Site Integration

Discussions about administration, management, technology and development

Moderator: OpenUru.org Moderators

User avatar
Nalates
Member
Posts: 437
Joined: Mon Dec 22, 2008 7:50 pm

Re: Site Integration

Post by Nalates »

Code: Select all

Internet Explorer Versions
1.	8.0	1,035	85.12%	
2.	7.0	124	10.20%	
3.	9.0	38	3.12%	
4.	6.0	19	1.56%
This is from visitors on my blog. I suppose v7 has to be supported. We now consider support for v6 a non-std design item and charge extra for it.

Code: Select all

1.	Firefox			2,150	38.27%	
2.	Internet Explorer		1,216	21.64%	
3.	Chrome			1,187	21.13%	
4.	Safari			695	12.37%	
5.	Opera			246	4.38%	
6.	Mozilla Compatible Agent	86	1.53%	
7.	Mozilla			19	0.34%	
8.	RockMelt			7	0.12%	
9.	Camino			4	0.07%	
10.	SeaMonkey		3	0.05%
It is interesting that Chrome is about to replace IE. Even more interesting is the devices list in use now.

Code: Select all

1.	Windows		4,401	78.34%	
2.	Macintosh	781	13.90%	
3.	Linux		243	4.33%	
4.	iPad		51	0.91%	
5.	iPhone		45	0.80%	
6.	iPod		45	0.80%	
7.	Android		38	0.68%	
8.	(not set)		13	0.23%	
9.	Playstation 3	1	0.02%
If there is any web site that works on everything, I would be surprised.
Nalates
GoW, GoMa and GoA apprentice - Guildmaster GoC - SL = Nalates Urriah
User avatar
Mac_Fife
Member
Posts: 1239
Joined: Fri Dec 19, 2008 12:38 am
Location: Scotland
Contact:

Re: Site Integration

Post by Mac_Fife »

The way I tend to test things is to get everything working in Safari first, then adapt for anything else. Mainly it'll be IE and it's flaky box model that needs corrected.

Anyway, the two issues I noted earlier seem to be fixed. The IE7 issue was just the CSS fix I expected it to be, while the IE8 one turned out to be a bit tricky. It seems that I developed my wiki skin using a slightly different version of the Usability Initiative extension from the one that was installed on the OU server (even though both claimed to be 1.16), so my patched files weren't fully compatible with the install. Synchronizing the UI versions cleared the problem.
Mac_Fife
OpenUru.org wiki wrangler
User avatar
JWPlatt
Member
Posts: 1137
Joined: Sun Dec 07, 2008 7:32 pm
Location: Everywhere, all at once

Re: Site Integration

Post by JWPlatt »

I am away from home right now and using Safari on Windows 7. Just thought I'd check in and see how the site looks on it. Everything looks fantastic!

<tips hat to Mac_Fife>
Perfect speed is being there.
User avatar
JWPlatt
Member
Posts: 1137
Joined: Sun Dec 07, 2008 7:32 pm
Location: Everywhere, all at once

Re: Site Integration

Post by JWPlatt »

5+ Years Late(r):

TLDR: I had some spare time. New site navigation software installed on several resources.

Mac did a lot of work designing and implementing our "WikiCMS," which allows us to dynamically create website pages on the main site. It extracts its page content from our wiki (Wikimedia). The site pages have a standard header, with banner and menu, and a footer with the content in between. But requirements to frequently update each new version of the wiki and forum software created arduous tasks of reintegrating our customizations into them. That got really old, really fast and was contrary to our original goal to keep things easily updated and secure. We ultimately stopped updating the wiki and forums for a long while.

I found a barely-supported phpBB extension last year or the year before, named "navbar" by vipaka, that works. It has a masthead, or banner, and a menu just like we had before, although it is now changeable instead of static. The ease of its integration was a big plus as we move from version to version. The new look - at the time - and function of the banner and menu, also with the Cavern Status bar under it, was pleasant and took less space. I took the generated code and ported it to WikiCMS, which was fairly easy, to at least standardize between the main site and the forums. The phpBB software is perhaps the most challenging to wrap, so it is very much the case that the look of the forum would determin the look of the entire site.

Meanwhile, our wiki software was getting very old and I was becoming concerned about security and staying current. But Mediawiki with each new version was making it increasing difficult to modify their skins with our banner and menu. So I had to pull Mac's work out of the wiki during an upgrade, losing easy navigation from the wiki to the rest of the site.

Some packages, such as Hesk, our support software, make it ridiculously easy with which to wrap a site. Other packages seem to go out of their way to make it as difficult as possible to wrap a consistent site navigation around them. I'm looking at you, phpBB, Mediawiki, and probably Wordpress, which force us to make changes to core code. It's as if in these days of diversity and cooperation, they're doing their best to not let others incorporate their packages into an integrated site of diverse software.

Mediawiki version 1.25 or 1.27 made a big, maybe huge, change to how their skins work. It resulted in being able to make small, direct mods to just two files in their Vector skin. It's still changing core files, but not much, and it's sustainable - at least for now. So I was able recently to reintroduce the new WikiCMS header and menu.

That made me happy enough to looking keep going with our other resources. So I wrapped Hesk, which was, as I mentioned, quick and easy.

Hesk was so much fun that I have targeted the Foundry this week. As part of that, I have introduced some improvements that you won't see, mostly aimed at making the site navigation code more portable to be able to work here and on the Foundry. But you also may notice some obvious things: we can display multiple shard statuses under the menu, and our mascot, Mini, will be appearing in more places. I'm not sure if that's a feature for everyone, but I like her. Mac wrote all the code for the Foundry's home page with Minkata account creation and password reset system. I have gone through all of it to wrap our standard standard look around the Foundry site. You'll see it after rarified approves and installs it. Note that this does not include JIRA and those resources - just the Foundry home page utilities.

These changes have been long in coming. The amount of development activity and use of the site has greatly diminished since we first proudly released the Cyan Worlds Engine as open source for Cyan Worlds right here on OpenUru.org. The goal, as always, regardless of how active things are now, is to create a unified, consistent and familiar way for you to find your way around when you need it. I hope you enjoy the site.

Please feel free to leave comments and suggestions here.
Perfect speed is being there.
Post Reply

Return to “Domain Development”