I’ve spent the last 5-6 hours putting what I hope will be the finishing touches on the forum. Special thanks to Foomandoonian, Simply-Basic, Mike and SierraK for signing up to the forum and helping me iron out some issues that were discovered.
I’ve tidied up the design so it looks the same in both FireFox and IE 7. I’ve added an entirely new icon set to help distinguish between new posts, sticky posts, ect. I also modified some link colors as well as some background colors. As per Sierra’s suggestion, I have turned the forum header/logo image into a link which will take you to the blog homepage when clicked on.
About syndication. Unfortunately, PHPBB RC7 does not come with any syndication out of the box and will not be shipping with any in the final version. Instead, I will have to rely on a mod author to create a syndication mod once PHPBB has been finalized which should be any month now. Until then, I suggest making sure that the check box to be notified upon a reply to a thread or topic you have posted on is checked. This should send you an email anytime someone replies to a thread you have posted in.
We already have some conversations ongoing within the forum so don’t be shy. Register an account and get in on the action. Click here to view the forums.
On the topic of updates, I wanted to let you know that I have finally fixed the “text highlight” bug which was apparent in FireFox. It had something to do with using a white image as a background. When a user viewing this blog in FireFox would drag their cursor over some text to perform a copy and paste, the highlight would blend in with the background causing confusion as to whether the text you wanted selected was their or not. This issue has been fixed.
I also tried to replicate the Internet Explorer Stack Overflow errors as I wanted to fix those as well. However, no matter how many times I refreshed the site, I could not get those errors to appear. Mike, if they happen again, the first thing I would advise you to do is to install IE7. If that doesn’t work, let me know and I’ll continue to investigate.
Now that most of the hard work concerning the forum has been taken cared of, expect to see some content added to the blog this week.
Thoughts and Insanity From Jeff 
Okay so I might be completely losing it or maybe its my computer…but its extremely hard to read the gray text on the dark background…
@Sierra I’m not sure what your talking about. Are you talking about on this blog or somewhere on the forum?
O_O…Its normal again…I’m guessing my eyes were playing tricks on me b/c last night the background was dark and the text was dark gray and it was really hard to read…or maybe it was my laptop…*on a MAC at school right now*
Jeffro!
Well, I use Firefox 2 and IE 7 at home. I’ve also updated my work IE to version 7.
After some browsing of your site, trying to pin point what is causing it, it appears that it only occurs when I click on a post.
So the homepage is fine, the errors only start to happen when I view an individual post. Even on IE 7 it still seems to occur.
Now, normally I would say, to hell with IE, Firefox is the way to go, but based on w3schools.com, here are the usage statistics for browsers:
September 2007
IE 7 20.8% – IE 6 34.9% – Firefox 35.4%
(http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.asp)
IE 6 has a pretty big cut.
Keep in mind, that these stats are from w3schools, which is used by people who have a bit more knowledge of the web. Therefore I’d be inclined to think in reality IE has a higher market share seeing as it comes with Windows. It depends who you’re targeting the site to.
Anyway, minor point overall. But seeing as it’s becoming a great site, it would be good to fix any small bugs that might deter people from visiting.
@Mike Don’t get me wrong. I’m not trying to steer you away from your browser of choice but I couldn’t duplicate the errors on my install of IE7 so I thought that might of been the problem.
However, I too receive the errors when trying to load a specific post. Thanks for pinpointing where the errors occur. I’ll be looking into it as the week progresses.
No worries Jeffro. I’m a big Firefox fan by the way. Let the record be set straight. :)
Been using it since the days it was still called Mozilla.
IE… not so much. Especially since it used to be so vulnerable.
But good luck in finding the little bugs. I find Javascript is the worst language to debug.
@Mike Upon using google and searching the wordpress.org forums, it looks like the issue is somehow related to javascript. This one may be tough to figure out.
Bugger. Yeah, like I said… Javascript is a nightmare to debug.
Well, just include the Browse Happy logo for Firefox. :)
http://browsehappy.com/badges/
The site is currently ‘down’, but the logos look neat on any website. Hopefully they can convert a few people.
Hey Jeffro,
I came across http://www.browsershots.org
Not sure if you’ve seen it before or not, but it allows you to see how your site looks in different browsers.
I have a quick review of it on my site if you haven’t seen browsershots.org yet:
http://www.ohmike.com/2007/11/02/easily-test-your-site-in-different-browsers/
It’s a pretty neat idea I reckon.
@Mike I read your write up. Thanks for mention and I think I’ll give it a try later on today.