Rikki

While we aren't quite ready to show off IP.Board 3.2.0 in its entirety yet, I wanted to talk a little about what you can expect from our new front-end skin - our thinking behind development, areas we've focused on, etc. Goals Before development commenced, we created a list of goals that we aimed to meet. These include: Improving the experience We've been accused in the past of having a 'clunky' experience in some areas, so we've worked hard to improve the user experience in key areas. Some of these are usability changes, while others relate to reducing clutter on the screen or relocating elements. Making the skin easier for 3rd party developers (and ourselves!) to use Another focus was on making our skin - particularly the CSS - easier to use, for skinners, developers, even our own team. We've found that as new features were added, whole blocks of existing CSS were copied, pasted, then tweaked to suit the new feature. This creates some resource overhead, not to mention more work for skinners and developers. To remedy this, we've begun introducing a new approach to our CSS: more modular units that can be reused and combined easily to make many interfaces easy to implement. This will be gradually introduced throughout the skin as areas get updated in future point releases. Already, we've been able to remove large sections of old CSS as the updated areas make use of the new modular CSS. Modernizing the display It's been 3 years since we first began working on IP.Board 3.0, and the internet has come some way since then. We decided it was time to refresh the visual style of our default skin. While it will still be clearly recognizable as IP.Board, we've added some polish to the overall style, and made more use of technologies such as CSS3. Areas that we've focused on A huge number of areas have had minor tweaks here and there, too numerous to list here. But other areas have had significant updates, including: Global wrapper This is probably a given, since it influences the rest of the skin. Parts have been made more streamlined, with a new member & moderator bar, a new application bar that now supports as many apps as you choose to install, inline sign in and more. Forum view While the basic concept of listing topics inside a forum hasn't been altered, we've made big updates to the presentation, including rethinking the display of non-essential items and a new, friendly topic preview. Topics view As with forum view, the basic structure has not changed (familiarity is a good thing!), but numerous elements have been tweaked, changed, and tidied. All in all, reading topics should be a more pleasant experience for your users. Profile Our profile view was in need of overhauling, so that's what we've done! It now sports a vastly cleaner display while keeping all the relevant information accessible. Data from 3rd party apps is easily incorporated without fear of breaking the tab bar as in 3.0. In addition, we have merged profile comments and status updates, giving members a modern 'wall' in their profile. Calendar We've previously posted blog entries about new features you can expect to see in Calendar, and to go along with that, we've completely revamped almost every aspect of the calendar display - hopefully making it a more inviting place for your community to share events. Registration We identified some time ago that our registration routine was less than optimal, especially when considering communities that make use of IP.Nexus, with its ability to sell packages at registration. To remedy that, we have rethought the registration routine, to present Nexus packages in a better way, get rid of unnecessary steps along the way, and above all make it quicker for your prospective members to register Moderation We will elaborate on this point at a later date, but we have made the various day-to-day moderation tasks easy to access and use - a boon for your moderating team. View New Content Our View New Content area has steadily grown more complex as additional sorting and filtering options have been introduced, so we felt it was time to improve the display of those options to make it all a bit easier to use. Posting Screen We've updated the new topic/reply screen to be more streamlined, as well as integrate some new goodies that we'll talk about later. Redirect Screens The old-fashioned 'you are being redirected' screens are now a thing of the past. Every area has been updated to use a new inline notification display, which doesn't get in the way and fades after a few seconds. Teasers To whet your appetite, here's some teaser shots of the new front-end. We'll be gradually showing more as we discuss new features in later blog entries. While these are just teaser shots, over the next few weeks we will start posting blog entries about new features on the front end that will also contain screenshots of new skin elements so keep an eye on our blog for more updates! Feel free to comment on this blog entry below or, if you have feedback unrelated to this blog entry, start a new topic in our feedback forum. Be sure to check the What's New in IP.Board 3.2 topic for a running list of announced changes!

One of the areas we identified as requiring significant update in IP.Board 3.2.0 was the member management process. Member management is, for most communities, the most frequently-executed task that happens in the AdminCP, so it is important the process is quick and easy. In previous 3.x releases, each different type of member (normal, banned, validating etc.) had a separate page from which you could manage that type. Once on the correct page, you check the members you want to work with, then select an action. Refresh, repeat. In IP.Board 3.2.0, we've significantly streamlined the entire process. All types of members are now viewed in a single interface, though that interface can adapt depending on what you're viewing. Let's take a look... Viewing Members Notice at top-left a toggle bar, to change the member type you're viewing. Notice also that the column headers (member name and email, in this case) allow for sorting. All of this takes place dynamically - virtually no page loads are required for any action in the new Member Management section. Searching for Members Searching for members is easy - simply start typing in the filter box, and results are displayed live in the list. For more specific searching, you can use advanced search to narrow your criteria. Managing Members Managing members is a one-click process. The available options for each member are presented as buttons; clicking an action confirms it and removes that member from the list. Previously, you would have to (in this example) select the members to ban, scroll down, choose the appropriate action, the page would reload, then you'd have to do the same for the members you wanted to delete. In IP.Board 3.2, you can simply work your way down the list, choosing the appropriate option for each user. We expect this will be particularly useful when managing validating members. Once you've cleared the list, the page will automatically load in another 20 members for you to manage. You can still mass-manage members, however. Selecting some members enables the available mass-actions, and again, once you confirm, more members are loaded for you automatically. Summary Member Management is now essentially a one-click process - a vast improvement on previous version of IP.Board. We hope that the new process will significantly reduce the time you spend on the repetitive and time-consuming task of managing your member base. Feel free to comment on this blog entry below or, if you have feedback unrelated to this blog entry, start a new topic in our feedback forum. Be sure to check the What's New in IP.Board 3.2 topic for a running list of announced changes!

One of the primary areas we have targeted for improvement in IP.Board 3.2 is a fresh style and usability improvements for the AdminCP. Our AdminCP has long been considered one of the best in the industry, so while we didn't want to tear up that work and start again, we did feel it was time to make substantial improvements. Overview First, let's take a look at a general overview of the new style: As you can see, we've tidied up the header area. The live ACP search, which has been a hit feature, has been made more prominent (more on that later). The 'button bar' that many pages make use of has been styled more like a toolbar in a traditional application. Many other general aspects have been tweaked, such as improved typography, removing various bits of clutter on the screen and updating the drag handle to the standard used in places like GMail. Sidebar / Menu In 3.0/3.1, the sidebar is the primary way of navigating through an application. The downside of this is if I'm in the Forums app and I want to, for example, edit a member, I first have to click the Members app, then find the item in the sidebar, and finally arrive at the page I wanted. We felt for an app of the size of IP.Board, more effective navigation could be done by using multi-level dropdown menus: This makes it really speedy to get wherever you need to get. You can even navigate to your non-core applications: The sidebar can be hidden, giving you more space on your screen for the important content. I've been using the new menu system for weeks, and I certainly couldn't imagine going back to using the sidebar as the primary navigation method. I hope this makes routine administration tasks noticeably easier for everyone. New Item Menus In 3.0, item rows that have additional options are displayed using the icon. While this works fine (especially when there's many options), it could be made quicker if the primary actions were buttons in their own right. IP.Content and IP.Nexus have had the new item menus for some time, but they're now used throughout IP.Board. Primary actions (such as Edit and Delete) are displayed as buttons, while less-frequently used options remain in a dropdown menu. The row you are hovering on highlights itself for easy identification: (Fun fact: this menu system is generated entirely with CSS3 - so it's incredibly easy for mod authors to reuse) New Tab Bar In IP.Board, many sections use tab bars for situations where you can edit all of your applications at once (for example, the Tools & Settings section). However, problems arise when you install lots of extra applications - the tabs can spill out of the bar and break the page layout. To resolve this, we have added a new style of tab bar, that comfortably displays as many apps as necessary. By default, it looks like a standard tab bar: But when many apps are installed and your browser window is not large enough to display them all, it adds smooth scrolling controls: New Form Style Though not a major change, we have updated forms throughout the ACP to use a slightly different layout. In 3.0, field descriptions were displayed under the field title. Where fields had long descriptions, this was unwieldy, and contributes to making forms more difficult to use than they should be. In 3.2, we have updated the styling so that field descriptions appear directly under the field they relate to. Field titles meanwhile are right-aligned, making it really easy for your eye to travel the page and identify items: New Live Search I mentioned earlier that the ACP live search had been made more prominent in the interface. We hadn't expected it to be quite as popular as it is, so in 3.2, we've improved the display of the results box. Often, a search would have dozens of results, which made them difficult to scan through to find the relevant one. Live search in 3.2 breaks down the display into sections, like so: Summary We hope that the new navigation system and live search really makes finding what you need highly efficient, so you can get on with doing the important tasks. We hope the cosmetic and usability tweaks makes performing those tasks just a little bit easier. And, of course, we hope you like the overall styling we are going for. Feel free to comment on this blog entry below or, if you have feedback unrelated to this blog entry, start a new topic in our feedback forum. Be sure to check the What's New in IP.Board 3.2 topic for a running list of announced changes!

Note: Since this entry was published, our Resources area has been updated with the new version. Go there now to see these features live! One of the main aims for IP.Downloads 2.3 was to overhaul the interface to bring it up to scratch. To that end, we have focused on 3 major areas in this revision, which we'd like to show you now. File Submission The current submission screen in IP.Downloads became unwieldy as multiple options and configurations appeared in each release. We've redesigned the upload process from scratch, to properly guide the user through each step and put the files they're uploading at the center of what they're doing. The new screen is composed of three steps: files, screenshots and information. It's displayed as an accordion so the user can focus on one thing at a time: The next step is to add screenshots to the entry: Notice here that the first screenshot is highlighted; this is the new Primary Screenshot feature covered in yesterday's blog entry, allowing you to set the 'main' screenshot for a file. To do so here, you simply click it to highlight it. Finally, you add metadata... File View Next we updated the view file page. Notice the primary screenshot is shown prominently next to the description, whereas other screenshots are available below. IP.Downloads Portal The final screen isn't so much an overhaul as a brand new page altogether. We felt one of the areas that could be improved in IP.Downloads is being presented with interesting downloads right on the front page, rather than a clinical list of categories. To achieve that, we've updated the homepage to be a portal of content, like so: Three main panels appear on the homepage: what's new, highest rated files, and most watched files. Each panel shows up to 18 files in a scrollable pane so it's easy for users to browse. In the sidebar, we show top downloads and top authors. Note that if you have the IP.Nexus/IP.Downloads integration enabled, instead of seeing Top Downloads, you'll see Top Free Files and Top Paid Files. Also when the integration is enabled, files will display their price: We hope you enjoy what's coming in IP.Downloads 2.3, and we'd love to hear your feedback!

We are pleased to announce that IP.Gallery 3.1.0 is now in the beta testing stage, and has been installed on this board for public testing! This update brings many refinements, performance optimizations, and new features, including: Friendly URLs IP.Gallery now makes full use of the IP.Board FURL system. Categories, albums, images and more now have the friendly URL structure you're familiar with. Image notes Image owners are now able to add notes to sections of their images, positioning and resizing them to suit. Other members will be able to see the notes when hovering over the image. (An example) Image rotation Images can now be rotated in 90

New Mobile skin When we developed IP.Board 3.0, we took the decision to keep the same basic Lo-Fi skin that appeared in IP.Board 2.x, but expand it to include the ability to post, which was a commonly requested feature. Since 3.0's release, we've had a lot of feedback requesting that we expand the Lo-Fi skin further, and create a truly mobile experience for IP.Board users. Now we're pleased to introduce the new Mobile skin. The new Mobile skin provides handy trimmed-down access to almost all areas of IP.Board, including topics, posting, searching and the messenger. Non-essential information and features have been stripped out, to ensure the interface for mobile device users is uncluttered as well as quick to download and render. The CSS used to build the Mobile skin is minimal, to help keep page sizes down, but we have added a splash a color to enable webmasters to brand their Mobile skin, if they wish. By default, the Mobile skin is traditional IP.Board blue. A GDK for the few images that appear will be released in due course. We've designed the Mobile skin to be usable on any modern mobile device, such as iPhone and Blackberry. It should look great on any size screen, too. We'd love to hear your feedback on the new look, and any questions you have! The skin will be available for testing on this forum in the next few days. Oh, one more thing... it has topic markers :)