SummitPost.org

As a courtesy to other SP members and because I like to take my time on things, I use a workshop page to create my pages so that I don't dump unfinished pages on the site.

However, in a number of ways, the new editor is not friendly to copying and pasting from my workshop page.

Would it be possible to make the following two changes?

* Hide "Under Contruction" pages from the What's New page?
* Allow a one-time "current date" when changing from under construction to done? Example: I start a page on September 1 and have it under construction. On September 10, I finish it and change the tag, and it gets posted on the What's New page for September 10.

These changes would, I believe, be a great incentive and benefit. I can't see any downsides other than a user forgetting to change the tag.

Well Bob, you happened to knock on the door at just the right time. Matt's free time is easing up now which means work on SP can be done. I'm already building up a full list of bugs/features that need to be done for SP. Many of them are small, but still important. The email feature will probably be fixed too sometime this Fall. While I've officially created the tableless design, lots of work still is needed to be done to make it fully stable and clean.

But I certainly like the proposal of the one time publish to what's new. A new uploader/PM system is also in order. Still haven't found a quality PM system (the one's I found were alright) but I have found a good uploader system. SP4 is going to be good.

The outline Bob has above seems like a good design to me.

Josh Lewis wrote:.... While I've officially created the tableless design, lots of work still is needed to be done to make it fully stable and clean. ... SP4 is going to be good.

Tableless design? I am a hack at html, but have managed to create pages that use tables for both text and photos. Does Josh's statement suggest SP4 will be not support tables in html code?

Curious and worried

That's a good question. Table's will still be supported fully and will probably be supported until the end of the internet. In other words, tables will work just fine and are still encouraged to be used in page development.

What tableless design in this case means is the template of SummitPost will no longer be build inside of a table. Wikipedia describes the rationale of this. This will reduce the code, bring SP's design up to standards, might help with search engine ranking, less server resources per page load, and make SummitPost load faster. Tables were meant for tabular data (information that you and I put out in our pages) and not for design.

Right now it's stable enough for production, but being the perfectionist that I am I want to restructure something to make it not look strange in some rare scenario's. Also it needs styling additions and needs to be applied to the rest of the site (profile, PM's, content).

Thanks Josh

I probably feel like my grandparents did when I explained to them how to use a VHS machine in the early 1980's. I understand the general concepts; increasing the already great performance of SP will be awesome. I am very happy pro's like you understand the complexity and structure of the web and site construction, and use for good; talking about mountains and climbing!!!

Cheers
Kevin

However, in a number of ways, the new editor is not friendly to copying and pasting from my workshop page.

I agree and here is another minor issue (it is minor).

When creating a page and when you go to the old editor, it detaches it from whatever page you were trying to add to.

For example, if I wanted to add a route page to a mountain page, and clicked old editor, when I finish the page it will no longer be attached. It also detaches all the photo coordinates unless you go back to the page, and reattach it to the mountain page before proceeding.

The only way I've found around this is to create a blank page by way of the new editor and then go back in and open and edit it in the old editor. It is a minor problem, but kind of a pain since it requires extra steps and since it makes the page appear on "What's New" too early.

As mentioned, it's still a pretty minor problem.

Table's will still be supported fully and will probably be supported until the end of the internet.

Josh, will we still be able to build tables in html?

I hope so. The reason I like html tables rather than the ones in the new editor is that I can quickly build them in excel by clicking and dragging, something you can't do in the new editor.

Your first html table takes longer, but once the first one is built, it's much faster to create the next one and so on. In excel you can click and drag numbers, such as when I build a table that has 500 rows and want them to be numbered 1-500 in a few seconds. You can't do this in the new editor.

For example, this is a screenshot of part of the excel spreadsheet I use by simply clicking and dragging code:

Yes Scott, tables will still be able to be made in pages...I asked the same thing. Who ever thought of the term "tableless design" must have had a life goal to confuse and worry future SP members

Scott wrote:Josh, will we still be able to build tables in html?

No, you must use PHP to insert a function that outputs a javascript statement that inserts a table. (just kidding) As far as I know every single HTML5 (latest version) element is supported on SP. Deprecated ones should still work but are not recommended (like the center tag). Some day browsers might actually stop supporting them (deprecated elements). But it will probably be a long time (many years).

But if you want a tableless page, all you have to do is insert this into the new editor when in source mode <style>table {display: none;}</style> It will break the page.