http://www.idkfa.com/v3 idkfa: syndicated http://www.idkfa.com/v3/v_thread.php?thread_id=4127&msg_id=4153 So, just to get a feel for what happened on the back-end: I touched at least 3,152 lines of code (according to a difference calculation between a snapshot taken on the 18th versus one taken last night). Using the same two snapshots, I have the following lines-of-code counts: Before: Language Files Blank Comment Code CSS 109 2886 1061 15,375 PHP 99 2508 2707 12,130 After Language Files Blank Comment Code CSS 110 3102 1061 16,074 PHP 135 2722 2643 13,752 kaiden@idkfa.com (kaiden) idkfa Fri, 24 Feb 2012 16:44:25 -0900 http://idkfa.com/v3/v_thread.php?thread_id=4127&msg_id=4153 http://www.idkfa.com/v3/v_thread.php?thread_id=4127&msg_id=4152 [...] kaiden@idkfa.com (kaiden) idkfa Fri, 24 Feb 2012 14:31:32 -0900 http://idkfa.com/v3/v_thread.php?thread_id=4127&msg_id=4152 http://www.idkfa.com/v3/v_thread.php?thread_id=4127&msg_id=4151 Looks pretty snazzy! Also looks good on my ifone! kitacek@idkfa.com (kitacek) idkfa Fri, 24 Feb 2012 13:49:41 -0900 http://idkfa.com/v3/v_thread.php?thread_id=4127&msg_id=4151 http://www.idkfa.com/v3/v_thread.php?thread_id=4127&msg_id=4150 I swapped out the original v3 design with the new one. All users and guests should see it now. If you log in, you have the option to switch back to the original design. Probably the most drastic change is the disappearance of the Discussion Items box to the left. I have replaced it with the discussion items bar, which gives you a listing of items according to the most recent activity in them. More active items are first in the list, and less active items are later. It is intended for those items that are less active to be "cut off" towards the right. You can still click on the "Discussion Areas" link to see the full listing and descriptions. Let me know what you think. And also, if you think this is more of a detriment than an improvement, we always have the option to switch back. kaiden@idkfa.com (kaiden) idkfa Fri, 24 Feb 2012 13:46:21 -0900 http://idkfa.com/v3/v_thread.php?thread_id=4127&msg_id=4150 http://www.idkfa.com/v3/v_thread.php?thread_id=4127&msg_id=4148 This... this ended up being crazy. I haven't really slept much this week, partly because I was staying up too late working on this, and partly because my brain wouldn't shut off even when I was trying to sleep. idkfa now has a rudimentary "theme" functionality. That is, based on its user and global configuration, it can now choose whether to render something with one "theme" or another. Currently, the ability to choose between themes isn't available, but will be in the future. I'm calling them "themes" because that is what Wordpress calls its "themes," which are different ways to display Wordpress that are not only cosmetic changes but also structural changes to the rendering as well. The "styles" for idkfa version 1 and version 2 were purely cosmetic. but the themes for idkfa v3 are both cosmetic and structural, as depending on your theme you can not only have a different rendering of the widgets (Latest Posts, Discussion Areas, etc.), but you can choose between different layouts for the site entirely. I still have a bit more testing and clean-up to do, and I plan to switch over to the new theme here soon (maybe this weekend). Stay tuned. kaiden@idkfa.com (kaiden) idkfa Thu, 23 Feb 2012 20:10:53 -0900 http://idkfa.com/v3/v_thread.php?thread_id=4127&msg_id=4148 http://www.idkfa.com/v3/v_thread.php?thread_id=4127&msg_id=4136 I've got the majority of idkfa transferred over to the new rendering mechanism, including the threading, items, and stream display. Some of it is pretty ugly, but it's functional, and has cleaned up the codebase considerably. kaiden@idkfa.com (kaiden) idkfa Tue, 21 Feb 2012 02:20:29 -0900 http://idkfa.com/v3/v_thread.php?thread_id=4127&msg_id=4136 http://www.idkfa.com/v3/v_thread.php?thread_id=4127&msg_id=4133 Alright. Losing thought integrity, so I think I'm about done for the night. Got lots done, however. I think I've completed the following sections: Archives Home Help Rules 'Tils Online Stats Search However, the stuff I took care of today was largely "boiler-plate," that is, most of the standard or more simplistic displays, and not the more complex, crazy-go-nuts part that thread/item generation is. I've left that for another day. Maybe tomorrow. However, my code, now, is much, much cleaner. Take, for instance, my home page, which is now in its entirety the following code segment: require_once('include/navigation.php'); require_once('include/header.php'); echo layout( array( 'header' => gen_header( "Home" ), 'right' => gen_pinned(), ), array( 'renderer' => 'split_layout' ) ); As part of the new rendering mechanism, I have introduced 'layouts'. As I was already creating a templating system for the smaller portions of the site, it made sense to create something that would give some sort of consistency to how the smaller portions would fit together, and also give me the control to mess with them later on across the entire site (critical, if ever want to have idkfa automatically switch between 'layouts,' say, for switching between a mobile layout and a desktop layout). Now I have an easy and powerful way to generate site contents that leaves the actual HTML code to the underlying renderers (hidden in gen_header and gen_pinned, in this example), and then also having the ability to apply any renderer to join together the components (but also have the renderer be smart enough to build itself if I don't specify certain elements). It also means that I'm having to go back and see all kaiden@idkfa.com (kaiden) idkfa Mon, 20 Feb 2012 03:06:50 -0900 http://idkfa.com/v3/v_thread.php?thread_id=4127&msg_id=4133 http://www.idkfa.com/v3/v_thread.php?thread_id=4127&msg_id=4129 So, I've started work on this. This applies well to a number of sections on the site, in that there are huge amounts of code that I can save by separating the data generation from the display rendering. However, there are also a ton of small, tedious sections that barely deserve having to create an entire "renderable" infrastructure. There are also massive sections of code that are intricate, bizarre, and have a strict order of operations applied to them (see: the thread generation sections) that make transfer to this sort of separation of church and state be very... Anyhow. Progress. But slow. Currently, the discussion item list and latest posts to the left are now implemented as "renderables." Will have to do some crazy things with the header, navigation, and thread displays. kaiden@idkfa.com (kaiden) idkfa Sun, 19 Feb 2012 17:30:36 -0900 http://idkfa.com/v3/v_thread.php?thread_id=4127&msg_id=4129 http://www.idkfa.com/v3/v_thread.php?thread_id=4127&msg_id=4127 SPDCA: Code design. So... there are a lot of ways to program. Arguably infinite, if we want to get math-y. But most of the time there are ways, and there are better ways. Programmers call the "bad" ways anti-patterns, meaning that they are patterns or trends in software development that have less-than-desirable eventualities when it comes to the software engineering process. That said, idkfa has a few anti-patterns, that is, bad choices I made when building idkfa. And that isn't to say that something I've put together is broken or dysfunctional, it's more than if I want to move forward with certain features, choices I've made in the past make it unreasonably difficult to proceed. Case in point: the "mobile" version of idkfa I tried putting together a while ago. It got so far, only to realize that the amount of work I would be putting into getting a mobile version of the site would be ridiculous. This is because I designed idkfa in the same way that I did back in v2, that is, I had the same code segments that did the underlying logic ("How many posts are in this section? Are you logged in?") also do the code display ("Put this section title next to the post count..."). This meant that for doing something like a mobile display, I would have to create two versions of the same function, and the new version would duplicate both the logic *and* the display, rather than making use of the same logic, and just changing the display slightly. It's going to take a while, but I think in order to proceed with some of my plans, I have to rewrite a good portion of the "rendering" parts of idkfa. It will mean I will have better code design in the end, and make it easy to eventually write things like mobile versions of the site, or have more powerful choices in display mechanisms (as well as switching between them). I'll let you know how it goes. More just writing this to collect my kaiden@idkfa.com (kaiden) idkfa Sat, 18 Feb 2012 19:06:43 -0900 http://idkfa.com/v3/v_thread.php?thread_id=4127&msg_id=4127