Site update!
Leading tonight's news: New tech, old polls, new poll, new content.
(Main page "excerpts" are temporarily wacked a bit; please click on title to read all of article.)
1) Updated site to Drupal's latest nifty version, in preparation for yet more improvements. There's always a step backward for every ten or so forward, though, with this kind of thing; the upgrade is bound to introduce several short-lived hiccups and maybe a long-term supperating sore or two. Your bug reports are appreciated!
2) Closed old polls:
How much do you tweak your RPG rules? : As you'd expect from this site, most respondents are tweakers.
Time to 'fess up. Have you dabbled in your own all-original game design work, past or present? : Again, as expected, there are dabblers of all degrees (and only one respondent calls it a "sad little hobby"). Welcome, dabblers and tweakers!
3) Made a new poll: Would you buy Games Diner content – updated, fortified, spiffed-up – as SJ Games e23 download products? If you're not familiar with e23, it's Steve Jackson Games' nifty online shop for game material downloads. It's nicely open to material from all sources; I haven't made myself an e23 author, but have an interest. If that spurs you (or your wallet) to comment, please hit the poll and/or leave a comment there.
4) New draft content: Edge Protection: Armor Enhancement for GURPS (draft). New version of an old favorite, awaiting your critique.
5) A few weeks old, but I haven't said anything about it yet: a site FAQ.
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Clunky Javascript editor
The Javascript editor application is slow and clunky, and it seems I can't turn it off now. Below the application is a label "Input format", but there's no control to turn off this damned thing and just have a simple text control.
The site layout seems to use a fixed size for the middle and/or right column; the result is that the huge Javascript editor control is overlapped by the right column, making both hard to read, and making the editor itself more painful to use.
Re: Clunky Javascript editor
Thanks for the comments – that's very helpful. I mentioned the inevitable "steps backward" with a software upgrade. With the latest Drupal CMS version, here are the two steps backward I've hit (in case any fellow webmasters are interested in the details):
1) Module for creating custom excerpts (i.e., short article "teasers" listed on main page) was not updated at same time. I know good people are working on this, and it will be solved soon.
2) The Javascript text editor I use, TinyMCE, was also not updated, and doesn't look to be under active development. Its functionality under the new Drupal is much more limited.
Re the latter: The site layout does have a fluid middle column, but it looks as if the TinyMCE window itself isn't fluid (at least not any more). It all fits if you widen the browser window enough, but that may not be possible on small-screen setups. And while there used to be a switch to turn off the Javascript editor, I see that, as you point out, the switch is now gone from TinyMCE.
So for now, I've switched from TinyMCE to a much simpler editor called widgEditor. You should see blank input boxes (which many people will understandably appreciate), with an "enable WYSIWYG" control to turn on the editing controls. (Though once they're on, I don't see a control for turning them off again... Grr...)
The controls are nicely simple, and in my testing, the widgEditor input box is fluid, adjusting its size with browser size. So this solution should work well... until your or someone's browser setup proves that wrong.
Thanks for the usability testing, and please let me know if problems continue!
Re: Clunky Javascript editor
> You should see blank input boxes (which many people will understandably appreciate)
Thank you. Having plain input fields *by default* fixes one of my long-standing annoyances with this site. Great.
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