

Edited December 10, 2006 by Loren
Updated Reviews section comments, added Spoiler and Acronym info