Aubrey Falconer

Update!

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PlexPedia enhancements, Safarri bugfixes, etc

Submitted By admin on 09/03/05

Aubrey Falconer, admin, Documents, life, safarri, plexpedia

Update: Just received my computer back - only two days after bidding it farewell. Apple and Fedex are certainly on the ball!

I sent my main laptop back to Apple for repairs yesterday due to the same issue that afflicted it before (bright white lines originating around the border of the screen and radiating 1/2" or so inwards), so I thought it would be a good time to get current on updates for some of the projects I have been working on:

I recently fixed a flaw in Safarri's distance based search algorithym that caused the max distance filter to default to 50 miles instead of unlimited. Enjoy the vastly greater number of results returned in your searches! :)
Apple recently released Safari 4 - and it's great! It's so polished and fast that it has displaced FireFox as my personal browser of choice - and believe me - that says a lot. One issue I ran into with it however, is that it has a bug that locks you out of any pages you are editing content in using the standard ATI tinymce editor if you click a button that opens a dialog (such as image, link, or html view). The latest builds of webkit have this issue fixed, so if you want to edit content on any of my sites while using Safari 4, I highly recommend you use the latest WebKit builds until Apple issues an official Safari update.
I have been experimenting with some of the amazing new CSS3 features that Safari and FireFox have begun implementing. You may notice rounded buttons and boxes, css animations, or real text with awesome looking drop shadows in different areas of my sites if your browser supports them. Such fun!
"That Snazzy iPhone Guy" recently interviewed me regarding the new Mars Explorer 1.2 for iPhone. He said he would include the interview in his podcast schedule, which could take up to a couple of weeks to air.
Mars Explorer's forums have a couple new categories. This is just the beginning of a series of improvements that I believe will keep the site much more organized!
PlexPedia has a new content type: Audio! You point it to an MP3 file, and PlexPedia posts a great looking flash audio player to your group. PlexPedia also has many other tweaks and enhancements - such as an autofill for comments and reply titles, a better looking "comments" bar on view pages that has been simplified to one line, more thorough tag prefilling, better content type and category selection adjustment in the submission process, "Add Content" being renamed to "Submit", etc.
I have been working on an extension to the ATI templating system which I am calling "themes". They are CSS based, apply to skins, and can be used to completely customize the look and feel of Safarri Stores and PlexPedia Groups. I can hardly describe how monumental of a feature this is - but let's just say that once I am finished, PlexPedia will be poised to become the premier system for anyone to host any kind of website, blog, or forum.
I have been experimenting with themes (and quite a few other new features - such as a much more customizable content permissions system) on a PlexPedia group that my local Church is setting up as a communication, coordination, and event archival system. Everything you see on the Church at North Idaho site will soon be achievable by all PlexPedia groups.

Have a great day everyone!

I can hardly wait to get back to work when my computer returns...

-Aubrey